I Don’t Blame Bigfoot, & Other Anniversary Reflections

My 29^th wedding anniversary approaches apace, and I must take some space to thank Husband for nearly three decades of devotion.   I must also thank the gods of chaos and fate for arranging my marriage.  I certainly had very little to do with it – I was young and stupid and engaged to someone else at the time.   Husband and I met down at the courthouse one Friday afternoon, said a few quick casual words, and that was the end and the beginning of that.

What was I to do?  Scratch out the groom’s name on the wedding invitations and add a write-in ballot candidate?  Eloping was the only alternative.

Talk of taking space takes me again to the far reaches of space.  I’ve not been able to bleach the image of Simon Parkes and his  7-foot crispy-insect off-world lover from the retina of my brain.  He is very careful to clarify her sex, mind you.  Nothing queer about this relationship, no sir.  He has a lovechild named Zarka to prove it.

Just when I’m almost over him, Mr. Parkes goes back on national British television to add that his first alien sexual encounter took place when he was six years old.  Asked whether the alien had been concerned about his rather young age, the now 52-year-old replies: “No, because it’s about experience and your soul.”

Souls are at stake, here.  It’s godless gambling, this profligate mating of cards from different suites.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has upped the ante on a bet media personality Glenn Beck threw down on the table.   Beck, fretting over the end of the world as we know it, says the Supreme Court’s Marriage Act ruling will inevitably lead to rampant polygamy: “If you change one variable — man and a woman to man and man, and woman and woman — you cannot then tell me that you can’t logically tell me you can’t change the other variable — one man, three women. Uh, one woman, four men . . .”   (sic).

He becomes rather too publicly excited at the thought of all these possible combinations.  Someone should remind him that such things are best considered late at night, and privately.

And just what, exactly, is a “media personality?”  You’re at the pearly gates, attempting to justify the way in which you spent your days.  Saint Peter takes notes, exchanging occasional wry looks with the Big Guy over the top of his reading glasses.  You say, a bit too defensively, “Yes, but I was a Media Personality!”

Rand Paul trumps Beck’s polygamy play, saying, “ . . . it is difficult because if we have no laws on this people take it to one extension further. Does it have to be humans?”

I doubt he deliberately uses “extension” as a subtle sexual play on words.  I’d like him better if he did.

When I was in the illegal market for a spouse (saddled already with that fiancé, remember), I fell into a very conservative mindset and, to my liberal shame, overlooked non-human options.  I didn’t want a lot of bull or a greedy pig or a stubborn mule or a drooling dog or a silly goose or a cold fish or even a great ass or Bantam cock.  I was after a good heart and good conversation and, with any luck, a good cook.

I suppose such qualities might be found beneath fur or feathers.  Had Bigfoot swept me off my feet with Weinerschnitzel, homemade Spätzle, and a crisp Alsatian white, he might have gotten lucky (Exhibit A).

Working on this blog has given me a rather bizarre electronic footprint – I’m a woman who researches sex with aliens, Sasquatch, the end of the world, conspiracy theory, and (even more frightening) conservative talk show hosts.  Saint Peter will really raise his eyebrows when presented with this list.

Browsing for Bigfoot images a few weeks ago, I learn that scientific research proves him to be the genetic product of a human female and some unknown male hominid.

This rankles a bit.  After all, it’s farm boys who torment the hogs and cowboys who take to the sheep.  Impassioned sailors see seals and imagine mermaids.  We girls aren’t the ones generally caught in flagrante delicto with other species.   Isn’t it far more likely that a horny human male humped some buxom primate who was no doubt asking for it?

But, as Simon says, it’s about experience and your soul.  Consider, for example, actor James Woods, 66, and his latest girlfriend, who’s 20 (Exhibit B).  What can they possibly have in common?  The differences of two generations in age make them altogether alien to each other.

Perhaps that’s the attraction.  Parkes and his partner and Bigfoot and his babe will attest.

Former Fiancé and I have our hometown and the desire to get away from it in common, but not much else.  This is at the height of my Opposites Attract phase, which I thankfully outgrow before being trussed up like a sacrificial virgin in white satin and lace.

I take off for Colorado with a boy I think I might love when he grows up.  Sounds wonderfully warm and romantic, eh?  Former Fiancé neglects to tell me that his brother and his best friend are coming along as well, and some girl he’s agreed to drive back to school in Boulder, and her big dog, and two guys we have to drop off somewhere in Wisconsin, and a dresser that needs to be delivered to a friend of his mother’s in Ohio.  We load Former Fiancé’s rusty old baby blue Chevy van and my  little ’72 Volkswagon Dasher up with all the worldly goods of the collective and take off.  We have maybe $400 between the seven of us.

I know I’ve made a tragic mistake before we cross the Pennsylvania border, but in my family one sleeps in the bed one makes, especially if one is not speaking metaphorically.  I sleep there (it’s a sloshy old cold waterbed, which I hate) in a basement apartment for two years, working at a bank while Former Fiancé goes back to school and his brother and best friend and an assortment of other misfits and strays and hangers-on camps out with us.

I am Wendy Darling, living with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

It’s not all bad.

But J.M. Barrie’s Wendy eventually learns to accept the virtues of adulthood.  She leaves Neverland for London, having decided not to postpone maturity any longer.  My Wendy doesn’t get to London, but does the same.

Former Fiancé takes me to an elegant party thrown by a respected college professor for his favorite graduating students.  It is a month or so before we’re to return home and get married.  Former Fiancé, as is his wont, has half a cheap beer, becomes stupid, and begins mooning people.  He is out on the expansive deck, pants down around his ankles, butt up against the expensive plate glass window.   Everyone laughs, shaking their heads.

I do not laugh.  I do shake my head.

“What’d I do?” he asks, as I leave him.  “You’re looking at me like I’m an alien or something.”

I step off the deck of that spaceship, bid Bigfoot goodbye, and go for the Weinerschnitzel and the dry German wine; I never was the cheap beer type.  Twenty-nine years later, I’ve no regrets and a great deal of gratitude.  Thank you, Husband, for all the Spätzle.