<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Drooling on the Pillow

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Going To The Chapel of Love 

I haven't mentioned this before, but the Goddess is my second wife. We all get a mulligan, am I right?

The first Mrs. Sluggo was a professional figure skater. I met her while working at a LORT theatre in Lake Placid during the late '70's. We did an outstanding Scapino and a pretty much cataclysmic Romeo and Juliet. But enough about me.

She was a straightforward kind of gal who loved to sew and write songs and play the guitar. A really nice person and the first Republican I ever dated. Her father was a collegiate hockey coach and only the fact of his innate decency allowed him to more or less hide the fact that he despised me. He had his reasons.

She had a life-long dream to skate with the Ice Capades. The attainment of that dream coincided with the end of our marriage. It was a dreadful mismatch executed at the exact wrong time for both of us and we both realized we were well out of it.

The divorce was consummated with zero acrimony. We each went out of our way to make it easy for the other. No money problems, property problems or, thank God, custody problems. A slicker, jollier sundering was never accomplished.

It destroyed me for about five years.

But that's another story. The reason I brought up the penultimate wife was overhearing someone at work talking on the phone to a friend about her impending nuptials and the problems she was having writing the vows. She gave samples to her friend of her work. To me, it just sounded like a Hallmark Card that'd been pounding the ganja. Moral, emotional and spiritual nonsense. I sometimes think it was this notion of personal vows that set loose the golems of doom in our society. It's sort of like a mortgage where the bank and you are allowed to each make your own terms. That's heartache ahead.

Anyway, we were to be wed in a beautiful Episcopal church overlooking the St. Lawrence river in Alexandria Bay. In our meetings with the priest he asked if there was anything special we wanted to do with the vows. I pipe up with what I thought was a reasonable request. I wanted us each to say 'love, honor and obey.' I explained to his fatherness that the notion of obedience was to the larger entity of our marriage and we should both be bound by it. I wasn't locked in to the idea; in fact it may have just floated through the brain at that instant. But he tut-tuts and hrumphs and says "We don't do obey anymore."

I looked at him and said, "But we're allowed to write our own vows, now, right?"

"Oh, yes."

"What if I put it in there? What if we each wrote our own vows and included the notion of obedience."

"I, uh, I would really be more comfortable if you didn't."

Well, as long as the freaking priest is comfortable. That's the main thing.

I didn't make a big deal out of it. Which is good because it might have ruined one of the last purely happy days we had.
Posted by: Sluggo / 7:05 PM
|
Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com Listed on BlogShares