I wasn't fool enough to really do it and I don't think there is any couple in the world that would really engage in such an experiment.
Whoever thought of this idea was a venomous rat. I can't think of a better way to untie all of the marriage knots ever fastened. If this guy was ever found and dragged out into the street, it would be difficult to stop all the married men and women from flying into a rage and hanging him in public like Mussolini. Sometimes the truth can be more damning than lies.
From one point of view, marriages that freely form out of love and arranged marriages don't seem to have any differences: passion is always helplessly obliterated by daily life.
There is a scene in Feng Xiaogang's Sigh where the leading man says to his wife, "When I stroke your hand, I don't feel anything. But if you were to suddenly cut it off I'd surely feel something!"
All marriages are paradoxes. When you emotionally feel inseparable, your body feels unresponsive and numb. Every marriage is a kind of self-contradicting watermelon: when the heart is ripe, the skin is rotten.
Six years later, we would kiss like our goal was to brush each other's teeth with our tongues. We'd screw like two perverts joining as one. No matter whether you are willing or not, these days will firmly come to pass as sure as menopause.
But perhaps there are also some ways to commute the death sentence of your passion.
"Let's role play," said Pig.
"OK, sure. But let's wait till I get a stronger leather belt," I said.
"Or … we could be gentler with each other. Ow! What are you doing?"
"Here wear this on your face. You can be Edward Norton."
"I'd rather you be a Japanese actress," Pig angrily grunts.
"Okie dokie!" I rough up my hair and toss it across my face. "Do I look like that scary ghost girl from The Ring?"
Pig turns his tail and flees.
"Actually I have a better idea, it's very simple," I said.
Pig looks on in expectation.
"Get two towels and let's tie them over our eyes. That way we can just imagine the other person to be whatever we want. That'll save us the trouble of dressing up."
Pig is completely speechless.
After being married for six years, everything that used to support us seemed suddenly ridiculous.
"Can't we just lie down together and watch some porn?" asked Pig. He looked like he'd ran all out of tricks.
"OK, but we should each watch our own," I replied.
"What? Why?" Pig didn't seem to get it.
"Because we don't like to watch the same kind of porn," I said as I shrugged my shoulders. I don't think I was too upset.
I've never totally believed in a thing like absolute loyalty, at least not in marriage.
Men are loyal and dependable, it's true, but it's only because the cost of betrayal is too dear. Women, on the other hand, are indomitably chaste, but that's because the outside temptations are not enough.
Marriage is abandoning the entire forest for a single tree. I find my own tree, but then discover that it has grown out over a precipice. I cling to it, rely on it, carefully sustaining myself. But I don't complain about it — all marriages are rooted next to precipices. If you lose grasp of your tree, the injuries are costly.
"What if one day you meet someone who deepens your passion by ten thousand fathoms? Or what if one day I meet someone like that? Will we break up?" I asked Pig.
"You won't find someone like that again," he said.
"And what exactly are you relying on that makes you so certain?" I asked.
"Because — I am actually already faaaabulous!" cried Pig, his head raised to the sky.
This is how my serious question was received.
In the Spanish film The Breast and the Moon, the lead female character, being the lucky woman she is, possesses two men — one is a perfect companion to her mind, the other is a soul mate of her body.
As I watched with Pig, I was suddenly overcome with desire and yelled out to him, "I want to be her! I want this too!"
Pig grabbed a hold of me and refused to let go. "Don't you dare!" he cried out.
I deeply took in a breath and said to him, "Pig, you smell like popcorn."
There was once a line in a song that went something like, "Let me rest my head on your shoulder, let me bury my face for good."
No matter what, I've found the place where I'll take my eternal sleep, and I'm not going to budge.
