My wifey had this moving line in her wedding vows, something to the effect of she’s never felt the need to shout from the rooftops about our happy life but if ever there were a day, this was it. It was beautiful the way she said it, voice cracking and eyes welling.
That delicate empath upstaged me with her authenticity. Her vows were heartfelt and natural to the ear, while I overwrote some performative monologue about the effectively zero odds of finding your soulmate and then attempted to flip the logic into a sappy meant-to-be idea that probably only confused anyone still listening and might explain this picture of my dad who does not have special needs except a pacemaker.
Then I proceeded to black out while ripping more shots than a central nervous system should handle, darting around like a rabid animal rarely in the vicinity of the bride. I was told I got kicked out of the afterparty bar before most guests arrived, and my wife ended up chasing me down the street in downtown Culver City and capped her special day eating Papa Johns next to my unconscious carcass in the hotel room. It was a pretty solid wedding I hear.
August 13, 2016. It’s been a pretty solid 10 years. No, let’s do rooftop. My wife is the only one I can be sure reads this blog, and it has been periodically suggested by my primary customer I write something nice for once. When the Commies took over the mainland, my grandfather didn’t leave for Taiwan one credit short of graduating from a prestigious university to subject his grandchildren to this kind of tyrannical editorial influence in Frisco, Texas. But he’s dead and I can indeed write something nice once a decade.
It’s been the best 10 years. It wasn’t that long ago when I thought kids-mortgage-suburbs-9-to-5 was the place where dreams go to die. Somewhere along the way I came to understand — maybe not officially until writing it down now — this was the dream.
What can possibly be so great about something so mundane on paper? I gotta cite Prof. Gary Morson, Intro to Russian Literature at The Northwestern University, once a decade as well. It’s not the grand event, accomplishment, gesture that matters. It’s the hundred grand little moments, daily wins, inside jokes.
My wife and I talk in unbreakable code when mentioning people’s race. We don’t use it only to say borderline racist things undetected; often it’s an innocuous value-added description, but not something our kids should have in their frame of reference yet. For Asians we say “GLE,” an acronym for the “Good luck everybody” line from the most spectacular 15 seconds of television comedy ever created.
To be more specific about type of Asian, we might say “Jungle” a la Ali Wong. For Indians, we say “Ross Perot,” the Texan billionaire who ran for president as an Ind-ependent. For Black or person of color, but really just Black, we use “Personal Computer.”
I guess three codes need to be replaced now, but you’re in my inner circle and it was worth illustrating. My wife and I work well together. She gets who I am and loves all of me, faults unitemized in the package, with a warmth foreign to immigrant children. I get who she is and appreciate her strengths while trying to improve weaknesses. This asymmetry of acceptance is something I can work on the next decade, but they call it your better half for a reason.
For our milestone anniversary, we took 24 hours in downtown Dallas. She sent me a link to a diamond necklace three months prior, and I care so much about aesthetic rocks I forgot it in a closet at home, still in the shipping box.
Gifts for me, a suburban monk, are a lot harder to think of, even for a gift master like my wife. I helped her out with what would seem like a feeble present to anyone who doesn’t get me the way she does. It was simply a request to take public transportation to the hotel, saving the $58 valet and stress of driving in a place working on its own marriage with Google Maps.
The DART train did not disappoint, as halfway there a possibly unhoused or underhoused man sat across from us and pointed out a warning under the seat by my wife’s flip-flop-clad feet. I looked down expecting a bug, and it was a condom. Small and unused as far as I could tell, hopefully a display item during its shelf life, although I have never seen such a shelf.
The man said let me take care of that, and we’re like, oh my god no, what does that even mean, but he insisted. Our protector leaned into our air space, pinned the prophylactic against the ground with the end of his cane, and snaked it away like he was signing for a credit card transaction on a giant pad with a giant pen. I am missing the pertinent detail of where the condom ended up because my brain couldn’t process the event fast enough. Like, my brother, you’re still taking that cane home with you, yeah? Disposable canes aren’t a thing? Chivalry in Texas knows no bounds.
So if you consider the lingering memories of that episode, which could surface any time without warning for the rest of my wife’s life, it wasn’t a cheap gift at all. Plus it was supplemented by her volunteering to take an abs pic in the elevator when my selfie was interrupted by other guests entering. Physical fitness is low on her attraction criteria based on at least one former lover, but she offered to finish the job because she knows what’s important to me.
Also there was a bonus gift in the form of a spirited hotel room session Sunday morning I’m not allowed to write about. I don’t want your imagination embellishing into some “Fifty Shades of Grey” interpretation, so let me just say it wasn’t crazy, no props or anything, but it was awesome.
Our life together is awesome because we’re together. She’s in New York right now trying to be a middle-aged Harry Styles groupie. If that doesn’t work out, she’ll come back to meal planning, logistics and scheduling, negotiating bland social activities, my excited reports of the latest deals discovered at Aldi, which has been an absolute revelation for me in grocery shopping.
My wife and I excel in the foundational unremarkable parts of marriage because there is just no one else we’d rather do this stuff with. It’s hard for me to get into the flowery expressions of love, but it’s just so easy for me to enjoy every day with her. It’s been like that since the first day we met at the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic when I was wearing a fedora and the first night at the Santa Monica Pub Crawl when I was wearing a Santa hat.
I have made plenty of suboptimal decisions since then when it comes to career, housing market, investing. These are traditional measures of success built to needle someone with my level of neurosis/OCD/perfectionism. But when I have those pangs of regret, they don’t really cut deep. And I think, maybe, a big part of that is arguably the most important decision you can make in life is your partner.
My overactive mind doesn’t need to chase itself all the time. It’s OK to rest, as Pepper told Iron Man, because everything will be fine. I won.
