martinsmithstories

Photo by Veer Shah on Unsplash

‘Evie and I wandered in the wilderness for three weeks before I found this cave. I reckon we must have inspected a hundred caves, and all seemed perfectly fine to me, but not one was good enough for Evie. She’d say “It’s got this” or “It’s got that” or “It hasn’t got this” or “It hasn’t got that.” And then she started going on about it needing to be a white cave, and nothing else. Shivering behind my fig leaf, I said, “W-w-why?” And she said, “Because we’re the First Couple, and as First Lady, I’m entitled to the best.” Had I a pulpit rock, I might have preached her on entitlement and white privilege, but by then I was losing feeling from the neck down, so I expanded my search area until I found this cave, put down a deposit where our toilet rock is now, sat down on the cave floor and refused to budge. She said, “OK. It’s a bit pearly, but I guess it will have to do.” I could tell she wasn’t happy. She kept on mumbling something about squatter’s remorse. But I told her I wasn’t going to spend another night outside freezing my primaeval pistachios off.

‘Housed and me now thawed, Evie and I settled into our new life of cohabitation, and I set about employing myself with the job of being the principal meatwinner while Evie kept the cave fires burning. But it didn’t take long for her to start chomping away at my ear cartilage. She said, “Don’t you think we need more light in here?” Then, “Wouldn’t a throw rug look great over there?” And then something about needing more room for her skins. And she always came up with these ideas on Saturdays, just as I arrived home, knackered and looking forward to chilling out on my day off. But to keep the peace, I bit my tongue, and at first light on Sundays, I took up my club and stone hammer, and I was no longer Adam, First Man, but Adam, Cave Handyman. I tell you, it was a blessed relief to get back to hunting on Mondays. Anyway, it took me three months of Sundays to chip away at our rock wall to create a hole large enough to “let more light in”. I wore my knuckles to the bone. And when I finished and cleaned up the worksite, I placed a skin over Evie’s eyes and guided her so she stood, blindfolded and excited, before my handiwork. I said to her, “Ta-da,” and removed the blindskin with a flourish. And guess what? She said she didn’t like it. Said that it was out of fashion. And then she made me head out on my day off to slay a woolly mammuthus so she could hang curtains to hide “the eyesore”.

‘A few months after the “rock wall saga”, I discovered how to tie a knot. I said to Evie one night, fireside, “Hey, look what I can do. I can knot.” She said with a hint of scepticism, “You cannot?” And I said, “Yep, I can. I can knot.” And she took one look at my bowed handiwork, and the floodgates opened. She said, “Make me a bed. Make me a chair. Make me a table.” The list just went on and on. She even asked me to knot some shelves for something she called a butler’s pantry. I said, “What in the name of creation is a butler? Or a pantry?” And she said, “Oh, it’s the latest must-have. No cave’s complete without one.”

‘I tell you, there’s just not a moment’s rest. It’s want, want, want. All the time. A couple of months later, she made me memorise a list of animals she wanted hunted and skinned. She said something about needing a new winter wardrobe. I suggested she might try mixing and matching some of her existing skins, and all I got for my honest advice was the death stare. I said, “What?” Then she gave me the tut and the arm fold, followed by the protruding bottom lip and finally the stomp out of the cave. Wohomo. Sure is a strange auroch. Look, I’ve been wearing the same skins for seven years. I know they’re a tad tatty around the edges and a bit on the nose, but they’re work clothes, for Eden’s sake.

‘So Evie sat outside the cave, and then the sobbing started, followed by the “you don’t love me” lamentations. I said to myself, “I am Principled Man. Remain steadfast and let the emotional guilt wash off this little dromornithid’s back.” The sobs subsided, and Evie upped the ante. She said, “I shall never subserviate myself to that man ever again.” I squirmed. She said, “I shall never cook for that man ever, ever again.” I blanched. She said, “I shall never allow that man to lay an amorous finger on me ever, ever, ever again.” Game. Set. And match. She had me by the short and curlies. I grabbed my spear and club and rushed out the cave, and as I passed Evie—her face scowled and lips petulant—I said, “Right. I’m on it.” And off I headed on this hunting frenzy, and I speared all manner of God’s creatures and hauled them home. I skinned them all and then, on bent knee and with bowed head, I presented them to Evie, who continued to give me the silent, ice-age treatment.

‘The next day, she stepped out and did a twirl in this new smilodon skin she was wearing and said, “Does my bum look big in this?”

‘How, in Eden’s name, does a fella answer that?

‘I find I have to tiptoe about the cave in the morning. She Who Is Always Right is a little irritable, a little fratchy, until she’s ground her java beans and downed that first mouthful. Yet, for some reason unfathomable to me, her daily fix fails to work its magic for a couple of days every month, and there aren’t enough beans in Heaven and on Earth to quell her moodiness. Thank God I’ve a sinewy neck, else she’d bite my head off. And that’s when I put in a little overtime and pull a double shift on the killing fields, leaving for work before dawn and arriving home well after sunset. And even then I spend the night cuddled up outside with Diabetes, our dire wolf. I don’t know if there’s a Mrs Felsic, but my advice to you at that time of the month is to avoid eye contact. At all costs. Yep, keep your eyes forward and your mouth shut.

‘And don’t get me started on her cooking. Recently, Evie started adding side salads to my meat. I said, “What in Al’s name is this?” She said, “Don’t stand there with that petulant pout on your lips and your hands teapotting on your hips and give me that ‘Oh, no, Mr Carnivore just wanting meat’ routine.” Then she said I was looking a tad tubby. Said I needed more fibre to make me more regular. I said to her, “I’m the most regular guy in all creation. I’m as regular as sunrise and sunset. I wake, I hunt, I mate, I sleep.” Look, I’m a meat kind of guy, a medallion and three chops kind of guy, but now I sit forlornly on the cave floor, munching away at these greens like I’m a buck-toothed nuralagus. “Mmmmmmm,” I say mid-chew, trying to show appreciation and not upset her feelings. “De-licious,” I add, praying Evie will turn her head away for long enough so I can spit the half-masticated bolus in my mouth into my loinskin. And that’s not the half of it. Evie’s gone the whole entelodont and ceased eating meat all together. The other day she said to me, “It’s good for the environment.” Speechless, all I could offer in reply was a raised buttock, followed by a prolonged, resonant fart within life-threatening distance of our open fire. Choking on my foul fumes, I said, “I’m not sure my eating all these greens is really helping the environment.”

‘Look, I admit I am a little out of shape these days and running out of puff. It’s not because I’ve slackened off at work, but, rather, because I’ve stopped procuring my lunch on the job. One day Evie said to me, “I’ll pack you lunch.” And I acquiesced. So off I headed to work, hauling my spear, carting a lunchbox the size of a cave and cursing the day I invented the knot. There I was, on stakeout in the killing fields, hiding behind a bush and hoping some easy prey would wander within spearing distance, and I glanced down at the lunchbox and said, “Just a nibble, Ads.” And in a blink I wolfed down one of Evie’s treats. Then another went down the hatch, and then another, and next thing I knew, I’d scoffed the lot. And sure enough, just as I licked my fingers and sounded a barbaric yawp which reverberated to Eden and back, a smilodon burst out of the scrub, and I shit myself and turned and fled, and I huffed and puffed as it gained on me, and I giggled like a hysterical pachycrocuta, and just as my pursuer opened its jaws to skewer me on one of its canines, I sighted a tree and scrambled up its gnarly trunk until I was out of my predator’s reach, and I ended up perched like a archaeopteryx laying an egg while the smilodon below circled the foot of the tree and cursed my nimbleness.

‘What about exhibiting some self-control, you may well suggest? It’s not a lack of self-control that’s driving my gluttony. It’s stress. The stress of keeping a cave roof over my family’s heads. The stress of keeping the butler’s pantry full. The stress of being the patriarch of all humanity and all the inherent fret that comes with that. And by spending all my time worrying about our basic needs, our survival, I’ve no time to attend to my wants. No time for belongingness; you know, having time for family and intimacy. I’ve no friends. Outside you, Felsic, of course. I’ve no self-esteem, no self-respect, and as for achieving self-actualisation, of realising my full potential, of accomplishing everything I can, of becoming the best I can be, well—pfft!—that’s a pipedream.

‘When I’m out on those stake-outs, fret-loading and stress-gorging, I often ponder what will be my legacy after the big “D” occurs. I ask myself if being the Father of Mankind is enough; you know, is that as good as it gets? Is it how I want to be remembered? Or is there more to life, more to my remembrance? Should I build something big, something tangible, something permanent that screams out through the aeons that “I, Adam, was here”? And how will they know it was me? How will they differentiate me from the common man? Hell, I don’t even know how to spell my name. All I can do is scrawl at the base of my monument an image created in my likeness of a stick figure with scruffy hair, there for all perpetuity. And will I be more myth than man? Will a powerful few twist my remembrance so they can control, manipulate and oppress the powerless many? Will others pay for my sin? And, most important of all, will anyone ever know I was a funny guy? Will anyone ever discover all those amusing anecdotes I’ve chiselled on the walls of my man cave these past seven years? I fear not. Else, someone will plagiarise my magnum opus and steal my thunder. I am Homo Ignoramus, drowning in my incomprehension and unknowing, and it seems that the more meat I eat, the more complex and confusing my world, inner and outer, becomes. I reckon what a man needs—to ponder the great unknowns—is a little time, a little space and a little silence. But that ain’t going to happen. Not in this epoch, anyway.

‘I suppose what gets on my myotragus the most is Evie’s incessant need to talk about and share feelings.

‘Last month, I was sitting on our outside rock, waiting for dinner and watching this amazing sunset, and Evie called out from the waterhole, “Don’t you ever feel the need to express your feelings?”

‘I said, “My feelings?”

‘Evie said, “Yes. You know, the inner you, the real you. Tell me—and be honest—what are you feeling right now?”

‘I said, “Feeling? Umm … I’m feeling … I’m feeling … hungry. Yes, that’s it. Hungry. What’s for dinner?”

‘She said, “No, not that. I want to know what’s bubbling away in your head and your heart—not what’s churning away in your stomach. Tell me, what are you feeling at this moment?”

‘I said, “In my head?”

‘Evie said, “Yes.”

‘I said, “At this very moment?”

‘And Evie said, “Yes. Open up and share what you are thinking?”

‘So I took a polite cough, then a deep breath and said, “Well, to be perfectly honest, I’m thinking, ‘What’s for dinner?’”

‘Evie rent her skins and said, “Nooo, you Neanderthal! Not food related. What else?”

‘I’ll admit I was a little taken aback by her hostility, but I pushed on and said, “Well … umm … I’m … I’m … I’m thinking, ‘Will I get lucky tonight?’”

‘Evie tore her hair and said, “Noooooo, you numbskull! Not food! Not sex! There must be something else lurking under that pronounced forehead of yours.”

‘And I said, “Something else? Well, to be truthful, there’s not much else. Food and sex. That’s all I think about. Morning, noon and night.”

‘Evie gnashed her teeth and said, “There’s nothing else? Not a special something or someone? Tugging away at your heart?”

‘I said, “Tugging away at my heart? Hmm, come to think of it, yes, there is.” Evie leant forward, and her eyes widened in hope. “Though,” I continued, “it’s more a burning than a tugging, aching away there, day and night.”

‘Evie said, “There is?”

‘And I said, “Yes, I’ve had this heartburn ever since I ate that woolly mammuthus shank last week.”

‘And Evie stormed inside and returned carrying my sleep skin and threw it at me and said if I wasn’t going to be human, then I could spend the night outside, housed with Diabetes. I’ve still got the crick in my neck. I shan’t be sharing my feelings in the future, thank you very much.

‘Look, I know I’ve got my issues. But put yourself in my skins. I never got to laze about in the briny, soothing, amniotic waters of a mother’s womb. I’ve never actually seen my father. And most of all, I lost Paradise. I don’t think any being will ever have a greater fall, not to mention it being compounded by my chronic vertigo. So, yes, I think I’m justified in feeling a little low, a little abandoned, a little precious at times.

‘Sometimes I think the spark between Evie and me has gone. No matter what I try or what flint I strike to try to ignite the flames of passion, I always seem to get the old Pleistocene shoulder. She’ll say, “Save it.” Save what? What am I? A bank?

‘One day, I even brought some flowers home. Evie said, “Awww, for me? That’s so thoughtful.” She gave me the old pout and nuralagus wiggle, and I thought, I’m in here. Alas, no such luck. My gift proved to be the gift that kept on giving. How was I to know the ivy I’d used to garland the bouquet would be poisonous and Evie would welt and scratch for a week?

‘You may well ask why we don’t make time for ourselves and have, like, a date night? Yeah, sure, and where in the world would we get a babysitter?

‘When we finally do hit the sack, and I’m as horny as a coelodonta and roll over for a little loving, she’ll sigh and say she’s too tired or got a headache or the boys might hear us or there’s a chunk of meat stuck between my front teeth. I tell ya, all that rejection eats away at a man’s self-confidence.