Is wedlock devilish or Godly?

JAKARTA (JP): The midlife crisis is a modern phenomenon.

It is traced to fear of losing youth and libido. It spares none, has gone global, and has its own fall out: some find their marriages rocked; but many do stay within wedlock, and laugh at it.

No wonder when stags bunch up at a party they compete to put their sense of humor on display.

Let us see what happened at Karim's party.

It was Sulaiman who brought up marriage. Jefferson, an American, surprised at seeing him, asked: "Hey, are you not off to Singapore?"

"No. Wife disposes what even God proposes."

Curious, Jeff asked: "Anything misfired?"

"Everything" said Sulaiman. "She simply refused to give me my credit cards."

"Your credit cards are with ibu? That's not on, Sulaiman," said Jeff, pouring oil on fire.

"Look, ibu thinks I become a sucker when a good looking girl makes a sales pitch. So, I can use my cards when she is with me. From such a tight leash on me she would not budge even if I go to Timbuktu. I tell you Jeff, wedlock is devilish."

By now a few more stags had come. Jeff, who usually holds his own in a corner at a party, corralled them saying: "Let's thrash this thing out. Sulaiman confesses wedlock is devilish."

"That's no confession. It's God's plain truth." This was Perfumo, the quintessential Brit, who went on, "Jeff, you know I am a born dandy, not a Don Juan, I swear; but my wife has unblinking green eyes. And my luck: Holding business lunches is part of my work and it so happens mostly chicks are my clients. After I line up a lunch. I select a chick attire, for a proper lunch presence. My wife knows very little of my work, imagines a lot and on top of it fancies she is uncanny."

"And infallible" interrupted a back-bencher.

Allowing the mirth to subside, Perfumo continued: "What do I find when I get back to dress after breakfast? My ensemble in ruins. It is no longer mine, colorful and flying: it is hers, insipid and a turnoff. Lunch is now drab grubbing. Complain, the grub becomes drab at home."

Varman, a party-going Indian, was amused. "Perfumo, your wife is not uncanny. She is a killjoy." he said emphatically.

"Come on how are you so sure?" someone asked. He shut him up.

"Don't be daft. We all know it" and continued. "Long back I complemented a hostess, within my wife's hearing. Since then I have been gagged. Every time I complain, my killjoy says 'stop whining' and adds one more lock to her door, literally, not figuratively."

Now Jeff was about to say something. Was there a tartar in his home too? The suspense was terrific. Jeff started slow.

"Undoubtedly wedlock starts well. The new wife is a singing brook, I admit. But it soon changed to the hiss of a Cobra, I dare say." Encouraged by the applause, he took-off, Jeff style.

"You now have a battle-ax on your hands. She not only flashes temper, but forgets she is a wife, and only occasionally, dishes out a thimbleful of, you know what, when you salivate for a bucketful. I tell you guys; from the gentle brook to a hissing cobra, wedlock is a devilish odyssey. Fools rushing in where angels fear to tread."

We all felt included and gave Jeff a big hand. But he had not rested his case, yet. "Friends," he resumed, "don't feel despondent. Cheer up. It was Oscar Wilde who said that wedlock is devilish; but in the same breath he also said 'Woman are angles.' Has he not shown us a light at the end of the tunnel?"

We felt titillated and were agog. I, suddenly inspired, choose to finish what Jeff left unfinished. "Perhaps Groucho Marx put his finger right on it when he said, behind every successful man there is a woman and behind her is his wife."

Before I got any applause, I was collared by a lady who had been listening all the time without us knowing.

"Hey, you" she said sharply, "you quote Marx eh! but hear what Somerset Maugham's Saddie Thompson -- the woman, not the wife -- in his story 'Rain' says. 'Men are pigs'. That's what Paula Jones is also saying, now" she added, injecting a current flavor into wedlock and abruptly making it a war cry.

How do you explain to a crusader that we were only having a good time? I tried to slip out before things became hotter; but she blocked my path and hissed, "Wedlock is Godly. It has no substitute because it has no equivalent. Home-sweet-home is the ultimate, the summit of woman-man achievement. Am I clear?"

I meekly muttered "Yes", cowed by her amiable menace.

-- G.S. Edwin