Am I Still a Man if my Wife Kills the Bugs?
Let’s start off with the facts. I am just over 6 feet, I can sprint a mile in under 6 minutes, and I can bench 6 reps at 225 pounds before an ambulance needs to be present. In spite of my moderate athleticism, 666 is the spirit summoned every time something creeps or crawls into my personal space. Testosterone? Overrated. When I see a bug, I am Casper the friendly ghost, hiding behind curtains and praying in the Spirit for divine intervention. My wife is left wanting as she copes with being married to a man whose masculinity is reduced to anti-matter any time an insect is present.
The great thing about not living with your partner before marriage is that you can hide the parts of you that would most certainly cause your spouse to reconsider matrimony. My wife didn’t know about my fear of bugs until after we were married and moved in together. Now three years in, be it grit or grace, she’s still sticking with her entomophobian mate. Still, if you were to rank the world’s “most tolerable husbands” I would be in the top 2%. I cook, and I cook damn good. I make my wife laugh all the time. I am compassionate. I cry during Pixar films. I possess just the right amount of masculine aloofness that makes my wife wonder if I am getting dumber or if I only pretended to be smart.
The great thing about not living with your partner before marriage is that you can hide the parts of you that would most certainly cause your spouse to reconsider matrimony.
What does this have to do with killing bugs? Or not killing bugs? Absolutely nothing. I just needed to paint a character profile for my readership that slightly overweights my strengths to build empathy as I struggle through this irrational fear.
Two nights ago, on an unseasonably warm spring evening, my wife went to gather some belongings from our balcony and left the screen door ajar. (Insert expletive expressed silently in my head here). When she does this two things happen. Bugs enter our apartment and I am compelled to move out of our apartment. Twenty minutes later as we were getting ready for bed, a gargantuan moth emerged from behind my hamper. This went unnoticed by wife who was giving me cliff-notes on the latest episode of This is Us. I whimpered, and my wife turned to see the dusty dragon furiously flapping its wings as it circled my lamp like an airplane.
“Kill it!” my wife commanded.
Confused and scared, because she knows my weakness, I grabbed my flip-flop and swung helplessly at the skinflake-eating demon. It maneuvered effortlessly away from my attempts to end its life then flew underneath our bed for an exercise break. My wife looked at me with disgust and preceded to go on a recon mission. Grabbing a flashlight, she searched under the bed for our new roommate in the hopes of introducing it to its maker. My wife failed. She proceeded to spend the next five minutes muttering about how my poor aim would lead to the first on-record moth committed homicide.
The next evening as we prepared for bed, the winged beast emerged from behind her hamper this time, flying around our room with the confidence of a stunt pilot. As I felt my knees get weak, my wife sprung into action, determined to kill. She grabbed the flip-flop that failed me the night prior and transformed into an assassin. She jumped on top of our bed, infrared lasers shooting from her eyes and put the prey in her cross-hairs. With the speed and power of a mercenary she murdered the moth with a swift flick of her wrist. Kill shot. The moth’s carcass dropped onto the carpet, along with my ego. Perched from atop our bed, Attila the Hun instructed me to clean up the remains.
Where does this leave us? When we got married my wife did not imagine that she would have to be the terminator. She didn’t expect that something a thousandth the size of her husband could send him into a vegetative state. Yet my wife in her coolness regards this embarrassing fear of mine as comic relief. That’s my gift. I married a woman who takes something that causes me shame and turns it into something inconsequential. For each bug that enters our life, there is a story that evokes laughter so hard it brings us to tears. So am I a man even though my wife kills the bugs? Yes. I am also a man married to a woman who exalts my compassion, humor, and strength over my laughable flaws. She sees me as the best version of happiness, her safe space, and her protector (for all non-crawling things). Who would have thought that my manhood could be so awesomely affirmed by the most incredible woman in the world? I didn’t — but I am glad that it is so.
Chad J. Thomas