I've often wondered how the other half lives. I mean all the married people. How do they live? I've heard a lot of cynicism about how reality sets in, soon after the ceremony, and I've been around enough married couples who've been married for a lifetime already, who fight constantly to do the least little bit of communicating with each other at all. I've had enough experience to be familiar enough with the Halleluiah Hula that I don't believe risking everything to get a sex partner is worth the heartache.
I've comforted friends who have cried the blues because their spouse didn't want to have kids all of a sudden, when having kids together was my friend's point in getting married to the girl in the first place. I've heard how depressed it made him feel that they'd never have a family of their own. I've known such people whose wives became pregnant soon after the blues hits the husband. I've been to friend's homes, when they've got their own rug rats cluttering up their floors with “toys,” which seem to be the things which take away all the secure footing in the entire house.
I've made public statements that I feel uncomfortable around children, until some public places ask me to go away and not come back, under threat of a trespassing charge. What kind of trumped up crap is that? I'd rather not be around my friend's kids, because their kids make me nervous. I'm not on the verge of committing a crime. I just want to stay away from having any kind of interaction with kids, who are the epitome of vulnerability, and I don't want to be around with that sort of state of mind under foot to have to concern myself with.
Friends go through all the baby-proofing of their houses, just so the little ones theoretically can't get ahold of anything that could hurt them, only to have their two year old eating Cheerios off the bare floor in the kitchen, after they've gotten to the food by dumping it out onto the floor, because they're hungry at a time that doesn't make any sense. The whole ball game baffles me completely. How do guys like that ever get to the point where they justify their own behaviors and belief systems? How do they ever get past the cynicism to actually manage to have a successful marriage and a successful fatherhood?
It's all too dangerous for an old fall risk like me. I never know, when I'm in such situations, when I'll be tripping on the “toys” and falling headlong into wherever I end up, with the baby in my arms at the time. Gee. Just the kind of circumstances I'd like to avoid forever. What I am is a confirmed bachelor, since the get-go. I've only wanted to marry one girl, but the time came between us – before the ceremony – when getting married just didn't make any good sense to me. In those days, I had no substance and no job. I was a no count kind of guy, who had an illness that was going to keep me a no count kind of guy for a long time.
I've known guys who did everything they could possibly think of to get married, and failed, only to succeed when they least expected it. They've done everything they can think of to make themselves attractive, only to find that maybe they didn't want to be all that attractive after all. I knew a guy who told me all sorts of things about how his marriage that were not the least bit idyllic or desirable, and he told me flat-out that if I wanted her, I could have her.
I've known guys who tried to get pregnant with their wives from way back, but when the object seems the most illusive to them, is exactly when they actually succeed in achieving a pregnancy. I've known pregnant women who go through the most unspeakable discomfort, who drive their husbands nuts for nine months time, who just need another guy, a confirmed bachelor man to talk to, who knows how to be kind, in a platonic way, to a tormented female.
I've known guys who went through all sorts of changes, just to find themselves in the sites of some woman they've scarcely noticed in their mutual circles, someone who is unflaggingly obstinate about how she wants decency in their marriage, to a point of distraction from the consummation of the marriage in the first place. How does a guy marry a girl who has no passion whatsoever? How does a guy get past the time he wants what he wants when he wants it, only to find he gets what she's got when he gets it? How does a guy trust in a situation like that?
It's occurred to me that I've gotten relatively close to getting married any number of times, but my fear has always rescued me, and I've undermined the process every time. I realize I'm more than a little bit cavalier with the ladies, as a focus of my social behavior, but in recent times I've been living in the hen house, being the only rooster who can't be caught, while the senior citizens in this crazy house try their darnedest to make anything at all happen between us. It's going on, on the internet, too. The case of the lone gentleman, who doesn't want what he thinks he wants, most of the time.