Breastfeeding. Tis a wonderful thing.
Now as a man, I realise that saying such a thing might see me mistaken for a perve and a creep. Hell, it's pretty hard for a guy to espouse any praise for the natural act of a woman feeding an infant by the boob, as the natural assumption is that most guys can't separate their base sexual feelings from an appreciation of what is, very much, a natural and beautiful act.
Not that I'm saying I'm not a perve and a creep. I am those things, very much so.
I can't help it. I've been a fan of the boob for as far back as my muzzy memory stretches. I love boobs. I'm a boob man. A tit fan. And frankly, though I'm not at all proud to declare it, I'll default to stealing a glimpse of some boob even if there does happen to be a baby hanging off the end of it.
I know. I'm terrible. I'm ascribing a sexual objectivity to what is, first and foremost, an organ designed for and devoted to the rearing of young ones. I ought to be ashamed of myself – and I am, quite genuinely.
Unless I work really hard at it, I will often find myself, out of pure base instinct, whipping my head around at the merest glimpse of a breast bared in public – a breast bared not for my benefit, nor anyone else's benefit, aside of course from providing nourishment to the woman's offspring. I swear I have a radar for bared breasts. I see them beyond the corners of my eye, even if the poor woman is sitting directly behind me. Somehow, I know that a boob is out, and I find myself gawking at it before I can think to stop myself.
It has been a problem plaguing my entire adulthood, and for a long time I struggled to overcome the issue. At first I tried to overcompensate. If ever I should offend my own growing feminist sensibilities by ogling a breastfeeding woman in my company, I would make every effort to not look at her again – not at her boob, or even at any other part of her. She became invisible to me, like she was not even there. Which, on reflection, was of course simply dumb. I'd be unintentionally ostracising her from my conversation or attention, appearing to punish her for daring to feed her child in public. It was the last thing I wanted to do, of course, and yet there I was doing it.
Then there was the time I was in conversation with a new mother, who was also a good friend, when she casually popped out a boob and started feeding her baby right there, right in front of me. What did I do? Did I make it weird? But of course I fucking did – never in my life had I ever held such a fixed lock on eye contact with a person such as I did during the remainder of that conversation. I was so determined to not look at her boob, so determined to prove to myself, and perhaps to her too, that I could be better than a slobbering perve, that I once again made things weird and uncomfortable by tractor-beaming my gaze deep into her eyes, drilling with my irises into the very depths of her psyche and her soul. She looked uncomfortable, but I was dumb and stubborn and lacked the preparation or imagination to behave any better. Can't say I'm too proud of how I handled that one.
That was back in my youth, though. With time and practice, in more recent experiences of a similar boobs-out nature, I could brow-beat myself into performing a passing impression of a normal human being. In between all of these near-miss breastfeeding shenanigans, I also somehow managed to find myself a real nice lady who saw something in me worth sticking around for, and we went and made ourselves our own little squalling piece of progeny.
As part of that process, my missus – she has a name, her name is Shelly – joined a Mother's Group, a bit of a support and social network comprised of other new mums in our local area. And boy, if you were ever inclined to find a situation where bare boobs and breastfeeding abounded, go and find yourself a Mother's Group to hang around.
I came prepared. Fathers weren't verboten from the Mother's Group – just as it was for the ladies, for the lads it was also an ideal chance to make some new mates and remonstrate on the many joys of new fatherhood (sarcasm only mostly intended). Beyond a chance to hang out with new mates, in attending these Mother's Groups I knew there was only too great a certainty that one of these newly-met ladies would whip out a boob and stuff it into a bubba's gob. And I was determined not to be weird about it.
Come the day and time, and lo and behold, of course it was the hottest of all the other mums who first went and bared a breast. Her name is Heather, and just to add to the fun of everything, her hubby Chris was the bloke I'd best hit it off with and considered the closest of my new buddies.
So when I found myself watching Heather undoing her blouse and fixing to pull out the boob, I looked away. As one would do, if one had control of one's faculties and wasn't a horrible revolting perve. Happily, Heather's boobs weren't enormous – her baby's head, once in position, covered her up quite safely, to the extent that once she had her bub in place I felt free and safe to continue to regard Heather as per normal. I could safely look to her when she spoke, and I would look away when there was no other real reason to continue looking at her, just as I would if she didn't have a boob hanging free and easy out of her shirt. I was doing well, I thought to myself.
And as the coup de grace, the finishing touch to my efforts to pass myself off as something other than a vile and reprehensible turd of a person, I even chipped in to the conversation a couple of times when she spoke while she fed – fixing her easily in the eye, smiling lightly and normally, even cracking a joke at one point and making her laugh. All while she had a lovely, perky, really very nice boob out there in the open.
And it was nice. It felt natural and easy. I felt like I'd finally trumped my base villainy, like I perhaps might finally be considered a regular human being in the grand scheme of things. Not that it was entirely easy and natural for me, I still had to check myself as boobs came and went, I'd still have to work to present a normal façade during future meetings of mothers and baring of boobs. But to have come away from that initial challenge, without having caught a glimpse of my mate's wife's breast – either accidentally or intentionally – it felt good.
And you know what? It kind of felt like my effort was actually appreciated by Heather. It's hard to say how or why, but on some subtle wavelength it truly felt to me like Heather had recognised in me a fellow of fine quality – like maybe she had issued something of a challenge in baring her breast for those first few moments, a challenge that other men in that situation had failed; perhaps other blokes had gone for the gawping gawk at her bared bosom, or perhaps they had erred on the other side as I used to do in my youth, making such a show of 'look, I'm not looking!' that it became something of a sad spectacle.
From that point on, both Heather and Chris were nothing but effusive with their friendship, both towards me and Shelly my wife. As time went by the mother's group dwindled, some ladies going back to work, others fading away from the meetings due to any number of reasons. Similarly, other couples and groups had formed tighter-knit bonds of their own, eventually to the point where myself, Shelly, Heather and Chris found ourselves only really hanging out with each other.
And that was absolutely fine. Shelly and I did alright for ourselves and we had a nice little house in a good town, and we'd have Chris and Heather over every now and again for a meal and a laugh. But Chris and Heather seemed to be doing even better, with quite a large and very nice place up on a hill with a top view out over the ocean. It had spare bedrooms aplenty, and they kept large reserves of top-notch beer and wine too, which in combination made Saturday nights of boozing on at their house – with our bubs asleep and safely parked upstairs – a regular occurrence.
One such Saturday evening, nearly twelve months into our mutual parenthood, we had just made a start on the fun. The sun had not yet gone down and things were only just kicking on; Heather was giving her little girl her last feed of the night, my Shelly had our little tyke upstairs and was deep into the twenty-minute ritual of settling him down for a sleep, and Chris was down the bottom of the yard taking a business call. I was nursing my first cold beer, though Heather had not yet started drinking, not wanting to spike her baby's milk with alcohol.
Which made it all the more surprising when, on finishing feeding, Heather didn't immediately tuck her breast back into her top.
I looked. I couldn't help but look, a quick fleeing glimpse.
It was the first time I had truly caught a good look at our Heather. Her breasts weren't large like my Shelly's – think Jennifer Aniston and you've good a good analogue for Heather's breasts and general fine figure, where you need to stretch more to a Salma Hayek to get a better idea of Shelly.
Heather's boob: perky. No natural droop or sag to speak of whatsoever. Fulsome, flush with the swell of breastmilk. Adorned with a prominent nipple, smallish in diameter but tall and proud of the boob; it stood stiff and erect, possibly a result of the rush of a cool summer's ocean breeze upon her damp, exposed skin.
I felt guilty as soon as I looked at her breast, and I quickly looked up to see if Heather had caught me – and of course she had. But there was no reprimand forthcoming. If anything, she looked somewhat triumphant, a twinkle in her eye and a small smile on her lips as though she had achieved exactly what she had hoped to achieve.
Not knowing what to make of that, and silently reproaching myself for failing in such an obvious fashion, I looked out to sea and took a swig of my beer. What else was there to do?
"Shelly's not breastfeeding any more, is she?" Heather asked of me.
