SOMEONE ONCE ASKED me, "What's the best state a married couple can be in?"
My answer: "Incest."
She fainted on the spot.
Me and my Pig, like mother and son, or father and daughter, never fornicated — but we come close.
At first, like they always say, everything is normal. I was the kind and loving woman, and he was the big and strong man. But after a while, time, like a disinfectant, bleached us back into our original states. Without knowing it, our cats tore free from our bags and our true selves were revealed.
Pig looked at me in astonishment. "Why do you dress like me? Are you wearing my clothes? I feel like we are a gay couple. Where has that slim, tender, kind-hearted little girl I once knew gone?" he asked.
I laughed maliciously. "In my body!" I said in an evil voice.
Pig took his hand and stuck it in his mouth, pretending to tremble in fear. "Oh noooo! You've eaten her alive!" he cried.
But the way Pig reacted to my surprises was never as spectacular as the way I responded to his.
I forget when it started, but one day I noticed that Pig was suddenly talking in the tone of a spoiled child. He was doing it pretty often and he seemed to really enjoy it. He was even giggling like a little girl, making his voice lilt in the air.
Then a few days later, much to my surprise (and dismay), Pig began to talk like a toddler. Instead of "food," he said "yum-yum." Instead of "pain" he said "boo-boo." He was devolving into a baby.
And this was only the first stage.
There was once a popular cartoon called "Crayon Shin-chan" that Pig loved to watch. He was obsessed with it.
He was so obsessed with it that he came to believe that the crass little five-year-old boy in the show was his role model.
Whenever he would see a pretty girl on TV, Pig would grin his stupid smile and yell, "Pretty pretty lady!" just like Shin-chan did in the cartoon.
After showering, Pig would shake his butt in the bathroom mirror and shout, "I'm a naked butt from outer space!"
Once feeling happy, Pig would go limp like a piece of seaweed and flap in the air singing, "Elephant, elephant, trunk so long!"
At midnight, I would sometimes hear noises from the kitchen, and knowing it was Pig I would yell, "PIG! YOU CAN't EAT THE CHOCOLATE COOKIES AT NIGHT!"
Pig would then trot over and stick his face out from around the corner and pretend to look miserable. "You caught me, you evil lady!" he would cry. Or sometimes he'd say, "I hate you! You big butt old hag!"
During dinner once, he took every single green pepper and threw it in my bowl saying, "Big sister, you like 'em don't you?"
I stared at the bowl stupefied for a while before rubbing my eyes and turning my head to carefully verify that the person next to me was in fact six years older than me. I pried open his lips to check his gums and lifted up his hair to check his scalp, making sure that he had not bumped into an alien that used extraterrestrial technology to restore him to his youthful state. The result was disappointing, as it seemed that all of his body parts were not those of a boy and continued to suffer from aging. He was determined to stubbornly continue down this path. How I wish it was the opposite.
Later, the more familiar we got with each other, the more he abandoned any kind of formalities. Apart from the times when he would prance around naked, showing off his far from perfect body, he would expose me to all of his personal strengths and flaws, and then wait for my praise or criticism.
For example, "Today my female colleague said that I looked so handsome in my shirt," he would assert in a self-pleasing tone as he stroked his hair in the mirror.
Or "Piggy is so unlucky! He got another ticket today!" he would say, pretending to be seriously wronged while waiting for me to come and comfort him.
Or "I'm sooo tired today. Help me wash my socks, OK? OK?!" in a tone that would give you goose bumps. He would then climb on the bed, pop open a bottle of yogurt, click on the TV and then dart his eyes around the room self-consciously trying to avoid my stare.
Pig's other habit was that wherever he went, he would eat. And whenever he ate, he would throw trash on the ground. This happened so much that it got to the point where I would often see little pyramids of refuse piling up in the corners of our apartment. Their contents would include apple skins, watermelons seeds, peanut shells, plum pits, fish bones, and every other kind of food bit imaginable.
I'd always nag at him about this, but Pig would always block his ears and close his eyes, like a naughty little monk absorbed in meditation. After secretly observing him, I'd come to the conclusion that Pig secretly enjoyed my prattling. If I were to stop my long-winded complaints for just one day he would begin to feel lonely, then scared, then incessantly asked me what he was doing wrong.
In reality, to a man, the complaints of a woman are part of his feelings of self-security.
This can (more or less) be traced back to the nagging heard by a man's mother in his formative years. It extends back like a ball of yarn in mother's hands, never completely unwound. It is annoying as hell, but also warm and comforting, reminding him of home. When a man is pleased to hear you nagging, it means that he is subconsciously swapping your face with that of his mother's.
To break it down further, I believe the phenomenon of an adult acting like a spoiled child follows the same reasoning. When men are boys they are incomprehensibly mischievous in order to win the attention and eventual affection of their mothers. As time passes, this habit never dies, but rather grows up along with the boy. Thus, when Pig is acting like a spoiled brat around me, I can feel the word "mom" blinking on my face like a big neon sign.
