Guess Who Got Married

My hair reflects just how windy our wedding ceremony was.

I’m glad I didn’t settle down early. Twenty years worth of fucked-up past relationships are a pretty handy guide in what not to do if one wants to stay in one’s current relationship. And with age comes better judgment in picking out a suitable partner. When I went to my 25th high school reunion this past fall I looked up and saw pass a shaven-headed man in a suit with wild eyes and an alarming lump in his neck. It took me a minute to realize it was Todd S. the smartass I had a crush on in eighth grade. He was beautiful then, longish, blond wavy hair, wide blue eyes and a perpetual tan. He had that girl/boy boy/girl look going on before anybody I knew had a name for it. I recognized that he was an idiot (both academically and behaviorally) even back then, but that didn’t stop me from fantasizing about him. Todd didn’t make the cut to any of my high school AP classes. The most notable thing he did during those whole four years was give the finger in the photograph taken of the entire Senior class from the roof of the school. The offending finger was airbrushed out.

After the reunion I looked up Todd’s profile and…he was still a loser. He preferred not to say whether he was in a relationship (which always puzzles me. Was he cheating on someone or just with someone who was cheating on someone else?), was a “musician” who didn’t seem to play anywhere or have as much as a home-recorded CD and didn’t mention any other career.

I thought of Todd when I heard Bristol Palin was engaged to marry the boyfriend who knocked her up. Now there are countless examples of women who have had children early on and still have happy fulfilling lives–as long as they choose to have the children and aren’t forced to carry pregnancies because religious wingnuts are incapable of minding their own damn business. But does anyone who’s not born-again-brainwashed think that a marriage of two teenagers with a baby on the way will succeed? I guess her parents or the GOP are trying to keep her from being the bogeywoman of conservative lore: the single mother. Except divorced motherhood is still single motherhood, just with a parental permission slip.

I looked up the statistics and women who marry before the age of twenty are fifteen percent more likely to divorce than women who marry after age twenty-five. The older the woman is for her first marriage, the lower the chance she will get divorced. “What was the percentage for your age bracket,” Guapa asked after we got back from our honeymoon.

“I don’t know. Apparently it’s so low they didn’t see fit to list it.”

Go See Gonzo

I was a little hesitant about going to Gonzo, the documentary about Hunter S. Thompson. He’s a writer whose work I’ve long admired, but everyone I’d known who had seen or met him in person made him sound like the world’s biggest asshole. Sometimes the fan was so enthralled with the idea (as opposed to the reality) of Hunter S. Thompson, he (these fans were always men) didn’t realize the impression he was creating. But I’m an anti-groupie. Generally when I meet someone whose work I love I will tell him, her or hir so, and then kind of run in the opposite direction. I never want to hang out. First, because I hate hanging out (I much prefer actual art or entertainment events as opposed to places filled with people where there may or may not be food, there may or may not be interesting conversation, but there’s always alcohol) and don’t have to do it to get laid anymore, but also because I don’t want someone being a dick to interfere with my enjoyment of his, her or hir work. The relationship I consider important is that of me to the work not between me and the artist-and his, her or hir neuroses, condescension, alcoholism, diva-tude, self-absorption, drug addiction, sexism, homophobia or racism. If you think I’m being unduly critical of artists, please note that I produced an artists’ showcase, and worked closely with those artists, for years.

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An Excerpt

The following is from a piece about my twenty-fifth high school reunion that’s still a work in progress, though I promised to send it to some of my old classmates months ago. I’ll probably post more of this piece periodically.

***

I had thought I had prepared myself. Before we had gone to the reunion I had explained to Guapa, “The folks who are going to the reunion have to be comfortable with three things.” I held up a finger, “What they’re doing with their lives right now,” I held up a second finger. “The way they look, including their weight right now.” I held up the last finger. “And they have to be comfortable being the age they are now.”

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This blog originated here though I am hoping to eventually import the whole thing to this space.