Why I Wanted to Keep My Marriage a Secret, by David Sedaris
All these years later, I could still see their room so clearly: its dark, almost black woodwork, its checkerboard tiled floor. It was three times bigger than mine and much quieter. I had just forced their mattresses into the hallway when my mother came and put a stop to it. “But I have a contract!” I told him. “They signed it. The matter was settled legally.”
The room swap never happened, but Amy and Gretchen honored our 1970 agreement. Gretchen has a long-term boyfriend who lives in another city, but Amy hasn’t even dated anyone since the early 2000s. I used to call them singles. Then I learned that, historically, the word only applied to women who were unmarried until about the age of twenty-five. After that, they are called thornbacks, a thornback being a bottom-feeding ray-like fish with sharp spikes along its spine.
Meanwhile, a single man of the same age is simply called a bachelor or, in gaming circles, a wizard.
Often I think I’ve done my sisters a favor, especially Amy. Oh, to be single and accountable to no one. Then Hugh will do something nice and I’ll remember that it can be nice to have someone around. Recently, for example, he cut my toenails. I used to do it myself, but now I have arthritis in my back and can only reach my feet in Arizona.
I didn’t do it ask Hugh to cut my nails. He just saw two of my toes sticking out of the holes they had poked in my socks and offered. Watching him face the worst with a pipe cutter, I thought of a poorly drawn syndicated comic strip that once ran in the Raleigh newspaper. Each depicted a boy and a girl naked but without genitals. “Love is” was written at the top of the frame, and then each day, underneath, there was an example: “love is… laughing at the same old joke,” “… wearing “his” and “her” T-shirts,” “… quietly watching a hummingbird eating lunch.” »
I don’t remember that “love is…cutting your amber nails into the shape of a dagger”, but I didn’t read it every day.
Of course, love is different from marriage. It may exist within a marriage, flickering like a tea light at the bottom of a hurricane glass, but it is hardly guaranteed to endure. This is why you shouldn’t pay too much attention to it. Planning a wedding or an engagement party, running away to couples therapy, renewing your vows: isn’t that just a recipe for disaster?
How hypocritical that out of me, Amy and Gretchen, the only one married is me. This happened in 2016 and took place in secret: it was essentially a forced marriage, entirely the idea of my banker, Cindy, and arranged purely for financial reasons. We did it at the county courthouse in the small town of Beaufort, North Carolina. Entering the building late that spring morning meant going through a metal detector. This is the last time I empty my pockets as a single personI thought, abandoning my wallet and the old man’s leather purse that I’ve been carrying since 1992.
Neither Hugh nor I were particularly dressed, although we weren’t rednecks either. We probably looked audited: slacks, freshly ironed button-down shirts, and the facial expressions you make after learning that the doctor who will examine your prostate has decided to let his nails grow. At least that was my expression. Just close your eyes and think about the money you will saveI said to myself.
