does he do?
‘I’m Minka’s manager,’ he says. At this point Minka, a vision in lycra, is standing, hands on hips, seeming to enjoy the early focus on her little helper, rather than herself.
‘And this lady is a full-time occupation – right?’ I’m scrambling for the right thing to say, so that this encounter doesn’t fall apart around my ears. At this point Woody – or Hank, or whatever he’s called – is tense, like a cat being held upside down in the air. I’m on his territory and I’m far from reassuring him that this will all be OK for him.
‘More or less she is, yeah,’ he concedes.
‘So this lady here is big business, right?’
A quick glance at those personal twin towers of hers, jammed into her lycra boob tube, which seemed anything but ladylike.
‘She’s a commodity,’ Woody continues, warming to his theme. ‘There’s only one like her in the world.’
It’s like he’s describing the Statue of Liberty. But did large numbers of people jump on a ferry and pay to go inside Minka? We’ll get to that later…
Woody is now firmly settling into his manager’s role. He continues to explain her unique selling point(s). ‘There’s only one like her in the world. Have you ever seen an Asian that looks like that?’
‘No, I don’t suppose I have,’ I say, embarrassed that we are talking about this woman like she is a rare Pekingese.
Woody seems to assume we are all unofficial shareholders in Minka Inc. He’s talking to me in cold, factual terms about this human being that’s looking on, which I find very awkward. I have the early sense that it’s because Woody lives in Woody’s world, a world he thinks we all live in. There’s no sense that this tall, bespectacled Limey standing in his house – and I think it’s his house (he seems to be wearing pyjamas) – might think it’s somewhat strange to refer to someone, anyone, as a ‘commodity’. And this particular commodity was, I suspected, more than just his client.
We wander into the living room. Like the rest of the house, it has its own colour spectrum which ranges from off white, to very off white. It’s that classic Martha Stewart inspired look of suburban American grandeur. Faux-mahogany kitchen units, fibreglass counter posing as marble, carpet heavier and thicker than Brian Blessed’s beard, massive, deep, low easy chairs and a telly the size of a football pitch. It’s the American dream. And it’s identical to every other similarly moneyed house in the country. Curiously, it’s not just in the malls that America rolls out its monolithic, chainstore culture. It’s often been proudly boasted that if you eat a hamburger from McDonalds, it will taste the same in Kentucky as it does in San Francisco. Similarly, a middle-class living room in Connecticut will be a dead ringer for one in Kansas City. I can prove that this is true, in an entirely unscientific manner, but born out of experience. I’ve stood in around twenty living rooms in America, and apart from the pecuniary value of the various items therein, and the layout of the respective houses, they were all essentially the same inside. Even my beloved Auntie Pasty’s house in Napa is decorated in the same way as Minka’s. Which is confusing. Maybe I’m just guilty of the interior decor equivalent of casual racism – because these homes are foreign to me, they all ‘look the same’. I hasten to add that notwithstanding decor parallels, that’s where Auntie Patsy’s and Minka’s similarities abruptly end.
Minka rushes off to an ice cooler and offers me a crisp, chilled apple. In spite of these undoubtedly unhealthy protrusions she calls breasts, she does have a strangely healthy glow. She clearly maintains her body to almost Madonnaesque standards. She is tanned and toned. And frankly just the act of standing up from a chair, given her upper proportions, is a gym exercise all of its own. We get onto her record, and whether she holds one.
‘So Minka…’ I start. How do I put this? ‘Do you have the most enhanced breasts in the world?’ That’s how you put this.
‘No’ she replies, flatly. Her voice is deep and her English, both in terms of pronunciation and grammar, is regularly upstaged by her mother tongue of Korean.
‘You don’t have the most enhanced breasts in the world. OK, where would you say you come in the order of it?’ I ask.
‘Number two.’
‘Who’s number one?’
‘Maxi. But I don’t know what happened – she got infection. But I don’t know what happened. Her boob, one is gone – I cannot find out what happened. When she’s gone, I’m gonna be number one.’
Woody is shaking his head disconsolately. ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ he mutters. Minka, the Pekingese, is off the leash, and he doesn’t like it. I don’t know why Woody is suddenly so circumspect about the facts. I suspect he’s a player in this world of large-breasted females, and therefore not one to spit on his own d-cup. Claims about who’s biggest in this arena would doubtless lead to a nasty catfight among these top-heavy women. A call later to Maxi’s agent informs me that Maxi does indeed seem to be out of the picture at the moment, whether retired or otherwise – and is thus out of this rather perverse race.
‘So Minka,’ I go on, ‘if Maxi’s out of action, does that mean you have the largest enhanced breasts in the world?’
‘Yes,’ she says without fanfare.
‘You’re number one!’ I insist.
‘Yes!’ And now, for the first time, Minka seems to be perking up – her pink lip gloss emulsioning a sincere smile. She’s warming to the attention and focus. Unexpectedly she dances towards me and grabs my arm.
‘Give me your hand,’ she says playfully.
At this moment I’m seized by a paralysis called Englishness. She pulls my hand with her veiny, gym-fit arm, her South Korean biceps gently pulsing. She then pushes my hand under the vast cantilever that is her right bosom. It’s like being asked to have a quick hold of the flat roof at Heathrow Terminal 5. Her breasts are incalculably heavy – the figure of 4000 centilitres of volume per breast doesn’t do it justice. And what’s shocking isn’t just the dense weight. Or how it looks. It’s the tactile aspect. The breast is rock hard, like a block of concrete. The kind of concrete they use to hold bridges up. In windy countries. That get earthquakes.
It’s at this point that any sense of camp, seaside-postcard comedy disappears out of the room. The price Minka pays in every waking and sleeping hour has suddenly dawned on me. Having been initially perturbed and certainly repulsed by Minka’s inflated upper half, it now strikes me as being horrific, like someone living with a terrible disability. Except this is self-inflicted. Or Woody-inflicted…
‘Are they heavy – you think that’s heavy?’ says Minka.
Why’s she asking this insanely silly question? Yes! Does she need confirmation that carrying a rack equivalent to six large Evian bottles strapped to your front is rather labour-some? I suspect it’s her way of garnering some understanding on the part of others about just what she’s going through, and that she can carry this much weight and not be dead by now. I also take it as a sign that Minka is starting to trust me, and that perhaps she feels increasingly comfortable with my approach and my motivation for being there.
As my sympathy for this remarkable woman grows, so does my germinating affection. In spite of her astonishing appearance, she is strikingly normal. And I detect a strength, not just in her lower back.
