Perils of having a blue, blue Christmas in the pursuit of love and lust
I’M NOT quite sure if this is a Christmas love story or a Christmas lust story. That is for you to decide. The probably true Christmas tale I am about to tell you contains ligatures of both lust and love hopelessly and inescapably intertwined. We will now issue the usual sexual content warning. You are not allowed to read this column until after 10 at night.
Men are buying lingerie for their women as we speak, at all hours, this being Christmas week. This purchasing of foundation is a most kind gesture from the caring men of Ireland, who are only too well aware that women are so worn out from preparing for Christmas, they hardly have the time to go shopping for exotic underwear.
It ain’t easy being a woman. Everything is left for you to do. The men only do the easy stuff like basting and tasting. You so hope he doesn’t mess up the present giving this year. Last year he bought you a box set of a plunger, deluxe toilet paper with your initials etched on each scroll, and a plugless toilet rim cleaner.
You drop him hints about a new car or more specifically a new second-hand car. The old car clinks so much it sounds like Matt Talbot is in the boot.
He surprises you. The present this year is a set of 16 itchy, drafty crotchless knickers with piano wire dividers, like the ones the mafia uses to dispose of its victims.
You fume because you know the saleswoman at The Adult Shop in the city will be cracking up laughing at your man. If the eejit had gone to your local store, the sales lady would have known what you wanted, your size and the underwear you know best.
And you cannot return the expensive knickers because he’s already tried the bloody things on himself, or, being a man, he’s lost the receipt and has forgotten the name of the shop. Anyway you would be too mortified to claim a refund as you know full well the sales crew will look on you with a mixture of pity and conceit. Or worse, you could run into one of the neighbours who might think you were in The Adult Shop to buy a Rabbit and the only excuse you can think of is: “It’s for whipping the cream for the plum pudding.”
So you fire the Christmas box in the bin, in a fierce fit of temper. You take some consolation that this year he didn’t buy you a trip to the City game in a grim city in the north of England. Last year a man called Syd used the c-word 67 times and vomited all over your good clothes.
You attack your beloved over the useless compendium of assorted undergarments. He tries to console you with, “Darling, I just wanted to make it hot in the bedroom” and you tell him he should have bought a hot water bottle. Then he chances you. But you’re not interested.
And it dawns on you that the binmen will get to see the discarded underwear. You tell your partner as much but he acts all hurt in the hope you will feel sorry for him and give him the Christmas present he really wants. You banish him to the spare room.
Up with you, out of the bed. On with two dressing gowns and the pull up anti-rain pants he wears going to the North Kerry Championship. Ireland is colder than Moscow on presents’ night. It’s as dark as your thoughts. The sleet wets you through to the marrow and you stumble to a cut knee.
The yard light is gone as he said he couldn’t reach up to put in a new bulb without the stepladder. Your husband asked you to change the outside light as he is afraid of heights, the dark and electricity. The fool lent the ladder to a neighbour. In goes your hand, down into the depths of the deep fill bin. You feel around in the blind like a vet inspecting a cow. The smell is vile. Sleet turns to hail. Your face is like measles from the spitting ice-bullets. Out comes a dirty nappy from your unlucky dip.
Back in again. You go deep this time, as if you were trying to pull out a ticket in a draw where the buyers start cribbing because all the winners came from the top. You almost vomit when radioactive glow worms emerge from the remnants of the takeaway he brought home after the Christmas party with the lads.
Your mother-in-law’s sherry has you over the limit so you can’t drive off and leave him. You get sick. And you take fright at the sickness. You wonder if there’s an emergency chemist open so you can buy a take-out pregnancy testing kit. Off to the garden shed and the shovel.
“Dig deep,” you say to yourself, in case some disorientated dog in search of a lost bone presents the present to The Born Agains in No 37.
You scream when the only partially decomposed head of the neighbour’s cat you knocked down with the car, and secretly buried, gives you a dirty look.
BACK into the house with the 16 pairs of underwear and you know if you were to wear all 16 at the same time, they wouldn’t keep you warm. You vow to write to the Minister for Health asking him to place a Government health warning on all flimsy underwear: “These garments cause kidney infections and sores.”
“If you put them yokes in the washing machine I bought you for Christmas past,” he advises thoughtfully, “they’ll be as right as rain, but don’t put them all in together as the colours might run.”
You decide to go back out for the shovel with the intention of battering him to death and then the plan is to bury him with the neighbour’s cat. He’s camping out in the spare room. There’s no snoring, so you know he’s awake. Probably beating himself up over yet another Christmas present fiasco. He went off the drink all of November for The Holy Souls and to spare up for your present.
Then you get to thinking. You say to yourself, “Hey, after all the years, the stretch marks, the fine lines and the last place finish in the weight loss clinic weigh-in, this dude still lusts after me. The yokes he bought were three sizes too small. My man sees me as two stone lighter than I actually am.”
The twins are not due back from the school outing to Lapland until the next morning. “Hey you,” you call.
“Me?” asks he.
“Who else is in the room?” asks you. “Do you want to help me toss the bed?”
“No better man,” says he.
You cannot return the expensive knickers because he’s already tried them on himself