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Conversations with the absurd - Bedroom Tactics

I've just come back home from visiting a troublesome relative. My other relatives (women) are eagerly awaiting my return for news. The news they are after though are not those I expected. No one is interested in whether or not she still gets beaten up, if there's food in the house or if the children are now completely ready to commit parricide:

- Come and give me a kiss ! How was the visit ?
- was ok... the kids seem ok, they told me that...
- So... are they sleeping together again?
- what? bloody hell, I don't know, that's none of my business.
- you don't know? you could have asked, I mean she should let him, what's a wife for otherwise?
- oh my god, we're not 1890! What the hell are you saying... I don't even want to imagine where their children came from...
- where they come from and where they go indeed... she told me she lets her three year-old sleep in bed with her. Then the little girl pees during the night and the sheets smell. That's a disgraceful tactic to keep a man away...
- you're a hopeless case... I'm going to make coffee, think of your own affairs while I pour.
- let me tell you about my business. When my man was alive, I showered from hair to toe every dawn, that's what...
- oh, and what about the beatings hey?
-  better a man who beats you than a man who divorces you!
- ...am leaving...
- Maybe he asks her to do weird stuff? Hey, come back, hey... !

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