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Now that we've been married for several months,my husband and I have to get on with the really Important business of being married. To whit, Letting Yourself Go.
I've already started to let myself go in modest ways. I've stopped peroxiding my hair so it has gone from blonde to muddy brown. I've lopped it off from longish to bobbish. I've started to scoff chocolate on the side so I plump up a little and soften those singlewoman edges. I put dogchewed furry slippers on after dinner and watch mediocre English television dramas. I don't offer foot massages every second night.
But this is just the humble beginning. Of course, I have bigger ambitions and soon I will let myself go in a really big way. I'll stop shaving my legs in winter (then summer, too). I'll start watching daytime television soaps in my pyjamas while crunching on pretzels. I'll tell him I really hate football and refuse to attend a game or have the sound of it in the house. I'll stop cooking and start ripping open cartons of frozen macaroni and cheese, which I'll microwave, slightly insufficiently, and then serve up in a grubby bowl with a spoon. I'll admit I hate all his friends but instead I will start calling my own friends sitting lip in bed at night wearing a face mask and drinking Bacardi and coke. I won't make the bed, even if it is my turn. And, down the track, isn't it much more comfortable to have two separate bedrooms? Especially with his imminent prostate problems.
And that will just be the middle bit. By the end of the process, I hope to be completely taking him for granted, paying as little attention to the marriage as possible and criticising him scathingly over tiny things while copiously ignoring everything he does lovingly , I figure with enough neglect, complacency and self-satisfaction, I can give new meaning to the terms "toxic disrespect".
Of course, my husband has to let himself go, too. That's part of the marital bargain. I'm not just talking about belching or forgetting to buy me a birthday present or saving up the words I love you for special occasions (i.e. Christmas).
Once again, I'm talking about big things. I expect him to develop a bulging beer belly and hairy nostrils and those big shooty eyebrows that men sport unashamedly. Of course, all that will have no effect on his convictions about his own sexual desirability A hallmark of the man who has really let himself go is the conviction that seduction is something he has grown out of and, while his own waterworks may be getting harder to turn on and off, his wife's libido should be positively push-button. Except without much of the button pushing.
So he'll be fat, hairy and hopefully wearing singlets and slightly transparent nylon drip-dry, n0-press business shirts (because, of course, we'll both have given up ironing). He'll loll around on the couch channel surfing relentlessly, fuss about whether he's coming down with a chest cold and believe that a big night out is going out to get a bucket of bad Chinese food and a half-price film from the local video shop where he will hire out-of-date action films because he can't stand those brain-dead chick flicks that I want to watch.
And, if he really lets himself go, he'll become unaffectionate, impatient, bored, frustrated and he'fl think that a hug is something you do to someone if they're choking on a fish bone.
It's ambitious, it's visionary, we have a long way to go. But, with a lot of work, we can get there.
Jane Freeman was writing for The Age,Sunday, April 12th., 1999.
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