For richer, for poorer…

I had a chat on the phone with my friend Mr Seagull the other night. I can’t quite understand how he manages to stay so upbeat in the face of his future ex-wife’s efforts to crush him utterly+. When I was going through similar (but considerably less severe) circumstances, I was like Eeyore on downers. In the rain.

Poor bastard. At the rate his account is haemorrhaging money, his bank manager must be feeling very ill indeed. I suspect the final divorce settlement will be over who gets custody of the pot to piss in, because there won’t be anything else left.

Still, although I’m pretty sure that being roughly shafted without lubrication is a decidedly unpleasant experience, if you consider that it’s the most “action” he’s had (albeit metaphorically) in over a year, it might explain his buoyant demeanour.

+ As one does when the bitterness starts to set in. I reckon she’s an absolute shoe-in to win the “Achiever of the Year” trophy when the Royal Society of Evil have their awards ceremony next month

A conspiracy theory in retrospect

I have come to the conclusion that marriage is a bit like a cult:

• the reasons for getting involved are seldom rational
• you go through an elaborate induction ceremony
• you give up your individuality to a large extent
• leaving is strongly discouraged
• if you do manage to escape, you are seen as a social pariah

However, the real trouble with this whole ’til death us do part’ fandango is that more often than not, you’ve been brainwashed into having disproportionately high expectations of what essentially boils down to a baroque variation on the shacking up theme. After a while, reality starts seeping in through the walls of your bubble of bliss and you begin to realise that some of your loved one’s endearing little quirks have the potential to drive you completely bananas. The truth of the old “familiarity breeds contempt” cliché brought into sharp, high-rez focus.

The thing is, when you get married, you become part of the conspiracy. You’ve been led to believe (by other married couples ensnared in the same murky tangle) that it’s all sunshine and roses. Naturally, it’s a rude shock to discover thunder and thorns lurking beneath the surface – but by then it’s too late. You’ve said the words, so it becomes essential to present an outward appearance of domestic harmony. To do otherwise would be tantamount to an admission of failure and we can’t have that, can we? Thus, the conspiracy becomes self-perpetuating.

When I first broke the news to my friends that my ex and I were getting divorced, practically everyone responded along the lines of, “Holy shit, Batman! But this is so sudden!”+

Hah! I sure fooled them, didn’t I? And to think Jam considers me cynical. The very idea!

+ No, I am not actually Batman. If I was, I think I would probably be driving a better car.

A friend in need

I went out for coffee last night with my old buddy Mr Seagull. He’s the one whose marriage is currently following an ever-decreasing spiral in the great toilet bowl of life. The good news is he seems to have achieved some degree of acceptance that Mrs Seagull hates his guts. The bad news is that Mrs Seagull hates his guts.

There has been some progress, however. They’ve agreed to put litigation on the back burner for now and attempt the “mediated settlement” route, but that’s about all they’ve managed to agree on. The main points of contention are that he wants more access to the kids, while she wants to rip his testicles out his arse+ Ain’t love grand?

Unfortunately, my best efforts at offering sympathy and comfort went somewhat off the rails:

“…and that’s the story. I just have to accept that she doesn’t want to reconcile and move on”
“Maybe she just needs more time to think things through?”
“You don’t understand – once she’s decided on something, that’s it. She never changes her mind”
“Oh that’s not true – she seems to have made a rather abrupt about-turn on the whole till death us do part thing… er… so Gibbs made six off six, how about that, hey?”

+ Ja okay, so maybe I’m a bit biased. Sue me. Nooooo, wait! I was joking!!

And stay out!

Despite her protestations to the contrary, I suspect that my ex-wife may still be nurturing residual feelings of hostility towards me. I don’t have any actual proof, other than the fact that she (unbeknownst to me until a short while later) gave Kyknoord Jr a hearty and filling breakfast of chocolate bars before letting the youngster loose in my car.

This result of this exciting experiment in toddler nutrition was – predictably – explosive and I was treated to an uncomfortably realistic re-enactment of that famous scene from The Exorcist. Subsequently, I ended up spending a fun-filled half-hour cursing my ex while I set about the grim task of de-pukifying the inside of the car.

I was trying to figure out how to scrub the insidious smell of regurgitated cocoa out of my nostrils when I received a phone call from my friend, Mr Seagull:

“What’s up, chum?”
“My wife just filed for divorce”
“Bummer”
“Yup”

The conversation would probably have been a little bit more emotionally charged if this had come as a shock, but the storm’s been a-brewin’ for some time now. The really sad thing – ignoring for a moment that even Satan is afraid of the guy she’s chosen as her attorney – is that I didn’t get a chance to tell him my vomit story.

6th of June, 1944

It’s been eleven months and change since the dwang hit the domestic fan and everything went pear-shaped in a handbasket+, but I finally had my day in court.

While I waited my turn, I was quite impressed how quickly they managed to get through the roll. There was roughly a five-minute turn-around time for each uncontested case. It essentially involved the advocate asking the plaintiff a few standard questions and directing him or her to “describe to the court the reason for the breakdown of the marriage”. The plaintiff would mumble something along the lines of “she kept gerbils in my sock drawer++” or some such and shortly thereafter, the judge would issue the decree of divorce.

“This is going to be a snap”, thought I, as my case was called. It seems that Murphy’s Law also has jurisdiction in the Cape High Court, because my documents had somehow managed to vanish from the judge’s file. The case was deferred while my attorney went in search of the missing papers and I was left to ponder exactly how I’d managed to accumulate such an enormous fucking Karmic debt. As the minutes dragged on, I couldn’t help visualising streams of money navigating a porcelain U-bend. I seriously don’t want to think what this two-hour scavenger hunt cost me. Hmmm… I wonder if I can take the High Court to the Small Claims Court and sue for damages?

Nevertheless, I eventually got to make my gerbil speech and it is now official: I am one of the eX-men. I’m still working on a catchy name, but my mutant power is the ability to have an empty bank account.

+ did I mention that I have a fondness for mixed metaphors? No? Well I do

++ a surprisingly common complaint