Stupid old pillows. You have the same realization about them each time jealousy sends you on a throwing jag. You even get as far as thinking that tomorrow, you really must go out and buy some more solid pillows that can be weaponized, but as soon as your jealousy abates, you forget all about it.
Still disappointed by the pillows’ lack of clout, you kick up each of your legs in turn, firing the slippers from your feet like two missiles, aimed right at your husband. As slipper toes go, these are on the more pointed end of the spectrum, so their landing isn’t without effect. “Ow!” your husband says as one of the missiles strikes his shin. I’ll give you “ow,” you bastard! You are crazed, ablaze with jealousy, and your husband’s little exclamation only stokes your fire further. You reach for the paperback on the bedside table and toss that in his direction. It’s a flimsy little book, miserly in its lack of substance, and its impact is practically negligible—except it succeeds in informing your husband that you are still very much a resident of the green-eyed kingdom. You would be well advised to prepare for your next attack by keeping a hardcover tome by your bed at all times. Preferably some kind of encyclopedia. Two of them, even. Then you could pick up one in each hand and hurl them one after the other.
You swing back your arm and, with all the strength you possess, swipe at the row of photograph frames lining the top of the chest. Your wedding photo, the shot of the pair of you holding koalas on your honeymoon, along with all the other silver-framed special moments, skid along the wood, cascading off the side. A hard parquet floor would have produced a more audible crash, sure, but at least the plastic backs break and skitter dramatically across the carpet in fragments. Just look at the fear in your husband’s eyes as he takes in those tiny shards.
With formidable determination, you cast an eye around the room in search of your next weapon of attack, but the bedroom really doesn’t offer itself up as a plentiful arsenal. When lucid you’re the tidy sort, and there’s little that irks you more than a messy room. Plus, you read in a magazine article titled “How to Put Your Husband in the Mood” that getting rid of extraneous clutter helps men maintain focus in the bedroom, and since then you’ve been even more militant about keeping the room spick and span.
With no other options available to you, you make a lunge for your made-to-order curtains, howling like a wild beast—GYAAAAAH! You yank them down with all your might, ripping them from their rails. The light-resistant lining happens also to be flame-resistant, so there’s no risk that your blazing jealousy will set them on fire. No sooner has curtain number one fallen with a muffled flop to the floor than you set upon the other. Your motions are exactly the same for curtain number two.
When it’s all over, you stand there like Moses, a lone figure parting a sea of curtain. Your husband, who is cowering in the corner of the room, looks at you in astonishment. When you turn to meet his gaze, he looks away. The force of your jealousy hasn’t dimmed in the slightest—and quite honestly, you’d like to keep going—but there’s nothing here left for you to do; so from your curtain sea you let out a great wail. Resentful words spill out of you, and you sob and sob. When there are no suitable objects available, you have to make do by venting your emotions instead. The bedroom is not a prime location to be stricken by jealousy.
Unequivocally, the kitchen is the best place for jealousy to strike. When you are fortunate enough to be consumed there, you assume a look of positive radiance.
You start with the crockery you bought at the hundred-yen shop: the little white dishes with badly painted fish in royal blue, those ramen bowls everyone has seen at least once in their lives with the dragons encircling their circumference, the large plates decorated with eggplants and tomatoes. A mug whose sole distinguishing feature is its bright yellow hue. A voluptuous sake flask with a rough-textured glaze. Each time you go to the hundred-yen shop, you stock up on ceramics. They’re all destined to end up in pieces anyway, so you don’t even look at them, just sling them into your basket. Well-stocked is well-armed, after all.
You throw and you pitch and you chuck. You smash things to bits. Tiny particles of porcelain dance around you like a dust cloud. Sometimes they cut your arms and your legs, but what does that matter? You don’t pay heed to such things, choosing to focus single-mindedly on your destructive activities. For you, such scars are the honorable wounds of a warrior. If anything, the scarlet blood adds a streak of color to your destruction, heightens the sense of drama.
When you’ve hurled the last of the hundred-yen crockery, it’s time to take your bombardment to the next level. You dive into your medium-range selection: the dusky powder-blue stuff from IKEA, the items from MUJI’s functional white series. Plates, tiny bowls, big bowls, teacups—you fling them all without distinction. You send them smashing down to the floor, regardless of whether or not they break. The lacquered wooden bowl bounces off the linoleum and rolls down the corridor, spinning around and around like a top.
Only your set of rapturously exquisite Noritake teacups will you not throw, not for anything. Those cost the earth, those cups. The ornate Arabian
