In Such Ways Are My Days Brightened

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My zookeeper girlfriend, the one with whom I lived nine years in the bleakest part of San Francisco, said I was prone to perseveration, “a particular response (such as a word, phrase, or gesture) regardless of the absence or cessation of stimuli.” Maybe I am, and maybe I ain’t. What I definitely am, and always have been, with every life partner I’ve been privileged to love and reside with, is fond of little mini-scenarios that get re-enacted many times per week. When a package is delivered to our tiny home sort of near the Thames, and Dame Zelda answers the door, we have a little ritual. She calls upstairs, “A package! I wonder who it could be for.” When she announces that it’s for me, I pretend to become frenzied with excitement, and hurl myself down the stairs, gasping with excitement. She, in turn, holds the package out of my reach until I’ve Asked For It Nicely. I’ll say, “Please [pronounced pweez, for maximum adorableness], may I have my money?” two or three times, and she’ll say, “But it isn’t money, is it?” I’ll typically get it wrong two or three more times before I finally manage, “Please, may I have my package?”

Yes, it’s a little sickening, but that’s one of the things that makes it hilarious for me.

I find that not only in this, but in most of my and Dame Zelda’s little scenarios, I revert to around three and a half, the age at which it all began going wrong for me. Commonly when she’s hard at work at her little desk in our microscopic dining room, I’ll descend the stairs with my trousers around my ankles (spoiler alert: I wear briefs beneath ‘em). When she sees me, she’ll feign exasperation and say, “Pull them up! You’re very immature!” Whereupon, the 40-month-old version of myself will stagger over to our big front window and begin dancing defiantly while she points out, “Someone’s going to see you!” Her doing so, of course, inevitably inspires me to dance all the more lasciviously.

In such ways are my days brightened!

I’ve made up little song fragments and catchphrases, little theme songs, about all my life partners, and driven them crazy reprising ‘em implacably. (Often the relentless repetition of something that isn’t funny on its own terms strikes me as very funny.) I think Dame Zelda is reasonably fond of hers, a sort of Chubby Checker affair called “Claire and the Bear”. Everybody’s doing the Claire and the Bear. They’re doing it over here and they’re doing it over there.

Here I am at 40 months old,
give or take around 35.

That she has always gotten my jokes — however dry, however born of a pre-childish (that is, unashamedly infantile) sense of humour — almost instantly is one of my favourite things about Dame Zelda. About a month after moving to her country, I mused that maybe I should try to make friends (or, in the locals' colourful patois, become mates) with the Rayners Lane bank teller who’d helped me open my first UK account. I mused it might be fun to present him with a bouquet and chocolates when we met. Dame Zelda, not missing a beat, suggested I say something like, “I love you in that shirt. Is it new?” I must have rolled around on the living room floor shrieking with laughter for 10 minutes.

The same sort of thing happened the first time I went into 40-month-old mode and started stomping around the living room chanting, “We have a parade! We have a big parade! We have a big Thursday afternoon parade!” Many women would have been on the phone to the nearest mental health hotline, but Dame Zelda, again not missing a beat, joined right in. “We have a parade! We have a big parade! We have a big Thursday afternoon parade!”

She doesn’t always get it, of course. Given that I have (and am very proud to have!) the most off-the-wall sense of humour of any of her boyfriends, that’s probably inevitable. (I’m the sort who will laugh himself into near-hyperventilation at something by which no one else in the cinema is even faintly amused.) For the past several months, while watching a television programme about Pompeii, for instance, I’ll might turn to her and ask, “Do you like magma [a mixture of molten or semi-molten rock, volatiles and solids found beneath the surface of the Earth]?” Whatever her answer, my own response will be just to repeat it, as though filing it away in my own brain, and turn back to the TV.  I’ve also asked if she likes renewable energy and Keynesian economics. I don’t think she’s realised that, even with my trousers securely belted round my waist, I’m asking the questions a precocious 40-month-old might ask if he or she could pronounce big grownup words but not formulate more sophisticated enquiries.

No spoiler alert required. She doesn’t read my blog.