This weekend a good friend of mine from high school got married. The ceremony was in Arizona, and though I could not take the time off of work to drive down there and offer him my condolences in person, my parents (who consider him as their own son) were in attendance and assured me it was a lovely experience. I'm happy for him, honestly. He couldn't have chosen a better bride to keep him out of trouble. They are heading to Salt Lake City for their honeymoon (which seems a bit unfortunate to me but nobody asked my opinion) and so they were in town last night where I was able to see him for a few hours. He seemed happy and, more or less, the same as always; it's still early.
I think of marriage rather like I think of bungee jumping: I'm sure it's great if you like that sort of thing, but I don't really have much of a desire to give it a try. It's the big craze these days; everybody's doing it, even members of my own gender who I had previously expected to have better sense. As President-for-Life of the Bachelor Club, it has been my solemn and sad duty from time to time to formally excommunicate members of our noble brotherhood who take the final plunge into everlasting matrimony. I wish them well in their new-found life, but it is my responsibility on these occasions to serve as a reminder to them that with this drastic change of lifestyle many doors are now closed to them. No longer will they stay up until four in the morning partaking of Playstation and pizza in equal proportions, surrounded by their brothers who will never ask them if their butts look big in the sauce-stained jeans they are wearing. I suppose one eventually outgrows this sort of thing and no longer has any problem giving it up in exchange for married bliss, but to those of us still lacking the “maturity” to do the same this so-called institution of “marriage” amounts to nothing less than treason and betrayal of the highest order.
As I am now twenty and four years old, well within reach of the official “danger to society” age limit set by my conservative community, many friends of my age have now been married and they are all, without exception, far less fun than they used to be. Therein lies the axiom I convieniently coined just moments ago off the top of my head: “The price of marriage is everything cool.” My newly-married buddies promise to still hang out sometime, but it never happens. Usually we lose all contact for several years until I receive an announcement that they have successfully procreated. The only exception to this is my friend Aaron, who was married already when I met him, and whose wife is so phenomenally awesome that she not only encourages him to do cool things but participates herself. Not all men are so lucky.
I have nothing against the female species, but I must admit that most of them have absolutely no sense of what is cool. Mention the X-box in mixed company on BYU campus and you'll see what I mean: cold, level stares of disdain from girls who see Microsoft's little electronic device as competition on a very personal level. I could provide a long list of reasons why video games are preferable to the fairer sex, but I would hardly be the first to do so and I have no desire to be labeled a chauvinist (perhaps its too late). I'm a liberal, after all; I'm 100% for women's rights. I shout, “You go, girl!” when I read feminist literary theory. And yet in situations of love and dating I find myself, like Shakespeare's Benedick, to be “a professed tyrant to their sex.” In fact, the similarities between this famous character from “Much Ado About Nothing” and the women-hating persona I frequently adopt are so striking that I often use lines from the play to express myself:
“I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love.... May I be so converted and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not!” (Act 2, Scene 1)
The problem is, however, that in Shakespeare's story Benedick does end up falling in love and getting married, saying:
“In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.” (Act 5, Scene 4)
Does Shakespeare have a point, or is he only another traitor to the Bachelor Club? Does even the President-for-Life (PFL) burn with a inner passion for another's touch? Does he fear to live his life alone? Does he scorn and mock that which he only fears he will never obtain? Or does he love already, secretly, and hides his love beneath a mask of frivolity? We cannot tell, and to say too much would be a violation of the standards of his high office, but of this much we can be sure: he is but human, at the end of the day, and video games and pizza aside, it is the human predisposition to love and seek love in return. It may be that one day you will hear him say with Signior Benedick, “When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”
But don't hold your breath.
I think of marriage rather like I think of bungee jumping: I'm sure it's great if you like that sort of thing, but I don't really have much of a desire to give it a try. It's the big craze these days; everybody's doing it, even members of my own gender who I had previously expected to have better sense. As President-for-Life of the Bachelor Club, it has been my solemn and sad duty from time to time to formally excommunicate members of our noble brotherhood who take the final plunge into everlasting matrimony. I wish them well in their new-found life, but it is my responsibility on these occasions to serve as a reminder to them that with this drastic change of lifestyle many doors are now closed to them. No longer will they stay up until four in the morning partaking of Playstation and pizza in equal proportions, surrounded by their brothers who will never ask them if their butts look big in the sauce-stained jeans they are wearing. I suppose one eventually outgrows this sort of thing and no longer has any problem giving it up in exchange for married bliss, but to those of us still lacking the “maturity” to do the same this so-called institution of “marriage” amounts to nothing less than treason and betrayal of the highest order.
As I am now twenty and four years old, well within reach of the official “danger to society” age limit set by my conservative community, many friends of my age have now been married and they are all, without exception, far less fun than they used to be. Therein lies the axiom I convieniently coined just moments ago off the top of my head: “The price of marriage is everything cool.” My newly-married buddies promise to still hang out sometime, but it never happens. Usually we lose all contact for several years until I receive an announcement that they have successfully procreated. The only exception to this is my friend Aaron, who was married already when I met him, and whose wife is so phenomenally awesome that she not only encourages him to do cool things but participates herself. Not all men are so lucky.
I have nothing against the female species, but I must admit that most of them have absolutely no sense of what is cool. Mention the X-box in mixed company on BYU campus and you'll see what I mean: cold, level stares of disdain from girls who see Microsoft's little electronic device as competition on a very personal level. I could provide a long list of reasons why video games are preferable to the fairer sex, but I would hardly be the first to do so and I have no desire to be labeled a chauvinist (perhaps its too late). I'm a liberal, after all; I'm 100% for women's rights. I shout, “You go, girl!” when I read feminist literary theory. And yet in situations of love and dating I find myself, like Shakespeare's Benedick, to be “a professed tyrant to their sex.” In fact, the similarities between this famous character from “Much Ado About Nothing” and the women-hating persona I frequently adopt are so striking that I often use lines from the play to express myself:
“I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love.... May I be so converted and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not!” (Act 2, Scene 1)
The problem is, however, that in Shakespeare's story Benedick does end up falling in love and getting married, saying:
“In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.” (Act 5, Scene 4)
Does Shakespeare have a point, or is he only another traitor to the Bachelor Club? Does even the President-for-Life (PFL) burn with a inner passion for another's touch? Does he fear to live his life alone? Does he scorn and mock that which he only fears he will never obtain? Or does he love already, secretly, and hides his love beneath a mask of frivolity? We cannot tell, and to say too much would be a violation of the standards of his high office, but of this much we can be sure: he is but human, at the end of the day, and video games and pizza aside, it is the human predisposition to love and seek love in return. It may be that one day you will hear him say with Signior Benedick, “When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”
But don't hold your breath.
Comments
THE favorite aunt, but not the rich one
Somewhere she waits, a shyly adorable girl of wit and gentle charm, matching you in literary snap and exceeding you in graciousness. I just hope you get to her before I do.
Mu-ha.