Marriage Is Apparently A Thing That Happens [excerpt]
My baby brother is getting married in July. He’s not the first one, either. To get married, I mean. It seems to be a thing that happens a lot. From what I can gather through various Google searches and Wikipedia, millions of people before him have also gotten married. And included among these millions is my older brother, who got hitched three months ago. So that makes two out of the three of we Darwin progeny to have tied the knot.
This, as you can perhaps imagine, is making my life fucking miserable.
Relatives I didn’t even know existed until now have emerged from the woodworking to ask me through pursed smiles How it’s possible that someone as fill-in-the-blank as me doesn’t have a girlfriend yet? and Might I just have a special someone tucked away in a suitcase somewhere that no one knows about? and How old are you again, Daniel, because you know that men are at their most virile between the ages of eighteen and thirty? I’m twenty-three. And, hysterically, they know that. I’m also gay. And, hysterically, they don’t know that. If they did, and though it’s now a viable option in a smattering of places, I somehow doubt they would be asking me these questions so vociferously.
Chief among these inquisitive relatives are my grandparents, who moved into our house at about the same time as my baby brother proposed to his fiancée and who, on top of serving as a constant – as in every day constant – reminder that I am not married, also serve as a constant example of exactly why I do not want to get married.
See the thing is, all of this marriage ballyhoo that’s brought on the onslaught of questions and kicked our family into high gear of late – the lace and the cake, the veils, the vows, the unions, the dresses, the gifts, the sobbing, the bloodshed – has just confirmed a quite concrete resolution that I’ve felt hovering above me for about six years now:
I am almost positive that I will never get married.
Like, I’m pretty sure that if China were to overthrow the world tomorrow morning and beat India into the ground and launch its nuclear devices at the ever-crumbling EU and the ever-deserving US of A and just fucking eradicate everyone in everywhere, and the only people left alive to re-propagate the human race were me, Beyoncé the day after her period ends, and a priest with two gold rings, I still wouldn’t get married, I don’t think.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against other people getting married. I’m thrilled that my brothers have found love and decided to perform a universally prized sacred ritual of commitment that reinforces centuries of patriarchal oppression. I think it’s peachy. I simply don’t want anything to do with it.
And, apparently, that’s odd. It makes no sense to almost anyone in my life. It used to. There was a time when I could tip back my whiskey and chortle at a young couple and say something flippant like “I’m never going to get married ever in a million years.” And every one around me would simply nod and smile sadly and after a few seconds of awkward tension the conversation would continue.
But then New York had to go and legalize gay marriage. And now the entire city has caught the bug, and you can’t walk three blocks without getting hit in the face with a garter and stepping in dove-shit. And the fallout of all this is that I can no longer say I don’t want to get married without sounding like a selfish twat with standards so insurmountably high that unless you’re Gaspard Ulliel in Paris Je T’Aime, you don’t have a prayer at getting a second date with me.
And, apart from the Gaspard Ulliel thing, that’s just not true.
It’s just that, at the end of the day, the fact remains that when New York added the optional “gay” before “marriage,” it did nothing whatsoever to change the distaste I feel toward “marriage.”
Because at the end of the day, I still feel about marriage the way one might feel about being forced to sit in front of a kitchen counter and watch a pie rot for twenty-three years before someone finally cuts you a slice and and says, “Here! Look! I made a pie!”
I’m not sure if that metaphor makes complete sense. I tried it out on my brother and he responded by staring at me blankly for a couple seconds and then saying, “But, I like pie.” And that’s great! He should like pie! Munch away! All I’m trying to say is when you’re made to stare at a pie for twenty-three years, you can’t help but begin to notice its discrepancies – the burnt areas around the crust, the bit of soggy apple sticking out the side of the pan, Kim Kardashian, the 50% divorce rate, and that bitch who got married to the Eiffel Tower – such that when it is finally offered to you, you have to pause and ask yourself what it is exactly that you’re biting into when you bite into marriage?
I seem to be stuck in that pause.
