At D and M's

D is looking tired. He says he cannot get up in the mornings. He feels so bad, he says, and he doesn't know why.

I ask him whether sometimes he feels that he isn't looking forward to the day. No, he says, he looks forward to every day. It's just his body.

Has he been stressed? No more than usual, he says. His life has become less stressed. He is finally back in sales and it is going well.

You need a blood test, I tell him. I am not a real doctor but I know that his GP will first try to exclude depression and burnout. Perhaps he has glandular fever. Once, drained, I went to the doctor. She tested my blood and said I had had glandular fever at some point. I hadn't even known.

***

Our wives should have sex with us. We are agreed on that. His, M, refuses to give him sex because he doesn't help around the house enough. (I am using the right terminology: she feels she is doing him a favour by letting him have sex.

But our wives should want sex with us. We should be at least in part sexual for them. I mean, our relationship should partly be based on that. If it is not, why can't we just go and do that somewhere else? What grounds would they have for complaint even?

M found out that D had been visiting prostitutes. She thought about leaving him but she did not.

She had no right. I don't approve of using prostitutes but I have no problem with his being unfaithful. He had no chance to meet other women: his job involves being on the road but he doesn't visit lonely housewives; he does not have an office that he can meet women in; and he is rarely permitted to socialise without her.

I tell her I hate living so far from the city because I cannot go drinking there. Why would you want to, she said. You're a family man.

Yes, I am but I am lots of other things. We all are. We only increase our unhappiness by not being.

Should D make himself more desirable to M? I don't doubt it works both ways. But she must be open to it. M makes us laugh. She used to be a goer, when she was younger, but now she is extremely prudish. She is angry that her daughter, C, has been watching pop videos and has copied the moves. C thrusts her hips out and gyrates as she dances. She is a good little dancer. She doesn't know what the moves mean. She sings along with the songs. She doesn't know what the words mean either. She is six and blessedly innocent.

M threw away one of D's CDs, a greatest hits of the year, because some of the lyrics were suggestive. They are, and I worry about the message Zenella will take from them. She already wears lip gloss. The sexualisation of preteens is a serious concern. I do not buy the orthodox view that it is harmless, that today's kids are more sophisticated and more able to handle it. I think the opposite, if anything, is true. They are fragile and easily overwhelmed by the torrent of messages they are fed.

C dances because her older sister is the focus of the family. M2 is a talented gymnast, possibly good enough to go all the way (she is too young to say but she seems to be just a little below the very best and it's still possible for her to make up the gap). She trains 22 hours a week. She is eight years old, I think, or perhaps nine.

C wants to be watched. She wants people to think she too is worthy of attention. She is an adorable child. She has a beautiful, ready smile, and is very eager to please. You would think parents would be proud to have her, would shower her with affection and try to make her feel special.

C is shouted at a lot, that I can tell you.

***

M says she will not send a child to public school (private school for those of you who speak nonEnglish English). She wil save the money to send them to university. She tells the story of a friend's child, who went to a public school and then, as if to spite their parents, left after year 10 and worked in hospitality.

I ask Mrs Zen when we are at home why M would say such a thing. Surely if she had the money she'd send her kids to public school. She's just saying it, Mrs Zen says, because she doesn't have the money. It makes her feel better if she makes out she doesn't want it anyway.

I say to Mrs Zen that there is no fucking way that Zenella will not go to university. As if that would be negotiable!

It's an odd thing. We were talking about why our friend D's husband M (another M -- I am now realising I should have used pseudonyms!) doesn't like us. I explain to M and D that he doesn't like us because he is from the UK (he is a Scot) and he is staunchly working class. They don't understand. I say, look, back there a painter, which is what M is, would not be marrying a bank manager, which is what D is. Even today they wouldn't be likely to meet because they would not go to the same places. Yes, they might hook up at a club but it's not likely that it would go for any length. His friends would take the piss. They would wreck his relationship. M is uncomfortable with D's friends, which Mrs Zen and M are, because he fears they are not from the same social circle.

The odd thing is that they are all working class too. They met at TAFE. None finished year 12 at school. None has much education. D (M's husband, not M's wife!) is unskilled and always has been. M (his wife, not D's husband) is a clerk, a low-level administrator. Mrs Zen is a bookkeeper. Why am I with them? My dad was a sailor. I am a nouveau bourgeois, if you like. I was the first person in my family, either side, to go to university.

I am saying to them that the difference is that going to university, pursuing a career was never on the cards for M. He was destined to be a labourer of some sort. It has nothing to do with his brains or his potential. I am saying to them that the middle classes just assume their kids will go to university. It's not even a question. I assumed I would but because I was smart, not for the same reasons.

Do I look down on them for it? No but I can tell you I look down on Mrs Zen's mother, her teachers who failed her, her friends who let her feel it was okay just to become an office worker and not even do the 12 years of school. I look down angrily on the people who failed her by not expecting anything of her.

***

My own mother is coming to visit this week. (My father is coming too. He will at last meet the twins.) I adore her. I'm not one of these tough guys who think that there is anything wrong with loving his mum. I enjoy her company, although, or probably because, she is susceptible to wild ideas. Last time she visited, she had Zenella chanting positive messages (I forget what they call them: reinforcements, something like that). "I am wonderful, yes I am. I am talented, yes I am." I love that she is positive. When I am down and she knows it, she sends me long letters bursting with positivity. She has never known how to help me live my life; not when I was smaller and needed guidance, and not now when I am so often bewildered by a life I seem to have stumbled into but certainly didn't design (or perhaps I did, but if I did, I must have been senselessly drunk when I drew up the plans). But I forgive her for that because her heart was in the right place. I can forgive just about anything of people who are at least trying.

At least she has given up on the Swedenborg. That was just fucking weird. Worse than Jung, who she read avidly when I was a teen. Her latest thing was the Alexander Technique and she had gone back to chanting to Hindi deities, although she's at least nominally a Christian. I'm almost looking forward to finding out what bollocks she is a subscriber to now. She doesn't fear the new. It rubbed off on me and I hope it rubs off on the Zenlings. It doesn't make your life any happier but it does make it richer, in a small way, generally without monetary value (so of no interest to the conservatives out there) but of some small comfort, I suppose.

***

D and I are looking out at the stars. There are a lot to be seen out at his place, because it is far enough from the city for the light pollution to be minimal.

There are a lot of stars, he says. Yes, I say, but you can only see, what, a few thousand, a few hundred thousand when you realise that the Milky Way is all stars. Call it a billion, I say, and they would still be a fraction of the stars that there are that would be one over 1 with 79 noughts after it.

That's a lot of stars, he says.

Yes, I say, and it's certain that somewhere out there are two apes like us, wondering at the size of the universe and how small they feel to be a part of it. I want to say, there's this big fucking universe and all we have is one another, that's all we have, but he is gone and I am alone under the stars.

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:22 pm