There’s a gigolo (lets call him X) who lives across the road, as you walk down our staircase, you can look into his bedroom, if you care to. There is a huge LED TV that dominates the wall opposite and although the rest of the house looks a ramshackle mess, one can see that the bedroom is pretty swanky. And this is no ordinary gigolo mind you, you won’t find him at street corners, he only goes on assignments for select people, I hear he is doing very well, that’s what the neighbours say and judging from his clothes and stuff, I see no reason to disbelieve them.
So today as my husband got into the car to come to court in the morning, he said “what a life, X is lying in bed at ten in the morning, watching Channel V.”
“after all he works all night, he has a tough life”.
A grimace. And a tiny hint of a smile.
My husband is getting used to me, I thought to myself, earlier, he would’ve ranted and raved and gotten on his moral high horse. But my point is simple….X is otherwise well behaved, when we run into him very very occasionally, he always speaks respectfully and nicely. Can I ask for more? Does my extremely limited interaction with him allow me to ask for more, or be judgmental about him? After all, his livelihood allows him to support his elderly widowed mother and unmarried sister… we all have our crosses to bear.
Like the friend we have, at one point of time, he was sleeping with one woman and seeing another out of town while being married to a sweet naïve girl who thought the sun shone out of his backside, (yes, she got a rude shock when she finally realized that the sun was no where near his ass!). My husband was visibly upset…..”your friend,” he ranted, ”immoral, unethical, dishonest….”.
“Hold it,” I said, “as far as I am concerned, it is none of my business. I’m not married to him, I do not plan to live with him….so what do I care? It’s his private life.”
My husband did not understand how I could stand it. Just like the other guy I knew who was having a torrid love affair with his wife’s own sister! Or the other lady we had occasion to run into, who wasn’t sure who the father of her son was, so her son had no less than four birth certificates, each with the name of a separate father!!!!! Or even that other married friend who sleeps with anything that moves just because its there….or the one who got upset because her husband wanted to know where she was going at 11:30 at night!!!!
Well, what can I say? Save that I have been fortunate to know all kinds of people and one reason why I do know them is because I have never been judgmental or superior. Its your life, your business. What do I care how you choose to conduct yourself or your life…as long as I don’t have to do the same? And who knows, who really knows, what the compulsions are. Ask the prostitute and she’ll tell you how she has to work to put her daughter to school. Ask the wife and she will tell you about her husband who beats her black and blue each night that he comes home drunk, ask the other woman and she will tell you how she was sexually abused by her own brother and her mother refused to believe her. I know, these are extreme cases but who wants to hear the reasons and justifications, valid or not? We have friends who I know are having affairs. Hell, I know their partners, one is a creep who makes your skin crawl, the other one is an out and bastard constantly pretending to be someone he is not, another one’s in laws are so dominating, she’s better off outside the house than in! And how does it matter to anyone else what anyone else does? Unless it’s your husband that woman is sleeping with, of course. (But even then I think I will ask my husband before I accuse the girl.)
Its so easy to sit on a high moral horse and be certain that you will never do anything wrong. That’s what most people like to do….they look at each other in alarm and whisper about so and so who did such and such….never once realizing and tomorrow they may be in those shoes. Why, I do not have so much confidence in myself. Who’s to say that tomorrow someone may not sweep me off my feet and I may be ready to leave a stable happy family to follow a dream? Would I do it? Honestly, can I say? Can anyone say what each of us go through except the person who is going through it? We hear of someone having a fling…..immediately we turn holier than thou and “concerned”….we want the dirt, we want to give our opinion, we want everyone to know that “no ya, its something I’d NEVER do”. Well, never say never dear. That apart, why not just let things be?
I hate the hypocrisy, I hate the judgments, I hate the ‘holier than thou’ lectures that are more fake than those glow-in-the-dark stars in my daughters’ bedroom …..can we have less opinions please?
Can we mind our own businesses, the world would be such a better place if we all could do each other that little favour!
And can you now go back to work and let me get back to mine?
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