WAKING UP
By Dario Fo
WIFE
“Listen, Stupid,” I tell him, “I don’t need to listen to feminists or radicals or anyone else to find out what a shitty life we lead. We both work like dogs and we never have a minute to talk. We never talk to each other! Is that marriage? Like does it ever even enter your mind to think about what’s going on inside me? How I feel? Ever ask me if I’m tired ... if you could give me a hand? Ha!”
“Who does the cooking? Me. Who does the washing up? Me. Who does the shopping? Me. And who does the death-defying financial acrobatics so we can get through to the end of the month? Me, me, me! And I’m working full time at the factory, remember. Your dirty socks ... who washes them, eh? How many times have you washed my socks? We should talk to each other, Luigi. We never talk. I mean, its okay with me that your problems are my problems but why can’t my problems be your problems too, instead of yours being ours and mine only being mine. I just want us to live together ... not just in the same place. We should talk to each other. But what do we do? You come home from work, watch the telly and go to bed. Day after day it’s the same. Oh, except for Sundays.”
“Hooray, hooray it’s football day. Every Sunday off you go to watch twenty-two idiots in their underpants kicking a ball around and some other mentally deficient maniac dashing up and down, blowing a whistle!” He ... that Luigi ... he went purple in the face! You’d think I’d insulted his mother. “How could a person like you ever know the first thing about sport?”
Not the best thing he could’ve said, really.
I freaked. “Who the fuck would want to?” I shouted at him. And then I really started raving on like a lunatic. Oh I said it all. Everything. I screamed at him, he yelled back at me, I screamed louder, he yelled louder ... we were just shouting the building down. So finally I said, “Right. If this is marriage we’ve made a mistake!” And I picked up my mistake and I walked out.