The Melancholy

I find it important to introduce this piece in the simplest of ways. By no means is it absolute as nothing in life is. It's but a mere interpretation of a life I can only understand in movies and not through my experience - perhaps one day (that's a BIG perhaps). This piece doesn't even take into account institutional marriage through the gay/bi/5th other eye... again, it's not a part of my experience. Enjoy.

Do you remember being a kid and coming to the realization that one day, you too, would potentially marry someone? Well me neither, but there must have been some point in my life when I realized I would eventually get married to someone, somewhere, sometime… at least I thought. I mean, isn’t that what grown folks are supposed to do?

I bring this up because at the age of 27, I still in no way shape or form desire a life that requires validation through a relationship that in itself requires validation through a signature on a piece of paper… it all seems a bit 15th century-like to me. Shouldn’t love be allowed to flourish in its bare sensibility minus “proper documentation?” If one subscribes to such madness, then surely one subscribes to the notion of borders, walls and hierarchies… patriarchy no less. All just my opinion.

It seems that the older you get, the less socially acceptable one appears to be if the box next to single continues to get happily check marked… like single twenty/thirty-somethings pose a threat to the norm of family Americana. “Why don’t these bastards fall in line?!? Honey, I think we should invite Lucio and his girlfriend to church on Sunday. They’re trying to pull some twenty first century hippie type bullshit and I don’t like it one bit” Salmon eventually reproduce don’t they… I mean they swim upstream and manage to co-exist with the rest of aquatic life. Ah, but if only we could mimic the animal kingdom – would make for some interesting reality television no? Really though, I keep tabs on my health insurance – as if my company’s going to cancel it because I continue to pay the bare minimum – single status.

Marriage is one of those things that I’ve failed to accomplish post high school, yet I feel damn proud and accomplished because of it… strange I suppose, but I couldn’t be happier…, at least by my theoretical standards – monogamy is way over-rated! I lie, I love my girlfriend kids. Not to shit on those with un-tanned fingers, marriage certificates in drawers beneath boxers and socks, tax dependants exceeding the singular sensation of one. I don’t think it’s the grass that looks greener on the other side, it’s the folks standing on it… with envy.

So where do we… er, I go from here? As folks previous to me and previous to those I once knew… and previous to those they once heard about and so on and so on and so… I continue to live by the idea that I am capable of loving another, even bearing children with another without “walking down the aisle” as they say… similar to what Tookie must have heard previous to execution Terminator style. “Dead, man, walking!” I believe in love above all else, above a signature, above a tax exemption, above divorce (for without marriage this term would be as useful as democracy), I believe in a society where one can say to another, “Hey mi amor, how’s about we order a pizza and drink some of this fine wine… damn girl, you never heard of Charles Shaw?” ...and not feel uncomfortably obligated to the person on the other end of the 2 buck chuck.

- Lucio