After getting a stack of old Easyriders magazines from the ‘70s, and watching too much Sons of Anarchy (see the next listing in the J.J. Krupert saga), I have really been making an extra effort to going back to calling my wife my ol’ lady. We live in Charlottesville, Virginia, and hang out with too many Whole Foods-shopping, square ass white people who do not understand that it makes sense sometimes to just stay up all weekend long at least until Sunday afternoon. The two terms are very different, and I think my relationship with my wife would be more secure long-term if I only referred to her as ol’ lady.
First the term “wife” refers to a legal agreement more than anything. In the eyes of the government, your “wife” is your acceptable partner. This of course is our American sectarian way of rethinking the old “yoke-fellow” Christian notion of husband and wife being bound for eternity in the eyes of Da Lord. Now I am not really a Christian (actually not at all, but there’s so much Christian bullshit in this country, I still say “not really” because I fear they’re gonna jump out from behind the cabinet in the corner and start holy rolling me into a small package for Jesus), and I’m as anti-American as the next guy (at least when it comes to American govt.), so neither of those really do justice to my ol’ lady and me’s relationship.
“Ol’ lady” on the other hand, is a fluid term. There’s no legal paper between you in this, yet you are already insinuating she is your “ol’” lady, as in you’ve been together forever. And will be together forever. Now, we all know forever is a rare thing when it comes to relationships, but it seems to me that one reason the divorce rate is so high between “husbands” and “wives” is that they have this convoluted Hollywood notion of what love is and how it is magic and requires no work and when someone gets flabby or annoying we bolt for some new legal agreements to free ourselves up to not break our old legal agreements. Essentially, this is fucking ridiculous. An “ol’ lady” can be an ol’ lady without losing that luster. If she hits you upside the head with a 2x4 because you were out with Deric drinking and driving home from Richmond while drinking with professional wrestlers in some dive bar in Shockoe Bottom, well that’s just how the ol’ lady is. It would be grounds for a separation or counseling if it’s your wife, but with the ol’ lady, whatever man, she was pissed, you deserved it, walk on eggshells the next afternoon, and then fuck again the next night, like good fucking where you start in the dark when you go to bed at the same time, but it’s so much fun you cut a light on so you can see what’s going on. That’s just how the ol’ lady is.
My wife is a pretty good ol’ lady. One morning, as I was getting ready for work, she came out from the bedroom wearing nothing but a yellow tank top, which made her look gooder than hell. I was about to just quit my job for the day, but she was only walking through to get one of children some milk with two other children circling around the house on the insides like inside vultures. There would be no need to stay home from work because we would not be left alone to our bedroom to be an ol’ man and ol’ lady together and wrinkle up the sheets, which to be honest were probably already wrinkled because usually we don’t make our bed until we go to bed the next night so that the bed is made for about seven seconds perfectly before we pull the covers down again.
My wife is also kooky. She was telling me about how all these people are showing up now allergic to red meat and pork because ticks are biting other mammals, have a little bit of that blood in them, and then bite the human, so that foreign mammal blood gets into the human immune system and it starts to fight the substance as an intrusion and breach of security, and from that point on whenever you try to eat a hamburger you get violently ill. It’s some crazy shit, and true, and happening right now, and you will hear about it on the news in like four years once the regular world cares, but my wife meaning ol’ lady told me about it this week. In great detail, too.
Back in the day, I used to joke I needed a Mexican Redneck Hippie girl to be my wife, and in my ol’ lady, I got about as close as I could to that. She’s not Mexican, but very olive-skinned, and from the looks of her dad, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some dirty Spaniard blood in there somewhere. And though she is herself a Whole Foods shopper, she also likes to drink beer and get wild. She did a joke thing one time when we were hanging out in this public square in college about how I should meet a chick with a little scrap of paper that said, “Do you like Raven?” and had a box for yes and a box for no. I kept that shit, just because. And fifteen years later, we have been married for eleven years in the eyes of the government and in the eyes of fake Christian gods, but oh man, we’ve been ol’ man and ol’ lady for ever. So much so that I’ve got her name on my forearm and she has my name on her upper back, except we didn’t want to get names because I guess we were brainwashed on a “husband” and “wife” kick and afraid to have names. I have an owl, which is her bird spirit, and she has a raven, obviously, and that’s how we roll. But I very well could have just gotten big bubble graffiti letters of SUZY on my arm because she’s my ol’ lady and always will be, even if I end up with some other ol’ lady down the road. There are no such things as ex-ol’ ladies. They are always your ol’ lady still.
Plus, if she ever does decide to just be my wife and leave me instead because I am retarded in some unforgiveable way, well then I get to be a hobo. Win-win, in my opinion.
STEAL "The Ol' Lady"
NEXT UP: A song from a fucking TV show!
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