Even in Paradise danger lurks beyond the happiest domestic picture.

There's a Paradisial myth about  togetherness, sharing, comfort and love. I'm sure you've heard it. It goes something like this:

Girl meets boy, they date, they get serious, they marry, they live happily ever after in a house with a white picket fence, a dog and a cat. They have, on average across Paradise, two children and a new car that gets traded up every two years. He works in a professional capacity , she is a fantastic stay at home mother, kids grow up unhinged by anything nasty, they go to university, parents pay for everything because there is no thought of social security. The children follow the same path, marry, etc, etc.

I used to live in Paradise. I hated it! Never did learn how to cook the perfect steak with the perfect mash. I was much more of a fruit salad, with your fingers, girl. My perfect financial advising husband, well, let's just say that his appetite went well beyond food that could be purchased at the local butcher. No, he was much more upmarket. He only purchased at the Farmer's Ocean Market. From the farmer's daughter to be precise. From the farmer's 14 year old daughter.

Dell, I called her. The farmer in the dell got all fucked up and  became the financial advisor in Dell. Bastard. Dell got the financial advisor in her, alright. She got his filthy little fertile sperm and soon there would be two beautiful Dells.

He had to die. How the hell was I going to do him in and not get caught? Crime was frowned upon in Paradise. We didn't like it or like people who did it. What we liked was a happy picture of domestic bliss, a happy picture where the young daughters at the farmer's ocean markets never stayed on stall for long because the little bitches got pregnant to the good husbands of Paradise. How the Paradisial wives never worked out the peculiar customer service strategy at the Farmer's Market had me bluffed for ages. Until I sought a second wife to help me kill my perfect paradise.

Bubbling beneath Paradise was a second culture: a sub culture of matriarchy and tropical holidaying. Initiation to the sub culture was triggered by the white drawn face of a single woman who had just learned that her good husband preferred fresh sea food to the regular beef on offer. Paradisial women always moved in pairs: strength in numbers, I guess. A single woman spelled S.O.S to the other good women of Paradise.


My initiation happened almost immediately after plotting to kill the king squid. His tentacle needed to be chopped off. But how? I just couldn't think of a way I could execute a death plan alone. As I sat beneath the palm trees in Paradise a perfect plan jogged into my devastated thinking.

"Great day for a run along the water. Want to join us," a passing, very perky, jogger jogged on the spot in front of me. Her jogging buddy in very expensive matching gym clothes jogged a circle around the two of us as though creating a whirlpool of connection.

My first reaction was to tell stopped jogger to fuck off but Paradisial training was nicely ingrained so I instead smiled sweetly and said,

"I haven't got the right shoes on but thanks for the invitation."

The whirlpool creator stopped jogging and faced me square on. She was beautiful. Gorgeous skin, gorgeous facial structure and eyes as calming as Lovan. She looked expensive, as did every other woman in Paradise. How did they afford to dress so beautifully? Surely there would be no money left for their husbands to dress up and socialise if they spent money on themselves?

Beautiful whirlpool jogger hugged me and I could smell natural frangapani perfume as her warm sweat dropped onto my arm. It was very intimate. She whispered in my ear,

"We have a way of dealing with the good husbands of Paradise you know. Come walk with me".


Well, well. The power of two is way better than the awkward heart broken plotting of one. Paradise lives on thanks to the cunning power survival strategies of the good wives of Paradise. It seems that the power is not in the killing but in total embracing of surface domestic bliss - just as men have done for centuries. Such surface bliss and polish, so the good jogger instructed me, scares the good husbands senseless and they never again wander or shop where they are not supposed to - just as disempowered women have done for centuries. In Paradise, the good husbands are rendered isolated in their own facade (who would believe them if they reported that a good wife slapped them behind closed doors or spent all the money on herself), engulfed by their own perfect lie and denied freedom of choice for the rest of their miserable lives in Paradise.

Ahhhh, I love Paradise.