Invisible Honey, I’m home

Self Editor’s Note: A few days ago Our Man in America posted a Facebook status update saying he likes to walk into his empty apartment and announce, “Honey, I’m home.” What he didn’t tell you was that, indeed, Invisible Honey lives in  the apartment.

I HAVE never met my wife in person, but this woman I live with is bitter. For the sake of political correctness, let me just tell you that I’m not even sure Invisible Honey is a woman. But because I love women (I neither love, nor hate men) I’m going to assume and wish that my invisible spouse is a woman.

She neither cooks, nor cleans.

Before you scream, “You African male chauvinistic pig!” let me tell you that some of my best friends are feminists. Berkeley types. I don’t mean that a wife has to do every chore in the house, but I go to work, goddamn it! My neighbors are my witnesses; I have told my wife  loud and clear — usually in the late hours of the night when my poor neighbors are trying to sleep — to get her ass up and get a job. But evidently invisible wives have neither the ears, nor the desire to support the feminist agenda.

The dirty pile of clothes I left on the floor three weeks ago is still there. It’s not that I’m asking her to go down to the river and wash them like I would if we lived in the old country.

Woman, (not Honey) your mother should have taught you this before I paid dowry, but to get dirt off the denim jeans My Brother in America gave me last Christmas, put water in a basin. Add detergent. Just a little bit, because he hasn’t sent any dollars to buy more if we run out. I think he figured out that I took his favorite pair of jeans from his suitcase as he bade Ma goodbye. Anyway, I’m his brother. He’ll get over it.

Put your hand in the water and move it sideways as fast as you can, like a kid making bubbles. That will ensure you get the most out of the detergent. Soak my jeans. Proceed to washing the lighter garments in the river. Be careful not to leave the ones that are awaiting rinsing — especially MY favorite shirt — too close to the current because they may wash away and make me mad. Hurry back to bathe the kids, return to the river and fetch water, gather firewood, cook and iron my clothes while I sit under that tree with my friends and listen to the radio.

The laundry room is in my Oakland apartment building and we have an elevator.

The dry cleaner is just down the block, so you’d think my dear ghost of a wife would leave the couch and drop my suit off. It’s not like I’m asking her to pay for the cleaning. I left a 20-dollar-bill on the kitchen counter before I went to work. Go drop my suit off and treat yourself with a manicure on those hands that I don’t feel, darn it.

Every night I announce, “Honey, I’m home,” no aroma greets me. Invisible Honey is usually sitting on the couch watching Oprah.

Sometimes Invisible Honey plays practical jokes on me. One night I tried to sit next to her, but she sneaked the remote under my big buttocks. The cable company charged me $29.99 to replace it. To add to the insult, I had to take an unpaid day off work because those cable jerks give me a “two-hour window” appointment.

The other day I put some food on the stove to cook and went to sit next to her on the couch. Though I couldn’t see Invisible Honey, I felt her warmth. She even watched a soccer game with me. But while I was hooked to the television — watching Chelsea molest Arsenal — my wife slowly got up and moved the pot of beans to the wrong burner. It took me four hours to cook dinner that night.

On yet another night, she snuggled me until I dossed off, and set the stove so high that it burned a goat head I was cooking. Yes, my friends, the goat head  I had to fly to New Mexico and haul back to California. I also suspect that whenever I come home a little tipsy — OK, shitfaced — she throws my shoes at me and makes me trip on them.

But the main reason I’m whining is because she has kicked me out of the bedroom. She removed the heater from the bedroom and painted the walls to look like it was never there.  This I don’t suspect; I know it’s her.

I can’t imagine any American dumb enough to design an apartment with a heater in the living room, another  in the bathroom, but none in the place I used to spend most of my nights before this woman intruded. I can believe that some American contractor installed a doorbell outside my small one-bedroom apartment, but the heater thing, no. Americans are No. 1, you know. F-word Yeah!

I think Mexicans do pretty F-ing awesome work when you hire them, so I’m unequivocally sure this is Invisible “Evil” Honey’s doing.

For the last week — it snowed in Oakland on Sunday!!! — I have been sleeping on the couch.

I’m beginning to wonder if Invisible Honey is so big that she has turned my bedroom into a walk-in fridge. Hey, if it turns out I’m right on this one, may I tell my friends they can’t  come over because I’ve got “multinational corporation,” instead of “company?“

I can’t figure out why this woman is tormenting me. I don’t have Tiger Woods money, so I have no mistresses. And if I did [it], she wouldn’t find out because my phone is password-protected.

Sometimes I wonder if at some point in our marriage things were good and Invisible “Sweet” Honey gave me Invisible Baby Kerubo. Maybe it was an accident that’s why I resent her, but Divorce Court Judge, please, order her to make my daughter visible once a week.

Your Honor, I’d ask for every day with my daughter but what man in America wants a “little bundle of joy” every day. I just want to take her to the playground at the park once a week so I can tell my buddies at work that I’m in my kid’s life. And, oh, I want to take pictures and send them to my mother in Kenya so she can stop bugging me about grandchildren.

Your Honor, you can put a restraining order to bar me from going near Ms. Invisible (Bitch) Honey if she finds some  Mr. Invisible Mother-efer to raise help my daughter.

I don’t give a damn what the judge said. Don’t you dare pull that, “He’s gonna adopt her” crap on me. I swear to God I’ll find you and kill both of you.  That’s my Lil’ Invisible Kerubo.

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Tags: divorce court, feminism, if i did it, oakland snow, oprah winfrey, restraining order, tiger woods