The women in my family are killing my family.
The father is a chain-smoking, chronic-gambling, foul-tempered abject bastard of a man. In his younger days no doubt a charismatic, beguiling scoundrel with the ability to charm anyone, his powers have now deserted him, even inverted him, into a rough, unlikeable, uncouth villain who draws ire and dislike and fists shaken at him. The tough, rough ruffian of his gangster-fuelled youth has returned in the swaggering old bully blustering about, the living room his fiefdom, dominion and personal kingdom.
The son is at least unobtrusive; an emotional black hole, a torn, empty scarecrow fluttering in the wind, a symbol of the shattered, broken emotional wreck of the family. A wastrel and an emptiness at best; a black, consumptive abyss at worse, a miming banshee, foretelling death.
Despite their respective debilitating dysfunctions, the women in my family are still killing them.
We are all hen-pecked in our family. All the men, especially on my mother’s side - that probably tells you something. It’s not because the men are weak, or meek; half my family have a polite, strained smile every time they see some caricature of a gangster on television, the other half are corporate criminals and financial mafiosi. They have been menial-labour slaves, whip-masters of slaves, insurance sales schemers, supermarket plotters and prison wardens. These are not ladies’ men, or even men’s men; these are bastards’ bastards.
Still the women are worse.
‘Mother Nature is capricious, powerful, and not to be trifled with or angered. She will take revenge and come at you with the force of a hurricane and the strength of an earthquake. That is why she is a Mother.” I do not doubt this line at all. It has always been the mothers who have drawn conflict with each other. My father’s brothers would not hesitate to tear each other apart with knives, any knives, even table knives - we are always careful to eat with chopsticks. The long chain of the brothers-in-law of the seven sisters of my mother’s side sit together and commiserate every time; they look less like celebrants of a festive occasions than refugees and war-veterans congratulating each other on surviving.
Because the women are worse.
All this rage, all this anger from nowhere, and all this refusal to admit fault or logic.
Rage.
Don’t let it destroy your family, too.
