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September 28, 2008Marriage is a great rideuntil you puke.WILL YOU MARRY ME?No. I love you too much to do that to you. Or myself. [This column another excuse for the author to be cynical about love. -Ed.] A married friend of mine has fallen in love with another woman. His decades-long marriage has been on the way out for several years, but this forced it out the door. Though he loves this new woman he doubts he will want to live under the same roof with anyone again. Another friend is trying her luck with a lost love of long ago. “THE DIE APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN CAST,”she wrote me. “The Diem appears to have been Carped.” Though she had given up on love, she’d said that if it ever came along again, she’d no doubt be right there to greet it. And the long lost love has returned to her. “I’ll be giving that old brass ring my best shot,” she said. Yahoo tells us, “Typically, getting the brass ring gets the rider some sort of prize when presented to the operator. The prize often is a free repeat ride.” In which case, my friend certainly did get the brass ring—a “free repeat ride,” a chance to “get it right” this time. Remains to be seen if it is indeed “free,” but that’s the cynic in me talking. My suspicion of romance and more specifically marriage as a foregone conclusion of disaster is solely my response to the thought of me, myself, shacking up or getting married, not anyone else. Living under the same roof with someone, anyone, is a killer, in my book (the one I’m writing). All you can do is go for the brass ring and give it your best shot. You’d have to be a completely different person than myself to embrace marriage, and guess what, every single person on earth is indeed a completely different person than myself. Lucky you! For instance, two “domestic partner” friends of mine who recently did the deed literally jumped for joy on the steps of City Hall. “IF THERE’S HOPE FOR ME,”said my friend, “you’re a cinch to eventually nail that brass ring!” Hey, gal, I don’t want that brass ring! Not to mention the gold one. And I don’t need to be told I should be waiting in hope for someone to complete my life. The brass ring is a prize for taking the ride—50/50 chance a booby prize! But despite my own gloomy forecasts—I always encourage people to take that ride, because this is life; you have to live it–and, you never know. Could be the best thing ever to happen to you. Though my friend seriously thought over her situation, she ultimately concluded there was no way in the world that she could not take the risk. Bravo. WHILE I BADMOUTHmy own chances at and suitability for marriage, so many would love to have what I have—the choice and ability to marry. There are those who have been together for years, lifetimes even, but cannot marry—because they are gay or lesbian. It was divine justice that pioneer lesbian activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were able to legally marry before Ms. Martin died. They were the first to be illegally married in the San Francisco marriage rush of 2004 (one website labelled it the “The San Francisco St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of Love) and the first to be legally wed this year. The California Supreme Court granted them the right that everyone innately possesses–the right to choose a partner and have that choice legally recognized and acknowledged. And the Forces That Be seek to rob some of the people of that right again, in the November election. Please, if you’re a human being and a voter, vote NO on 8. It made it onto the ballot, but I doubt they will win. Because mankind needs to evolve, not devolve, beyond this crap, and small inroads being made here and there blaze the trail for larger ones. SPOILER ALERTIf you plan to see “Nights in Rodanthe,” don’t read this. I was very moved by the love story in this film, which, though of the cliché Hollywood genre, was elevated by the strong performances of Richard Gere and Diane Lane. Then the other cliché sprang up: you can see from 3838 miles (or 6161 kilometers) away that the guy is going to die visiting his son’s third world medical practice. (That’s the straight line distance between San Francisco and Salinas, Ecuador.) I said to my companion, “If he dies, I am going to kill this movie.” I was furious! Why couldn’t they just be granted their happiness? My friend Saand told me, “That’s not how life is; they’d live together for a while and start getting annoyed with each other and that’s the way it goes. Shit happens.” Was it just my history of having the lake of love drain away from me just as I was about to fall in it? That I wanted someone, somewhere, to be living the ideal? I know plenty of happy marriages, assuming outward appearances are reflective of what goes on behind closed doors. Everyone in love enters a marriage with the best of intentions and faith in the future. At first, the reward is in just taking the ride, having snatched that brass ring. You won! But there are those of us who, if we ride for too long, eventually puke. IN LA-LA LAND, MANIFESTED AS RODANTHE,Paul and Adrianne’s movie-love is so pure and good the only way to preserve it is for one of them to die. In death, love never gets the chance to go wrong. In life, the ideal eventually turns real, because happy endings are false advertising for not-guaranteed results. Sooner or later the posed portrait of happiness either fades or gets torn in half, with your ex on the discarded side of the picture. Perhaps Prince Charming becomes Prince Alarming. Caution: Restraining order ahead! With sad endings, there is usually a potential for renewal and redemption. Nevertheless when the death was introduced the story felt manipulated and contrived to be more of a tearjerker than it would otherwise have been. To me it felt false, though the film does end on a note of hope, heralded by a stampede of horses. Hope by the producers for more tears and more box office. SHIT DOES INDEED HAPPENI included a “Shit Happens” section in my 2006 post “No One Would Ever Do Anything” [if they knew what they were in for], the longest axfile of all time. If anyone ever made it to the end of it, you’ve won the brass ring. You get to read it again—for free! “That’s the lie that screws everyone up—that love lasts, or should last, forever, and that we are somehow lacking if it doesn’t. If you’re just living your life doing your thing, people tell you, just wait till you meet the right man; you’ll change your tune. See, you don’t even know you’re deluding yourself, that marriage is where your greatest happiness lies, because it hasn’t happened to you yet. Here’s a secret: don’t dwell in the past, where other relationships ‘failed,’ or await the future, where that ultimate soulmate marriage is slated to succeed, but enjoy who you’re with right now for as long as it lasts. If it ends in heartbreak, honey, shit happens.” It’s not marriage per se I object to, it’s the social conditioning of having it held up as the utmost in lifestyle. I don’t want to be either married or not married; I just want to be a person, a citizen. STILL, HUMANS WANT LOVEin their lives. But don’t expect a smooth ride–nor a rocky one; just go with the flow. Enjoy it while it’s enjoyable. FCKAll that’s missing is U. Postcard to the Silver Fox from Chicago Midway Airport coming home from Philly; also spotted on a t-shirt worn by someone named Sarah Palin. If you consider yourself a “failure” in love and feel like your life is over, I would not base the rest of it on hope for a reversal of fortune; I would not heap hope with that burden of eventually making you happy. I would just continue to live life, with its triumphs and heartbreaks, and take joy in the variety and unpredictability of this world. If you’ve been crushed under love’s pestle, cry, cry, cry, but don’t forever dwell on yourself–volunteer for something that will impact other people’s lives for the good. People without love may feel like there’s something missing—but don’t count on that new love to fill in the blank. The Forces That Be want and need you, the consumer, to feel needy, to always be looking for a remedy or a palliative. Flush out the “you complete me” crap. Too much to ask of anyone, in the long run. It’s propaganda encouraging people to not depend upon themselves for the happiness in their lives, so they will continue trying to buy it. As long as you leave your own peace of mind up to someone else, shit will indeed happen. WELL, SO MUCH FOR THATI sold my flat. It closed September 12th. And now, the rest of my life.
Congratulations David and Wendell! Best wedding photo ever! Buona fortuna and enjoy the ride! Phabulous photo by Patty Kihm. ------------------------------------------------------------ Do:
Looks like freedom but it feels like death, it’s something in between I guess. – Leonard Cohen copyright Alexandra Jones 2008 |
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