Читать книгу Tart - Jody Gehrman - Страница 9

We should have done away with marriage long ago; by now it should be a fuzzy historical footnote, like eight-track tapes.

Unfortunately, knowing this didn’t save me from getting engaged last spring. I’d been a die-hard Amazon since my parents’ divorce, arguing with anyone who’d listen that a girl should never trade her leather bustier for a Whirlpool dishwasher, but in my late twenties, I temporarily forgot. Having sex with the same person on a regular basis can really mess with your understanding of pertinent details, like who you are, for example. I should have known things were taking a turn for the worse when Jonathan, who always prided himself in being wildly original, popped the question on one knee in a nauseatingly sunny and not at all offbeat setting. It was April and we were picnicking at a quaint park; the trees were sparkling after a light rain and toddlers were toddling across the grass and tulips were waving in the breeze, for Christ’s sake. It was mortifying, how Sound of Music it all was—especially when you consider that both Jonathan and I insist musicals are the lowest form of entertainment, right below public lynching.

Why continue submitting to a proven recipe for disaster? Take two cups pressure to conform, equal amounts fear and isolation, add a dash of childhood trauma and you’ve got marriage. Put that in the microwave with sexual urges and animal behavior, cook on high until the whole thing either caves in with apathy or explodes with infidelity. There is no such thing as a genuinely happy marriage, there are just varying degrees of skill in the performance of one.

Cynical? Maybe. I’ve earned my cynicism, though. I wear it like a Purple Heart.

My parents split up when I was eleven. My father, the shop teacher—skinny and slouching, sporting horn-rimmed glasses and pants that showed his blinding white socks—started giving it to a twenty-six-year-old dental hygienist with major cleavage. Simon does Sally. It was a mess. Calistoga (think sleepy, claustrophobic, its only claim to fame a line of mediocre beverages) had a great time laughing about it behind cupped fingers.

After the divorce, my mother moved to Marin County, studied numerology, unblocked her chakras and became an embarrassingly successful hypnotherapist. Her main clients were miserable bleach-blond divorcées driving Beemers and wearing dream catcher earrings. She started marrying with a vengeance, always with an unerring eye for the clod who would make her (and, by association, me) most miserable. I called her a serial wifer. She didn’t need them for their money; she was driven by something much deeper, more compulsive and masochistic. She once said to me, “Claudia, I don’t marry because I want to. I marry because I find it impossible not to.”

As for my father, he married the dental hygienist, who turned out to be a hypochondriac. She got out of her dental career, claiming the drills exacerbated her migraines, and sponged off my father, consuming his modest but carefully stashed savings, until a guy rolled into town who built swimming pools, and she went off with him. It was a weird time in my life, watching the drama of my parents’ love and (worse yet) sex lives unfold with the creepy predictability of a B horror flick. At first I dug my nails into my arm and tried not to scream, but by the time I was into my teens I observed it all with cool detachment, bored by the snowballing disaster of it all.

Cynical? Isn’t observant a little more accurate?

Anyway, now that my Jonathan-induced amnesia is safely behind me, I have every reason to be thrilled that he fell for a jailbait temptress and ran off with her. I should send them a dozen roses with a note: Better you than me. Let them indulge in each other’s flesh until they’re surfeit with sex and kisses and don’t-ever-leave-me-I-love-yous and the slow, torturous monotony of the future stretches out before them like the open ocean before seasick stowaways. I’m done with it all. From now on, I’ll be a warrior for non-monogamy. I’ll fight the good fight, protesting the evil of the bridal industry and romantic comedies wherever they rear their treacherous, sycophantic heads.