On Monday and Wednesday nights, Marcin fights in a children's school in Redfern, where there is a class in an Israeli fighting technique called Krav Maga. People (mostly men, but not all of them) meet here twice a week to beat the shit out of each other- he returns from these forays into testosterone land without his glasses, wet with sweat, covered in bruises and in a mysterious good humour.

Last week I went to collect him afterwards on Wednesday night to go grocery shopping. I was waiting in the car, reading Kuba's rules and regulations on his housemaid's job in the Manly Pacific Hotel, when they emerged: two big men and Marcin. One six foot something Israeli with a jaw like the Terminator, and the instructor, a dark solid man with his head cocked permanently at an angle as if he was expecting someone to run up and try and tear it off at any minute. They formed a little sweaty constellation outside my window and Marcin said to them, "This is my wife."

I am still trying to analyse the obscure little thrill that shot through me to hear myself described in this way. Where did it come from? Do I like the idea of a man I love and admire laying public claim to me ? Was it caused by a cloud of pheromones emitted during manly activity? Is it pride, that somebody was willing to promise me until death do us part (though actually nobody did)? Is it the novelty of hearing myself described in a way I had never imagined I would ? And what does it really mean to be a wife?

Wife is a word of substance. That's why the phrase 'my wife left' always shocks: wives don't leave. They are immobilised under the weight of their title, held in check by wedlock. Being a wife means you exist in the world, that you are tethered by tradition to the past and the future. Wives are soft and smell of yeast and milk- do I, with my chicken legs and protruding ears, qualify? Wives forgive, make beds, wipe small faces and occasionally, when it all gets too much, shout and cry. They hang around and feed the dog and if you need something you can call them from work, they haven't got much to do so they can fix things up for you.

I am a wife. I don't do any of these things, though my will is good and I cook dinner sometimes.
Nevertheless, I belong to someone, and as time goes by I realise that I like the feeling.