Hi.
Coffee: Organic Honduran, Trader Joe’s brand
Getting ready for a best friend’s wedding, I think about marriage. When I was four years old, my mom took me to the library. We checked out a copy of “The Kitchen Knight”; I read about my nerdy namesake – Sir Gareth of Orkney – and fell hard for his quest to rescue and wed a women he’d never met. The story got deep in my bones, snuggled up to my gristle, and made me feel like ‘true love’ – whatever that is – was my destiny.
A lot of American boys grew up with something similar. I hope most of them have realized how screwy the notion is.
Marriage can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people but the predominant line that I bit hard is not a narrative of love, compassion, communication, or equality, but rather the parasitic dream of whole-sale devouring a woman. You take her career, her family, her name. You are the capital m MAN of the establishment, whisked in front of her through a grand patriarchal quest, snatching her from a high tower without asking why she might want to stay or get down. Imagine those cartoons where a character eats a fish and pulls out the bones – it’s something like that.
And yet my friends love each other and they’re getting married. Love springs inside the most problematic places. I don’t know a good name for that deep, lifelong connection anymore, but I know it when I see it. Cheers to the newlyweds. Cheers to being human with each other.
Currently Reading:
Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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“Find what you love and let it kill you.” – Charles Bukowski
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