The other day, I was checking my calendar to see if that particular week was "pay week", and I realized that it would have been my wedding anniversary, if I'd been fool enough to stay married. And it would have been the 27th anniversary. 27 years. Damn, that made me feel f'in old, not to mention that it also sounded like a very long prison term.

As my thoughts turned back to that time, I wondered what in the hell was in my mind to let her talk me into marriage. Granted, I was very young then and didn't have as strong of a sense of myself as I do now, but even then I wasn't completely clueless as to my basic nature. She was the first one I'd actually lived with, as opposed to all the random hookups I had back then. Perhaps I'd allowed her to talk me into the notion that she was "different" from all the rest, somehow.

I'd met her at a party and she spent the night with me afterwards. She kind of grew on me and we were soon spending a lot of time together. And when her roommate moved out of her apartment and she could no longer keep up the rent on her own, I let her move in with me. It was comfortable for awhile, especially because she put up with my wandering ways, and when she got it in her head to get married, I let myself be talked into it.

My grandmother wanted me to get married in her home church and, as it didn't matter to me where the marriage took place, I agreed. My uncle, my father's brother, who was a Baptist minister, was to perform the ceremony. And as the ex's parents lived within a couple of hours of my grandmother, getting married there would also allow us to visit her parents for the one and only time I would meet them.

As I waited in a little room before the ceremony, I almost gave in to the urge to climb out the window and go running for the hills. Unfortunately, my brother talked me out of my natural impulses, and I went out to meet my doom, resplendent in a dark green tux.

The day after the wedding, we drove up to spend a couple of days with her family, which was a total boregasm for me. But we didn't have the money for a proper honeymoon, so we had to make do with this. At least her parents lived in a scenic area, so there was that to enjoy.

After we returned home, I was back to my old ways within two weeks, unable to endure the monotony...errr, monogamy any longer.

I hadn't thought about any of this for a long time but, all these years later, I'm still amazed that I actually went through with it.

tags: marriage  wedding  1980  anniversary  

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