As a general principle, I try and stay away from crazy people. Unless they’re hot chicks who have been driven temporarily insane by substance abuse, loud music, and the heady scent of musky manhood. In which case, everyone’s a little crazy all at the same time and this is no bad thing.
Of course, hot crazy girls are their own reward. Until they’re not. It’s an established fact that long-term relationships with such wonderful creatures are simply not possible. You don’t want that mental shit moving in with you and setting up house. You might think you do, cos you get laid in ways that would make Caligula blush, but that does eventually get old. And then it gets weird. And then one day you just go fish in another pond for the sake of your own sanity.
However, all things being equal the occasional dose of hot crazy bitch has much to recommend it.
But there have been times in my life when I have encountered female madness that was linked genetically to hot bitches, who were not of themselves insane. I speak, of course, of their mothers.
And while there are times when maternal insanity is passed down to the daughter, many times it is not. Nonetheless, a man is still forced to confront it when he’s brought home to “meet the parents”, which almost invariably happens when one embarks upon a relationship.
Now, my mother, was a saint. All mothers are to their offspring – at least for a while. But my mum was kinda crazy in her own way. She was a tragically neurotic lady, with a heart made of gentle kindness and a soul made of forbearance. She was also cultured enough to keep her neurosis in check if I brought a girlfriend over.
The same, sadly, could not be said for the mothers I encountered when I was brought over for introductions. And yes, I was a hard sell to any parent. Firstly, there was the whole wog thing. Australians in the 70s weren’t keen on their Debbies being fingerbanged by Marios, Spiros, and Borises. They mellowed eventually, when the Marios, Spiros, and Borises were replaced by Tuâns, Hoangs, and Mehmets, and they had a whole other racial set to stress over.
Secondly, there was the whole motorcycle thing I brought with me as I got older. And that went from “motorcycle normal” (ie. got a bike, got a leather jacket, learns how to wheelie, but maintains a sunny disposition) to “motorcycle outlaw” (ie. got a very loud bike, got a leather vest with terrible and unknowable imagery to go with the jacket, and a host of barbaric jewellery that perfectly matches a no longer sunny disposition).
Still, normal mothers managed to deal with this, mainly by crying in their rooms at night and begging their daughters to find a “decent guy”. Which only made those daughters ever more keen to try anal, shave their vaginas, or pierce their nipples.
But there were a few times when I encountered mothers that were fully, moon-howling crazy, and I was the one who was wall-eyed with horror and confusion.
The first one to affront me in such a way was a lovely lady when we first met at an awkward family dinner. She initially reminded me of that mum in the old Medow Lea “You Oughta Be Congratulated” margarine commercial. Super-efficient and great at everything mum-like with one of those creepy always-smiles on her face.
I’d been going out with her daughter for two months and I was starting to lose interest, but went along to the dinner because…well, fuck, I don’t even know why. I just did. It was a big slap-up affair, roast chicken, all the trimmings, wine, ’taters, gravy – hell, the woman could cook. And just as I was finishing my chicken, she got her crazy on.
Her husband, by the way, sat silently for most of the time, staring at his meal and drinking scotch like it was water. He’d shaken my hand when we met, then sat there like he’d been forbidden from speaking unless spoken to.
His wife was not muzzled in that way. And off she went…
“When are you opening a joint bank account?” she wanted to know, her mouth grinning, but her eyes full of indecipherable insanity. “I think that would be the best. Don’t you?”
It was not a question she wanted answered. It was purely rhetorical. And on it went…
“You’ll both need to put away money each week from your pay, and in no time at all it will add up, and you’ll be able to get a home loan.”
Clearly, the woman had no idea that all of my wages, and some of her daughter’s when I was short, went on buying motorcycle tyres, oil, chain-lube, and bourbon. And when her daughter was full of bourbon, she was a lot more interesting than when she wasn’t.
“Um…” I said when she paused for breath and stared at me with that wolf-grin and her dead-mother eyes.
“I have to show you the Glory Box I have prepared!” she then chirped, and ran off to some part of the house, only to re-emerge pushing a steamer trunk along the carpet a few seconds later.
You all know what a Glory Box is, right? Sadly, it has nothing to do with Glory Holes, and everything to do with an old tradition whereby the females of the family would, over a period of time, collect metric fuck-tonnes of sheets, towels, doilies, etc, and stick them in a trunk against the day the daughter got married.
She then immediately started taking the neatly folded shit out of the Glory Box, unfolding it, and telling me all about it. Hubby silently power-drank scotch, my girlfriend began clearing the table so her mother would have room to display the accumulated haberdashery, and I sat there in polite horror.
That fucken trunk was seemingly bottomless. But we got there in the end. Dessert was served, further insistences were levied at me – the chief of which was “The sooner I sold my bike and bought a car, the happier everyone would be”, which appalled me on a level the Glory Box had only touched upon. And then there was a while bunch of stuff about how she would be happy to manage my money, my housing, my career (Why had I not gone to university and become an engineer? It was not too late.), and so on.
“Mum liked you,” my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend told me when she walked me out to my bike not long after. This was perfectly understandable. I was very likeable when I was trying to be polite.
Some years later I was in a much longer-term relationship. And I got on relatively well with that girlfriend’s mother. She was an old hippy, and very tolerant and easy-going. The fact I had colours on, a hunting knife on my hip, and was steadily acquiring skull tattoos, did not faze her.
I kinda liked her. And then one summer holidays, her daughter and I rode to a place on the mid-north coast where her mum and her mum’s new partner were holidaying. Everything went to bastard shit seconds after we arrived at their hard-to-find campground.
I hate fucken nudists to this day. There’s something wrong with them and nothing sexy or hot about any of them. And I never wanted or expected to behold a girlfriend’s leathery ol’ mummy fat, naked, and with her arms out-stretched to hug me. Ever. As stark as that horror was, the sight of her nude partner was even more upsetting – fucker, do not be scratching your saggy old balls and then holding out that same hand for me to shake.
My girlfriend was equally as horrified as I was, and we left less than ten-minutes after we arrived. I told her to tell them I’d forgotten to get petrol, and that we’d be back shortly, whereupon we fucked off, found a motel, and tried to erase the shock and dismay we were suffering by smoking bulk dope, drinking bulk bourbon, and indulging in hot monkey sex with our eyes open, because each time we closed them we could see that which would never be unseen.
And the last crazy mum I encountered was at my wedding reception. She was the mother of one of my groomsmen, who, as it transpired, had fainted face-first into a bowl of soup, and missed her arrival.
He had fainted thusly because he had consumed the best part of a bottle of vodka. And he had consumed the best part of a bottle of vodka because he was trying to get his mind right about fucking one of the bridesmaids. The bridesmaid in question was twice his age, and very keen to get it on with him. He, being an obliging kinda bloke and in keeping with the celebratory spirit of the event, was up for it. He just needed to be pissed to do it. And he overdid it.
Anyway, just as I was wondering whether to let him drown in the soup or rescue him, his mother swept into the reception. She was wearing a full-length mink coat, which was weird because it was early summer and quite warm. She had also not been invited, but that was not the issue.
The guests were all seated and the band had yet to start, so she was the centre of attention as she marched down the hall, straight up to the bridal table.
Please understand I had no idea who she was. I had never met my groomsman’s mother. But I was about to.
“My congratulations!” she declared in perfect Serbian, as I rose out of my chair. Whereupon she kissed me three times, as tradition dictated, told my wife she looked beautiful, kissed her three times, then looked with disgust at her son, who had turned his head out of the soup bowl and was in no immediate danger of drowning.
“He is a disgusting pig like his father!” she stated with a frown as she beheld him. Then she smiled at me like he’d ceased to exist. “This is for you,” she then said, pressing an envelope into my hand. “May you have a long and happy marriage.”
Then she turned on her heel and marched out again. She had just given me $500 in cash.
Which was, by any measure, rather crazy.
But “crazy” is a broad church, don’t you think? And it really is the sort of stuff that adds immeasurable flavour to your life. Sometimes, crazy is hugely unsettling. You’re not sure how to deal with it, because it’s so fucking irrational and disturbing. At other times, you get the good crazy, and that is worth bottling.
But “Mother-crazy”? That’s just special, isn’t it?
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