Mail Order Mail, Prologue

PROLOGUE

Norman stormed out of the lawyer’s office. The rip off bugger had charged him an arm and a leg to do something he thought he could do better himself. Norman signed the piece of paper reluctantly and it hung like a noose over his head. The broad was to get some of his wages and custody of his lovely children, Tom aged 16 and Sarah aged 15. He had visitation rights only once a week when they come for over night stays. The woman got to stay in the matrimonial home because the judge was soft in the head.

The judge asked if there was any chance of reconciliation.

“I was dumbfounded, heart broken and outraged that I believed in Norman’s empty promises to end his affair. Time and again, he lied and betrayed me. I hope you understand my rage and roiling emotions. There is no way I want him back.” Diane told the judge.

“She is so fastidious and difficult to please, I feel shackled in my own home.”

The idiot judge said that until the children had turned eighteen, this was their home. Still fuming over his bitter and painful divorce, Norman cursed himself over the torrid affair he had stupidly got himself into.

Norman’s wife Diane, frustrated with being the down trodden blue collar worker’s wife, decided to up grade herself and go up market. So determined was she that she put herself to school at Auckland Technological Institute or ATI and got herself a diploma in office management. Still unsatisfied, she enrolled for a business degree at the Auckland University. Now he reckoned she thought she was too good for him, a scruffy looking traveling fitter and turner who had put the bread on the table the last twenty years. He had spent years babysitting the kids while she went to night school, when he should have been down at the pub drinking with his mates. Now, she wanted him to improve himself because he was below her as an office administrator. She nagged, and nagged and nagged so much that he dreaded coming home. Diane was always full of sarcasm in her tone. Diane went to weight watchers and crashed on a massive diet and had lost a whooping fifteen kilograms in the past year.

“It’s sheer determination and will power,” boasted Diane to anyone who would care to listen to her,

In her campaign against cholesterol, she banned red meat and fried food she called sinful food. Instead, she served rabbit food for lunch, and more rabbit food for dinner. She introduced alien food like zucchini-couscous and some Arabic hummus which was just a fancy name for chickpeas. Norman had a fight with Diane about not eating chick peas because he reckoned that chick peas were for chooks, otherwise it would not have the name chick peas and he was not eating any Arabic food either. He was a hot blooded Anglo Saxon and there was nothing wrong with that, period. For breakfast, it was muesli with skim milk and a banana. When Norman asked for bread, she gave him healthy Vogel bread that was so hard he couldn’t chew with his ill fitted dentures. She even denied him his Sunday bacon and two eggs. In place of coffee, she gave him dandelion tea. He salivated at the thought of his juicy succulent piece of sirloin steak, roast potato in its jacket and pumpkin for his Sunday tea. In deed, it was just a thought, laid in front of him was a piece of poached white fish. Yuks!!!!

When Norman complained, she jabbed his beer gut tummy and said, “I don’t want to die a penniless widow of a glutton who dug his own grave with his fork.”

Norman always wore his boiler suit unzipped to his navel because his big stomach made it impossible to zip it further. Diane always complained that it was disgusting without trying to understand his difficulty.

Diane attended a confidence and self-improvement seminar and came back transformed from a brunette to a blond. She rang everyone to tell them what a wonderful weekend she’d had and recommended them to sign up for it. She went to their houses with motivational brochures to persuade them to join. Of course, she didn’t tell them that she was getting a comission of every candidate who signed up. Then she told Norman that she had signed him up for the next seminar. Norman protested and the nagging went on and on. It was like an old fashion vinyl record that had broken down and stuck at the same groove playing the same line of “ The Beatles’ will you still love me, will you still want me when I am sixty four?” She wouldn’t let him touch her or sleep with her because of his calloused, hard and rough hands and smelly odor.

Diane was buying self help pop psychology books like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and other motivational books. After reading, she forced him to read them to improve himself. Bugger her, the only reading he had ever done were the Playboy magazines he kept in the glove compartment of his truck and which he took to the cheap motels during his work travels. Most of the time, he just looked at and drooled at the photographs of the naked and half naked women. The articles were too complicated for him to read. Diane’s incessant nagging made him resentful. She woke him at 5 am to run with her as she trained to run the New Zealand Marathon.

Norman went down to his favourite pub and ordered his bitter. There was nothing better than the smooth flow of the bitter down his throat on a day like this. His mate Joe and Gary came over.

In an attempt to exonerate any responsibility of his causing the breaking up of their marriage, he convinced himself that it was Diane and her incessant nagging.

“First thing in the morning, she nags me about the obnoxious stale odor of my cigarette butts soaking in beer. Last thing at night, she nags me about my smelly socks I leave lying outside the laundry hamper. Nag! Nag! Nag! Enough to make a sane man mad!” Norman tells his friends Joe and Gary.

“A man’s house is his castle, my dad used to say.”

“Cheer up, mate! It’s not the end of the world,” said Joe.

“You can’t blame it all on your wife, mate, you had fun with that floozy.”

Norman hated to be reminded of that torrid affair. When the wife gave him no respect about him and his despicable dirty fitter’s job, he went down to the pub and had a glass too many. It was more than one glass too many, it was more like six. Then this little pretty young Tongan Island girl was in front of him, with her top showing too much cleavage.

“Mālō e lelei, Hello handsome, want to buy me a beer.” And she let him brush his hands against her breasts.

Before he knew it, he was checking in with her in some cheap motel. Anelasini was making him young again. She was like a compliant little lap dog and did everything Norman wanted her to do. He was adventurous, experimented all the techniques he read in his porn magazines, something he didn’t dare remotely ask of his wife Diane. He stayed over-night claiming that he was traveling. Diane didn’t care or worry about his extra days away. She was too busy being an important player in her company. But checking in motels was expensive so he suggested to Anelasini they just made out in his pick up.

All good things must end, one day Diane’s car broke down. In a hurry to the office, she asked Norman to send her to her office in Penrose.

“Ouch!” as she sat down. An incriminating ear ring pierced Diane’s bum.

“Whose is this?” in a huff, Diane slammed the door, and went inside to call for a taxi.

Norman sat sheepishly in the car, it was as if he was a bad boy and he was caught red handed with his hand in the cookie jar.

Diane came out and told him to ship out. “You will be hearing from my lawyer.”

Norman moved out, and rented a small flat in Avondale and Anelasini moved in. Norman was no match for the party animal Anelasini was. Neither was his wallet. After a few months, it was no fun any more. Anelasini wanted to hang more with her Tongan and Samoan boys and they messed up his flat, cluttered the kitchen sink and bench with dirty dishes, drank his beer and ate his food. He suspected her relationship with the boys was more than platonic. One day, he cut short his traveling and found the slut in bed with one of the boys while the others were in the lounge drinking his beer and playing guitar.

“Out! Out! I don’t want to see you again.”

“About time, old fogey, take a look in the mirror, even the Viagra couldn’t save you,” Anelasini rudely showed him her middle finger.

The boys slammed the front door so hard that it shattered the glass and Norman had to fork out $200 to get it fixed.

“Get lost Bloody Islanders!” Norman muttered. Norman went back to Diane and begged her to take him back.

“No way!” Diane had a supercilious smirk in her face. “I’ll see you in court.”

In the lawyer’s office, Diane wore a cold expressionless mask. The bitch, twenty years of marriage came to naught. His ungrateful kids refused to see him or talk to him on the phone.

“Bloody woman! Bloody kids!”

“You should have done this long time ago,” consoled Gary.

“Diane’s a cold dyke, you know damn well yourself,” added Joe. “You recall the wife of my colleague Jeff who left him for a woman?”

“Look at me, I am a happy bloke, happy as Larry, drinking here with my mates while my submissive Asian woman is cooking and cleaning for me,” said Gary.

“How do you do it, mate?” Norman looked up from the counter.

“You got to pay me to divulge this privilege,” said Gary.

“Come on mate, what are friends for?” asked Joe.