Well, Kiss My Couscous!

I once had roommate who was a very angry person. Now, I joke about having anger issues, and I do struggle with anger. But I don’t believe anyone lives in fear of me. Except maybe spiders. (Sweetface thinks I should add him on the list of people that live in fear of me, but I am so going to get him for that!) I’m nothing compared with this perpetually irate roommate. The smallest things would set Madfury The Bonecrusher off like an M-80 Firecracker on the Fourth of July. She once ripped a chunk out of a flat Plexiglas cover that was bolted to the wall. It was as if she was eating raw beef and testosterone for breakfast every morning.

Number one on the list of things that made her go ballistic was public displays of affection (PDAs). Years of watching my parents make out in the line at the grocery store has pretty much desensitized me to PDAs. A couple has to cross the line into indecent exposure to gross me out. But Madfury The Bonecrusher could steam broccoli in her ears when people so much as looked googily-eyed at each other. She absolutely flipped out when a couple kissed in public.

She claimed she was nauseated to the point of debilitation by witnessing PDAs. I was on a bus trip that she happened to be on. She saw a couple kiss—it a simple peck by the way—and said, “I’m sick. I’m going to vomit,” [insert mocking whiny tone here]. They stopped the bus for her, thinking she might be revisited by a vengeful White Castle burger and large diet coke. Instead of explaining, she stepped out into the fresh air and we had to wait for her to get over being Her Royal Frostiness Queen of the Sexually Repressed.

No, Madfury wasn’t Amish, or Victorian. In fact, I kind of doubt she was that religious, because I’m fairly certain she would have been the type of person to sermonize at length and often, if she had been (between the times she was chewing nails for her recommended daily allowance of iron). Also, I don’t know much about the Amish, but I don’t think they are even as opposed to PDAs as Madfury The Bonecrusher was.

Not that Madfury The Bonecrusher bothers me any longer, (That’s one of the good things about moving every four years. Spiteful, mean people magically go away.) but I think I found the perfect place for her to live. Tangerang, a city in the mostly Muslim country of Indonesia, unleashed a spate of anti-prostitution laws on its citizens. Kissing someone not related to you in public for longer than five minutes is now a jailable offence. Somehow the lack of PDAs is supposed to stop Joes from picking up ankle-bearing hookers.

I suppose the tonsil-seeking sex professionals of Indonesia can be excused from not having seen Pretty Woman. Just as I'm sure the Tangerang Police want to be excused for hauling off a woman who had finished her shift at a restaurant and was waiting for her husband to pick her up. Her crime was being a woman who was outside, alone after curfew. They charged her with prostitution.

Which makes me wonder if people in Tangerang will start buying egg timers for their sweethearts. And maybe husbands can buy their wives "Property of" tags in case they have to leave the hearthside and pretend to be autonomous adults.