Real Marriage 裸婚(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：介末,Nicholas Manthey

出版社：中译出版社

格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT

Real Marriage 裸婚试读：

Jie Mo, who converts life into the written word, is often said to be the “modern day San Mao”. Her work in media has taken her around the world and in 2006 she became famous on Sina Weibo for her serialized publication of Six Years of Marriage, which received over 1.6 million hits. She believes that the world is a place for self-cultivation, that life has no boundaries.Part  OneSix Years of MarriagePremonition

THEY TALK ABOUT the seven-year itch. I’ve always thought, “So what about the sixth year?”

Now I know: in the sixth year, we were both wondering if we’d itch by the seventh.

If the itch was light, we could just scratch. If it was strong, we could rub each other. If it was unbearable, we’d just slip off our shoes. Who was it that said spouses are like shoes?

I never thought that six years would go by this quickly. I ought to write something as a record of our ordinary married life.

It’s because of its ordinariness that it deserves to be recorded.

Neither of us like sturm und drang. Neither of us like crucibles, or gauntlets.

Time makes us grow into each other like tumors. Separation means mutilation. Halves of lives are lost.

And so we’ve chosen to stay together; we both love life.

If we stay together till our hair goes white, this writing will become a milestone. If not, it will become the epitaph for our graves.

On a wet and clammy night, there was not a sound other than the music from inside the car.

“What if we don’t make it to the seventh year?” I asked my pig of a husband.

“I can definitely make it,” Pig said, glancing over at me.

“Whatever it takes?” I shot back.

“Whatever it takes!” replied Pig.

I’m apt to neither overlook nor spare. “What if we are both weak and fatigued, and just could not make it?” I asked.

Pig responded in the same way every time I became unreasonable. He would turn the highly praised profile of his face toward me, lightly tug on my ears and say, “You’re so cute, thinking up silly things all day. Why don’t you think up some ways to make money?”

This is my husband. I call him “Pig.”

Everything on earth, once it entered his brain, became simplified into a single, plain reason: money.

He firmly believed that the base determined the superstructure.

I really admired him for this. When it comes to money, I spend it like it’s water. As for earning money, I cherish each cent as if it’s gold.

I think Pig admired me, too. He would often wonder how strange it was that the total of my bank account would go unchanged for a whole year, unable to accumulate a single, additional penny.

I said to him, “Pig, sometimes I am really thankful to you, sometimes I really adore you, sometimes I really despise you, sometimes I really hate you, sometimes I really trust you, sometimes I really want to know how my life would be different if I hadn’t met you. Sometimes I am really panic-stricken, thinking of enduring a life without you.”

“That’s a lot of ‘really’ in a row,” he said. “You’re going to be this bipolar till you get old.”

I sighed. I have no choice. If I can’t change my husband, and my husband won’t change himself, then I have to change.

This is how disagreeable of a woman I am — a fortune telling website once gave me the prediction, “Your body is at rest, but your mind is unsettled.” To put it more academically, “Life fills you with dissatisfaction and the future fills you with dread.” What’s more, I am so emotional and sentimental that I am on the brink of a mental schism.

I often assisted Pig in lamenting his bad luck. He married me like a chivalrous knight in a moment of blind devotion, and from that moment he has had to face my tortuous inquisitions, full of extreme questions regarding life, death, love and hate.

Men I’ve known have often asked, sympathetically, “Is your husband getting along all right?”

Every time I stood up for him like a revolutionary, “What suffering he bears makes all men happier. At least this way, I don’t have to engage some other random man in painful dialogue.”

Recently I’ve felt anxious. Life has become too tranquil.

There is no more quarrelling like a violent storm.

I’m a woman who fears peace on earth. Still water fills me with a deeper dread than does a raging tempest.

I’m afraid of affection going out like a receding tide, like color slowly fading from an old painting that becomes more diluted until one day, all that remains is not its original whiteness, but a permanent yellow stain. If life was really like this, I wouldn’t bother waiting until that day. I’d just take the painting and rip it to shreds. Even in pieces, it will still be a painting.

One Saturday, we went to a restaurant nearby to get a bite to eat. We were wearing black T-shirts, eating porridge to our heart’s content. The potatoes there were like huge, fragrant stones.

“I don’t like irregularly shaped swimming pools,” I said. “Whenever I do backstroke, I’m afraid of hitting my head.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Pig.

“I don’t like long, narrow pools either,” I continued. “They make me feel like I’m going to drown in an ocean tunnel.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Pig.

“I like big, square, open-air pools under the sun. The kind with a slanted bottom that goes from 1.5 meters to 2 meters at each end.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Pig.

We looked in each other’s eyes, seeing ourselves reflected, laughing like a pair of pigs, holding our round bellies as we giggled.

Like all prosperous marriages, ours is like a ragged piece of old clothing. It breathes, fits well, and is soft. Most of the time, you can’t even tell you’re wearing it.

But if you ever change and put on a brand new one, you will feel stiff, like you’re wearing a shelf. I have no patience to spend the time to make it feel old.

In the evening, Pig was stuffing his lunchbox with rations for the next day’s lunch at work. He was packing it like it was the last food he would ever see.

I yelled at him, “You Pig! You’ve stolen all of my beautiful potatoes!”

Two dimples appeared on his face as he spoke, “I’ve also stolen your heart.”

Unable to escape his grasp, I was trapped in a happy gloom.Anniversary

“WHEN DID YOU get married?” asked my friend May.I could not remember. I need to go check my marriage certificate, which is as undoubted as Mao’s doctrine.

May said today was her eight year anniversary.

I asked her how she felt.

“I felt reminded that I’ve been a wife for eight, full years. Other than moving into a new house, I feel nothing.”

Later on, I heard that she was busy at home putting together a romantic dinner.

Crystal suggested that she go nude under the apron. I suggested she should draw on the apron a pair of massive tits.

When I was in the south of France in what seemed like the region of Provence, I came across a road-side stall that had an apron for sale. The front of the apron had a picture of a full-bodied woman with a large chest and strong legs, wearing lace underwear and garters. The price was thirteen euros. But in a moment of weakness, I let the apron go. When I got to Paris, I searched stall after stall to no avail. There was not a single apron like it in sight. My regret ran deep — I wanted to give it to Pig as an anniversary gift, so that one day while wearing it in the kitchen, I could run in and take a picture of him.

In a way, marriage produces more special occasions. Each one is like a Christmas tree, and you feel compelled to decorate it.

Before getting married, I was a smooth killer. Whenever a special occasion came around, I felt like a shark smelling blood in the water for the first time. I was terribly vain. My favorite kinds of gifts were of the superficially flashy variety, ones that I could show off while walking down the street. But at heart, I’m still a simple village girl. I’ve never expected anyone to give me something lavish like a convertible I could race through red lights with. I’d rather have someone send me a bouquet of flowers to my office while I’m at work. Thinking about it now though, I feel disgraced. Everyone knows that if you show off flowers to the world, you’ve never seen a diamond or a mansion.

For our first Valentine’s Day together, Pig brought home a bunch of red and pink roses. As he walked in the door, he received my greeting thusly, “Why did you waste so much money on roses? Are you insane? You’ve been ripped off.”

Pig, on the contrary, was very pleased with himself. “Don’t worry, they were only thirty yuan! I told the shopkeeper, ‘It’s already eleven. In one hour, you won’t have anyone looking to buy. You might as well sell them to me.’”

Even so, I still think a bottle of shampoo is more worthy of thirty yuan.

Look, getting married is like a journey. A journey where you start in heaven and fall down to earth. As we progressed, our gifts tacitly changed from elegant flower vases to kitchenware. You don’t need roses to survive, but you do need food. We were never so poor that we went hungry, but we did get incredibly lazy. Love is like climbing a mountain, and marriage is when you get to the top. After that, you can stroll about as slowly as you please.

After already gifting wallets, belts, T-shirts, shirts, razors, leather shoes, slippers — even socks and gloves — I started to wonder, “Is it appropriate to give long underwear for an anniversary gift?”

Pig was even worse than me. After gifting chocolate, flowers and perfume, he proceeded to repeat these same gifts in the same order. He did this several times. He was like a long-distance runner doing endless laps in his lane, determined to wear down my will.

I’d really like to know who invented anniversaries. Every kind of commemorative occasion puts human memory and imagination to the ultimate test.

Fortunately, humans naturally strive for simplicity.

After only one year of marriage, our celebrations were limited to both of our birthdays, Valentine’s Day and our wedding anniversary — only four special days out of the whole year. Yet still, we both deeply regret the fact that we weren’t born on the same day in the same year. If we were, we could drop one of the days and only have to celebrate three times per year.

Going on like this left us no room to be lazy. We racked our brains trying to think of ways to surprise each other, creating small joys to break up the monotony of life like how small flowers dot the great grassy plains.

This is what Pig the money worshiper did.

“Happy birthday! I got a car you!” he said, handing me a key.

He did the same thing on our wedding anniversary. But when he gave me the key that time, he told me that he bought a house.

If other people overheard they would have certainly thought that I was some millionaire’s mistress. In reality, we already had a car and a house. All he did was changing the ownership from his name to mine.

Being a miserable wretch with this much misfortune really stretches out your patience.

I once made a humorous PowerPoint presentation for Pig that summarized our married life and demanded him to be grateful for my benevolent caretaking.

I once went to Hong Kong and bought a copy of the game Twister. When we played it felt like we were doing yoga on top of each other.

That year for Valentine’s Day I invented the game “Intimate Little Tips.” The game goes like this: within five minutes, each player must write down the other player’s strong points on a piece of note paper. Then, each player sticks their note paper on the other player’s body. Whoever writes the most, wins. The loser must submit to the will of the winner, doing whatever he or she commands.

Our game went something like this.

Pig wrote the following: beautiful, graceful and friendly; generous, open-minded and happy; energetic, tough and family-loving; strong character and high EQ; thoughtful and intellectually independent; simple, law-abiding and fearless; clear-cut, kindhearted and efficient; loyal, competent and opinionated; intuitive, tasteful and fashionable; affectionate, cultured and decent; frank, adorable and full of love.

Near the bottom of the paper, he added one last word, “Tender!”

The following is what I wrote for Pig: likes Garfield; can swim, skate and ski; often downloads cute movies; drives me around; has long legs; never makes me violate my own conscience; a good photographer; high degree of survivability and always pursues the best life; outwardly cold but passionate inside; good at making money; knows how to enjoy life; likes to role-play a spoiled child; good and educated; gives treats to stray cats; keeps cool when I flip out; cooks well; tolerant; admires me; reluctant to give me money but does what’s best for the family; a little romantic; good at imitating funny cartoon characters.

After reading each other’s notes, I flew into a rage, first beating the bed with my fists before picking up a rolling pin and chasing Pig around the room. How was I supposed to believe that the person he described was me? I had to make him confess — who was he really thinking about when he wrote all those compliments down? Me, tender?

Pig repeatedly cried out for forgiveness as I yanked on his ears. Blushing with resentment, he finally gave in, doing “ant walk” as I asked!

He was referring to the dancer Yang Liping in Impression of Yunnan, who was famous for her suggestive dancing style where she and another man would lay on top of one another in the push-up position and walk like ants.

Within a few seconds, we both collapsed to the floor from exhaustion.

Now, having gotten past six years of marriage, most of our anniversaries have faded from memory. Only when I see the prices of flowers on the street sharply go up can I then realize the next day is Valentine’s Day. Or one always says to the other, “Hey, just give me some cash for my birthday.” We’ve begun to give each other gifts at random, regardless of what day it currently is. Piggy key chains, Ipod, CDs.

Our days float by like autumn leaves. Sooner or later they fall. All that we can hope for is that they look beautiful as they fall because when the tree goes bare, it is all that we have.

There were also times when we would fabricate special occasions. When you’re flooding with desire, you have to give yourself something to chew on.

For example:

“Let’s go eat Japanese food.”

“Why?”

“Today is the day that we got back together after our first fight!”

“Today I want to buy a green tea flavored cake!”

“Why?”

“Today is our anniversary for the first time you sent flowers to my office!”

“Give me a present.”

“Why should I?”

“Today is the day we first halfway broke up a few years ago!”

“I …”

“If you can’t remember important days like these, clearly I am not important to you! I know that you are a responsible guy at heart, you just have moments of negligence. Now you must be extremely regretful, but as penance you can take me shopping and buy me something to wash away your guilt.

…

In moments like these, Pig always got a weird expression on his face. I’ve always felt that the muscles on his face were doing the belly dancing. Unbelievable but charming and fascinating.

Anniversaries are contradictions. Life is always full of them. Some are good and some are bad. They are mixed together like meat and fat on a strip of pork belly.Same Bed Different Dreams

INEVER THOUGHT THAT the person who would process my divorce papers is someone I knew: my newspaper’s proofreader. I wasn’t even given time to be puzzled as she handed me a yellow form and instructed me in a patient voice: “This is your divorce certificate. Just check the boxes and circle the answers according to your situation and that’ll be it.”

Just like when I filled out all other forms, I made mistakes in a few places. Sweat was dripping from my head as I repeatedly apologized.

I never thought he could shift his love to another woman so quickly. But the most frightening thing was that he could hook up with that colleague of mine, that pregnant one.

To my own surprise I didn’t even bring up how our property would be divided. I just very calmly signed my name, and tore the carbon copy from the stack of forms, folding it up and sticking it in my pocket as if I were collecting a receipt.

As I walked down the street, feeling totally lost, I suddenly felt that there was someone blowing into my ear.

Terror-stricken, I opened my eyes to the unbearable rays of the sun. Pig’s face was resting next to mine on my pillow, grinning like an idiot.

“I dreamt that we got divorced,” I said in a haze.

After I said it I was suddenly clear-headed. I bore my fangs and snapped at him, “You didn’t even spare the pregnant woman!”

Pig dodged left and right, felt wronged and cried out, “Dreams don’t count! Dreams don’t count!”

I was puzzled about how I could have had such a realistic dream. I remembered the two of them talking cheerfully as they walked away together. I even remembered sizing up my pregnant colleague and seeing the stripes of her black and white skirt wrap around her tight body. Admittedly stylish.

“I got a copy of the divorce certificate, printed on yellow paper. It’s sealed,” I said.

“You’re an idiot. You only get the certificate after you get divorced. How could they give it to you before?” Pig once again looked down upon me from his tower of common knowledge.

Pig is the kind of lucky person who forgets things once they pass. I am not.

I asked him, as if struck by paranoia, “But why did I have this kind of dream?”

Pig turned round, “Because I have never done anything like that before.”

I let out a big sigh, “It’s not the first time we are having different dreams in the same bed.”

My girlfriend Susu once asked me why I didn’t write more about marriage. She loved reading about the subject.

I always replied, “I’m busy now. I’ll do it in a few days.”

To be honest, my mind was wavering uncertainly, as if standing on a thin wooden board high up in the air. I’m dreadful that I might step into the empty space.

I only dare to write about marriage when I’m in a good mood, because there is always a lingering fear that once I become gloomy, I will drag all unhappy thoughts out of the corners of my memory, even probing down into the roots of my mind to find the true meaning of this thing called “marriage” and realize it is trifling and meaningless like all other things in life. In fact, I’m more often gloomy than happy.

The Taiwanese singer Xin Xiaoqi once sang, “All love is despair, but those who are lucky would simply enjoy it.” It’s true because everything in the world, the more you question it the more desperate you become. Either that or you instantly become a philosopher — but isn’t it worse to be a philosopher?

As my muddle-headedness passes, I think marriage is great. But my only fear is that if I blindly write it so, I will mislead older girls and make them think that marriage is a blooming flower accompanied by the singing of angels and a cure to cast off the desolation surrounding the loneliness of insomniatic pillows. In fact, sometimes when there are two heads per pillow it can make you feel lonelier if they have different dreams.

Take, for example, Pig and I.

Our nightmares were always out of sync. We even had our own personal erotic dreams.

My dream lover was skinny, white, and sensitive. His fingers and figure were long and slender, and he had a rich literary air about him. He didn’t talk much.

Pig’s ideal bedmate, however, came in three varieties: little female servant types, little white-collar types, and little college girl types. In short, pretty little girls.

Sometimes we were both perplexed — how could the one you love and the one you marry be poles apart? Big black Pig, thick and strong, not even a wee bit sensitive, despises arts and loves to grin like a dumbass. And me, with a violent temper, don’t wear underwear, like to dress like a vagabond and act ostentatious in public. I feel twinges of pain when I see these lacey lotus leaves. I have a “proper wife’s” face that looks like it knows nothing of romance. My breasts are as innocent as my face. Not a hint of sexuality in them.

Falling in love relies on passion. Marriage relies on reason.

Though we did not go through a period of passion, we still could reasonably marry.

I think that if we didn’t have this life as husband and wife, this matrimonial kind of thing, everything would be extraordinarily perfect.

“Turn on the light,” Pig said.

“Keep it off,” I insisted.

“Just one minute for foreplay,” countered Pig.

“I dare you,” I said.

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