A Comfortable Hammock for Boobs

Published on: 26 September 2013 Author: Laura Dockrill

The author, poet, spoken word performer and all round good egg Laura Dockrill, who's work includes Darcy Burdock and Angry Cookie, became our ninth Writer in Residence back in 2013. In this blog Laura treated us to a fantastic feminist poem about her boobs!

It's really nice to make friends with people whose work you like.

It's such a lovely way to meet a person. Recently I've been bumping heads with writer Dawn O'Porter. Dawn has pulled together some of her favorite people to make this excellent book called The Booby Trap and Other Bits and Boobs, featuring a lot of different pieces of work by lots of different people all about boobs. The book is in aid of breast cancer charities and is published by Hot Key Books.

Tonight, I will be reading my contribution out, in front of lots of people (including a Spice Girl) at the launch of the book – and so I wanted to let you read it first:

A Diamond Encrusted Bubble Gum Flavoured Speckled Glittered Brightly Coloured Erotic Eye-Wateringly Bouncy yet Sensible, Comfortable Hammock (with pockets)

Mum, let's pretend we're bakers.
It's 5.30am and luckily, for us, the cakes have just come out
hot
from the oven.
It's ok; you lie there, because I KNOW you're tired,
And I'll sit here, on your tummy,
with all of my 5 year old body weight
and decorate the cakes. Otherwise referred to as...
Your boobs.'

Of course I never wanted to eat them. I just wanted to
roll
them
and squeeze them.
And attack them.
Because I didn't have them.
And when she 'reminded' me that once upon a time, before the plastic joy of McDonald's,
that they fed me! I DRANK from them, with my mouth?
Well I was horrified.
And I never wanted to see them again.
They were 'udders'.
Embarrassing ones. With personalities.

I hated seeing friend's Mum's ones even more, accidentally; in a changing room,
All baked egg-like and soggy and depressed and wilting,
Like a flabby rejected exotic plant that nobody read the 'How To Look After' manual of.

When they (the breasts) chased me, and caught me, got me, in the kiss chase menace of puberty, I fought, proper.
I said
'NO! Don't give me those' and took to a bra like a fly to a pond. Drowning, terribly.

It meant I was growing up
and I would have to watch whilst my sister
got tickles and ice cream
whilst I awaited Santa's stocking of sanitary towels and M&S vouchers.
Thanks Papa Chrimbo.
Cheers for that.
I'm about to explode.
Like a bomb of snake blood.

Then suddenly, they become your thing almost over night.
They are yours.
Flat-chested girls say,
'How did you do that?' about your boobs, and you say
'Just by being alive and eating loads of stuff.'
And that's pretty good and you
look at slightly chubby blokes and think
Thank God I'm not a bloke because they aren't allowed two
sockets for extra fat to dress up in a balcony bra
and you are proud but guilty.
Dockers' Knockers.
Inside I just wanted to be Tinkerbell actually.

We want 'tits' like girls in French films who
shove vest tops on with NOTHING underneath,
who hop and spring around like newly born lambs,
boobies like ice cream cones,
like hiccups,
like moths,
with nipples like tiny perfect kidney beans.

Those girls want 'bangers' with big moose-like swells,
orbiting their own selves like naked gorilla heads, stuffed into swelling stinging frothy elastic,
that punch your lights out every time you go to switch the light out,
black eyes but... look at them boobs.

You go to your friend's houses and you swoon at their
little cup cake paperette bras dangling on the bathroom door, like dinky patterned bonnets for Barbie dolls that almost make you weep, they are so pretty.
Meanwhile, should you and your friends ever get stuck on a desolate cliff?
You could certainly attempt catapulting them across the world to safety with the capacity of your BRASSIERE, that's right, I dropped the Brassiere bomb, code word for flubbery, gargantuan, goblinesque, dinosauric, vacuous pit of Bermuda Triangle, no mans land.
It's a contraption.
It's a bit of equipment. That's not pretty.

I also recognise the advantages.
My bra is like a rucksack and can hold loads of stuff inside it.

Because my mum wore low cut tops and let her boobs harass the eyes of strangers
I have always kept mine relatively under wraps
like the magazines that come in bags that you're not allowed a free flick through before purchase.
My chest is a gamble.

I wish you could eat it.
Your bra.
A bra.
Or at least chew from it.
It must have another purpose other than just like Clinton's monetizing on Valentine's Cards,
making men and women curdle sour everywhere,
Well... bra shops do the same, with their variety,
they are all too small,
too ugly or just too rubbish,
however,
we need them
because there is NO better feeling in the world than taking a bra off after a hard days work of bra wearing. And I've tried a lot of feelings.
Bra shopping for big boobs is horror of the head syndrome when every answer is a no.
Because how many hammocks are beautiful? The title of this piece is actually an advert. That is what I am looking for.

When you finally swan out and the right bits go where they should,
in and out like the violin they always promised...
You feel like a Goddess
mixed in with a mistress
mixed in with a fraud
but mostly a bit like a woman.
Which I guess is allowed.

And you are thankful.
That you 'got it' and 'you know it'
But then suddenly,
as if all women are WWE Wrestlers battling it out for the one golden belt that is their perfect physique, of course,
it gets taken (I say taken I mean stolen) away from you the moment you found it
and then you yourself wait to be woken up at 5.30am
and have some other new weird child of your own,
playing bakers with your tits.

Read more blogs from Laura