The weeks seem to rip along at a frightening speed these days, faster than last year, I would say. Already we are staring at spring and its big brother summer beyond it.
However my morning of Club Marital Advice on Wednesdays appears to slow time down a bit, as chaps use up a great deal trying to spit the problem out. Silences interlaced with heavy sighs accompanied by eye-rolling mark a mem down as someone bearing a heavy load.
I refrain from the obvious “Come along, now,” as this freezes the slow minds of my nervous clientele. I take the well travelled option of examining my gleaming black oxfords until a gurgle or two announces the intention of the bug-eyed club member to begin.
“Er,” one recent supplicant, Sidney, began, “I have suggested to my wife, that is I have requested softly to my turtle dove, that we try separate rooms for a while….er.” Sidney rested as would a puffer fish after a particularly harrowing day, gasping for the first martini.
I have heard this chant before: that two bedrooms will solve the problem of one. In the case of brother Sidney that approach would not resolve two of the key problems of the long marriage: Neglect and slow burning embarrassment. I was not yet ready to rub salve into the gaping wound of the sagging partnership, so cocked an inviting eyebrow for him to continue.
“I mean to say, the old girl is getting more needy as the days wane, what?” he added. I nodded, knowing this chapter all too well. I chose not to skip to the last page but rather, as part of the cure, to let the fellow stumble on his own to the proper conclusion.
After a few more like-minded outbursts, I had the whole story, which as I thought, involved a chap stuck halfway up the hill at the point of no return.
It would seem that Sidney and Myrtle (I have changed their names from Godfrey and Betty to protect the participants) had a wonderful marriage. After producing the usual three ungrateful children they had settled down to a twosome lifestyle that was both full and meaningful.
But as the years passed, a sleeping serpent in their perfect garden had awoken, producing a new and terrifying Myrtle who now wanted more. Whenever Sidney kissed her goodnight with a slight squeeze, as was his norm, she made it pretty clear that she wanted the “Full Business,” as he described it, and she was not to be fobbed off with a cheap hug.
Well, as we men know, the FB is but a distant memory except after any movie starring Lana Turner. Participation in such a frightful activity at our age could bring on “the Big One” (heart attack).
This subject once arose on my and Kitty’s horizon. It still sends a shiver down my spine when I recall it. I found myself being gripped by my frenzied wife at all hours, with her wearing that horrifying “come with me” look. I hid with an aspidistra plant in the closet as she shouted my name in threatening tones while roaming the house.
I believe these things are sent to try us, like the boils of Job in the Bible, a test of one’s character out of the blue. I fought this apparition by pretending to be in the throes of St. Vitus’s Dance and then praying fervently on our roof as a mid -level prophet might do.
Eventually my wife’s overheated whims passed into the ether and we began to share our lives again, although a sense of mistrust was never far away, as if we cleared the hurdle but not without barking our shins in the process.
It is the price of a long marriage.
The very memory sent a spasm through my tummy, but I showed no emotion.
A murmur of thanks escaped Sidney’s lips. He floated away with hope in his eyes.
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