It’s not a long story, but it’s a story as old as time.
Michael’s family is filthy rich. They invented Jell-O or something. Michael will never work a day in his life.
These are Michael’s marriages.
(I have not been married myself.)
Marriage #0
This marriage lasted one second.
Her smile felt stale. Her tongue was orange. Her favorite soft drink was Fanta.
Michael was happy to know that about her.
On the verge of saying something, he decides on saying nothing.
Marriage #1
This marriage lasted about a minute.
Call it a drug den. Call it the most disgusting room in this town, and that’s saying a lot.
Michael was filthy rich, but he enjoyed blending in.
He’d fallen in with a fast and dirty crowd.
At six o’clock in the morning, the polluted cocaine was wearing off, and the revolting aftermath was beginning.
Then another packet of the same cocaine was fished out of a stranger’s back pocket.
Everyone in the disgusting room, including Michael, wanted to be friends with the stranger.
Michael felt alive, awake, and utterly brilliant again.
From the corner of his eye he spotted a girl with extraordinary silver hair.
He was asking her so many important questions.
He couldn’t help himself.
Does she have a godfather? What does she think about men? What’s her name?
Suzanna. Michael and Suzanna. They could share a life together. Things could be great.
Sufferers of substance abuse disorder, Michael and Suzanna could make a charity of it, stockpiling all the drugs in the world, and naming the effort after someone famous.
At seven o’clock in the morning, Michael summons the courage to approach Suzanna.
“Don’t tell, tell me,” he says, “your, your name, it’s Suzanna…”
Michael is blinking. Like a lunatic.
“No, my name’s Gregg,” says Gregg.
There was never silver hair. There was never Suzanna. There was never a girl. Michael was dreaming her up. There were only young men in boxer shorts abusing themselves in the dark.
Marriage #2
This marriage lasted around an hour.
Michael wasn’t flabby, just directionless and shackled by lust, so his therapist suggested meeting cute girls at the gym.
That was the prescription.
Anyway, she’s a bodybuilder. She sprouts a bit of peach fuzz every month or so. She starts beating Michael. The beatings, vicious and unforgivable, escalate in severity.
She ruins his boyish good looks.
On one occasion, she beats Michael within an inch of his life—or, rather, within an inch of his wife.
They divorce. This decision will make even more sense fifteen years later, after she drowns her children in the bathtub, one by one. Michael reads the newspaper sometimes.
Michael’s therapist was a cool woman. Michael proposed to her. (She graciously declined.)
Marriage #3
This marriage lasted a night.
Michael takes out a life insurance policy on her. She takes a life insurance policy out on Michael.
For the entirety of the marriage, Michael tortured himself upstairs. Away from her in their brand new bedroom, he realized his brand new mistake.
What had he done? Everybody was going to hate him. People would begin speaking about him in very unflattering terms. Nobody was ever going to understand him.
Even those who had never cared for her were going to hate him now. They were going to prioritize her heartbreak over his emotional retardation and radical impulsivity–because other people equals conspiracy, always.
She still calls him up. She mostly berates him.
But, sometimes, out of concern, almost, she asks, “Michael, are you still torturing yourself?”
She can’t help herself.
She wants to know.
She’s hurt, still.
“Yes,” he responds somewhat apologetically, “I am still doing that to myself.”
By the end of his life, Michael’s indecision will have killed billions. Entire countries powered by love will be wiped out. Michael will deplete their resources.
“Is he still torturing himself?” her girlfriends inquire at the bar.
“I don’t know, I don’t care,” she cries. Then sips her extra minty mojito.
Marriage #4
This marriage lasted a day.
On their first date, they visited the zoo. In front of them, two elephants copulated, trumpeting. In response, she cracked several jokes.
The jokes were pretty funny. The jokes lasted throughout the date.
Smart. She was smart. Michael was furiously impressed by her.
But she was an alcoholic, and she couldn’t stop drinking, and can you guess the rest of it?
Despite the marijuana and cocaine, Michael wasn’t an alcoholic, not exactly. He couldn’t fathom the specific complexities that belong to alcoholism. Alcoholism is its own universe.
Nobody understands alcoholism. Not even alcoholism understands alcoholism. Michael couldn’t accommodate her alcoholism. He was far too selfish for that. He was the only one allowed problems.
Michael’s friendship group encouraged that divorce.
She called him up a few weeks ago—totally sober, in recovery.
In a major way, she’s doing much better than Michael.
On the phone, she goes, “Michael, as a young clinical psychologist just beginning her private practice, I want to thank you for being the first person to explain the difference between asocial and antisocial, and I still hate you.”
Marriage #5
This marriage actually lasted a week.
“My jeans hurt,” she jokes.
A little while back she tripped and fell. The sidewalk was a bed of salt and barbed wire.
Her knee got scraped. Blood turns brown.
Thank God The Town Fixed That Treacherous Sidewalk!
Besides that, she was a girl.
She was kind, blonde, fiercely intelligent. She was beautiful inside and out. Take my word. Without a clock, she always knew what time it was. Michael was insulted by her random talents.
He doesn’t deserve her, not at all, and she has no idea.
When she walks in on him with another woman, she’s crushed beyond crushed.
Marriage #6
And now—I have to be honest—this marriage did last a month!
Wow! What an accomplishment! Michael!
He was Mother Teresa, and she was Sid Vicious.
One hundred things went wrong between them. She thought the consequences were pretend play. She thought the rules didn’t apply to her. She was dead wrong. He showed her.
On this occasion, he packed her bags for her.
Turns out she was an escaped mental patient.
How did this marriage last a month?
Well, Michael appreciated the challenge because he’s an asshole at heart—undeniable!
He’s an asshole who never wants to be given a mirror. He’s an asshole who doesn’t appreciate distractions. He’s an asshole in need of some good and proper loving. He’s an asshole until the end.
Marriage #7
This marriage lasted nearly half a year.
This young woman had a miraculous story. She was resilient. Her family belonged to a fringe religion.
Basically, they were Christian Nazis.
In the middle of the night, she escaped. She ran, ran, ran through those woods. It was a long and rough journey. She’s never ever going back to Northern Idaho. She’s somebody who’s very admirable to Michael.
Why didn’t it work out? Their marriage?
Because, as an asshole, Michael doesn’t realize when an astonishingly courageous Golden Woman is staring back at him.
I don’t know, but that might have something to do with it?
Marriage #8
Now, this marriage?
Get ready…
A whole fucking year, man!
She was an artist.
Her art was primary to her. Her art was too important, Michael thought.
Her art surrounded them. Her art took over their lives. There was no space for Michael. They ate her art for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Her art tasted okay.
They drank red wine from fishbowls.
Poor Michael!
She was a conceptual sculpture artist, meaning her art served no functional purpose, just like backwards sinks and toilets don’t.
Her name was Martha (no relation to Martha Stewart or Martha Plimpton).
She got rich as shit off her art.
Michael was jealous of her success, her artistry, her new financial independence from her upper middle class family.
Marriage #8.5
In Italy, she’s a registered Communist—so, no, cannot come to America.
Naples in late summer is the boiling point and that’s a done deal and when it comes to this vacation, Michael will just have to survive.
Marriage #9
This marriage lasted a decade.
Fucking yeah, man!
She’s never been married before, and Michael envies her for the experience she’s about to have.
For the most part, they got along.
She was beautiful.
She was so beautiful, she was cursed, she couldn’t speak. Capable of only a few guttural sounds, that was it. The marriage probably lasted ten years due to the profound lack of conversation.
And no, she wasn’t born without vocal cords or something. She was simply cursed. God was playing a cruel joke. Satan stayed out of this one.
And no, she wasn’t dumb, not at all.
Actually, she was a genius.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Pulitzer Prize and, for some reason, an Academy Award, too.
Michael moved in with her.
Passing in the hallways and staircases of her mansion, they would stop each other just to absorb their respective smells. They smiled. Their nostrils growled. This was their primary means of communication.
It went on like this until it didn’t. The divorce proceedings were lengthy, heartbreaking.
Her attorneys unprofessionally stumbled over her muteness. This broke Michael’s heart.
Unlike the rest, he really did love her.
What can you do?
Crash into another marriage for the tenth time.
Marriage #10
This marriage lasted a century.
Not so much a marriage, but a memory from late adolescence that drags on, leaving its mark on the history of the world.
Her family’s place.
Her parents: away for the night.
Nice enough house. Perfectly comfortable on the living room sofa. Watching some trashy movie.
Afterwards, she makes cruel comments about the girls at school.
“If she had a brain cell, it would be lonely.
Her mother’s a crack whore.
Her mother’s head is toothless.
Her mother literally sucks dick for crack.”
“I want to fuck you, literally,” says Michael.
Watch Michael’s stupid mouth.
“You don’t even know what fuck is,” says she.
Watch her mean mouth
And so they have sex.
This is the gunshot wound to the head.
This one officially opens the skin.
He performs poorly. She performs poorly too. She makes sure to ridicule him. He goes dumb when she does. At the same minute, a skinny man who wants to be Michael’s new stepfather proposes to Michael’s mother.
Will this thin fellow manhandle Michael’s mother’s progressive parenting techniques?
Michael hopes not. She allows Michael to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
Okay, she does want Michael to marry a virgin.
And that night in another part of town, a different kind of girl meets the wrong stranger and loses her eyes.
Michael will never hear about it.
Marriage #11
This marriage lasted an eternity.
A foreign exchange graduate student.
For reasons that come across as a bit religious, she has media dreams.
She dreams of fame, enormous recognition.
On their first date, bubble gum gets stuck in her bangs, and they can’t get it out.
It’s a boring relationship. She establishes the softest boundaries.
She believes in change just for the sake of change—but come on, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
She’s a Cashew: Half-Catholic, Half-Jewish.
Her big dog is truly big—her right arm will never be the same
Her dreams never come true.
Divorce.
Again.
Marriage #12
“Why am I such a fucking pig when it comes to Ethiopian food?”
She was asking an urgent question.
Sometimes, Michael enjoys her enjoying herself.
I just can’t get enough.
Marriage #13
This marriage lasted for the rest of Michael’s life, but it wasn’t a marriage, they just dated and dated and dated and dated.
There’s something funny about her—like, she gets him, but only in a way.
On their first date, she pulls up to the restaurant in a sparkly purple Volkswagen with a multicolored interior. Her tight dress is the color of chicken fat. She led a Pavement cover band in college.
Michael starts tossing compliments at her. She tells him to calm down. It’s very much an instruction. Michael wants to fuck. She doesn’t just want to fuck. It’s a predicament.
Outside the restaurant, a very white man—big and tall, barefoot and shirtless––shovels the sidewalk with bloody, mangled fingers.
She and Michael bond over their shared fascination with obliterated child stars. You know: what went wrong, and how nobody ever sees the wrong coming. Michael’s beside himself with engagement.
Two weeks later, they come across a used waterbed online.
They rent a van and drive across the country, to Vancouver, Washington, to pick it up.
They have time to waste. Michael has piles of cash to burn. Everything is disposable.
The waterbed costs $15.00.
Now they’re home. The excitement of irony—it vanishes like always.
Him on his side of the waterbed. Her on hers. What a baker’s dozen did.
Myles Zavelo lives in New York. His work has appeared in The Harvard Advocate, New York Tyrant, Joyland, and elsewhere.
