'She’s my Ma’am … and I love her!'

My brother, I don’t blame you for the way that you feel, I don’t blame you for doing things that you know, in your intellect, are not true to you. I don’t blame you for overlooking the blatantly obvious things that she does to hurt you, things that scream out foulness and stink of disrespectful deceit. It is not your fault.

You, like all others of your side of the species, including the Sumo, are just an innocent victim of a series of biochemical reactions that make up the essence of a male. You had no say in the genetic structural development that made you the emotional wreck that you are. All of what you are was decided for you, without prior consultation, and has left you to live with the tragic consequences of being the human male; a soft target, emotionally bankrupt, unable to survive without a partner and devoid of any power to change your vile dispossession.

So you follow your genetically predisposed emotional make-up and you are also dictated to by the society you live in, culture, religious belief, whatever you wish to blame for it. You do the things you are meant to do, the things that make you a man. After all, you are expected to do these things and be that person for if you don’t, you are clearly strange and different. Nobody wants to be strange and different. So you do what you have to do. You get yourself a woman and boldly exclaim to all who will listen: “She’s my Ma’am … and I love her!”

All this under the pretext of love, and then, my dear friend, your problems begin.

“She is my Ma’am … and I love her!” Nothing gives a woman more pleasure than hearing a man say those fateful words, or something with a similar meaning. With those words she now knows that she has full power over your happiness and she starts wondering, with glee and eagerness, how she can systematically make your life a living misery.

Men have been living out their nightmares right in front of my eyes for what seems like all of my adult life, and with age it seems the women get worse. The stories have become more gruesome, the disrespect heightened to levels of unbearability and the men left to pick up the piece of their broken hearts as she drives off into the sunset with her next victim.

These days, it just seems that these women are going all out to erode their men emotionally until the men have absolutely nothing left but cold emptiness as their only and constant companion.

I ask you, my dear ladies, why are you being like that? What has so drastically changed in your naturally kind condition? Have I missed something here? What is it that has changed so much in the woman from the time when my mother was a hot young lady, faithful to her man — my father? She got married to him a virgin and stayed with him and all his faults, and almost 40 years later, they are still together and she’s running the roost while he just thinks he does. Isn’t that how it should be? What has changed since that beautiful generation of women?

My mother moulded my father, with great care, gently and with patience, into exactly the man she wanted him to be. Well, maybe not exactly, she clearly does not appreciate the copious amounts of fermented beverages that he consumes on a daily basis, but that makes her an even better woman for using that as a way to patch up other parts of their relationship. He must have traded in something probably worth 10 times more to her that he had to give up so that he could be “allowed” his indulgence of his undying love for the golden nectar. It is genius and, most importantly; it is worthy of praise and respectful.

Now in her old age, my mother is a pillar of strength for all of us, her sons, who just seem to have failed to find happiness with our chosen partners, the same happiness that my father found with her. And do not knock our choices in partner because everyone knows that a woman will always start out perfect. She will allow you to be who you really are; she will appear happy with that, not willing to change anything about you. She will not complain about the little things or even the bigger relationship breakers that she doesn’t like in you — not until she is absolutely sure that she has you completely in her grasp, and then she will systematically proceed to ruin you emotionally.

I call this coming out into one’s true self: when one day you decide that this would be the day your partner finds out who you really are, no holds barred, and they have to change to fit in with the new, real you.

It seems too that they just don’t cut women from the same soft, kind, strong, respectful cloth that they used to back in the day. Not that I was around back in the day, but I just seem to be experiencing a whole lot of foul behaviour in women these days. Maybe it has something to do with my age group where there are many people getting married or in serious relationships around me, but I’m just hearing too many stories of things going wrong in young marriages as a result of a woman’s fault this time — no longer the man’s.

You may argue that this is just a way for women to even the scores; well, you may argue whatever you wish.

The commonly held perception is that all men are dogs and women are always the innocent victims when relationships fail as a result of infidelity. But lately, women seem to be determined to get even; some will argue that maybe it is about time. Women pursue pleasure relentlessly these days, whether sexual or that brought about financially through material possessions.

The unwritten man-rule when it comes to activities outside your relationship, I have heard, is; if you have to, do your dirt, but always respect your Ma’am, her family, her friends and your home. But of course there are those bastards who don’t give a damn and go ahead and do their dirt without any respect whatsoever for anyone else’s feelings.

And this is where it seems to me the foul woman has taken on the baton; why everyone is equal now. If it seems that philandering is an activity acceptable for men, then that should go double for the formally immorality-repressed woman, right? Meat is meat and women are sure eating it, and they are not restricting themselves to the meat in their own home. They are going out there, either wrecking their own or other relationships regardless and seemingly unaware or affected by the emotional damage this causes.

“She is my Ma’am, and I love her.”

These days you cannot leave your woman to go to work in another city in a bid to improve everyone’s quality of life back home. Or maybe I should rather say, you shouldn’t leave your woman to go work in another city. Because chances are you will get a tearful SMS a few months down the line starting with the fateful “We need to talk … ”, telling you how she was lonely and this guy was there and before she knew it they were having breakfast in bed.

Of course this is all your fault, because what are you doing in Durban trying to make sure the children will have enough money to be able to go to university one day when they finish school? “You should have been here for me …” I guess the seven calls and the 23 SMSs a day were just not enough then. Who would’ve known?

“She is my Ma’am, and I love her.”

So she’s your Ma’am and you love her, you stupid idiot; she’s your queen and you would do everything to keep her happy. You come home every night, you sleep next to her, cuddle her after making passionate love. You bought her a house and a fancy car, gave her the baby that she so wished for. You ignored her lack of education or manners, loved her dearly, but whenever you were off to work, she invited her other man into your house.

He sat on your favourite couch, drank your favourite whisky from your favourite glass. Your Rottweiler, Peaches, knows him; why, he always plays fetch with her, the unfaithful bitch, in the garden whenever you are gone to another city on business for a couple of days. He drove your car to the car wash on a few occasions.

“She is my Ma’am, and I love her.”

You met her through a common friend one afternoon at a braai and you fell for her immediately without knowing her background or personality. She was your “type”; beautiful, tall, light-skinned and those eyes … You could disappear inside them for ages. Immediately, even before you had spoken to her, you had given her “Ma’am” status; she was the new queen in your heart’s castle and she could do no wrong.

Your friends hated her; only the ones that love you hated her. You picked up a negative vibe from them towards her, but because you were so taken by her charms, you ignored them and their opinion of her. You fell in love with her regardless, and she, too, told you how much she couldn’t live without you. And so it went on.

A few months later, to your surprise and utter dismay, you found out about her boyfriend of eight years. Eight years! How could she keep a dude who is virtually her husband away from you for so long? How could you have never known something was happening? She used to get late-night phone calls, but you consoled yourself that it was just her brother or friend. Knowing you now knew about her secret, she told you how unhappy she was with him, how she wished she could end it, but just didn’t know how … and you believed her! Idiot! And accepted him as a passing distraction which she “would sort out soon”. Stupid!

After that initial shock, more stories came out as you told your sorrowful tale to trusted friends. They added to your sorrow with stories of even more deceit. Like that day she had to catch an earlier flight on Wednesday to go home; well, she only left on Friday and what happened between the time she left your house on Wednesday and the time she left on Friday is up to you to fill in.

Those three are just some of the scenarios that play themselves out as the Sumo watches from behind the safety of a bucket of chicken strips. These are sad stories that are seldom told; well, not until something horrific happens and the story is related in the evening news. And now it is a tragedy, everyone is a victim; even those who are not physically harmed during these anger tirades catalysed by infidelity will still bear the emotional scars forever.

The reason that I am so troubled by the cracks in the moral pillar that is a woman, and why I have spoken of them so passionately, is because of my love, respect and appreciation for all women. They are truly magnificent creatures, mysterious and enchanting. My respect for all of them, which was drilled into me, without much effort or resistance from my side, by the woman who gave me my place in this world — my first love, my beloved mother — still lives within me, but is now stirred into disillusion by recent occurrences (some of which I have mentioned above) that shake my faith in them.

Even though I have felt the anger, dismay and sadness that comes with realising your king or queen is sharing that which is meant only for your pleasure with someone else, I could never condone any sort of violence that would come as a result of the expression of these emotions of hurt.

But even I, the Sumo, sitting here and expressing these very thoughts and having witnessed what I have — and knowing many more of my male counterparts feel the same but dare never utter those feelings lest they be heard and dully punished by society — know that my time will come. The bait will be dangled in front of me and I will, following my predetermined nature, bite and proclaim out loud: “She is my Ma’am, and I love her!”

I rest, troubled

The Sumo