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dragonlady7So my baby sister just got surprise!married in Nevada in the midst of a cross-country trip with some dude whose name I had to ask her (and which I can now pronounce but can't spell-- it's either Zack or Zach, and I don't know whether that's short for Zachary or not). She evidently would have liked me to be shocked-- not because she is one who enjoys provoking shock in particular, though she certainly does delight in contrarity-- but my reaction was "That's hilarious!" Which might have offended her, but honestly, one doesn't get surprise married to some dude if you're not looking to offend anybody, which in my book means get ready to be offended right back.
There's much less drama over this than it sounds. "I hadn't known you were dating," I said, to which she answered, "we weren't," which also sounds awfully dramatic. But the thing is, Z and I have been shacked up for six years and we never really dated either. I honestly have been on like two dates in my life and they were awful (unless you count yesterday's unpremeditated lunch outing, which Z retroactively referred to as "a lunch date"-- does that even count??). I don't date. My family, we don't really date. It's not our scene. We make pretty quick decisions about this shit and are either right or wrong. (So far, I'm counting more "rights" than "wrongs", so it seems effective, but then, we also don't necessarily tell one another about the strikeouts, so I could be dealing with flawed data.) It's not complicated and fraught affairs of the heart. No, it's pretty practical shit, really. Not that it's unsentimental, it's just, well, sort of not.
We have in the past theorized that my baby sister is actually a reptile, but I know this is not so. We Kelly girls have our own strange internal lives, and were not raised to dance the nice social dances and pretend to feel the Hollywood fancy shit. Kill yourself for a man? Hah! Kill him, maybe, but more likely just get on with your goddamn life because you have shit to do, honey. (Though maybe you could give your sisters his home address "by accident" and see what happens.) Our father's first gift to our mother, during their courtship, was a garbage can, because she needed a garbage can. They got engaged because our mother said, well, I had decided that if nothing happened to keep me in this area, I was going to go live somewhere near the ocean, so if you haven't any pressing need for me to remain here, I'll just be off now, and our father said, Actually, if you wouldn't mind, could we get married instead? And she said, Oh sure, and the four of us were born. Well, not immediately. But pretty quickly.
We Kelly girls (she wasn't a Kelly girl yet but she soon was), we don't fuck around.
I still don't know how to spell his name, but I suppose it's not really any of my business. I'll find out if/when my sister decides whether she's taking his name or not. And I suppose I'll find that out when she sends me her new address.
Not that she's moving in with him yet. But still.
Whatever. It's not really my business.
That's not intended to sound cold-hearted. I'd be proud of her if I wasn't pissed off at her.
Why am I pissed off?
Because God-damnit, you know how many people are going to start bugging me about when I'm getting married? And even if they don't, my twenty-ninth birthday is in like a week or something, and I'm going to be dealing with all these imaginary people that I think are thinking about it, because I am not entirely a Kelly girl at heart. Well, I am, but I don't always remember that-- it's the stupid fucking novelist thing, it drives me insane. I've got hypothetical people having hypothetical opinions out the goddamn wazoo twenty-four seven. I can't even have a goddamn dream as myself.
(Although all of them have been about Pennsic lately. Weird.)
It was actually a milestone goddamn event for me when I actually had a sexual fantasy as myself last week, though what confused the everloving hell out of me was that I was having it about someone I wasn't actually interested in.
You can't have it all!!!
But anyway, I digressed. Yeah. So let me articulate my extremely Catholic views on marriage:
It's a sacred institution.
You don't just get married because you fancy yourself in love with someone.
You get married because you have a legal reason to need to be tied to that person.
Basically:
Children,
Property,
Insurance/Inheritance/HIPPA/Retirement.
My mother thinks this is mercenary. I'm just going back to the real traditional values here. You don't marry someone because they have pretty goddamn eyes. Don't be shallow. This is the goddamn law here.
I've been shacked up with Z for six years. I don't really need to "make a commitment" to him. I have a goddamn commitment: I no longer know what I own and what he owns. We have a goddamn cat together. We can't fucking break up. Christ, it would be the end of days. He's my best friend. I don't know what the hell I would do without him. He's been the most important person in my life for a really long time now-- as in, basically since college. I graduated, spent about a month in my mom's house, tore my hair out, and ran away to his place and just never came back. That's pretty much my whole adult life. I don't think I need some man in a skirt* to make me say it in front of everyone I know for it to be real. I don't need a piece of paper.
I need a piece of paper if there's any reason that a lawyer is going to have this be his business. And there are a lot of reasons like that out there. Just not at the moment, really.
I don't know if my baby sister's ideas mesh with mine totally, but anyway, that's my take on it. She felt the need to become legally incorporated with this dude; fine. I'm just bummed because the other half of bothering to get married is basically having an excuse to throw a huge party for everyone you know, and I feel gypped. It's kind of the consolation for having to go through a big legal hassle, slightly more festive (but only slightly-- we are Irish after all) than a funeral which is roughly the same thing only the other end.
Eh. We don't fuck around.
___________________________
* "man in a skirt" is a direct quote from my grandmother Kelly, incidentally, I believe on the topic of birth control. She was about 85 and watching TV, and said somewhat irately, "What's some man in a skirt doing telling me what to do with my body?"
I miss my Grandma Kelly a lot, I sure do. Her funeral, incidentally, was a hell of a party, but I'd really rather not have another one like it anytime soon.
There's much less drama over this than it sounds. "I hadn't known you were dating," I said, to which she answered, "we weren't," which also sounds awfully dramatic. But the thing is, Z and I have been shacked up for six years and we never really dated either. I honestly have been on like two dates in my life and they were awful (unless you count yesterday's unpremeditated lunch outing, which Z retroactively referred to as "a lunch date"-- does that even count??). I don't date. My family, we don't really date. It's not our scene. We make pretty quick decisions about this shit and are either right or wrong. (So far, I'm counting more "rights" than "wrongs", so it seems effective, but then, we also don't necessarily tell one another about the strikeouts, so I could be dealing with flawed data.) It's not complicated and fraught affairs of the heart. No, it's pretty practical shit, really. Not that it's unsentimental, it's just, well, sort of not.
We have in the past theorized that my baby sister is actually a reptile, but I know this is not so. We Kelly girls have our own strange internal lives, and were not raised to dance the nice social dances and pretend to feel the Hollywood fancy shit. Kill yourself for a man? Hah! Kill him, maybe, but more likely just get on with your goddamn life because you have shit to do, honey. (Though maybe you could give your sisters his home address "by accident" and see what happens.) Our father's first gift to our mother, during their courtship, was a garbage can, because she needed a garbage can. They got engaged because our mother said, well, I had decided that if nothing happened to keep me in this area, I was going to go live somewhere near the ocean, so if you haven't any pressing need for me to remain here, I'll just be off now, and our father said, Actually, if you wouldn't mind, could we get married instead? And she said, Oh sure, and the four of us were born. Well, not immediately. But pretty quickly.
We Kelly girls (she wasn't a Kelly girl yet but she soon was), we don't fuck around.
I still don't know how to spell his name, but I suppose it's not really any of my business. I'll find out if/when my sister decides whether she's taking his name or not. And I suppose I'll find that out when she sends me her new address.
Not that she's moving in with him yet. But still.
Whatever. It's not really my business.
That's not intended to sound cold-hearted. I'd be proud of her if I wasn't pissed off at her.
Why am I pissed off?
Because God-damnit, you know how many people are going to start bugging me about when I'm getting married? And even if they don't, my twenty-ninth birthday is in like a week or something, and I'm going to be dealing with all these imaginary people that I think are thinking about it, because I am not entirely a Kelly girl at heart. Well, I am, but I don't always remember that-- it's the stupid fucking novelist thing, it drives me insane. I've got hypothetical people having hypothetical opinions out the goddamn wazoo twenty-four seven. I can't even have a goddamn dream as myself.
(Although all of them have been about Pennsic lately. Weird.)
It was actually a milestone goddamn event for me when I actually had a sexual fantasy as myself last week, though what confused the everloving hell out of me was that I was having it about someone I wasn't actually interested in.
You can't have it all!!!
But anyway, I digressed. Yeah. So let me articulate my extremely Catholic views on marriage:
It's a sacred institution.
You don't just get married because you fancy yourself in love with someone.
You get married because you have a legal reason to need to be tied to that person.
Basically:
Children,
Property,
Insurance/Inheritance/HIPPA/Retirement.
My mother thinks this is mercenary. I'm just going back to the real traditional values here. You don't marry someone because they have pretty goddamn eyes. Don't be shallow. This is the goddamn law here.
I've been shacked up with Z for six years. I don't really need to "make a commitment" to him. I have a goddamn commitment: I no longer know what I own and what he owns. We have a goddamn cat together. We can't fucking break up. Christ, it would be the end of days. He's my best friend. I don't know what the hell I would do without him. He's been the most important person in my life for a really long time now-- as in, basically since college. I graduated, spent about a month in my mom's house, tore my hair out, and ran away to his place and just never came back. That's pretty much my whole adult life. I don't think I need some man in a skirt* to make me say it in front of everyone I know for it to be real. I don't need a piece of paper.
I need a piece of paper if there's any reason that a lawyer is going to have this be his business. And there are a lot of reasons like that out there. Just not at the moment, really.
I don't know if my baby sister's ideas mesh with mine totally, but anyway, that's my take on it. She felt the need to become legally incorporated with this dude; fine. I'm just bummed because the other half of bothering to get married is basically having an excuse to throw a huge party for everyone you know, and I feel gypped. It's kind of the consolation for having to go through a big legal hassle, slightly more festive (but only slightly-- we are Irish after all) than a funeral which is roughly the same thing only the other end.
Eh. We don't fuck around.
___________________________
* "man in a skirt" is a direct quote from my grandmother Kelly, incidentally, I believe on the topic of birth control. She was about 85 and watching TV, and said somewhat irately, "What's some man in a skirt doing telling me what to do with my body?"
I miss my Grandma Kelly a lot, I sure do. Her funeral, incidentally, was a hell of a party, but I'd really rather not have another one like it anytime soon.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 05:52 am (UTC)You could always just throw yourself a party, with some thing you recite to each other because you feel like it. Make it an excuse to make yourself a great big totally impractical expensive dress and break out the booze.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 10:05 am (UTC)