Back on my Perfect Husband Price in the Closet fixation. Thinking about how he doesn't even notice how bad his mental health is. How the coping mechanisms creep in one by one until the majority of his mental bandwidth is work or a blank space/white noise where his sense of self and identity should be. How he'll phase out sometimes in the back of social gatherings until she taps his arm. She and her friends rib him affectionately for it, joking it's a soldier thing.
He'll drive home after an op and sit in the car for an hour, because for some reason he can't face the walk to the house. Can't figure out why; the lads tell him he's a lucky man. The missus is gorgeous and there's probably a good seeing-to waiting for him when he gets home, right? He's just being a melt for no reason, he tells himself. He gets his head in the game to shower and perform as he should do. Like it's another assignment.
He's "happiest" at work because he gets to tune into a part of himself that is wholly authentic, but once he's out of there, he feels stressed and anxious all the time. He passes it off as "being knackered" with a wry smile, and never makes the ball and chain jokes because what kind of man says that? He's just tired all the time and she's damn patient with him.
His calendar is a bunch of colourful blocks with her important dates, appointments, things she's interested in that he can take her to because that's a really easy way to fulfil his "husbandly" duties and earn maybe a few hours asleep on the sofa, or maybe an afternoon fishing. How he gets up at 5am the next day after an op to start a new project he will get finished before he goes back, but it'll take every waking hour, and then he'll tentatively ask whether he can go watch the footie with Simon on his last afternoon of leave. Breathing a sigh of relief when he's given permission.
How it gets so bad after a few years that his damn dick stops working. He googles it from behind a VPN after managing to cover himself by giving the most amazing head he's ever given in his life, and figures it has to be an injury that's caused it. When the base medic can't find anything, he goes online to find the pills he needs to sort it. Never looking inwards, never asking questions, never once daring to crack open the box sitting in the back of his head, wrapped in chains, because he's pretty sure he can hear a small boy sobbing.
John Price is a Good Husband. Loyal, caring, stalwart, attentive in bed, financially secure. He checks and rechecks the mental criteria that was drilled into him as a young man to see what he's missing, and is satisfied when he comes up with full marks each time. Tired. He's just tired. That's why he feels so incomplete.
