June 1997 smoking jacket by Jack Smith |
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Going to the Chapel?
My mother's been bugging the shit out of me to get married. As moms go,
mine is a great one. I guess all moms like to harp on things they'd like to
change about their kids. It used to be things like, "Can't you be a little
less cynical?" and "Why don't you get a real job and forget this whole media
thing?" But being the oldest and the most unmarried of her offspring, she's
still got a jones to marry me off.
I've tried for years to understand this. It's not like I'm sponging off mom
and dad and living at home with my parents lying in bed at night wondering
when I'm going to stop littering the living room with beer bottles after an
all night cable TV infomercial binge. I have a "real job" (as real as a
media job can be) and haven't lived at home in years. I rarely think about
this anymore resigning myself to bachelorhood at least for the time being.
But I attended the marriage of one of my college pals, Scott, over Memorial
Day weekend and had too much free time on the train ride home. After much
conditioning by my mom, this is a disastrous combination.
Everyone I know is now married so I tried to figure out why I'm over 30 and
unmarried.
I've been in a couple of long term relationships and in love, even, but none
ever turned into forever. My high school sweetheart and I dated into
college but we both lost interest after we learned that there indeed were
other reasonably smart people in the world outside our small town. The most
that I got out of that relationship was a few bad sweaters for Christmas and
some great oral sex.
My next big flame, we'll call her, Miss X, and I had a four-year
relationship. We talked about marriage and planned on spending the rest of
our lives together. But we both grew up and changed. I became a
Midwesterner and she, a psycho bitch who cheated on me with a French guy.
The most recent long termer ended only because I was an idiot. I had the
chance
to marry a wonderful woman who was in love with me, but I was "confused."
(i.e. I was scared shitless of the responsibilities that would come with
marriage. Thankfully, this fear has since dissipated into self doubt and
occasional bedwetting.)
After going through my past relationships with little clue as to why I'm not
betrothed, I moved on to get some grasp as to what I was looking for in a
woman that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
My needs were much simpler as a teenage boy. I needed sex and lots of it.
But I like to believe that I'm more complex as a man. I now need an expert
slide guitar playing, UNIX guru supermodel. Some would say that's too much
to ask for, but I believe my marriage "problem" can be explained in analysis
of my requirements and I can justify each of those qualifying factors.
First, slide guitar players know the blues. It's more than understanding
the musical form. To be a virtuoso slide player is to empathize with the
common man/woman and his/her struggles. It's emotional, baby. I want a
woman who can covey passion in non-standard tunings with a long neck beer
bottle. (Access to vintage instruments is a bonus and a good guitar
collection would only make me love her more.)
Next, UNIX gurus are hard to find when you need 'em. I can't count the
number of times I've accessed my shell account only to forget proper
grepping syntax. Plus, you've got to be smart to be a guru and intellectual
girls are a definite turn on. I'd like to come home after a hard day at the
office and find her writing code while listening to Robert Johnson. When we
finally decide to hit the sack, she'd be able to work the nuances of the
different UNIX flavors into the fantasy stories she'd whisper into my ear.
These stories would begin with phrases like, "We go to a party and meet a
girl with a Louise Brooks haircut and a Todd Oldham mini. She's compiling
pdksh for NetBSD..." I'm getting wood just thinking about it.
Finally, the supermodel thing... I guess some things don't change with age.
All guys want to marry a hot chick and to be a supermodel you've got to be
foxy.
Plus, supermodels, like the Chauncy Gardener character from Being There,
have their every simplistic utterance assigned elaborate meaning. They live
constantly in the moment without the baggage of thinking about anything too
deeply. Supermodels just be. It's important for my mate to be living the
Tao.
This little list was pared down a bit. I used to have requirements like,
"Stand up comedienne with her own network TV show" and "Martha Stewart."
Thankfully, I recognized how insignificant these conditions were and
dispensed with them appropriately preferring to have my prerequisites for a
mate fit neatly into Maslow's hierarchy.
My train ride back from the wedding only lasted 90 minutes. But in that
hour and a half, I got straight to the meat of this marriage thing. I just
haven't met the right woman. I'll meet her someday and settle down. She'll
be someone who can make a National steel resonator talk. She'll hack.
She'll walk the runways of Paris and New York. She'll be just like dear old
mom.
back to the junk drawer
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