In the end, our lives together as man and wife end in a farce.
But in my heart there's regret.
Sometimes, this kind of regret can accumulate like thick black clouds of crows, eventually erupting in a lightning strike that cracks like evil shrieks of the birds.
I asked Pig, "Why don't I have passion anymore?"
"I still do," he responded.
"You're a sham," I said.
"Well if you dress up like a nurse or a student I'll be surging with passion," Pig said.
I gave him a death stare and told him to go drop dead.
"Sex is communication," I said. "I look at you and I know I love you, but I don't know how to express it exactly. Language and hugs don't have enough power; therefore I want to make love with you. It doesn't matter what clothes you are wearing, what your hair looks like, what you are talking or what you are doing. I have no choice."
Pig looked at me, as if absorbed in thought.
"And you, you think sex is just when a man gets his rocks off, so you want me to momentarily be your porn star, do stripteases for you and obey you in a hundred other ways. I should not expect too much from you since most other men are this way. But you are cleaner than most because you have the strength to admit it."
"I never thought about it this much," Pig stammered.
"Whatever. In short, when in bed, women outrank men." With an unquestioning tone and wave of my hand I ended our conversation.
There was nothing else to say.
The rule to make a marriage last, or in other words, to obtain a happy marriage, is thus: don't change for the other person, and don't let the other person change for you. Otherwise both people will be ashamed of themselves and will take their rage out on each other, become enemies, and then eventually part ways. If you think you can still bear to look at this person, then continue. But if you feel repulsed by him — pack up your things and go. It's not worth it for you to enter a forced labor camp together.
A different guy from before, let's call him "T," once asked me, "Do you love me?"
I said, "Yes I do. You're a bad, bad guy."
T then asked, "Do you love Pig?"
I thought about it, and then said, "Yes. He's like a defenseless child."
Another guy, let's call this one "M," once asked me, "Can Pig really give you everything you need?"
"I don't even know what I need myself," I replied.
"Then he's a failure," said M.
"That's not true," I said. "What he has given me has far exceeded what I need."
M thought about that for a bit before saying, "Yeah, I guess I really couldn't be anything like him. He was so docile and obedient."
Therefore, I married Pig.
There is nothing perfect in this world, and there certainly is nothing perfect about marriage.
Therefore, we must both accommodate each other.
If you are used to being single then you wouldn't know that accommodating someone else in marriage is actually a virtue. No matter how much you bare your fangs or brandish your claws as you curse at the sky in the society, sometimes you just need to lower your tail and look happy.
But everything has a limit.
"If you get made up really pretty, then call me and beg me to come home early, I'll be really excited," said Pig.
"Oh, you CAN cancel all of your overtime work," I said.
"Come on, just once!"
"If I get made up all the way and sit at home, you will get home and ask, 'Hey, you want to come out?' If I wear lace underwear and garters and do a striptease on the heating pipe running through our apartment, after you come home you will call me crazy, pick up the phone, and call an ambulance to take me away. Or what will you think if I fill a warm bath with rose petals and light a candle in the window? You'll laugh and call it a low-budget porno. You're a rotten romantic."
"This isn't how it was before," said Pig in a puzzled voice. "Before we didn't need to use any tricks. We burned like a fire."
That's because we didn't know each other, I said.
My friend Xiao Feng once encouraged me to conduct the following experiment.
Before getting married, toss a coin in a jar each time you have sex. After you get married, every time you have sex take a coin out of that jar. See when you finally empty it out.