She hauled up my bra straps like a parachute instructor

I was wandering through the lingerie section of a well-loved Dublin department store the other day, tiredly trailing behind an organised, time-conscious, well-groomed friend who was in the store for a bra fitting.

While hazily tripping past Balsam Moon balcony bras, Wind Chime contour balconette bras, Exotic Plume midi briefs and Holiday Rocket thongs (I swear, I'm not making these names up), I was thinking about Lolo Ferrari, the French porn star, late of Channel 4's Eurotrash, and her 71in silicone-enhanced breasts, each one weighing in at more than 2.7kg, and each, apparently, containing three litres of saline solution.

Her brassieres were, they say, designed by an engineer who had previously been employed by Boeing, possibly one of very few men in this world who would understand the aerodynamics of living with those puppies.

My friend, an infrequent visitor to the smoke, had other appointments in the city that afternoon. She had important things to do, meetings about Irish arts and the American market. A trip was being planned for painters and performers.

Tales of addiction

I wanted to go with her, have another crack at New York City, hang out in dark bars, mooch around turpentine-scented warehouses, listen to intricate tales of addiction and epiphany from men with goatees and painful memories.

I wanted to stay awake in that sleepless city, bandy words such as “populist” and “subversive” and “utopian” and “raw”, with my head thrown back, laughing like a high-heeled hyena, a southern shrimp cocktail in one hand, a whiskey sour in the other.

I’d already tried to impress my friend conversationally with a putative attempt at stand-up, but my audition on the escalator, on the way up to the lingerie, about my inability to get the cat to swallow her worm pills, just wasn’t cutting it. (“Er, hello,” says the cat. “Do I look like a worm?” Okay, okay, it needs work.)

Ever the trier, I spotted a one-piece black thing that looked like a dull swimsuit hanging from a rail. “Invisible Body Suit,” read the label. “Oh, look,” I said to my friend. “It says here that they use the latest technology to make you virtually disappear. A manufacturing first, eh? An invisibility suit? Eat your heart out, Harry Potter. That might explain the price tag. Eh? Eh?”

“Get a grip,” she said, evaporating into a dressing room. And she was gone.

Fantasie Samantha

Having refused the lure of Opera Push-Ups or Backstage Full Cups, she had whipped a Fantasie Samantha or two off the rails and was already in one of the powdery little cubicles, her arms up in the air, while a proficient lady with comfortable shoes, an aura of professional detachment and a tape measure around her neck noted her vital statistics.

I was waiting for her on the half-moon couch outside the dressing room, lolling around on the velour, trying to think of something interesting to do with the mince that evening, when another of the black-clad female assistants with cushioned insoles beckoned me into one of the curtained cubicles. Before you could say “Moulded Minimiser Underwire Sensation”, I was half-naked in the perfumed abyss and faced with my bewildered reflection.

Look, I’m no Lolo, but I thought my friendly, if somewhat tired, cerise-pink brassiere (which had come in a two-pack with another one in lavender) was, if not top-of-the-range or particularly appealing, perfectly adequate to fulfil my needs.

“Uh-oh,” tutted the lady in black, shaking her French pleat from side to side, pursing her lips in distaste and hauling up my bra straps like a parachute instructor. “We will need to do something about that droop.”

And, hey presto, she too disappeared, appearing moments later by my side with a burly-looking black brassiere with scallop-edged straps, a startlingly superior attitude and a voluminous cup (although still several sizes smaller than its price tag). “Now,” she said, hooking me into it with something approaching gusto, “that will give you confidence.”

“Finally,” she sighed, when I was fully trussed, “you have a shape.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, marvelling at my instant, vaguely alarming décolletage and wondering what I should do about the little pockets of flesh rolling over the sides where my arms should be.

I paid for it on the never-never card, the pretend-you-didn’t-just-do-that card. How could I not? How could I turn my back (front) on all those years of measuring efficiency and tell the pleated lady that it might take more than a bit of under-wiring to reboot my faulty circuits.