Whiny, Pouty Bitch
wrestling as angst outlet and foreplay
After three years of near-daily acquaintance, the manager at the bodega near my kids’ school said he loved the way I spoke to my kids. He said I was so patient. I said, well, I’m not always. I just try to get my angst out in play.
I called it Monster Mommy. I haven’t done it in a while. I have new tactics. But I used to get down on all fours and growl a little, and the kids would scamper from me. Sometimes we’d all laugh, but sometimes they’d say, “Please stop.” So I would.
This might seem cute, or it might seem troubling. I consider it a coping mechanism.
The new coping mechanism looks like this:
After lying on my back in a child’s size bed for an hour, I said to my husband, “Can we go to sleep?” I was crabby. I was shattered. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
He said, “No, babe, it’s a quarter to nine.”
My brain moved in such a way that it needed to do the math. A quarter is fifteen, minus 9:00 equals eight forty-five. I couldn’t argue with him — it was too early to go to sleep. But I wanted to argue. So I squatted and pouted at the edge of the couch that he sat on. I had a lip a bird could poop on, as my dad used to say.
“Why are you being so cute?” my husband said.
“I’m not being cute. I’m pouting,” I said with a glare.
“We can’t go to sleep before 9:00,” he said.
I hmpf’d. “If you’re going to make me stay up…” I said, unsure how I’d finish the sentence, “You need to pound me awake.”
He chuckled. “Is that right?”
I watched his little cheeky smile form, which was probably the reason I said it in the first place. I like to be monstrous to him. To get a rise out of him.
Then he said, “Look at your cheeky smile.”
“I was looking at yours,” I said. I crawled toward him. I raised up onto my knees. The pout still on my bottom lip. Then, without thinking about it, I punched his arm.
“Is it going to be like that, then?” he said.
“Does this hurt?” I said. I braced my fist in its best, untrained form, and punched him again.
“No,” he said, smiling an extra cheeky smile. I could see the child in him.
“How about this one?” I said, punching the other arm. He tensed before that one. I could tell he felt nothing. It didn’t frustrate me, though. I liked it like that. And I knew it would be so. We did this whole routine now and again. He found it silly, and it comforted me to remember that no matter how hopelessly unrestrained I was, it wouldn’t move him.
“And this one?” I said. But as my fist moved toward his chest, he grabbed my forearm, mid-air. “You bastard,” I said. My eyes felt alive, but I squinted them like the whiny, pouty bitch I was.
