M y club, as most know, remains my place of choice, a land unto itself. We mems enter with furrowed brows that are unknitted rapidly by the sight of kindly staff running toward us with gleaming martinis at the ready.
The nourishing fluid hits bottom as we open our new copies of the venerable Times Colonist while nestled in our comfy green wingback chairs, and all is well again.
After some time of engrossed reading, it occurs to me that my marriage, while sandbagged against the problems of the outside world, now resembles a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome.
I mean this in the best of ways, of course; it is just that I feel I am a Petri dish and there is a small camera in the corner watching it all. I will attempt to prove my case in the shrewdest of ways, by telling the truth.
If I were still the carefree bachelor of long ago, before I had acquired my hangdog look, I would not put up with even a small percentage of what comes over the walls of life each day. Pals of my wife seem to arrive willy-nilly whom she claims I know, which I most assuredly do not; she and the cook "test" odd food on me; not to mention I have to drop everything and drive her to Upper Sooke, although she has a perfectly good driving licence.
"There is a limit," I once thought, but that is where our friend the Stockholm thingie comes in. I just do it and keep quiet.
In fact I love her all the more for it, if I am honest, just as a kid-nappee begins to admire the kidnapper. To my way of thinking, it is a more common occurrence in long marriages than one might have guessed.
I suppose it is only to be expected that after a while a chap becomes tired and lets go of that little bit of flotsam in the freezing North Atlantic. He gurgles a few times and sinks from sight, not unlike a successful marriage, which in most cases is one where the male learns to say "Yes, dear" through gritted teeth when he is told his wife's frightful brother will be living in the attic for the next little while. Or when the bride of yesteryear has thrown out his school jacket he loved, all because it has a smudge or slight discolouration. He suddenly has a yellow car, he is not allowed french fries, certain favourite TV shows are out and more than one martini is disallowed.
Could one imagine putting up with that from a girlfriend? Even a voluptuous and rich one? No!
We become meek and mild, knowing it is not worth it in the end, realizing that life will be quieter if we just grin and nod feverishly no matter what the memsahib suggests or does. Slowly the happy times go down the proverbial drain, and we enter darker regions of the female psyche without a flashlight or map. In the end, only they have the key to the way out, and so we blindly trust that they will take our hand.
I must say I had a hard time clinging to the above scenario the day she brought Pericles and Bertram into my sorry life. Those two cats had been returned to the shelter by others a record 14 times, with several accompanying notes recommending euthanasia without the option. Somehow the fiends confounded my wife into thinking she was doing a godly charity by saving them from their well-deserved demise. I am tempted to kidnap them, but that would not end well.
They are with us still. I really don't know what to say about the whole thing except those cats are the greatest proof of my deeply held love for my wife. We shall go on into the warm ether together (hopefully after strangling the bloody cats), syndrome or not. [email protected] @TheYYJMajor on Twitter
