My husband is insanely jealous.
Over the years his expressions of jealous anger, the bitter sarcasm and even some of the things he did ostensibly to please me, or to just lay his claim on me as his wife, was done out of some jealous grudge. All the little, petty things that I noticed convinced me that my husband was not simply jealous, but insanely so.
Oh, Ved is smart, cool, and confident. He exudes that sense of inner power and smiling control that men like him seem to be born with. He's not handsome, or good-looking in a film star or male model kind of way, but because of a certain inexplicable attitude that he conveys, people find him very attractive; and it's not just the women, I can tell you that!
But I know that's only a faΓ§ade. And I know you think I'm the eternal wife with her eternal bitching. But so what? I'm entitled to some bitching. How long do you think you guys are going to get away with it?
Me? I've been a transparent person most of my life And things never really changed after Ved and I married, till very recently. No, children, I wasn't born in a glass factory, and being transparent means that I don't hide my opinions and emotions, and come out very strongly when I have to.
At first Ved just coped with, perhaps tolerated, my occasional dramatic outbursts of pain, anger, and possessiveness. Then a year or so later, he began to retaliate. I've suffered the stinging slaps that filled my eyes with tears, the drunken punch on my jaw that rattled my teeth, and the verbal abuse. While the pain subsided, an unexplainable something seemed to create an indifference in me, and while it may be an over worn clichΓ© to use, there was a void in me.
Now, three years after we married, I've stripped Ved down to the bone. I like to believe he's now as transparent as I want him. But he's capable of concealing that transparency from everyone else; and when he so desires with selected people, he reveals an opacity that wins their trust and beguiles them into thinking they are sharing some earth-shattering secret with him.
Ved is the good guy with all and sundry. I must admit in all fairness though, that is a quality to admire. Oh, and I've been told that I'm certainly the best thing that's happened to him. When Ved's blood relations tell you something like that, you better believe it! Because, for their 'darling Ved' nothing could be better than them. They've mollycoddled, pampered and protected him; showered him with the gifts a fortunate family like theirs can well afford, who are bestowed not just with wealth, but with an abundance of family love. They indulgently allowed him a first marriage with a girl of his choice, the consequent messy divorce, and sooner than they could react, a second marriage to me, again without their approval.
Anyway, to get to the point, Ved's jealousy hit me in spurts and bursts. Look, I'm on the plump side, but I'm nice to look at with an attractive enough body, though my tits do need a little propping up now and then. I wear clothes well; apply makeup strategically but sparingly; can actually make both 'intelligent' and 'appropriate-noises' conversation whenever occasion demands; I drink and smoke like the men, not because I'm trying to prove something as some of them presume, but because I was doing it before I even met some of these jerks.
At first it was the little things like his "confirmed" suspicions that I was being especially "overt" with one of his friends.
And what was Anil doing putting his finger in your glass of rum, then licking it as if it was your pussy?
Now that I come to think of it, it was probably some hidden sexual message that Anil was giving me. Yet from what I recall, at that time all Anil had done was something as innocuous as removing a peanut floating in the glass of booze that he'd got me from the bar and eating it up.
That's another thing. Men are very attracted to me too. I'm not Aishwarya Rai or Sushmita Sen, or even close to those beauty queens, but at any party I eventually end up with a lot of the men surrounding me. Wives who don't know me get jealous and form their own catty clique which excludes me, or they pretend its all terribly good fun and hey, let's party! Then there are the few who'll make it a point to join me with the men, which I actually welcome, because I do get self-conscious among all those leery men.
And see, I do love Ved. I married him because I love him. He isn't the first guy I've had. I've been through a couple of affairs myself, both lovely when they started out and traumatic at the end. I've had a number of one-night stands and heard many promises never kept. So when I finally make myself realise that things couldn't carry on the way they were, along comes Mr Ved Vihar. The first year was bliss for the two of us. Despite all the jealousy and transparency, life was good together. We were both doing well, and though our dual income was assuming a certain recklessness in disposability, we were happy.
Then I began to strip him away. To expose him to himself. Hold up this mirror so he could see himself 'naked' without his veneer and the accoutrements. He didn't like it at all, and when I realised that his inflated self-confidence had waned, at least with me, I stopped. His work also suffered for awhile, and then he made a sudden decision to change his 'career path'. From a safe job with a multinational at a middle management level, Ved switched to high profile PR and Marketing which he set up on his own. With a lot of help from his family, needless to say. The initial months of uncertain clientele stepped up his own insecurity, and as his wife I was the natural target to transfer this insecurity with his fits of acrimonious jealousy, which resulted often in extreme passion or violent outbursts.
Making love to Ved was good. Why am I speaking of him in the past tense? He's still my husband and we still have sex. I suppose that's my transparency. You'll notice I said sex, not making love...
Making love to Ved is good, was better. When we were dating prior to our marriage, he had been a little intimidated by my forwardness and my aggressive attitude in bed, making him lose his hard-on, or to come in a couple of strokes. He would then have to revert to using his fingers, and it would take me that much longer to orgasm. So for a while there it was no fun. Then he sorted himself out once he and I had become an item, and soon became a tiger in bed. He couldn't get enough of me and I couldn't get enough of him. There were times when we both bunked work to just stay at home for two or three days and fuck ourselves silly.
In the beginning Ved got jealous because I was paying close attention to some guy or vice versa. He created a scene each time, either storming out of the place we were at, leaving me to hitch a ride home with some commiserating twerp and his wife; or he would go into super-silent, I'm-ignoring-you mode till we got home, where he would rage at me with sarcasm laced with venom. Men are really bitchy too, you know.
But we'd make up. He'd apologise, we'd joke, and then would make passionate love. It was love then, a little beyond mere sex. Later, he hit me for the first time. He also apologised again and we made love, but we didn't joke that time.
Ved is a good dancer. He's tall with long legs, a mobile waist, and quite fancy with his footwork. He loves music and loves to dance any chance he gets. I'm not that good. I move well enough I suppose, keeping to the rhythms more or less, but I'm self-conscious. And since I gained some extra weight, I hate my breasts flopping about inside my top when I dance. Ved has a lot of energy on a dance floor, and regardless of how many he's drunk or the joints he's smoked, he can get on to the floor and really move. I found him sexy on the dance floor, so I liked watching him, but when I danced with him for too long, I somehow felt my space being cramped, and imagined people snidely commenting on how odd we looked. One such night out, I'd declined the fourth or fifth dance with him, so while I quenched myself with a beer and chased a tequila after it, Ved was gyrating on the floor with some woman who was part of our gang that night.
There I was minding myself, when as usually happens at such gatherings, that woman's neglected lover or husband, or escort for the evening, I forget what, consequently felt obliged to ask me to dance. I hesitated at first but seeing the man's woebegone look, I got up and took his arm. Ved and the woman were trying to set the dance floor on fire, as lights flashed psychedelically, the strobes making instant statuary of them, the hysterical pop music making the bass speakers thump, accelerating heartbeats, as the giant TV screens around the dance floor silently showed replays of football and cricket matches. The woman danced quite well, and the two of them seemed to be inspiring the other with an air of gay abandonment about them, as they say. Ved, unlike the blacks, whose movements he tries to emulate, is far more restrained and not as blatantly sexual in the thrust of his hips and behind when dancing. Ved caught my eye as we moved about on the floor and grinned at me. It was during one of these glances that he saw my partner's hand brushing off my backside. The next song was an unexpected slow track, and the dodo with me suddenly clasped me to him and began to pirouette around the floor.
Of all the rotten luck, not only did this guy not know how to move naturally to a rhythm which Ved was great at, but he kept stomping my feet and clutching me around my shoulders and above my arse so that he wouldn't trip and fall on his face.