On Marriage, by the Unqualified

Marriage. Marriage is what brings us here together, today. It must be the strangest intersection humanity has developed yet, this weird confluence of friends and family, custom and law, the sacred and secular. Here you have what is intended to the happiest of states, so the societal norm informs us, of union. Yet everyone has a story of this friend or that relative, or themselves, who married and divorced. Perhaps again and again.

In a marriage you develop the deepest intimacy. Not just the sex, but what happens afterwards. Laying in bed together, after the afterglow has faded. Sharing the home, the chores, figuring out the rhythm and desires of each others' lives without losing your own. And bills. Debts. That stain in the underwear. The bad breath in the morning. The in-laws you can't stand and the friends that rub you the absolute wrong way. And all the harsh words that will come. The mistakes.

The affairs.

Kids even.

Maybe kids from other marriages.

Even kids from affairs, mayhaps.

Marriage. Marriage is not exactly as advertised.

#

My mother and father divorced when I was two. Or three. The family has always been a bit fuzzy on the exact moment. My mother never remarried, and only rarely dated in the dim, dim recesses of my memory. From there, it would be easy to accommodate a belief that any trepidation of marriage on my part, or relationships in general, could be easily Freudianised as their fault. Too easily.

This would not factor in my grandparents, who raised me as much (and perhaps a bit more) than my mother. From age three on, I grew up in a multigenerational household. My grandparents were nearly a stereotype: Depression-era survivors who met and married post-World War II. They lived and loved their five children through the Forties and Fifties and Sixties. There was never any doubt to look at them it was a cooperative marriage, with each a claimed spehere. Inside the house, grandma ruled. Outside, you heeded grandpa. I wanted permission to go somewhere? That's child-raising – ask grandma. I need money? That's finances – ask grandpa. Never once did I have any sense my grandma was unfulfilled, or my grandpa bitter. They lived and loved exactly as they wish.

When grandma broke her hip and slowly faded painfully over the next two years, me, my uncle, and my mother took turns driving grandpa to the hospital or nursing home two or three times a day to spend time with her. And mostly, it was me; I had more availability. I listened to them chat and laugh, or her whimper and him hold her hand.

These two are not idolized, however. Neither were pure saints with some “I only met my soulmate once” story. Theirs was my grandma's second marriage; two of my uncles and an aunt are technically half-relatives by blood. My grandpa stepped up to the plate and adopted them all when he married. Only my Aunt Sandy would grow up to defy him by taking her biological father's surname after her own divorce. And when grandma died, she left me a book she had been working on for years. A baby book, oddly enough, called Grandmother Remembers, filled with all kinds of facts I had never even though to ask about.

Such as their marriage date, March 21, 1952. My mother was born October 12, 1952. I did the math. Less than six months.

“Well,” grandpa said, “she was early.” He smiled.

Sure.

#

I can divide my friends up into two distinct camps: the ones I had before returning to college later in life and the ones in college with me now.

The ones before, almost none had gone to or completed college. The closer we were, the less likely for them to be products of higher education. Some married, all divorced. One dutifully pays his child support, loves his daughter, is a great dad, but never married; relations between him and his child's mother are rarely harmonious. Another's longest lasting, most loving relationship was with another man's wife, long distance. He cited that marriage as a “military marriage of convenience” and thus a sham. Another friend who was in the military confirmed this is fairly common, which speaks volumes in itself. The longest marriage of a close friend likely lasted only so long since he spent a great deal of time in prison; once he was out, the combination of personality traits and parole constrictions wrecked his marriage and free access to his three children.

Never once, however, have any of them took a stand against marriage. Not one does not desire a relationship, and a marriage eventually. A permanence.

The friends in college, most of them, seem deathly afraid of marriage. As much as most religions make marriage a sacrament, they take a stand against marriage for themselves as holy writ; usually this is coupled with an intense abhorrence of having children as well. It's not that they want to “date around” or can't have relationships either; most do. “If I ever wake up next to him and realize we actually are in a relationship, something that won't end at any moment, I'll freak out and run,” said one after they'd been together over a year; now they live together.

It's all a bit paradoxical. What is a marriage? Is it the ceremony and the paper? All the college friends who view marriage with an intense distaste for themselves all vow support for rising surge in favor of gay marriage; but why support something as a legal institution you can't stand the thought of doing yourself?

Whether you call it marriage or keep it undefined, when you figure out a system after the afterglow has faded, sharing the home, the chores, figuring out the rhythm and desires of each others' lives without losing your own, what can you call it? And bills. Debts. That stain in the underwear. The bad breath in the morning. The relatives you can't stand and the friends that rub you the absolute wrong way. And all the harsh words that will come. The mistakes.

If you can face all that, why be terrified of a single word?

I Found This Book Nowhere

and the book is saying

so

are

you

This is the strangest book I own; the cover is a color mixed somewhere between navy and purple and claimed by neither. There is a bright white chair in the middle surrounded by a circle. At twelve evenly space points along the circle eleven lines radiate out from each point, creating an intricate network of white lines cross-hatching the circle. In truth, there are no lines or chair; the images are created by negative space on the cover. Therefore, it is only an impression of a chair. But your eyes slide off this distinction and see, yes, a chair. A simple wooden chair within an abstract, geometrical pattern. At the cardinal edges is the word “Remember,” four times. There are words around the circle; but we'll read them later. All in all, it has the look of an occult tract written in Frank Miller's Sin City.

The title? Well, here you have to indulge in some conjecture. The book arrives in my hands working at the library, a tiny part of a large donation from a retiring professor. My task to methodically determine what books the library already holds, and whether the donation is an earlier or later edition.

This is a problem child.

No, the library has no copy. But searching through the WorldCat database, collecting millions of books catalogued throughout the international network, I could uncover three titles:

Be Here Now

Now Be Here

Remember Be Here Now

Librarians all over the world are confounded by this tome. At least I'm not alone. Amused and wondering just how to catalogue this thing, and generally intrigued by the–

Wait, let me tell you more about the pages. And why it's so hard to classify. Forget the cover; no one who handles books, stacking and shelving and searching and archiving, is fooled by the outside. The secret history of a book is written on the inside, in the title page. A blank page, and then a few more pages gives you all the legal information. The real author, the full title, the copyright year, the publisher, the printing. All the hardcore nerdy stuff a booklover wants to really know; where the ancestry of the ink lies. And what the technician needs to handle the blizzard of texts storming in.

Only this title page is little different. It tells me,

“Yes, I am printed in 1971. By the way, did you know that's the Year of the Earth Monkey? Also, this is made in love for love. Any portion of this may be reprinted to ring the bell of the dharma, but only with prior written permission of the Lama Foundation.”

More or less. As of a sixth printing, there were 186,000 copies of the book floating about. Not too shabby for a book with no fixed title. Yeah, after all that, no title on the copyright page. There is no title page, really. There is a page devoted to telling you how the money (in 1971 costing $3.33) paid for the book is distributed, with the admission

“We don't fully understand the relationship between the energy formed here and the green energy that flows through us.”

Amen, brother. So I walk in to the supervisor, because the book amuses me and perplexes me all the same.

“Hey chief, how do I handle this. It has something like three names.”

She takes it and turns it over, flipping through it. The pages are yellowed with age just a bit, and the cover has tears and dog-ear stress. She laughs at some of the illustrations and the general tone of the writing. “Well, this hasn't actually been catalogued by anyone yet. It doesn't exist. What do you want to do with it?”

“Man, it would be awesome if I had a book like that.” I'm wistful but joking.

She's got her head bent and looking over her glasses with a smile.

“Seriously?”

She keeps looking.

“I need you to at least say okay.”

“See,” she says, “It's in pretty bad condition, it lacks solid information, there's already other copies held by other libraries. We'll probably just have to give it away or recycle it anyway.” The hard truth is the library can't store infinite books. So we nod, and the book disappears into my bag before I settle in to research the rest of the stuff on the cart.

This is perhaps my favorite part. The author is sitting down with a relative who believes he's Jesus and is locked up for doing one crazy thing after another, stealing and the like. And he looks at the author, funky beard and a dress and the whole hippie shebang, and cannot understand why Jesus is locked up and the author's free. The hippie explains:

Sure * Because as far as I'm concerned we're all God * That's the difference * If you really think another guy is God he doesn't lock you up ***

*Funny about that *

And all the *'s are tiny, haloed Christs.

It's a hippie bible. Now, I've got a lot of books on my shelf. Three different English bibles. Even a Mormon bible, just 'cuz. The Tao Te Ching, the Analects, the Apocrypha and stuff on Kabbalah; I could use a good Qur'an. Books on all kinds of mythology. Every continent covered, except Antarctica, but if you know a good penguin mythology collection, send it on by. Fiction, mostly fantasy and science fiction but not all. Science and poetry and history and the Complete Works of Shakespeare and E.A. Poe. Beowulf and Grendel. But this book is the weirdest of the lot.

I put it on the shelf and all the books shimmy to Parliament: We got the funk UNGH! Give us the funk! You see, what I'm trying to tell you is the title. Remember the words around the circle I didn't tell you? Be and Here and Now chase each other around the circle in repetition, but the spaces change, and at one point they merge for BE NOWHERE. The spine has both Be Here Now and Now Be Here, flipped, mirrored. I'm trying to tell you

the

title

is

*BEEEP*

I love my family. Truly. But when that phone rings, and I see “Home” or “Mom Cell” pop up as the caller identity, I let it ring. And ring. I could press “ignore” and let it go straight to voicemail, but then they know. You have to let it play itself out, play the game and don't blink first. If it's important, I'll check the voicemail and call back.

Sometimes the thought strikes me: perhaps I am a terrible son. Who ignores calls from a mother? Wretched scum and villainy! But picture the Cosby Show, and all the Huxtables leaving and returning to the family home, over and over, and you circle close to our family legacy. My mother, my uncle, myself, we all flung ourselves outward at some time or another and then gravitated back to my grandparents. Repeatedly. Even as an adult, I would be asked, “So you still live with your mother?”

No, with my grandfather. It's his house; Mom living there also is pure coincidence. I'm just carrying on a tradition.

Maybe I'm not a terrible son; maybe I'm a terrible person, all-around. I don't much like picking up the phone in any situation. When it rings, I think, “Why is this person calling?” Most of my friends know not to call without damn good reason, so I'll pick up, otherwise...

Cue my voice:

“Hi, you've reached Steve. I'm not here right now, or maybe I am and I just don't feel like picking up. In any event, leave a message. Bye.”

It's not the flashiest, kindest message out there. One supervisor commented, “Well, at least your honest.” Which is pretty much all I desire. This cell phone, bits of metal and plastic and tiny circuits, is a tool. I like tools. I like to use them.

I do not like being used by them.

It seems as if this little tyrant has wormed its way into supremecy overnight. Old landline phones had the advantage you could escape them just by leaving the house. And I can still remember me and a friend wandering the mall as teenagers almost fifteen years ago, with the dull beige, brick-like hammer of a phone that was newly “mobile.” Hot stuff. You had to carry it; no pocket would hide the sucker. At least its slavery was obvious and apparent.

Whenever my friend Seth calls me, at some point I'm bound to hear swearing as he swerves his car. He can't divorce his phone and the road. For me, if the phone rings in the pocket while driving, I don't pick up. The thought of it strikes me silly. Even dangerous.

So the phone, you see, is for me. It is for my convenience. It is, I must sadly inform you, not for the world's convenience. If it goes in my pocket, I regulate.

When I return a call home to see if something has happened, if Grandpa is in the hospital or anything, I do make a point to say hello to him. Let each other know we're still kicking. You can time it in under a minute or two. Neither of us really wants to ramble, just a hello, you good? Sure. Take care.

He never calls. And we like it that way. When I close my eyes and transport technology back two thousand years, for fun, I picture Jesus sitting around being tried by the Sanhedrin. Ringing all around him in black, they shout, “Why won't you answer our calls?”

Serenity fills his voice.

“Man was not made for the telephone; the telephone was made for man.”

Amen.