It was back in my Fag Hag days. Yes, I was one of those women. The phase lasted about two years.
I had a Fag Husband (is that what they are called?) and we were a couple in every way, other than sex.
Of course, I did try to get physical with him. Of course, I failed.
I was completely unprepared for my Jerry Springer moment. I had a cosseted suburban childhood. My mother dressed her age, my father worked hard and was strict. We went to church. We had a nice house. I went to the local schools - junior, senior and high school.
I even told my mother, in one of those petty teenage rebellion moments, that we were boring.
"One day, my child," she replied, "you'll be grateful we were boring."
Annoyingly, as with other pontifications she made, she was absolutely right.
So there I am, young and relatively innocent, living with my Fag husband in a city far from home, working some piss-ant, dead-end job, experimenting with the most inane drugs you could dare to try, smoking cigarettes and deep into the Techno scene. Yes, I was one of those people who went to a Rave with a baby bottle around my neck, filling it only with water, because a little tab of Acid had me on a psychadelic high that no alcohol could match.
And then my Fag Husband introduces me to his childhood friend. This man-boy was not White, he was rich and he was well educated. So you see the irony, he had left his culture of birth behind, been assimilated into White South African society through a private school education and parents rich as Croesus, but I saw him as so very, very exotic. In fact, in the days of Apartheid, I thought, in my naeive way, that being attracted to him was a borderline act of political resistance.
And so I fell for him, even though he had a girlfriend, who was included in our social outings. I found her intimidating, because I'd grown up strictly middle class and like my Fag Husband and his friend, she was private school educated and came from money. I never felt, back then, that I fitted in with those Country Club-type people.
Mr Exotic was as interested in me as I was in him and, long story short, we ended up doing the Horizontal Mambo more than once behind his girlfriend's back. I'm a firm believer, just by the way, that blaming "The Other Woman" is a crock of shit. No-one kidnaps and forces your partner to flirt with them, fall for them and fuck them. The third person in the triangle - male or female - has made no commitment to you. Just as getting rid of prostitutes won't get rid of prostitution, blathering on that people should respect other people's commitments and "not give in to tempting the person in a relationship," is utterly unrealistic.
Anyway, one night, Little Miss Country Club came to pick up Mr Exotic at our house. She went into my room and found a used condom. Now there's a life lesson right there. If you choose infidelity, at least cover your tracks.
Seeing as the only other person there at the time was my Fag Husband, it didn't take a genius to figure out who I'd be schtuping.
She went completely ape shit.
Now let's think for a moment about the term "ape shit." It indicates a regression to a primal state and refers to the ape defense mechanism where they do, in fact, throw their feces.
When two male apes are squaring up for a fight, they will posture, trying to establish, before physical contact, who is more dominant. This posturing involves baring teeth, beating the ground and throwing things. Any things. Food, stones, sticks, and poop. If one shows himself to be more dominant than the other, this enables the weaker ape to back down and avoid a fight which could injure them both. It's the ape equivalent of the "naval exercises" that a government will coincidentally conduct off the shores of a country that's starting to piss them off.
So. Back to the Ape Shit. She's crying, she's screaming, she's calling me all sorts of names. She slaps me across the face before Mr Exotic steps in to hold her back. She lurches forward and tries to kick me in the head. I can still see, after almost 20 years, her black boot and how high the heel was. (Hmmmm. I wonder if it was designer...)
Now here's the part that would not make for a good Jerry Springer episode: I didn't respond at all.
I was in complete shock. Not only had I never faced this kind of ridiculous display before but, back then, I really believed that rich, private school, Country Club types were upper class, like the Queen of England was upper class, and that they always behaved with strict decorum.
I remember I was somewhat removed, in my head, from the whole situation, looking at it from a distance thinking: "I can't believe she's actually doing this. Has she gone a bit mad?***"
Mr Exotic, rather muscly and at least one and a half times his girlfriend's weight, was struggling to hold her back.
My Fag Husband, being true to the cliche that gay boys only fight with witty barbs, was nowhere to be seen.
At that moment, our housemate came home. His finance, sussing the situation immediately, gave me half a pill of some kind of anti-anxiety meds she was on, and I was soon sitting in my bedroom, completely zoned out, hearing the screeching recriminations from behind my locked door.
And I'm still thinking: Why is she doing this?
She should be breaking up with him, kicking him in the head or, even better, the balls. She should be getting back in her car and tearing off into the night, stranding him here. She was pretty, she was rich and I figured she could get anyone she wanted. It wasn't like this was her future husband, for Christ's sake. We were all in our early twenties!
I realize now I was in some strange kind of Spock mode.
The only thing I could focus on was how illogical her behavior was.
It was probably the most surreal experience I have ever had in my life.
But I guess we all have our dramas to face.
I have friends who grew up in families where their parents had fights like this on a regular basis. I have a close friend whose husband hit her. I even had a friend who used to create drama in her life with her boyfriend because, I realized years afterwards, that was the only mode of behavior she knew when it came to relationships.
So I guess I got lucky. I've only had one of these Jerry Springer moments in my life.
But it taught me so, so many things:
- Rich people are as fucked up and badly behaved as the rest of us
- The victims of a partner's infidelity would rather blame the third party than entertain the thought that their love would choose someone over them
- Anti-anxiety meds are a blessing from our Lord God himself in high stress situations
- Never get too close to the boots of a woman who wants to kick your head in
And another thing.
I'd be an utterly terrible Jerry Springer guest. Unless I take up Kick Boxing.
* Mad = Crazy, not angry in the English sense
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