Mum’s Lament Part II
I copped him out when he got home, our mike that is. The dirty bugger. Just like his dad and at his age too! Bloody cheek, fancy touching up a complete stranger – in the cinema of all places! It’s dirty. I never thought he’d turn out to be a bastard like him, I mean for fuck sake I wanted something better for him – wanted him to stay pure like. Stupid bloody Doris. I try and get some and look what happens to me, it turns out to be our bleeding son. This wouldn’t happen if I was a bloke. If a bloke has had enough of his wife he just strolls into the nearest bar, tip a couple down his neck and take their pick from the easy gash. But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes. Nothing goes the way I want it to, behave like I bloke I said, dirty like. I can live without it you know, the sex that is. The kissing, and the touching, especially the touching, I would give almost anything never to be touched by his dirty grubby hands again. He doesn’t talk to me for three days at a time and all of a sudden his horribly belchy breath is in my face and his great big body is on mine. I wouldn’t so much mind if he asked me first. If one day he went, “so how ‘bout a fuck then?”, at least I could put me book down first. I almost always lose me page once a week on a Saturday night. I do miss it though, the kissing that is not the book. I almost did it once, to see if I still could. We were in bed and he was passed out next to me. He was so still and didn’t make a sound. I was almost afraid he was dead. And then I started thinking to what it was like before we had the kids, and before we got the house, and before everything became a familiar routine. He somehow looked younger with his eyes closed, like how he used to. I lifted my hand up out of the sheets, and touched him. I moved my hand down his chubby, prickly face and I felt that rush that I hadn’t felt since we had our mike. I got up, being sure not make a sound, leaned towards his face, got closer and closer to his lips… then he turned over and let out an enormous fart. “Oh” I said, “you’re alive then”. I was so angry, I was. I got out of bed and turned the light on, and there on the bed was the pig I wake up to every morning. Never again I thought to myself, never again will I touch him.