Relationships

                  Jelly Beans

He was a big, cheerful Chicano bloke

from rural South Texas near the border,

a few years younger than I was

– I’d guess in his mid-thirties –

a colleague of mine and my supervisor –

and notably given to spouting words of wisdom,

whether his own or Chicano folk wisdom

I couldn’t say.

Soon after I married another colleague of ours,

who was to become the mother of my children

he told me to enjoy it while I could, because,

“If you put a jelly bean into a jar

every time you fuck the first year you’re married,

and then take one out every time after that

the jar will never be empty.”

He was right – at least in that case.

                 Types of Toxicity

Every now and then

memories of the images and spirits

of women I’ve loved

– two in particular –

occupy my being.

I miss these women painfully at such times,

but realise that our situations together

had been hopelessly and inexplicably toxic,

and resign myself to my equally toxic loneliness.

                    Passive Harvest

My experience of romance,

back when I experienced it,

was that due to my timidity

and deceptive appearance,

it always started out with me being wanted,

but ended all too soon with me being had.

                   Three Stomps

The morning after their first night together

he watched in fascination as she dressed.

Especially the undies.

She stood with her back to the wall,

lifted her left leg, bent at the knee,

poked her left foot through the leg-hole

with a stabbing motion,

returned her foot to the floor,

her undies around her thigh just above the knee,

Then she stomped her right foot on the floor three times:

– Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! –

before lifting it and aiming it through its undie leg-hole.

He thought that this was really cool.

Charming.

Enchanting, even.

She did it every time she dressed

as the years oozed by,

even when she was heavily pregnant

and the leg-holes in her maternity undies

were no sure things.

It was such an enduring trait

that he pegged his love for her on it

as the children grew

and she had less time for him,

drifting off into the world of the spiritual

under the tutelage of a Vedanta guru,

and taking her holidays with just women friends

at a health resort in the Northland bush

where she slept in a tipi

and enjoyed frequent herbal enemas.

By the time she banished him from their bedroom

her three-stomp routine

had come to annoy him deeply,

and, to tell the truth, just about drove him nuts.

He was more than glad to be rid of it.

                      Smoky at the Fireplace

Luther Standing Bear, an Oglala Lakota Sioux Chief, 

taught children that it is impolite and disrespectful

to pass between the fire and others.

One cold mid-winter evening,

when my daughters were maybe three and four,

I was in the lounge of our house in Otorohanga,

sitting comfortably on the sofa reading,

warmed by the fire in our wood-burner across the room.

My daughters’ mother – then my wife –

who’d had the improbable nickname Smoky since infancy,

came into the lounge from the hall,

bringing with her a blast of cold air.

She left the door to the hall, which was beyond my easy reach,

open to the frigid wind,

crossed the room, and stood directly in front of the wood-burner,

opening the flaps of her dressing gown wide

to receive the full benefits of the fire’s warmth,

and blocking me off from it completely.

I knew right then what I’d already suspected:

that she neither loved nor respected me,

something that nothing that I noticed in her behaviour

over the subsequent dozen or so years

of our dismal cohabitation contradicted.

When I mentioned how much

that display in front of the fireplace distressed me,

she told me that I was being ridiculous,

and later occasionally used that as a justification for ridiculing me

when she was in the mood.

Luther Standing Bear, an Oglala Lakota Sioux Chief, 

taught that it is impolite and disrespectful

to pass between the fire and others.

             Matrimonial Bliss

Although I’ve spent most of my life

by far

in the company of nobody else

except perhaps a dog,

I don’t think I’ve ever been as lonely

as many of the times

when it was just the mother of my children and me

together by ourselves.

            For Their Sake

She told me, “Look,

even though I don’t particularly feel like it,

I think we should fuck anyway.”

For some reason

this failed to make me feel wanted

or loved,

which is what it would’ve taken

to turn me on.

Our beautiful toddlers

grew and developed enchantingly

in the next room.

                She Wore Padded Bras

I’ve always been comfortable

with women presenting themselves

as they bloody well feel like it.

It would be the height of hypocrisy,

for example,

for me to expect a woman to shave

any part of her skin.

Make-up seems kinda creepy to me

– except of course for dramatic performances

and clowns –

but if a woman feels more comfortable wearing it

then it’s no skin off my nose.

Clothing and footwear and hair styles,

ditto.

On the visual level, then,

what’s cool with you is cool with me.

For various reasons

I’ve never been much of a fan of big tits, though,

although I do try to see the person behind them,

but a woman I once loved – still do, actually –

insisted on wearing padded bras,

I suppose to provide her clothing

with the silhouette she preferred.

Of course I said nothing,

but I didn’t like the obstacle they presented

to me copping a feel from behind

when she was rolling out piroshkies

or whipping up a batch of her greasy chicken and dumplings

–       unless she was in one of her dressing gowns.

Hmmm. Maybe that’s the real reason she wore them.

                  Grey

I saw an article

about how grey hair

has come into fashion –

or has become ‘hot’,

as the article put it,

and I remembered

one of the many women

with whom I have failed in love

who had prematurely grey hair.

She went through

an impressive variety

of brands and colours of hair dyes.

When I mentioned that I thought

she’d look even better

if she’d let her hair grow out

into its natural grey,

she brushed this opinion off as irrelevant,

thereby adding herself in yet one more way

to that seemingly endless stream of people,

including my more or less lovers,

who have casually flaunted their

disdain and disregard

for my irrelevance.

When I filed for divorce

the process-servers,

as part of the identification process,

asked for her hair colour.

I couldn’t tell them.

                         Divorces

Helena, Belinda, Smoky, and Tania –

each with a startlingly different personality,

my divorce from each

a failure with apparently a totally different cause.

Only one factor remained constant in each case –

me.

After each divorce I thought I’d learnt the lessons

that the failure had to teach me,

and that those lessons were essentially meaningless,

since every situation is different

and I’d never encounter one like it again,

but that analysis was superficial.

I was kidding myself.

The problem in each case was me.

Once they found out what I’m really like,

despite my large, masculine, imposing presence and powerful voice,

and that they could disrespect me

or disregard me to their hearts’ content

without me responding with any more

assertiveness, aggression, confidence, or masterfulness

than a cringing nine-week-old puppy

chastised for peeing on the floor,

they just eased into a state of contempt for me

and then lost interest in me as a partner –

except for Helena, whose own violence turned her on.

It’s how I was raised.

I was desperate for love,

but because of that unlovable,

as they, perhaps subconsciously,

found that my desperation made me

unworthy of their love.

                          SNAG

I tended to view all that

sensitive-new-age-guy crap

back in the nineties

with considerable bemusement,

as one of my biggest life-long problems

is that I tend to be deferential and considerate,

and that most women react to that

with contempt.