Til Hot Ass do us Part

My friend A works with this guy, Rich. The first time I met Rich, I got a bad feeling about him. This is because A had told me all about Rich, as well as her other co-workers. She also told me about Rich’s wife and young child. So when I walked into the restaurant for her birthday dinner last year and saw Rich’s arm slung casually and familiarly around the back of a chair that contained the woman he brought with him instead of his wife, I started to dislike him. That dislike grew when Rich announced he was too drunk to drive home and that he was going to stay with his cute, blonde, not-wife friend. Rich must have been a real lightweight. His one and a half gin-and-tonics on a full stomach had gotten him so drunk he thought we would believe a crap story like that.
Surprisingly, A did believe him, though (in her defense, she had consumed enough alcohol that night to justify her believing that crap story. She also believed she was fine, right before she passed out on a couch at the lounge we went to after the restaurant). So it came as a surprise to her when, one night, Rich started to put the moves on her.
They were out with co-workers. Rich was, again, sans-wife and his “friend” was out of town on business. So he turned his sights towards A, who had, again, managed to drink enough alcohol to convince herself that Rich was a nice guy with altruistic motives. He told her that, if he wasn’t married, he would definitely try to take her home (isn’t that a nice sentiment in and of itself? “If I wasn’t married, I’d definitely bang you.” Doesn’t it just make you think of roses and hearts and the names of your first children? Note to men: “I’d fuck you” is not a pickup line.)
At the end of the night, Rich decided to drop A and another male co-worker off so they wouldn’t have to walk home. As decorum dictated, Rich dropped A off first. But then….
“He called you back? And asked to stop by?” I was shocked.
“I know. I thought it was odd.”
“It is odd,” I said, mouthful of Eggs Benedict suspended midair in disbelief. “But you know what? He did it on purpose.”
“He didn’t want T to get suspicious.”
“Exactly. If everything was above board, and if he wasn’t trying anything except to see your apartment, he would have either dropped you off last, or he would have asked T to hold on a sec or come up with him to see your new place. The fact that he so blatantly hid the fact that he wanted to come upstairs in itself makes the whole thing not right.”
“That’s exactly what I thought. But I was really drunk. So I didn’t think about it when he called. I just said sure. It was really late.”
“How late?”
“It had to have been at least 3 in the morning.”
“Doesn’t he have a wife and kid?”
“A wife, a kid and one on the way. But wait, it gets worse. While he was there, he came up behind me, put his arms around my waist and pulled me into him.”
“Ewwwww.”
“I know! He just hugged me, he didn’t do anything else, but still. That’s intimate. I wouldn’t do that with my girlfriends. Definitely not my guy friends. So what the hell was that?”
“Um, gross. And wrong. He’s a married man. It’s very, very wrong.”
The story really upset me for a number of reasons. I don’t like Rich at all, and now I was justified, but who the hell wants to be justified like that? He had been rude to my friend. He was being miserable to his wife. And, ultimately, he was being a real shithead to his kid, who would have to bear a lot from the fallout of his clearly doomed marriage.
More that that, though, it made me wonder: Do people’s vows mean anything to them anymore? Has “Til Death do us Part” become “’Til Something Else better comes along”?
These days, it seems like the only people who are taking marriage seriously are gay people, the one demographic who are forbidden by most bass-ackwards states from getting married. There is a actually a show that features the shortest-lived celebrity marriages (Britney Spears is apparently trying to see just how many times she can get on that show. Although, I give her credit. She and the freeloader she married have lasted a lot longer than I expected. A lot longer being 4 months). Just like the word “obey” has been taken out of most traditional vows, so to have the words “til death do us part,” if not literally, then definitely in practice.
I think of the way my great aunt talked about her husband and their marriage and I wonder if it’s possible today. My aunt was so in love with her husband. Did they have a perfect marriage? Of course not. They were dirt-poor and people kept dropping by their house to live. But they worked through all of it. People today don’t seem to have that kind of stamina, as evidenced by a 50% divorce rate and marriages that end after a few years, or a few months. The biggest difference, though, is the attitude going into the marriage. Divorce used to be taboo; now it’s almost expected. And people aren’t thinking long-term as they walk down the aisle. People are getting married the way they should be buying shoes: they may not be practical, but they’re awfully cute, and if you only get a couple of seasons out of them, so what? They’re fun. But when your spouse starts to really be a pain, just try to throw them in the back of your closet and see what happens. You’ll have a divorce lawyer so far down your throat he’ll be up your ass.
I’m not totally innocent in the married-man department. I’ve gone on dates with married men. I’ve also gone on more dates with men I had no idea were married, or had live-in girlfriends, until the end of the night, when they finally fess up. I’ve been hit on numerous times by men who don’t even bother to hide the wedding band. And it all makes me doubt the validity of marriage as an institution. If nobody really believes in it, does the institution of marriage really exist? (If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it….) Commitment should mean something, but these days, it doesn’t. We change jobs, careers, lovers, spouses like we change socks and underwear. When the going gets tough, people tend to cut and run faster than a shirtless redneck on “Cops.” Why, I have no idea. I also don’t have any plan on how to bounce back from this cultural phenomenon. Should we blame cartoons, that have given us all Adult ADD in everything in our lives, including cartoons? Is it the culture of divorce that most of us have grown up with that has made us cynical? Or is it this overriding apathy that I see has taken over so many of my generation that makes work a four-letter word? I don’t have the answers. I’m guessing that Rich’s wife doesn’t have them either, as she stares down at her pregnant belly while her husband sweet-talks the twenty-something set.