Marriage Tales

At nineteen my father told me the story that ensured that I never looked at my mum the same way. It happened way before I was born and is basically the reason my father always did what my mum asked.

My father had just inherited a summer house from his dead grandpa and my mum decided that was what she wanted as her birthday present, so she ‘nicely’ asked my father to sign over the deed to her. Naturally my father didn’t take her seriously and refused vehemently. Well that night my father gets home to a world class dinner, all his favorites carefully prepared and set down just for him. Thinking my mum was just trying to buy her way to the deed, my father wined and dined on what he still says was one of the best meals of his life.

After dinner she takes him up to the bedroom, undresses him and gives him a good bath. She then proceeds to give him a soothing massage during which she handcuffs his hands and legs to the bed. At this point he tells me he was really feeling bad about having to still refuse her request after all this effort. The house had been in his family for years, a cherished childhood retreat and here my mum wanted the house so she could give it away to her bum brother who even now still can’t keep down a job nor his liquor.

Then it happened, right after she had his legs cuffed, she stopped dead in her tracks, looked him dead in the eyes and asked him one last time if he would give her house, feeling as bad as a man could possibly feel, my father denied her for the last time. She rolled off him, sat at the end of the bed and lit a cigarette; my father had never seen my mum smoke before then. He smiled, knowing it was going to be a standoff, thinking he sleep it off, but then the southern uprising began. It was then my mother slyly displayed the empty bottle of aphrodisiacs. The color drained from his face as he watched her walk over to the television set to begin playing a porno.

Well my dad fought the good fight but alas he gave in after an hour or two or so he says. That’s how my mum got the deed of the house and that’s why my father hardly, if ever, said no to my mother as long as she lived.