[Writer’s group assignment: my group assigns weekly homework for us to keep our brains going. This one was a particularly vile one, so I thought I’d post it. It’s totally whiney, but fun. I’ve been asked to perform it as a talking piece. Enjoy.]
Marriage is an ex-wife calling at 3:35am because she just jumped a curb and ripped the axle out. Yes, that car, the first new car you ever bought and you bought it together. She’s hysterical and crying, drunk and/or messed up on the new drugs she’s found and she.. called… you.
Marriage is being stupid enough to offer to come pick her up, because, you know, you’re a nice guy. You want to be a good guy. You still love her. You’re stupid enough to think that her pussy is the nirvana of all nirvanas and you’d give your testicles to crawl back into that warth, that fable of completeness. And just like the during the divorce proceedings where you offer to help her move out, she tells you, “No, I’ll call my boyfriend.”
Marriage is you wondering, emotionally drained, why the hell did this bitch call you in the first place?
Marriage is the twenty years you’ve spent punishing yourself with rage and anger and lost jobs you’ve replaced her with. Every fight in crappy bars where you sought the punishment for driving your heaven away. The long line of sado-masochism, begging for forgiveness at the heals of leather clad women, tied to posts where anything walking by was invited to degrade you. One more whip, one more caress, one blunt force trauma to soft tissue with the bruises you use to scare away your friends. Anything to replace what you had.. or thought you had…
Marriage is a seven year monk-like existence, aesthetically speaking, that you buried yourself in as a small, thin wool blanket: it’s not really warm, and it doesn’t comfort you, but at least you’re not naked. Living in an apartment box, a sleeping bag and austere clothes because you don’t deserve to live in a home, a bed and a decent suit.
Marriage is the barrier to all success, the destroyer of all happiness, the reason why you’re fat, the reason why you don’t work the fat off, the reason why you hate your mom, the reason why your mom doesn’t like you, after all, you’re just so angry all the time. It’s the coral your friends have to watch out for when visiting your beaches… but you’re crafty, you always like to lower the tides as they swim away from you.
Marriage is why you laugh at crying children, roadkill, and the mothers of dead soldiers. Serves them right for being in a place where you can observe their pain.
Marriage is why five minutes of meditation is enough to make you fume. Silence is the roar of a jet plane but solitude is preferred over rage. The spews of angry lava doesn’t burn your friends when they’re not there. You do no damage unless someone pokes you. You drive your passion to those things that make others safe because your tired of seeing scars and bandages on friends.
Marriage is just another fucking way to control you, a restricting pattern to contort yourself until you’re no longer a recognizable human - it’s foot binding and when you free yourself, you find you’ll never walk again.
Marriage drives knives into your friends’ ears when you say, Fine! They want you to write about your emotions? They want you to write about marriage? You’ll give them what them want, what they asked for. You’ll do one better - you’ll be honest about it.
Marriage is the words spoken from a heart of ashes… no phoenix of fire to be reborn, no spreading over a grave for regrowth, no home-warmth hearth… Nothing to rekindle, nothing to stoke. A deep, black pit of bitter ashes.
