Do You Want to Get Married?
Hey. Do you want to get married? I’ve been thinking about it a lot and decided it’s time to pop the question. It doesn’t seem like a big deal if you don’t think about it that much. I had a friend in college who was certain that he was ready—he knew. At the ripe age of 22, he knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with one person, and that baffled me. I’d ask: But how do you really know? How can you really be sure? At the time, I had set my sights on experiencing as many things as I could. But I already had the knowledge of city bus routes, where to buy the cheapest cup of coffee that still tasted good, which corner to stand on in order to see and feel everything happening all at once. This friend, he was still at home, and yet, he was sure, his next step was a lifetime of monogamy.
Hey. Do you want to get married? We can live in an overpriced one-bedroom in the middle of the city, living the life of nostalgia in reverse. You can get the paper delivered to our door every morning, even though that’s going out of style. But you’ve always liked doing things that way, right? I always liked that about you. Make some coffee and let me bury my feet underneath your thighs while we sit on the couch and read, regardless of the time of day. “Your internal clock is fucked,” I always used to laugh, especially after nights where you wouldn’t sleep, leaving to get a short stack at the IHOP a few blocks away for breakfast at five in the morning. Or did that count as dinner?
Hey. Do you want to get married? I read an article today about a husband who collects and frames objects for his wife. On her desk are empty tortoise shells, nests of various sizes, Robin's eggs that he has nestled in straw, placed inside wooden boxes under panes of glass. I thought of you and wondered if you would collect anything for me. Forget the city—can we live in a small cottage by the sea? Hey. Do you want to get married? Let’s skip the wedding. You met me early in my life, so you’re able to fact check my current self against who I used to be. Is this what it feels like to know someone? Not only their ugly bits but their past tiny rabbit selves, people with growing hearts so easily broken. It’s nice to have someone who knows me and my tiny rabbit heart. Or at least it feels that way. Do you feel like you know me?
Hey. Do you want to get married? I’m going to be 27 soon and that’s how old my mother was when she got married. I remember that, when I was a kid, she told me that she starved herself to fit into her wedding dress. A small part of me thought that was darkly romantic. The fact that she wanted to contort her body into a different shape—to become a different woman on the day that everyone she loved would be looking at her. In ways, I relate to that. I’m feeling the pressure. As though, if my life doesn’t run parallel to hers, I’ll be less of a woman. Will you make me more of a woman?
Hey. Do you want to get married? Let me tell you about the moment when I knew you were the one. Do you remember when I lived in the city and you lived in the suburbs—I would call you late at night when I was walking downtown? That’s how I knew. I would call and you would pick up, regardless of the time. I could hear the sleep in your voice. Here I was, being reckless, and you were asleep, responsible. It was the first time I felt like someone was saving me. Could you feel that from across the country?
Do you want to get married? Being in love with you feels like sitting on a crowded beach in the middle of August. With my vision obscured by the legs of passersby, a moment of panic, until I see someone with a familiar towel or a cooler, the color of the one from my childhood, and I’m grounded in an unfamiliar place. Lately, I’ve been thinking about who I read somewhere once that marrying someone means committing to all of the different people they might be in the future. I want to see you through all of your phases—my personal moon.
So, what do you think? Do you want to get married? Let’s floss our fangs together in front of the bathroom mirror. Later, when we’re reading in bed, we’ll run our tongues along the backsides of the teeth in our individual mouths and feel them move, like blades of grass in early spring.