I had a dream that the Russian mafia killed my husband.

The reason I was thinking about the Russian mafia was, once again, some stupid NPR broadcast. I have had more fucking nightmares owing to NPR than I have had owing to ANYTHING else, ever.

Oh yeah, and, if I need to remind you: when I am awake, I don't have a husband.

...But let's talk about that today, shall we? Because I spent a good portion of June bitching -- to anyone who would listen -- about the institution of marriage, and then I ignored the subject all through July. Time to get down and dirty and discuss this stupid shit.

I am currently older than my mother when she got married to my father.

I don't like that at ALL.

I am too young -- I am not ready -- I cannot foresee EVER being ready -- to make a promise of fidelity and monogamy forever and ever.

Don't get me wrong; when I love somebody, I LOVE them. When I love someone, it probably IS forever. Neil, for instance. Neil and I loved each other immediately, and I guess I never grew out of it, despite finding out all sorts of distressing things about his way of life, despite prolonged absences, despite knowing FULL WELL that I could never, ever be happy "WITH" somebody like Neil. I've loved Neil for five and a half years. I will always love Neil, and so Neil is part of my family, wherever he may be. I mean it; I don't HAVE a problem loving people forever and ever. It's the other stuff that bugs me...

Okay, so say that I'd found the person of my dreams, the person I was going to marry, the love of my life, my Soul Mate, what-the-fuck-ever... And say I married that person, intending to live happily ever after. And say that we had a honeymoon in... uh... in North Seattle. Okay, and say that, one morning (AFTER noon; I refuse to marry anybody who wakes up at the butt-crack of dawn...), we went out to a nice little coffeehouse, and there, lo and behold, I ran into Neil. Then what? Then, could I run to Neil and hug him, and tell him I'd missed him, and that I was happy to see him? Could I kiss him? Could I stay up with him all night sometime, just listening to Neil talk? Could I let him hold my hand when he'd sufficiently freaked me out over something? Could Neil ever be part of my life again, or would I have to say, "Hey, Neil, I'm so glad I ran into you, this is my new husband, why don't we exchange email addresses or something?"

Madly in love or not, I'd still rather swap spit than email addresses; Neil's a good kisser.

Hypothetically, would that make me a bad spouse?

I have already loved several people in my life so far, and all in completely different ways. They are all family to me. They are all people to whom I'd loan my own mother, if ever any of them needed somebody to make them a sandwich, or take their temperature and say nice, motherly things. Supposing that, right now, some attractive young man walked up to me, announced (in a terribly convincing way) that we were meant for each other, carried me off to Vegas and we got married, would I have to revoke certain privileges from those people I already love? Would I no longer be able to write those unsent letters? Would I no longer be able to call my biological family and urge them to hang out with my other loved ones? Would I just have to forsake loving all these people I've cared about?

Being married sounds terribly lonely.

So, Sammy Soul Mate has carried me off to the altar, and now my ex-lovers, my would-have-been-lovers, and my would-be-lovers, are now nothing more than Friends. Because if, say, I married Sammy Soul Mate, and then I ran into Neil in North Seattle, and I ran to him and kissed him, and wanted to stay up all night talking, that would be, in a manner of speaking, cheating.

I'm not prepared to only love one person for the rest of my life. I'm not prepared to never hold anybody else in my arms ever again. I'm not prepared for the day when I run into, for example, Neil, and it's considered some slutty sin to kiss him and tell him I love him and I've missed him.

Now, if I happened to be merely DATING Sammy Soul Mate, things would be so very much easier... If you cheat on your boyfriend, or your lover, nobody gives a shit except Sammy. If you cheat on your husband, it's fucking disgusting and the whole relationship is down the tubes forever. Unless, of course, you happen to be a kinky couple...

It's ALL in that stupid piece of paper. It's all in those rings.

Yuck. I need a cigarette.

Okay, so I'm exaggerating a bit. Of course, there are allowances in the marital vows for having affection for other people. But it still seems terribly unsatisfactory.

I'm not even talking about sex, either. If I happened to be married to Sammy Soul Mate, there's a chance I honestly wouldn't have the desire to sleep with other people. At certain times, with certain people, I have simply not WANTED to be having sex with anybody else. There are other ways of "cheating," which I would most certainly commit. I imagine myself curled up on the couch with Sammy, watching TV and cuddling, happily ever after, and I imagine that, sometimes, HELL YEAH, I'd grin to myself and think of somebody else, think of sleeping with somebody else, wonder what would have happened if I'd married somebody else. I'm being completely honest now, because I'm single, and I can: no matter how much I love Sammy, no matter how happy Sammy makes me, no matter how well I can control the basic human instinct to screw everybody who happens to be attractive, I'll never stop daydreaming...

I think about the married, or ex-married couples I have known. My maternal grandparents come to mind first; they celebrated a fiftieth anniversary four years back. They're happy, and I cannot imagine, in my WILDEST dreams, either of them leaving the other. In some ways, I find it terribly romantic, and in other ways, I think it's kind of gross. I don't like the idea of being SO familiar, and SO comfortable with a person, that one finds it okay to email one's grandchild with the news that "Grampa's bowels are giving him trouble." It just doesn't seem acceptable to me to speak for another person like that. Even about things that are more socially acceptable: "My husband is very tired today. My wife doesn't like meatloaf very much." Yes, yes, I know I keep a fucking online journal and broadcast all sorts of things about my friends and acquaintances... but it makes me queasy to actually speak FOR someone else. To my knowledge, in this journal, I have successfully avoided MANY things like: "My lover is afraid of spiders," or "My lover doesn't like purple jelly beans." Rather, for me, it's always been: "My lover told me last night he's afraid of spiders," and: "I really don't think my lover likes purple jelly beans because he always picks them out and gives them to me." You see the subtle difference? People who are married for an infinitely long time (or, hell, a few MONTHS, some of them), seem to get this idea in their heads that it's okay to speak FOR somebody else -- not ABOUT someone else, but FOR someone else. Man, that's fucken disrespectful...

I don't ever want to be that comfortable with anybody. I don't ever want to hear: "Helena doesn't like..." or, "Helena had a dream about..." or, "Helena has a headache..." And I don't ever want to inflict that kind of thing on anybody else. If I got married to Sammy Soul Mate right now, I would want to include that in the marrage vows: "Sammy, I love you so much that I vow to always respect your right to speak for yourself about your individual tastes and feelings and thoughts."

...Because when it's become okay to say, "Helena doesn't like beets," (which I don't), then not even the functions of my own taste buds are sacred. My own BODY is no longer my own anymore. If Sammy Soul Mate and I got married, and fifty years from now, Sammy started with that sort of shit, I'd dump his ass. Because that's the point at which I feel two people have died into each other; neither has any semblance of an identity anymore. Even if Sammy has seen me spit fifteen beets across the room and scream, "that tastes like shit!" I couldn't stand it if Sammy said anything more than, "From my understanding, Helena's not very much into beets." After all, Sammy doesn't REALLY understand about how shitty beets taste to me; no one ever could.

I do not want to belong to anyone. I do not want anyone to belong to me. I do not want the responsibility of another body, and another mind, to take care of. I want to take care of my own, and I wouldn't mind supporting the body and mind of another person, but I simply HATE the seemingly inherent possessiveness of being married, or being in a ridiculously long relationship.

My friend Marianne got married about a year ago. I felt so deserted. Married people never seem to have any time to bum around and hang out. Married people never have the freedom to stop looking at their watch. The last time I saw Marianne, she had to leave after an hour or so, because she'd told her husband she'd be back at a certain time. This was not the Marianne I knew. The Marianne I became friends with, the Marianne I loved, was the sort of person who would spend a weekend on my Flip-and-Fuck couch without informing a soul of where she was, and not worrying a bit about it. Marianne used to walk up to strangers and say, "I like your hair. You're cool. Let's hang out." I swear to gahd, she did that the very first day I met her, and I was so envious of her guts. Now she's married, and last I knew, she couldn't stay for dinner at my house because she had to get back to her husband.

My friend Bennie got married, maybe two years ago. I stopped hearing from Bennie much. Bennie and I used to see each other every day. Bennie was a fantastic friend. Bennie knows things about me that nobody else knows, because we were buddies, and confidants, and I could usually call Bennie, unload on him, have him unload on me, and we'd both feel better. Then he got married, moved to Buffalo, and I hear from him three times a year. Last I heard, his marriage was sucking ass. Funny, how the only times I hear from married people are when they're thinking they don't want to be married at the moment.

My friend Mike got married to his high school sweetheart, Amie. And it's funny; Mike and I dated when I lived in Santa Fe, and I NEVER expected (or wanted) to get back together (truly, it would have been disastrous). And I was truly ecstatic for him when he and Amie announced their engagement, because THEY were both delighted. But I miss Mike. Hell, I miss Amie, and I've never even met her. I expect them to be together for a ridiculously long time, because I really believe they're completely in love. And it feels like I'll never see them again. Like they're so in love, and they have this paper to prove it, that nothing matters to them outside of each other and their life together. Which is, yes, beautiful. And I'm genuinely happy for their happiness. But I miss them. It feels like they're gone from me forever now. Kurt Vonnegut had a word for that in "Cat's Cradle." I don't remember what it was.

Now, perhaps I'm too secular a person to be talking about the "institution" of marriage as if I know what I'm talking about. According to Christians, getting married is having God bless two people who love each other. And I think that's freakin' great. But then again, why will God only bless two people? Sure, sure, Sammy Soul Mate and I are madly in love and intend to spend our lives together, happily ever after, and yeah, God should bless that!!! But what about my friend Bennie? God should bless my friendship with Bennie, too! What about Neil? God should bless my love for Neil, too! (Okay, okay, so if Neil set foot into a Christian church, he'd probably burst into flames, but we're speaking hypothetically here...)

What makes one relationship more sacred, or divine, than any other relationship? I love my brother John, for example, but there's no sacred ceremony in which I could say, "hey John, you rock; I wish you all good things and I promise to be your devoted sister forever and support you in whatever ways I can."

Why are people tied together so loosely unless they're married?

Why is it possible for the absolute love of one's life to be barred from a hospital room while one is dying, because they never legally married?

Why is it a "sin" in this society to make love with one's old, dear friend, but not with Sammy Soul Mate to whom one is married, however happily or unhappily?

Why is it that friends and loved ones come and go so easily -- but if you marry them, they're stuck to you, they're BOUND to you, and if they ever leave, or think about leaving, or wandering off, or doing their own thing, or whatever, they feel guilty forever?

Why is it that, just because I hypothetically love Sammy Soul Mate more than I've ever loved anyone on the planet, I'm expected never to love anybody else, before or since marrying Sammy?

Why would people ever get married? It's such an ugly thing to do, such a display of ownership, such a boxing in of an individual that one finds beautiful. "We love each other, and we want to be together for the rest of our lives -- now don't ever leave me, don't ever think about leaving me, don't ever love anyone else, and compromise your needs to make sure mine are met, for the rest of your life." I never want to do that to anyone. I never want anyone to do that to me.

According to popular rumor, my father got married in June. Since my dad is completely thoughtless, I received the announcement on what would have been his anniversary with my mother. Thank gahd I'm not one of those kids who wishes their parents would get back together, or that would have made me cry. As it was, I just rolled my eyes. My dad's alleged new wife is a terrible person. Needless to say, I did not attend the wedding. I did not even acknowledge the announcement (and what the fuck; it was an EMAIL anyway; I didn't even warrant a real invitation...). Rude of me? Yeah, but we're talking about a woman who, according to reliable witnesses, dumped a full box of dirty cat litter into my brother's bed. It would have been much ruder of me to show up. I wouldn't have been able to keep a smile pasted on, and I would have yelled, during the ceremony, "You stupid filthy twatrag!" Or maybe I just would have tossed cat litter instead of rice or birdseeds. Personally, I think my dad -- at least the dude who used to hang out with his kids and take them out for ice cream sometimes, rather than keeping them out of sight and out of mind in the basement "rec room" (it's a basement with a TV and a computer in it; no getting around it, it's a basement...) -- deserves better than such a nasty waste of human flesh as this woman. So... what happened?

Once upon a time, my dad was a pretty cool guy. Seriously. He didn't yell at me and my brothers for bopping each other on the head with bamboo sticks on the Potomac. He bought me an ice cream cone after I'd subjected myself to the last ten hours of "Twin Peaks" in a row -- he even managed to ignore my stupid, wide-eyed comments about the Log Lady liking frozen yogurt. He used to take me to the airport and let me watch the planes because my parents didn't have much money for entertaining us. Once, he drove up to the top of Pike's Peak in Colorado, and we both got altitude sickness (which is a LOT like being stoned), and he yodelled at a rock because he thought it was a a mountain goat. My dad, once upon a time, was a pretty cool guy.

I don't know WHY he found Barb. She was nasty to his kids from the very beginning. Joseph ran away to Philadelphia and I ran away to Santa Fe. When Joseph and I made our respective returns, she forbade us to listen to music and got dear ol' dad into the habit of locking us out of the house after a certain time of night, disregarding things like work schedules. My brothers were still allowed to eat in the house, but my "cooking smelled bad," so whatever I ate had to be pre-cooked, and cold. Spaghettio's out of the can. Potato chips. And there was no place set for me at the table, ever, even when I was already in the kitchen. According to another popular rumor, my middle brother is in the process of moving into his own apartment, and I've already run away pretty much permanently. My dad never said an unkind word to Barb, never backed up his kids' rights (or, if he did, her screaming overshadowed it...). I still have vivid memories of the two of them taking my middle brother to task for something, and me grabbing John, dragging him out of the house, and walking a quarter of a mile away, where we could STILL hear the shouting...

My dad sacrificed his own KIDS for this nasty woman. Before her, he had his lousy moments, but he was still a cool enough guy to yodel at a rock. Now, it seems they're married. And what has it gotten any of us? She's probably got the most expensive diamond Wal-mart sells. She's got somebody (my dad) to push around until one of them dies. If my dad is sick, she's the one who will be allowed in the hospital room. The marriage, the legality of it, assures both of them that they won't be alone until one of them dies. They'll live out in that old field, getting older, and the house will grow smaller and smaller until it's just the two of them in a tiny little box. It'll be a little tiny box filled with her nastiness, and his weakness, and no one will be able to tell which is which. She'd started dressing him, buying his clothes for him, long before any outward talk of marriage. She'd started talking about him like she owned him, like she was a part of his very BODY, long before I even moved out: "Your dad doesn't want to be woken up right now; why won't you be quiet?" (How did SHE know if he wanted to be woken up? What, is she a fucking neuron?) Now, they're married, so it might very well be that way forever -- or at least until death do they part. They'll turn into one ugly, ugly person, and they're rotting away out in that little box, out in that old field. Imagine my dad and his wife next time you're walking down a stretch of rural highway, and you see a rotten cardboard box at the side of the road. Whatever you do, don't touch it.

Last night, in my dream, the Russian mafia killed my husband.

Good.

I'd be a horrendous wife anyway. I'm too devoted to interesting people. I'm too excited about the idea of making a new friend and spending long hours walking around the lake all evening and telling useless but thrilling old stories. I enjoy going out with my little brother and spitting off the top of a parking garage, too much. I couldn't give up emailing all my old friends. I'm too interested in myself, and in being alive, and exploring stuff, to give myself to somebody else to take care of. And I'm too in love with Sammy Soul Mate (you know, hypothetically) to take one oxygen molecule from him and try to transform it, own it.

I'm glad the Russian mafia killed him. He deserved better than a life in a little box with me. He deserved better than losing all his privacy, losing all his ownership of himself. He deserved better than losing all his old friends and being forced never to love anybody else ever again. He deserved a ceremony to bless him as a human being, as an individual, as one person with the capability to love, and create, and BE, without me getting in the way and fucking things up. Sammy Soul Mate, it is too bad they killed you. We could have been great friends. Maybe it's best they killed you, though, instead of me killing you.

(I don't like beets, and you will never understand...)

(I'll never stop daydreaming...)

(I want to climb to the top of Mount Rainier with you. I want to hold your hand and help you on the really hard parts. I want you to hold my hand at the really hard parts and help me. I want to write our names in the snow at the top. I want to kiss you and tell you I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with THAT feeling. Then I want to climb back down with you and get a cup of coffee and say "thank you for being alive and sharing yourself with me." I want to meet you, for the first time, every single day, as if you woke up with a new soul every morning. If I can't do that, I'd rather give you to the Russian mafia.)

~Helena*