FRASIER:

Elsa and I took her boy 12, her daughter 9 and my youngest and only daughter 12 to the fair on Labor Day.  It was a last minute planned meeting after not having seen each other for weeks.  While doing our best not to look like horny teenagers at our age, we indulged rides, slushies, and a few dolls before winding down watching piglet races.  The last act of the day consisted of some rare tigers.  White ones and whatever the hell the yellow ones are called.

This was no Siegfried and Roy.  It was what Single A ball is to Major League Baseball.  In other words: Nice Try.

The set consisted of a circular cage about 25 feet in diameter and 10 feet high.  Six big cats came out and slowly got up on stools while the pudgy carnival barker issued commands from a head set while working two long poles.  He flicked at them with one that had a rope with a small knob at the end.  In his other hand he had a pole with a point and would occasionally feed them pieces of raw meat about the size of what gets diced up at one of the tourist trap Japanese steak houses. This, to cats in the wild who would rip apart a Wildebeest for lunch for pete’s sake.

The cats were coaxed out of a cage and directed to their stools with wrist flicks and encouraging words.  The first five were pretty well behaved.

Then came Spartacus, the 750 pound big dog of the big cats.

I started laughing.  Standing behind Elsa looking over her head at the scene while the girls sat in front of the cage and the boy sat on the railing of the bleachers, I began whispering jokes into her ear and sneaking cheap PDA nuzzles.

“You know that cat wants to rip that guy’s arm off.” I whispered in her ear while playing with her neck and hair.  “Here he is, stuck in a circular cage, taking shit from the dim witted son of some family of tamers.  Sweet Jesus, the indignity of it all.”

We’d giggle and swap lines while leaning into each other.

Spartacus would get down off his stool and head over to bite the neck of one of the younger female cats.  The barker would flick.  Spartacus would hiss as if to say, “Ok, I am only putting up with this shit because I want to.  Otherwise I would kick your ever loving ass.”

And we’d laugh.

Although Elsa sensed an affinity for me there to this big, caged cat.  I felt for him.

They Should Look Like this ...
(Photo Link)

... Instead of this.  
(Personal Photo, obviously, from the quality)

 Fast forward a week and we’re still joking about Spartacus.

“Honey,” she growled in a low, gentle, guttural voice akin to Marge Simpson that I find incredibly sexy while looking into my eyes with her arms around my neck, “Just how far have you gone with this?  You telling others or is this our little joke?”

“Nah, it’s our little joke, why?”

“Well, I am worrying about your mental health, honey.” She said, likely only half joking given my messy divorce, lack of work and a personal injury suit that has 5 lawyers in my pocket at the moment.  Compartmentalizing isn’t for the faint of heart.  I know it’s hard on her, too.

And as I sat on the front steps of her home the morning after this exchange it came to me why I connected with Spartacus.

Two years ago I was caged.

I was in an office over a garage working out of a house that required too much maintenance in a loveless marriage with limited respect shown between my wife and I and from our kids to us.  I was miserable.  I sat at a chair staring at a computer screen feeling powerless.  Caged in a 20 by 20 office over a garage doing a job I did not like, for a person who did not like me, in a house I hated.  

I didn't have boundaries.  I was bounded.

It was as if my spouse was the lion tamer flicking at me.

An email would come from work after no communication the night before which likely had me on the couch.  “I forget to tell you that you need to take [kid] to the orthodontists.” Flick.

“Before we spend money on your office roof, I need the turnout roof fixed as the hay is getting wet and that costs money.” Flick.

“Oh, I forgot about Tuesday being date night.  Do you still want to do something, I am pretty beat.” Flick.

Coming home after several days at a horse show tired and cranky after two days being anxious and agitated getting ready for the horse show, “What did you do all weekend?” Flick.

Or, about a week before finally moving out while readying to put the house on the market after working about 14 hours fixing things on aching knees and seeking a stroking by saying I was pretty beat, “Well, that’s what happens when you let things go.”  Flick.

Or not even getting a card on our 25^th wedding anniversary after buying three pieces of jewelry and leaving them around the house at different times during the day that ended with strained dinner conversation and rote, going-through-the-motions intimacy. 

FLICK!

Not all the fault of another, but those were the hurts felt on my end.

And so I recalled looking at Spartacus and joking to Elsa that I wanted to break him out of that goddamn cage and let him take off.  Get back out into the wilds rather than suffer the indignities of getting flicked at by some manipulative little trainer out to make a buck off his prowess while he sits there caged, coiled, and likely more than a little pissed off.

So I came back in off Elsa’s front step and relayed the analogy. Mentioned watching Spartacus get off his stool, growl at the flicking trainer, and go nuzzle one of the female white tigers.

Later I simply imitated Kirk Douglas saying, “I’m Spartacus.”

And then I gently bit her neck.

It’s fun to roam life’s wilderness side by side with her.

ELSA:

In front of us, a chain-link cage of Illinois bred and born tigers. A lot of misfits and runts doing tricks, and then there’s Spartacus. Spartacus is the big guy, the alpha of his own little fenced-in world, and Spartacus is no longer enjoying the show. Spartacus paces and surges off his stool, but some part of him is so well trained, so…habituated… that when he wants to snarl or swipe or go after the neck of the pretty little white tiger on the next stool, he waits until the trainer’s back is turned. He wants -- you know he wants -- but one little tap of a slender rod pushes his 750 pounds right back onto a tiny stool. We all feel the tension in Spartacus. However, I don’t believe everyone starts purring and yowling and whispering excitedly, “I am Spartacus!” That would be Frasier.

When your date turns into Spartacus, your weekend takes a turn.

I do get his affinity to Spartacus. Without knowing every detail, I understand the rough layout of his marital circus – having a blueprint of my own curled up in my sock drawer. I remember the stings on my nose – and the sorry-ass satisfaction I’d take laying my own stripes on my late husband’s nose (when he was alive, for crying out loud. I quit when he was dead). It’s a mutual taming, swiping at each other in a locked cage, but even so, at its worst, it was a maddening, deadening, infuriating entrapment. And at those times I wholeheartedly wanted to bust loose.

Let Spartacus roam free? For the last four years, there has been little to stop me from doing just that. And freedom is not just excessive wild sex, punctuated by one juicy steak after another– although everyone knows that is the lot of the widow. It’s the release from the endless swiping and stinging. There you stand, single, with a useless rod that you get to finally throw down. And do you swear to never pick it up again? By God and Gum, you certainly do. If there is no other Scarlett O’Hara moment in post-marriage, it’s the oath that you will never pick it up again and you will run like a wild woman if you see anyone else with one in hand.

But this brings us to the dilemma of the chain-link cage. It’s the metaphor for marriage in this instance, in case any of you are asleep at the wheel, and I’m not all that happy about it. Tired, would be the word I’d use. But this is what I got, so stay with me.

Skip to yesterday. Sunday, and the Patriots game is on television. To put it in context, this is the second time in 15 years that the television in my house has been used for football watching. But Frasier is here, he loves football, he’s charmed my son into revealing his own latent love for football, and my daughter is going to glue herself to Frasier’s leg no matter what he does, so he may as well be relaxed on the couch so she doesn’t blow out his knee. The three of them are sucked into the television set on a gorgeous fall day. OK, maybe it was a sucky, cold fall day. And I have a major, wicked flashback to my marriage days: it’s one day out of their lives and the world is out there to be explored, and everyone knows that children who watch too much TV puff up like a microwave-popcorn bag and have nothing witty to say at cocktail parties, and what about reading a fucking book– and lo! the rod is in my hand. On top of it all, I have to go grocery shopping while these three slip blissfully off into tv slumberland – and another rod magically appears. Sweet Jesus, the living room floor is actually covered with them, an explosion of long, sharpened red sticks that I thought I’d chucked years ago.

Wait, we’re still on rods. Where’s the chain link fence? I look around the living room, lift my eyes from the floor, and realize that there is no fence. Oxygen is swirling all around, willy nilly, with plenty for me to breathe. And it is apparent, for a moment, that if Frasier wants to watch football, if he needs to surge off the stool and bite some 350-lb Patriot neck, I am not trapped. And I need to buy food for my kids, which I have to do whether a tv plays or not. It’s not a role. It’s a task. I can breathe. I can toss the rods. So I do.

But the fence. Still hanging out there, my tired metaphor. Because I can’t figure out the answer. When what binds us together also makes us feel trapped, and leads to the stinging and flicking, I can’t bear it. I don’t think. We all want to roam free and have a little meat on a stick, to watch a football game and fly through flaming hoops, to take our kids to a country fair and meet each other like horny teenagers, to run wild and have a soft couch for our old joints, to rip a throat or two and to be kept safe and secure from the hordes of fair-goers gathering to see the tamer shed a little blood. We want. You know we want.