Column Chronicles
 
Deconstructing love and marriage
 
 
Frank Cotolo
November 14, 2013
 
I offer rare excerpts from the Last Will and Testament of Sir Archibald Courtesy, Duke of Whatington and pursuer of philosophical profundity, as recorded in Great Britain, circa 1845.
 
"I have had three wives. One of them was best. But all of them wanted to covet the sacrament of marriage and each accused me of not fulfilling my measures of husbandry. So, each of them left me, betraying their vows and somehow taking all of the furniture.
 
"Woe is the woman who or whom can beg for the masculine standard and yet contrive a morality all her own. She is the woman who does not carry the blood of a family to its destiny, though she is content to carry thirty extra pounds in her loins.
 
"It is my third wife that - who, whom - still makes my heart quaver, though, since my love for her transcended all tradition, including the missionary position during intimacy. I dare not to speak her name, else cause romance to flush once again through my pecks. Indeed, I still savor the sense of her femininity, even when she wore a derby.
 
"When I learned of her death I wondered two things. First, did she think of me at all when the dark moment of finality came to her? And secondly ... all right, I wondered one thing. I could not believe that her demise brought unto me the deepest of regrets, though I could not approach her after she left me because she never put down the crossbow.
 
"She was a perfect, soft and genuinely natural woman, yet one who could swing a sword like a Crusader beheading an infidel. I was under the impression that she loved me, certainly, for one reason, because she bore me two children, sons named Behemoth and Albania. I was by her side at each of their births, though she called me Donny when in dire pain of birthing. Still, I stood there, even amid the protests of fellow men, who mocked me for sharing a woman’s godly punishment while delivering life to the world. I defied my friends and my family, holding her hand as each boy appeared from her womb with fingers crossed and ears flapping.
 
"Nay, I thought she loved me. But as the boys grew to manhood, a state they may never know, she looked at me one day while I attended to her unknown illness, and said, 'Get out' as soon as you may.' I was asunder, I was aflame, I was insulted and defensive. Before I could say a word I went to the barn and slaughtered five pigs, chewing on their entails in anger.
 
"Then we talked and she said I was not who I should be for her, that I was a bad source for her journey to peace and security. Me? I asked, 'Are you sure you don't mean someone else?' I was shocked that she was swinging the executioner's axe so smoothly, content to serve the blade and sever the bond.
 
"I would not leave, for my sire had placed me upon this land, this realm, to prosper and breed. So, off she went into the forest with raging angst and angry rage and a hatred in my decision not to accompany her whims. Behemoth and Albania were confused at the schism and yet they held their tears as they were beckoned into the forest and frightened by the animals and other terrors of Nature that only their mother could embrace.
 
"In time, she coupled with a faker, a man of modest and ordinary making, one without firm fiber, a wimp, a chicken, a crybaby, and shortly after that she died and he left for further adventures in anonymity.
 
"Now, I cannot recall the first two wives, though I thought I saw one recently in the market square chewing on a basket, and all I know is that there is forever to be a great mystery that lingers, one that cannot satisfy an answer for me unless I fabricate it. That would be the lie that she died with regret that I was not worthy of her struggle, of the struggles all of us own in our intimacy.
 
"Alas, I, Sir Archibald Courtesy, am left with a sorrowful legacy. I denounce love in its legal form, in its so-called sacred shape. I, Sir Archibald Courtesy, though I embrace my sons and what blood they transfer, do bequeath the pain of my disappointment to all men everywhere, that they may see through the veneer and the slaughtered swine and take upon them the gift of lust over love. For, as the Bard wrote, 'We in pain from broken bonds do sway in ..." so and so ... it is too painful for me to quote."
 
Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.

Copyright © 2009-2013 SRN Mediaworks Productions, in association with Frank Cotolo.
All rights reserved. We are not responsible for the content of external links.
148.ca | Cafe | Fab | Radio | Local