a proposal
Dear Maria, My Love, My Darling,
This is a marriage proposal. I’ll say that outright so you know what your answer should be at the end of this letter and my reasons behind writing it. So, here it goes. I guess I’m at a point in my life where I tolerate your presence enough to share in a tradition that will cost us fortunes while people who consider us their friends celebrate our camaraderie and more importantly, give us things of value. I hope that we’ll be able to stand each other and will have enough spark in our friendship–our sexual friendship–to put aside any differences that might come our way. I say let’s test the waters because I’m a good swimmer. I have more to lose than you do anyway, really.
As I’ve mulled over this this possibility of a life with you specifically, I’ve asked myself many questions. Do we cohabitate because that’s what we’re supposed to do? Are we as humans, like the penguin, supposed to get only one partner, or is that something we just say when we’re lonely and watching the Discovery Channel? Now, I like penguins. And I think about monogamous penguins in love and how romantic that is. Then I think of penguins doing it and can’t quite imagine penguins humping, so I assume that with marriage comes a life without sexual contact, or if it does exist, it looks funny or results in flipper babies. These are the conclusions I draw and why I think that you should agree with me.
I love you. I know before I’ve used air quotes to say that, but I think I’m willing to remove them now, or at least only use them in the privacy of our own home. I do not understand marriage or myself, or the idea of bringing another life into the world. That terrifies me more than being alone. It seems too easy, and dare I say tempting to ruin someone else. Just absolutely ruin. Mentally, financially…Not physically, because I’m not a vicious or particularly strong individual. But there are so many ways to damage someone just by doing the slightest of things. I’m not saying I would, but I’m just saying I’m human for thinking about it. So no, I do not want children.
I hope to not get in the way of your dreams, and I hope you will support me and my wishes so that I might get my way–at least a good majority of the time–so that I may not resent you for compromising my goals which may or may not involve you. Not that I think that you have any of your own, or foresee this being a problem.
I hope that underneath the surface of our love there is no animosity that will lie dormant until the other grows tired of the other’s presence. Then I assume we’d part, hopefully amicably. Or maybe dramatically with me riding a motorcycle away from the scene, you throwing my clothes out the window, a goat mysteriously walking through the yard, me, smoking a cigarette and throwing it behind me, the goat mysteriously bursting into flames. I’d take up smoking in our relationship so that this might occur.
Though I do not promise to be civil after the separation (because you know how I am with ways of jealousy and well, I’m just being honest, which is something you adamantly claimed I was not), I hope you will not hold my straying heart against me after I gave you so many years of complacency and filled the role you were looking for financially. I did hold a steady job for, well, a few years at least and you seemed to like being out of the house more than me. And you were the most charming crossing guard on the block until you started to fill out that vest. (Again, I’m working on my honesty.)
And even after I manage to completely skew the facts in the divorce hearings, I hope that you will appreciate my talent for the lost art of storytelling. Let us remember that these things, like money or a house that was once ours, these are just things. And you don’t need them. You don’t need these possessions that weigh you down. I need them. And I’m glad I can help you by lifting that burden.
I want you to have memories that include us. Now with that, I will await your return from work. I’ll apologize in advance because admittedly I could not control myself with a pint of chocolate-chip cookie dough ice cream in the freezer that did have your name on it, but I figured that was in the metaphorical sense, and I just renamed it after myself.
As a reminder, this is a marriage proposal, and I look forward to hearing you say yes.
Yours,
Charles
