“Call me shallow, but I cannot live with that Mo”

IT’S 11pm and I am in bed, specs on, book in hand.

My husband is doing his nightly Spiderman Scuttle — a hip flexion exercise which he executes by scampering jerkily backwards and forwards on all fours across the bedroom floor.

This is accompanied by Spiderman acoustics: a rousing syncopation of pants, grunts and floorboard judders.

But such is the nature of long-term cohabitation that half the time you don’t notice its routines.

But tonight is different. Tonight, when he’s traversed the floor in this manner for five minutes, I say, “I’m having to muster the spirit of the Blitz here, to keep going with my book.”

“Nearly done,” he pants, lurching past the bed on hands and knees. I look down, about to say “enough with the bloody Spiderman,” when he looks up, and all thoughts of Spiderman are obliterated.

“There’s something wrong with your face,” I say.

He eases out of scuttle position, sits back on his heels and points to his forehead. “I cut my forehead,” he says, “on the light downstairs, if that’s…”

“No, it’s not the cut. You look… weird.” “Oh. It’s probably the Mo,” he says.

I glance at his upper lip then look away quickly, as at the sun. “Yes,” I confirm, “it’s the Mo.”

“I told you I was growing a Mo...” I remove my specs. “But your face didn’t look like that yesterday,” I say, “did it?”

I’m disconcerted; wondering how it’s possible not to have heeded the startling physical transformation that my husband appears to have undergone, and which confronts me now.

I’m also unsettled by another thought — that the footings of our marriage, which have stood firm for 26 years are now trembling because of a Mo.

“Call me shallow, but I cannot live with that Mo. Not long-term.”

“What?” he says, standing up, “it’s only a Mo.” He picks up a dumbbell and starts lifting it.

“I’m finding it difficult to look at you. Me finding it difficult to look at you would be a hard thing to sustain long-term.”

“In fairness, I only shaped it properly for the first time tonight,” he says, letting his arm go slack and putting the dumbbell down. “It does look a bit different. I shaved it close here,” he demonstrates, leaning forward and pointing at his cheeks, “which I never do, and here,” he says, jabbing at the centre of his chin.

“If you’d left off the shaping,” I say, “you might have got away with it.”

“If I did that, I’d just have my normal stubble,” he says, “I wouldn’t have a defined moustache and that’s the whole point of Movember. Anyway, got away with what? I mean no one else has said anything to me…” he mumbles.

“No one else has said anything to you preshaping. But I must warn you that post-shaping, this will change. Things are very different now. Now, you have a highly distinctive look.”

He pants, lowers the weight to the floor and stands up. “What’s the look then?”

“Well, pre-shaping,” I say, “your Mo was ’70’s Kung-Fu Porn, if there is such a genre…” He raises his right arm and drops it from the elbow behind his left shoulder, pushing down it with his left hand and with that, I have it.

“Do that again.” “Do what again?” “That elbow thing.” “No. Why?” “I’ve seen you do that exercise a hundred times,” I say, “and it has never looked like a Village People dance-move before. It’s most certainly never looked camp.”

“You think I look camp?” he says. “No, since shaping your Mo, you look gay.” “Errah,” he says, “you’ll just have to put up with it till the 30th.”

He gets into bed. “Or then again,” he says, “I suppose I could always go away.”

He turns to me and strokes his Mo theatrically, cocking his head to one side.

“Stop it,” I say, “what do you mean away?” “Yes,” he says, “just until the 30th. I was thinking maybe…”

“You were thinking maybe what?” “I was thinking maybe the YMCA.”

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