(MY VIEW) I Know, Not I Do!

by William Henderson

"Let's have a moratorium on marriage," I suggested to my boyfriend. We were in bed in my bedroom, the only room in my apartment with real air conditioning, and we weren't touching. It was hot, still, even with air conditioning; the heat wave was expected to break any day.

Not that he and I are or ever were engaged. But at some point, past the getting-to-know-you point but before the we-may-as-well-make-this-official point, someone brings up marriage, in cute ways, usually: suggestions for possible honeymoon locations or who will perform at the ceremony, or laments that your parents will never get a chance to meet unless you get married, or any number of ways you tiptoe around the idea of forever-and-always without using the words "forever" and "always." The idea of marriage phases into the reality of marriage.


A wedding in Central Park, where he was best man, and the two women wore one-of-a-kind dresses, preceded our conversation about weddings and marriage. He'd never had someone to bring with him to a wedding before, he said, which snowballed into a series of conversations that ended in my bedroom.

I've been married. The attorney I used for my divorce said she does not believe in marriage, though she has been married twice and is still married. During one of our last meetings before the blink-and-you'd-miss-it appearance before the judge who agreed to end my 11-year marriage, my divorce attorney said that no one should get married unless money is involved. She laughed when she said that no one should get married unless money is involved, but I think she meant that no one should get married unless money is involved, and I've started to agree with her, not about the need for money to be involved (though I wouldn't turn down the involvement of money) but about the unnecessariness of legally promising to be there in the morning. MORE!