NB: This story was published as ‘The Housewives Tale’ and was adapted slightly to contain more facts about York, such as place names etc.

I would like to explain to you why I am in a room with my best friend who is cellophaned naked to a chair. But before I can I need to take the tights out of his mouth, and ask him myself, as not even I am sure how this happened. It would seem I have got myself into an awkward predicament and I haven’t even been drinking.

By the way my friend is called Walter and he is the husband of Griselda. Walter and Griselda have been going out together since they were fourteen. They were the one inseparable couple that every school churns out whilst the rest of us were happy to play hop scotch or football. The only time they stopped petting was when lessons began and I sometimes think that if they had been allowed to continue they would have done better in their exams.

Their intense love annoyed me at first, as every time I asked Walter if he wanted to do something he would decline. He’d say they were studying together or going to see a film or they had to do some shopping for his Gran. After a while I stopped asking him because I couldn’t bear to be continually denied, especially given that the diversity of his reasons always gravitated back to the same word: Griselda. I accept that there may be a slight element of jealousy in my tone. I just can’t accept that he wanted to spend more time with her than I did with a football.

When we left school he became an apprentice electrician for his fathers business and she a receptionist. Within months they had both left their parents home and put down a deposit on their own house, living well off of their combined income. As I had nobody to kiss at school I did well in my exams and so decided to stay on and do A-Levels.

I would often pop around to their house in the evenings. I didn’t particularly want to see them it just got me out of my mother’s house for a while and enabled me a little privacy. When you’re at the bottom of the pile you must chose between your evils and ruining their privacy was a lot more enjoyable than ruining my mums.

They were good to me and would let me drink their beer for free, although I always suspected Walter was a bit of an exhibitionist who took pleasure in flaunting his emotional and financial wealth. He’d say I could pay him back one day, when I got a well-paid job and the education had paid off, but he’s still waiting, as am I.

Two months and three days after Griselda’s nineteenth birthday she gave birth to an 8.5 lbs. baby boy whose first two names were Peter-Trevor, after the two Forest legends Shilton and Francis. Griselda was not happy with the names but had eventually given in. After a thirteen-hour labour arguing was the last thing on her mind. Besides she confided in me that things could have been worse as he originally wanted to name the first born after the entire squad that won the cup in 79. I put her mind at rest by explaining things could have been even worse, that he could have wanted to name the child after the current eleven who hadn’t won a cup in years.

Exactly 11 months later Griselda gave birth to another boy. She told me that Walter desperately wanted the baby to have a brother as he had grown up a single child. Fortunately this time the boy was not named after a footballer. He was named after the lead singer of The Smiths. But once more after a long drawn out birth, arguing was the last thing on her mind. She told him no more children, and as all his hero’s had been immortalized he assured her there was no more need for kids.

Money became scarce as did the free cans and I found his sudden interest in my education alarming. I think he really believed that my future job would help bail him out of the current situation. I stopped going around for a while because listening to people arguing is not as pleasurable as listening to people talk, although what they argued about did make me laugh. Griselda kept saying she wanted to go back to work and earn some money but Walter was having none of it. He didn’t want his child to grow up with strangers. In his diplomatic way he told her that he would give up work if she could get a better paid job. It was a fair point but something about it seemed wrong. There was no way she was going to get the same money as an electrician, not unless she got an education and she couldn’t get an education while she had to look after kids.

All of a sudden Walter wanted to meet up regularly for a drink, I think he had used up all his kisses and now wanted to find a different use for his mouth. He would sit and tell me how unreasonable Griselda had become and how she seemed to be more interested in the kids than him. I didn’t tell him, how she had told me, he seemed to be more interested in drink.

He would complain that she didn’t understand the pressure of working a six-day week. I never reasoned with him that this was because she worked a seven-day week, as he wasn’t looking for rational explanations. Instead I conveyed sympathy through the universal shrug of shoulders as he just wanted someone to talk to, and given that he was buying, it seemed a fair exchange.
Dinner times were added to our weekly drinking routine after the birth of his third. He had a big contract locally and so needed the rest to get away from all those wires. He would tell me when he closed his eyes at night all he could see was reds and greens and blacks. I confessed that this was more colourful than my dreams until he explained that it was the colours of earth, neutral and live wires. He confided that their daughter had not been planned although I sensed he was more gutted that they had conceived a daughter, and he had no female idols he could name her after. But he eventually found one, naming her Lara after the Tomb Raider character, much to Griselda’s annoyance.

Walter told me he enjoyed his job but it made him tired. His greatest pleasure in life now was falling asleep in front of the TV or in the bath whilst reading the paper. He told me he didn’t even have the energy for sex anymore and that Griselda seemed less attractive with Farley’s Rusk’s stains on her blouse. I suggested that perhaps she should feed the children something different instead, but he didn’t find it very funny.

The next time I saw Walter was earlier today. He called me at 1pm and asked me to meet him down the pub. I should have sensed something was up as Griselda had called earlier and asked me to pop around at 8pm. He had a devilish grin on his face and couldn’t contain his excitement. He began by explaining how relationships worked and how it’s not the same when you have seen the same body for ten years and that body has had three babies. But recently something had changed. He’d been asleep on the settee and she had come up to him and started to nibble his ears ‘Just like she used to when we were at school’. I told him I thought one ear looked slightly smaller than the other, and without thinking he started laughing.

He said the next day she made strange food like strawberries and cream and celery doused in mayonnaise. He then went into great detail about the way she sucked on the celery and the way she dropped the strawberries whole into her mouth as only a frustrated married man can. It was as if he was proudly promoting a car he had restored from certain oblivion.

‘By Wednesday’, he explained, ‘she was bending over at every opportunity and had even gone Commando.’ I suggested that perhaps she had not had time to do the washing but he wasn’t listening. He was too busy recollecting the sight in precise detail which was perhaps unnecessary given that she was his wife and not mine. However each time he lusted after her she rejected his advances, telling him tomorrow was the night. He must have been excited because he didn’t make me pay for the pint even though it was clearly my round.

When he got home that night there were no screaming kids. There was no TV blasting out Bob the Builder. Just a little message that read, ‘Come up to the bedroom’.

When Walter got into the bedroom Griselda was flounced across the sheets, dressed in latex. Her hair was tied back tight against her head and bunched into a long seductive mane. Walter went to speak, as Walter is apt to do, but Griselda silenced him, running her finger across his lips. She put on some music that involved sitars and African drums and began to dance for him. He seemed to enjoy it more than when he had listened to The Smiths.

After slowly undressing him she placed him naked on a stool and bound his arms and legs to the frame so that he couldn’t move. She then took off her rubber suit and took a pair of tights out of her drawers. She caressed the tights delicately across the indents of her body and then she rolled them into a ball. Just as Walter was about to scream out in ecstasy she ran at him and shoved the tights as far down his mouth as they would go.

‘Would you like to play, little boy?’

Although Walter was gagged his genitals spoke for him; striking upwards into a solitary salute as if a raised arm desperate to catch the teacher’s attention.

‘Good’ said Griselda, and began to apply bright red lipstick to the edges of her mouth. This unfamiliar behaviour excited Walter as she had previously adopted the motto of what you see is what you get. He began to shake in anticipation, reminding Griselda of the washing machine on full load. She then took some cellophane out of a draw and started to wrap it slowly around his body from the neck downwards, as she had done previously with cling film around his sandwiches for work.

Walter was feeling a little nervous now, finding Griselda’s behaviour most out of character. For the first time in years he didn’t know what was going to happen next and thus found the experience annoying rather than pleasurable. He was just about to explain this to Griselda when he remembered her tights were in his mouth and the only conversation he was having was with himself. He momentarily considered the possibility that she had cellophaned him so that he lost some weight, but this soon passed when she ripped holes in the cellophane to expose his most erogenous zones.

‘Baby nod up and down if you are okay’

Walter nodded his head up and down.

‘Recently, things have started to get a little stale in the bedroom.’ Walter was nodding his head before Griselda had finished.

‘So I thought it was time to spice things up. Do you want me to spice things up?’

Walter nodded his head three times, just in case he had not made it perfectly clear how much he was enjoying this fresh approach.

‘Would you like some oral baby?’

Walter was now nodding his head so fast that it actually looked as if it was stationary, like the effect you get from rotating helicopter propellers.

She bent down so that her mouth was within inches of his groin, and began to talk into the surrogate microphone.
‘Would you like the kind of oral every woman should give her man now and then?’

Walter nodded his head and Griselda lowered hers. He closed his eyes, realising he was a lucky man. Then he opened them to find Griselda getting dressed before closing a fully packed suitcase she had hidden under the bed. It was time for the oral he had requested.

‘You are the most inconsiderate bastard I have ever known. Every single night I have to listen to your whinging. Whinging about your day at work, whining about your dinner, moaning about the state of the house and the noise the kids make. Then if I’m not listening to your whinging I’m listening to your snoring or listening to the phone tell me that you’re going to be late or back after closing.

I’ve given you everything; my youth, my adolescence, my twenties. I’ve given up my career, my friends and hopes. What have you given me other than stretch marks and a headache? I can’t talk to you anymore it’s always you, you, you. Do you ever ask me how I feel? Do you ever ask me what I want to do? Do you ever ask me if I mind staying in looking after the kids whilst you piss away the few pence we have? Do You? No, because your only bothered about you. Just to get you to listen I have to tie and gag you. It’s the only way I can get a word in edgeways. That’s not how it’s meant to be. That’s not what love is all about. That’s certainly not my idea. Well I’ve had enough. I’m leaving you. I’m going to live with my sister and she’s gonna look after the kids whilst I start back in my old job. If you want to see them your welcome but you won’t see me again. You were a good sort long ago but now you’re no better than the rest, well I’m not having it anymore. Go get yourself a slave or someone partially deaf. Someone that will listen to all your bloody stories about cowboy electricians who wouldn’t know the difference between a fuse box and a trip switch if it hit them in the face.’

She then kissed him on the cheek and told him I would be around at eight to untie him…and so here I am.

When I entered the room to find my best friend cellophaned naked to a chair, you can appreciate my dismay. It seemed strange that we had spent an entire adolescence avoiding eye contact in urinals and dressing back to back after P.E only to have everything flaunted in one fell swoop. It was excessive behaviour and I asked him if he had been drinking. He shook his head from side to side and I sat down on the side of the bed, wondering what I was meant to do next. My educational qualifications never prepared me for situations like this. I find it hard enough trying to make decisions concerning my own life without confusing matters by bringing naked best friends into the equation.

I decided to do what all friends do when an unfamiliar situation impinges upon their relationship; I asked him if everything was okay and if there was anything he wanted to tell me. He shook his head from side to side and then up and down, shaking the chair he was strapped to. I decided to take the garment out of his mouth and see what he had to say for himself. As always he was less than grateful.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

But he wasn’t interested in an answer and so it was I who did the listening as he delivered a ten-minute appraisal of my life, although it felt more like a criticism. He demanded to know the reason I was so late. Why I had arrived at 9.30 instead of 8 as I was supposed to. He then informed me that I had always been late since he had known me and it was damned irresponsible and rude. He even suggested that my poor punctuality was the reason I didn’t have a girlfriend. I just shrugged my shoulders, because he may have had a point.

It seemed absurd to be lectured on moral etiquette given that he was strapped up naked, but I figured that this irony would sink in sooner or later. Eventually his rant turned to raucous laughter and although I couldn’t decide if it was due to insanity rather than joy, it was better than having my life dissected. He began to explain everything and slowly it all made sense. I felt a little sad in a way that his nudity was not a presentation for my benefit, but this was soon surpassed by relief.

He told me that beer was invented for times like these, and that a pint would never taste as good as it would tonight. I agreed with him wholeheartedly but was just a little unsure if he wanted me to carry him down to the local strapped to the chair or if he wanted me to untie him. It’s hard to gauge the boundaries with exhibitionists.

In the pub I decided not to disclose that I admired his wife, as it didn’t seem appropriate. Besides, it was one of those situations again where he was back in control and it was my role to obediently shrug my shoulders as he spoke. He told me how she would be back, and how she didn’t understand, and how hard it is being an electrician. He seemed more angered at the unnecessary waste of the cellophane and how he would much prefer to look after kids than wires. I just smiled and listened seeing as he was paying for the drink.