Thursday, April 21, 2005

Love and Marriage

I wouldn't trade being married for being single any day--not only am I madly in love with my wife, but I simply can't imagine going back to the dating rat race again after 11 years. But marriage can be damned peculiar, like an interpretative dance where one partner is doing The Spastic Sea Monkey and the other The Mashed Potato. Case in point? I got home last night after work and hugged my wife around the waist:

Cha: Oh my God I'm getting fat.
Me: Whatever! You are not. Kiss me.
Cha: My belly looks huge.
Me: Where's the remote?
Cha: Is your Mom going to Curves?
Me: She said she lost 16 pounds last month on the South Beach Diet. She's down to 480 pounds.
Cha: Shut up!
Me: Ok, ok...
Cha: I ate two ice cream sandwiches today.
Me: Well, if you're worried about gaining weight, that won't help.
Cha: I knew it! You DO think I'm fat!

This kind of thing goes on regularly now--Cha tells me how fat she thinks she is, how fat she feels, how much she's eaten, and I do my best not to fall into the trap she's setting for me, but inevitably I say the wrong thing because I'm either a tease or a jerk or both. Whatever I say gets translated/twisted into "you're fat," but not speaking isn't an option.

She has gained weight since we've been married--so have I. Big deal! She weighed 110 pounds then, and she still looks muy sexy to me--in fact, I luxuriate in her tiny pot belly and her overwhelmingly charming derriere, and I tell her all the time how hot I think she is. What I don't understand is that strange need to entrap me into saying something negative. I don't run around saying "I'm an unambitious, pasty, paunchy, chinless, moon-faced bit o' white trash" all the time, trying to goad her into confirming my lack of self-worth.

Explain this behavior to me!

She also told me her "freaky" dream from the night before, and blamed me because I was watching 100 Scariest Movies which scared her. "I was in the bathroom and I killed 12 very small people in a row and hid them from you. They were helpless and I shot them all and poked them with sticks until they were dead, and I knew I would do it again every year because I'm a psychokiller."

This dream has nothing to do with Scariest Movie moments.