I overhead this two checkout lanes away at the grocery store. I think he was talking about cigars. But it could have been cigarettes. Could have been pot, although as yet we can’t by pot at the grocery store. Give it time, give it time.
I don’t know this guy, wearing painter’s whites, buying a six-pack of beer at 4:15 pm on a Wednesday, at what I hope is at least the end of his workday. I love the idea that husbands still do things behind their wives’ backs – smoke cigars, talk trash to their buddies, relive and exaggerate former conquests, over-indulge with beers or scotch. What I love even more is that husbands think they’re pulling one over on their wives. As if we don’t notice they stink and are hung over, even if they’ve made a last-minute effort to straighten the place up before we return. As if we don’t see the debit card charges and line up of bloodshed/smutty movie covers preserved so perfectly in the Netflix Recently Watched queue. As if we can’t tell from the way their bodies sag and drag that they have eaten nothing but burgers and nachos and chips with cheese from a jar, if they’ve bothered to eat at all. As if we couldn’t hear, during our nightly check-in call, their overly loving, overly sappy, buddy- and booze- and freedom-induced generosity to love the women who they usually resent for keeping them in line, nitpicking their faults, turning them into women, really, not appreciating at all the unruly/un-ruled side of their man-cave behavior dragged out, finally, into the light of day (or the dark of night).
Got me thinking what I do when I’m without my man. I watch chick-flicks. I get together with friends. I wear my jammies as late into the day as I can. I eat something I couldn’t serve my child. Maybe a big bowl of popcorn, and call it dinner. Maybe Digestives. Maybe potato chips and sour cream. I drink a glass of chilled white Graves, from a stemmed glass. I pile books on the bed next to me. I turn the music up loud and dance throughout the house. I talk with my girlfriends. I write. I do a load or two of laundry. I look at old photographs. I sometimes invite another friend over for a sleepover, and we talk and talk and talk late into the night.
For all this illicit estrogen-based revelry, when planning my henhouse rendezvous, I refer to my guy by name. To acquaintances or store clerks, if it comes up, I’ll say “my husband.” He is securely in my mind and language not only as a unique individual, but my unique individual. He is not The Husband (aka, The Louse, The Good-for-Nothing, The Lug). I have never thought of his parents as The In-Laws; nor mine as The Parents. They’re people with names, even if I wish they’d come up less frequently when we argue. I am not, and cannot be, something as generic as The Wife (aka, The Ball and Chain, The Little Missus, The Bitch). After all, I’m me. Multidimensional. Free from social constraints. I’m a great wife; just ask my husband. Oh, sure, there are the occasional controlling/bitchy/homemaking moments, but no more or less than other women I know, who are and are not wives. My essence cannot be reduced to being a wife.
Zoom out, though, and in a sociological way, I am The Wife. Married to The Husband. Raising The Child. How much of what we do is pre-programmed by these roles? How much does individuality shape us? We’ll never know.
I only read stuff like that when someone’s looking.