The List

     It's a pattern by now.  A couple in our circle divorces.  The story is they just grew apart.  Then we find out it's another woman.  It always is.  And then my wife starts giving me these looks.  She's wondering whether I'm having an affair.  I'm not.  But she doesn't know that.  So I sit her down, hug her close, and recite the List:

• I'm going bald.

• Meanwhile, my other hair is out of control.  Eyebrow, ear and nose hairs are sprouting faster than I can pluck and cut them out.  The hair on my chest is just getting bushier.  Not to mention my back.

• The wrinkles on my forehead grow deeper by the day.  The bags under my eyes used to go away after I woke up.  Now they don't.  Forty years of sun damage has accumulated on my skin, scattering brown spots and pre-cancerous growths all about.

• I wear bifocals. 

• My teeth are crooked, uneven and yellowish.  Not really crooked, uneven or yellowish, mind you, but just crooked, uneven and yellowish enough that no one will ever ask me where I got my teeth done.

• My head is too big and too narrow, like something you'd see on Easter Island.  The size of my head is magnified by my slight build, thin arms and legs.  My gut is growing, though, and someday may even serve as a counterbalance to my head.

• I rarely smile or make eye contact, preferring to glare or a thousand yard stare. 

• My five o'clock shadow shows up before noon.

• I stoop.  Not because I'm tall, but because I'm too lazy to stand up straight.

• I can't dress myself.  Never wear the right thing.  Usually look like a slob.  And I can't match colors.  I'm so bad at that I claim I'm color-blind, even though I'm not. 

• I'm ticklish, prone to squeal like a little girl when someone touches me. 

• I can't carry a tune, I can't dance a lick and I don't enjoy making the scene.

• I never remember jokes.

• I don't cook and I don't really care for fine food and wine.  And as for long walks on the beach at sunset, I don't like the feeling of sand between my toes and dark beaches creep me out.

• I don't reach out to others, I reach into myself.  I'm so self-absorbed that I'm usually somewhere else even when I'm here. 

• If you ever manage to get me to talk, you'll find that once my mouth opens it won't shut.  Conversing with me is, if nothing else, an opportunity to hone your listening skills.

• I spend too much time reading in the bathroom.

• I can be brutally frank, especially when I'm not trying to.

• I'm out of shape.  I'm inflexible too:  can't touch my toes, rarely change my mind. 

• I sweat while sleeping.  Snore too.

• I don't believe it's healthy to suppress the expulsion of bodily gasses.

• No one ever calls me a BSD. A BS'ing D, on the other hand....

• I'm sometimes depressed, always depressing.

• I obsess over the wrong things.

• I'm not handy around the house.

• I speak with certainty even when I'm not.

• I work too much, then spend what little free time I have with a blog.

• I avoid confrontations. Passive aggressive is more my style.

• I panic easily.

• I forget birthdays, anniversaries and major gift-giving holidays such as Christmas. Then I buy lousy gifts.

• I'm sterile.

     Then I smile and say, see, even if I wanted to, I couldn't have an affair. And for some reason this just makes her feel worse.

     Add one more to the List:

• I'll never understand women.

Comments

[Hazee]

Hi, I'm from Malaysia. I've been reading your blog for a long while now and I think this has to be the funniest! I think your wife feels worse coz now she has so many reasons to look for an affair herself! LOLOLOLOL. Btw, your blog is great! Keep writing!!

[R J Keefe]

I must confess that I was thinking along lines laid out by Hazes. But, seriously, your wife understands that there is no such thing as an interested male who cannot contrive an infidelity. She may even understand that, for precisely all the factors that you enumerate, infidelity itself may be the objective. Sex with someone new has a way of making men feel renovated.

[Phil Fleming]

You chronicle with brutal honesty your physical & mental decline, but have you remarked, proceeding apace, an emotional & moral decline? By emotional decline I mean the loss of capacity to feel strong positive emotions like love. Do you wonder why affairs occur as we struggle desperately but in vain to check our disintegration?

[Oorgo]

Another excellent post, I laughed, I cried, I related.

Funny how relationships go, I can talk to other women, flirt even, but could I ever move in to make the kill? No, I not only don't have the guts, but I have this funny moral thing that nags me all the time. Plus like you, I usually depress people if I talk to them for too long.

[MindSpin]

The list isn't going to work, but you get big points for the hug. Besides the fact that your list is funny, self-deprecating and pretty darned endearing, your wife knows what a curmudgeonly gem you are, and she's thus well aware of the fact that somebody else could figure it out, too.

To top it off, it can't make her happy that you proclaim yourself unlovable, when she's obviously making a life's work of convincing you otherwise.

That'll be 2 cents, please ;->.

[Amy]

It's not about you. You have to make a list that long about what is attractive about her. In my humble opinion, and as a member of the fairer sex. :)

[Neil]

The only problem is that bald passive-aggressives with bad teeth are so IN this year.

[DarkoV]

OL, Not to worry about the "too big and too narrow" head and the " slight build, thin arms and legs." It was said of another genius, Orson Welles, that his body had to grow to the size that it did, because his weight-unburdened frame was a mis-match with the size of his brain.

So, as you grow from scrawny to pseudo-brawny, know well that your brain will feel more comfortable with a high-caloried girth, a better match for your high-falutin' brain.

[stephenesque]

Ugh. Gross.