It drew attention to us and the game was up. To this day it’s recalled frequently by my wife. I’ll take the content of those vulgar messages to my grave. Giggling.
COOKING
I have a friend who is a former Royal Marine Commando, now working as a bodyguard in Afghanistan. A tough guy. Last year, after coming home from a three-month spell away, we went out for drinks. Much later, he was dropped off at home, takeaway Chinese in hand, which he duly ate while his wife was sleeping peacefully upstairs.
Sadly my friend was in a rather confused state (maybe post-traumatic stress disorder, or possibly that extra Stella) and, seeking something to wipe his dirty Chinese sweet and sour hands on, mistook his wife’s newly purchased white jacket for a tea towel. In the morning he was awoken by a blood-curdling cry to rival anything he had faced in Afghanistan or Iraq from the mullahs. He had a fear like he had never known before. The immediate discussion of course centred on why whenever he saw his mates he ‘needed to get in such a terrible state’.
I remember meeting up with my best mate Phil and returning home slightly the worse for wear. Putting on all the lights in every single room, I then started to cook. Men often like to cook when drunk. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a drunken guy with the munchies started the Great Fire of London in 1666.
As I was throwing random ingredients into a pan, which I then planned to put between two slices of bread, my lovely wife was upstairs asking in strong Anglo-Saxon terms what was going on and could I just ‘get the fuck to bed’. Why don’t women just say what they mean?
Feeling a bit sorry for myself, I went and chatted to my dog Digby, who has never used language like that and doesn’t judge me. (Dogs don’t – that’s why they are man’s best friend. Cats are judgemental little shits.) And as I was chatting to him, I was struck by how warm and cosy his dog bed was.
The next thing I remember is seeing daylight and my wife towering over me in her dressing gown. Digby was on the other side of the room looking at me as disapprovingly as a little dog (not too little, though – no man should own a small yappy dog) can. Digby wasn’t happy.
And it’s not just because a few weeks earlier I let my wife get his balls cut off. I picked him up from the vet’s and the look in his eyes will stay with me for ever. It wasn’t just the pain and disappointment that any man could do this to another man, all be it a man-dog. It was as if he was saying, ‘It could be you next.’ My wife said getting him done would calm him down, and stop him having sex with any passing dog and urinating on the furniture. My God, I suddenly realised, she wants MY balls removed, she wants my sacred man purse lopped off. To control me; to stop me urinating on the couch (which was an accident).
Think about it. What woman wouldn’t want their man neutered? I bet there are back-street man-neutering clinics springing up all over the place right now. An illicit underground network. Run by man-hating women using very rusty implements. With little or no anaesthetic. This explains those too-good-to-be-true men you hear all about from your wife.
‘Well, Gill’s husband loves going clothes shopping with her and picking out new curtains.’
He’s been neutered. You see the neutered men every Saturday limping a few feet behind their women in shopping centres. Thousand-yard stares. I’ve stumbled on a big global conspiracy here. I bet Bill Clinton has been neutered by now. Just look at the poor fella. That Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced New York governor caught using prostitutes (at least, unlike our feckless MPs, he didn’t claim it on his expenses), was probably neutered the moment that public apology was done.
No, the real reason Digby is on my wife’s side is that I had slept in his bed that night. A dog bed. That really stinks. The sight that greeted my wife was of a pissed-off-looking dog and my head and shoulders in the dog basket, with the rest of me a tangled heap looking as if I had fallen from a great height. All the lights were still on and for some reason there were spaghetti hoops in my hands.
‘Nice seeing your mates again?’
THE SEXY BLACK WIDOW SYNDROME
Women think they have smarter, more emotionally mature relationships than we do with our mates. Bollocks. It runs deeper than a headlock. A bit.
Sure, when guys get together alcohol is often involved and as a consequence so is stupidity. This doesn’t help the case for more Mate Time. When women get together, a nice civilised coffee and a Danish is enough. I sometimes envy the simplicity of this. No need for vomiting and hangovers. None of those conversations around midnight about jacking it all in and starting a business together selling monkey butlers door to door.
Don’t be fooled, though. Ladies’ conversation is rarely civilised. Gossip and bitching. And you know what they discuss when they go to the toilets together? Us. And our winkies. I wonder if other animals do this?
Sexy Black Widow 1: You should have seen the tackle on the one I had last night! Hung like a gnat.
Sexy Black Widow 2: Ha ha ha! Last night’s date ended with him crying, saying, ‘This doesn’t normally happen,’ as his web shot off real quick. How I laughed as I ate him…
All Sexy Black Widows together: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
THE VICIOUSNESS OF WOMEN
I would take my relationship with my mates over women’s any day.
I’m serious. A man can break a woman’s heart but that is nothing compared to the vicious damage women regularly inflict on each other. Smiling assassins. All nice to their faces but hidden away with another friend/witch and the gloves are off. If Goodfellas had been Goodgirls the violence would have been far worse. With hair straighteners and nail files.
‘You’re saying I’ve put on weight? Put on weight how? How exactly do you find me weighty?’
Men can be cruel to each other but they do it to each other’s face. Dignified. Your clothes, hair, beer gut, bald spot, wife, girlfriend, football team, birth place, penis size, girth, salary, sexual orientation, everything. It’s all fair game. It’s a sign of proper, deep friendship that a mate can safely say ‘What the fuck are you wearing?’ when you turn up in a brand new shirt you thought you might be mistaken for Brad Pitt in. With a beer gut and bald spot.
Women’s friendships are generally more emotionally mature, but they are also more emotionally tedious. Discussions about problems and disputes with friends, feelings about things, can happily carry on for several days without any intake of breath. Is it possible that women can use their handbags as gills?
MEN AND PROBLEMS
This annoys us men as we are hardwired, when confronted with a problem, to solve it. To a man a problem shared is like being handed a bomb that needs to be defused as quickly as possible. To us it all comes down to which wire to cut. The red one or the blue one?
This is opposed to just talking about it A LOT. It’s man DNA: men are problem solvers. Not always very good solvers, but solvers all the same. Last year my wife told me to get Ruby our eldest daughter’s hair cut but not to spend too much money on it. Quick as a flash I had processed this order and come up with a smart solution: I’d cut it myself.
With no formal training I cut my daughter’s hair. Can you guess what happened next? Even Ruby looked confused as I set about her fringe. With paper scissors. The fringe that my wife had proudly been cultivating for the last six months. Problem solvers. My wife came back home and let’s just say hilarity did not ensue.
MALE PROBLEM SOLVERS EXTRAORDINAIRE
Back to men and their mates.