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2002-02-27 | 8:00 a.m.

So I was finishing up my column on Monday night, not totally satisfied with it, but quietly pleased that I had actually done it, gotten it in on time, preserved my reputation, etc., when it became clear that Duff was royally pissed off.

He had forgotten that I was going to be doing it, and then when he got home and I wasn't cooking dinner, and the kids were gravitating to him, he got irritated. So, in full passive-aggressive mode, he takes a long nap. I made dinner, so he couldn't complain about that.

As I'm getting ready for bed, he complains vociferously that I have spent seven hours working for $25. He reckons I should have spent, at most, three hours on it. It's not a good return. (His three hours for $25 model isn't particularly appetizing, either, but I don't say that.) He says, "Are you satisfied with that?"

"I was until about three minutes ago," I say, toothbrush in my mouth.

"Oh, now you're going to start crying and then we'll get in a fight."

But I don't. Not right away. It's only after I get into bed and start thinking about how he has ambushed me that I start crying.

Voices turn harsh and I march downstairs toward the chair, but when I hear him coming after me I get scared, residual stuff, and then head for the door and out on the porch. He comes after me and tries to physically put me back in the house. He picks me up and puts me up on the threshold and I go back out and he shoves inside, then blames me because Jasper is crying.

"Your son needs you," he barks.

I have a low tolerance for this kind of bullshit COPS tele-melodrama. He starts talking about how he feels, and he's starting sentences with, "I guess it's because I'm a guy..." and he doesn't realize how much contempt I have for this kind of posturing. Speak for yourself, not on behalf of beleaguered constructs of masculinity.

Then we start talking again and it's all about how I don't do my share around here and I tell him for the hundredth time that I want to live on my own, and I cry until my eyelids puff up like breast implants.

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