Mawwiage, That Bwessed Awwangement!

The wedding is almost here, and we’re only two days away from “that dweam within a dweam”, despite what the neurotic countdown clock in my sidebar is telling you. This essay will be my last as a single man. The next time you hear from me, I will be shackled to the keyboard as a husband, the obligatory ball and chain fastened to my ankle and chaffing my delicate skin. Fortunately, I’ve never found staying faithful to be difficult, as it’s only my eyes that occasionally wander, not my pee-pee. Also, Brittany is pretty good with a knife…

I think that most of the wedding arrangements have been arranged by now, but I can only make assumptions at this point. New wrinkles have been added into the cloth of our marital plan on a daily basis, and I haven’t had the time to make sure that they’ve all been successfully ironed out. I haven’t had enough time to do much of anything, actually. My days and nights are too crowded already, and squeezing in bits of wedding planning has proven difficult. I’ve generally left things to the smoothlegs in my life who are buzzing around like industrious, coked-up bees, and only offer my opinions and thoughts when I’m directly asked. Fortunately, their need for my input seems fragmentary, at best. Unfortunately, on the rare instances where I’ve actually been asked what I’d like, my suggestions have been riddled with a thousand tiny holes of inadequacy and regret.

For example, I found one of rock’s most touching instrumental performances by one of the best guitarists in the world, and I gently suggested to Brittany that we use it for our first dance together. First, a pause and a look of disbelief. Then, laughter and mocking and shame. Later, after I suggested a classic Nick Cave love song, there was ridicule and travesty, then bitter, bitter acquiescence. I gave in, found an inoffensive Don Henley number that is actually quite fitting, and I reached a tentative accord with everyone involved. This has been the way of things during this whole process. I have ideas, everyone else has “better” ideas, and I’m left alone to wallow in self-deprecating humor and neglect. Marriage – it begins!

I kid, though. Apart from the instrumental song, I knew that most of what I was suggesting was either unfitting or completely inappropriate. When Brittany suggested we use something more classical sounding with strings and woodwinds, my immediate response was, “Good idea! See if The Vitamin String Quartet has any Sabbath.” I seem to invite the scorn of others into my life, although I can’t figure out why. Don’t believe me? Try this: We’re holding our reception at the church, and the first line of that Nick Cave song I mentioned is, “I don’t believe in an interventionist God…” I rest my case.

Trey, my father and myself are going to pick up our tuxedos in the morning, and I pray that my freakishly long, simian-like arms were properly measured during the fitting. I was a groomsman in a friend’s wedding once, and my tux arrived with a short-sleeved jacket that demanded immediate alteration. I really do have an odd build, when it comes to my arms. It makes buying clothes off the rack a curious and upsetting endeavor that ultimately results in me buying a shirt that’s either too big for my torso or that fits me in the body, but has sleeves that come to my elbows. Whatever immortal hand or eye it was that framed my fearful symmetry, something joggled its hand when it did the stitching. Arms like mine belong on a monkey, not a man. (Yeah, yeah. Get the jokes out of your system right now. I am not a Sasquatch!)

Assuming the tuxedos fit and that Trey will be willing to take his off once we’ve confirmed that everything is alright, we’ll move on to the rest of the items on tomorrow’s checklist. (During the fitting, he was reluctant to remove the trial jacket until he’d walked up to every last person in the store and assaulted them with a plaintive demand for verbal acknowledgment of his handsomeness.) There’s decorating (ie, heavy lifting) to be done at the church, there are bridal party gifts to purchase, and there will undoubtedly be an unending stream of last-second chores needing to be done before the rehearsal begins in the early evening.

I hope everything goes smoothly, because right now I’m feeling pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. I’m not sure if I’m not nervous because I simply haven’t had time to devote to nervousness, or if it’s because I’m so comfortable with how things are. I remember the night before my first wedding, when I was pacing the grounds of my hotel and fretting over every aspect of my life. I was angry with my best man for being somewhere other than nearby to talk to me and tell me what I wanted to hear. I was worrying about whether I was truly in love, and if my bride was truly in love with me. I fretted over the potential longevity of our marriage, or the lack thereof. I was scared about being with only one woman for the rest of my life, and spent far too long considering the vast amount of exquisite T and A in the world that I would be cutting myself off from by saying “I do.” In short, I was a nervous wreck, but I didn’t know why. I couldn’t know, because I lacked the foresight to understand back then what I have the hindsight to appreciate now. I was terrified because I was doing something terrible: marrying for the sake of marriage, to complete the rite of passage and enter adulthood, regardless of consequence. I was not in love.

I hope that’s where my lack of nervousness comes from now: from confidence, from truly knowing just how deeply Brittany and I love each other, and from how much I adore Trey. I hope I’m calm and collected and unconcerned with my future together with Brittany, simply because I’m supremely confident in the fact that we’ll actually have one. This serenity I have now, this inner harmony or whatever new age, pseudo-mystical internal “energy” you might want to call it, has me in a mood of perfect tranquility, unconcerned and at peace. I’m not worried about anything. I know that I probably should be, though. After my previous trip down the aisle, I should be thinking about all the negatives of the future as well as the positives, but the truth is that I’m not really thinking about the future at all – the good or the bad. I’m not hoping for happy times in the days ahead, because I know they’re already there, waiting for us. They’re coming. It’s a given. A fact. Certainty.

Saturday will come, and Brittany and I will be married. Sunday will come, and we’ll still be married. Then, another Saturday. Another Sunday. Another week, another month, another year. Another decade. The days of the calendar will flip forward one by one, year after year, and Brittany and I will both be there in whatever future we’re hurtling towards, standing together against the world. Like I said, it’s not something that I believe will happen. I have no faith in a positive outcome for our marriage, because faith ends where knowledge begins. It’s no longer necessary to believe in something when you know it’s real, when you know it’s right, when you know it’s eternal.

And with that, I think I’ll close things today with a quote from the esteemed Sir Terry Pratchett that I think best describes my lack of faith in our marital success:

“…most people don’t find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they’re there, they know they’re there for a purpose, they’d probably agree that they have a place in a well-organized universe, but they wouldn’t see the point in believing, of going around saying things like, ‘Oh great Table, without whom we are as naught!'”

When you know something’s real, you don’t need to believe in it anymore. That’s how I feel about my future with Brittany and Trey, and about all of the endless days rolling towards us: days that we’ll walk through together, as a family. From my proposal through today and for all of the days yet to come, I have never been worried about my future with Brittany, nor will I ever be. I don’t know if I’ll ever be nervous about anything when it comes to her. I’m certainly not hesitant when it comes to pledging myself to her for the rest of my life, and I’m pretty sure I won’t even freak out if and when she ever tells me that she’s pregnant. News like that would have terrified me at any other point in my life, back when I was with any other woman. Now, though, it has a nice ring to it. I’m not saying that we want to start trying to get pregnant in the immediate, immediate future – but I don’t mind practicing. It does, after all, make perfect.

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
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Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

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I'll try to not be boring.

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What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.