Not always wrong.
Still, I love my kids.
Next: I love my husband.
It is fun, after twenty years of marriage, to try saying this with the appropriate gravity, to imagine yourself choking on the rich bile of spousal passion as you once may have. If it were posed as a question—
Do
you love your husband?—you would feel “yes” bubble up inside your vascular cavity like carbonation in a Diet Coke. The silliness of the question is exceeded only by the pointlessness of the answer. You have kid(s). You have house(s). You have car(s). You have bill(s). You have shit(s) to deal with. The tentacles of partnered life bonding you to your husband are guaranteed to both murder the triumphant passions of early marriage and build, in their place, an infinitely less destructible set of sentiments. The fact that Phil takes me for granted these days and shows me less ardor than he does heated toilet seats does not negate this basic truth.
The impetus for my marriage is as old a story as the love triangle that imprisoned Tristan and Isolde. No, I wasn’t knocked up. Nor was my biological clock ticking itself into a time bomb. Nobody arranged it; I wasn’t sold to the highest bidder with a chest of baubles and a gaggle of chickens. My beloved didn’t croak, leaving his brother no choice but to save me from the dire straits of widowhood. Did I wake up one day and find myself floating solo in a pool of merry marrieds? Nope. At the time most of my friends were in the same boat as me, wedded to nothing more convoluted than pulling off a successful Friday night, obsessed with our careers, warmly embraced by our first post-graduate apartments, our friends, our naked selves stripped of clingy college sweethearts. In fact, the artlessness of it all is almost embarrassing.
I was in love.
Not the fearless, ravenous, consuming, if-I-can’t-have-you-I-might-have-to-eat-you variety that had afflicted me with Ren White. I can safely go on record as never wanting to eat Philip Atticus Rose. Kill him, yes. Ingest him, no. Nevertheless, in my twenty-second year, not quite fresh out of college but not yet stinking with inertia, I’d lived and loved enough to know
the tart pang of attraction when I felt it.
Attraction.
Isn’t it ironic that the crucial ingredient of attraction, mystery, is not only the enemy of marriage, it’s the enemy of human relationship? When there’s mystery, there’s horniness. When there’s mystery, there’s hope. When there’s mystery, he just might turn out to be Viggo Mortensen with a side of monogamy.
Once I was young and Phil was mysterious. And it was good.
But before we get into it, a confession: My sister isn’t the only Schultz sister with a celluloid life. It may seem corny, but I tend to see my own existence as a sort of epic blend of
Pollock
and
Love Story.
Okay, actually, it’s more like
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle,
except without the clothes, great bodies, and excitement. Just the mess.
Set the scene: San Francisco. It’s 1985, and the city is in the throes of Indian summer . . .
Sweet curls of pot smoke waft up between the weeping trees in Golden Gate Park. Joggers and Rollerbladers zigzag down the Embarcadero, the city’s Goliath bridges rising up around them with utter majesty. That fall, the city simmers with the flavors of love: Chinese, Indian, Italian, El Salvadoran, Thai, the exotic, spicy thrill of it all scenting the skin. Rachel— Raquel— is a young sculptor living the bohemian dream in the Mission District, a squalid, rousing pastiche of artists, Central American immigrants, drug addicts, homeless, hippies, dykes, and urban-minded sorts who prefer the rainbow-colored sunny side of the city to its more rarefied hills and heights (Nob, Russian, Pacific).
Her loft, which she shares with an aspiring chef named Sue Banicek, opens languidly to the city’s exquisite light. It sits on top of a taqueria-tamale parlor. The tamales are filled with ropy cheese and succulent chicken,
Still, I love my kids.
Next: I love my husband.
It is fun, after twenty years of marriage, to try saying this with the appropriate gravity, to imagine yourself choking on the rich bile of spousal passion as you once may have. If it were posed as a question—
Do
you love your husband?—you would feel “yes” bubble up inside your vascular cavity like carbonation in a Diet Coke. The silliness of the question is exceeded only by the pointlessness of the answer. You have kid(s). You have house(s). You have car(s). You have bill(s). You have shit(s) to deal with. The tentacles of partnered life bonding you to your husband are guaranteed to both murder the triumphant passions of early marriage and build, in their place, an infinitely less destructible set of sentiments. The fact that Phil takes me for granted these days and shows me less ardor than he does heated toilet seats does not negate this basic truth.
The impetus for my marriage is as old a story as the love triangle that imprisoned Tristan and Isolde. No, I wasn’t knocked up. Nor was my biological clock ticking itself into a time bomb. Nobody arranged it; I wasn’t sold to the highest bidder with a chest of baubles and a gaggle of chickens. My beloved didn’t croak, leaving his brother no choice but to save me from the dire straits of widowhood. Did I wake up one day and find myself floating solo in a pool of merry marrieds? Nope. At the time most of my friends were in the same boat as me, wedded to nothing more convoluted than pulling off a successful Friday night, obsessed with our careers, warmly embraced by our first post-graduate apartments, our friends, our naked selves stripped of clingy college sweethearts. In fact, the artlessness of it all is almost embarrassing.
I was in love.
Not the fearless, ravenous, consuming, if-I-can’t-have-you-I-might-have-to-eat-you variety that had afflicted me with Ren White. I can safely go on record as never wanting to eat Philip Atticus Rose. Kill him, yes. Ingest him, no. Nevertheless, in my twenty-second year, not quite fresh out of college but not yet stinking with inertia, I’d lived and loved enough to know
the tart pang of attraction when I felt it.
Attraction.
Isn’t it ironic that the crucial ingredient of attraction, mystery, is not only the enemy of marriage, it’s the enemy of human relationship? When there’s mystery, there’s horniness. When there’s mystery, there’s hope. When there’s mystery, he just might turn out to be Viggo Mortensen with a side of monogamy.
Once I was young and Phil was mysterious. And it was good.
But before we get into it, a confession: My sister isn’t the only Schultz sister with a celluloid life. It may seem corny, but I tend to see my own existence as a sort of epic blend of
Pollock
and
Love Story.
Okay, actually, it’s more like
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle,
except without the clothes, great bodies, and excitement. Just the mess.
Set the scene: San Francisco. It’s 1985, and the city is in the throes of Indian summer . . .
Sweet curls of pot smoke waft up between the weeping trees in Golden Gate Park. Joggers and Rollerbladers zigzag down the Embarcadero, the city’s Goliath bridges rising up around them with utter majesty. That fall, the city simmers with the flavors of love: Chinese, Indian, Italian, El Salvadoran, Thai, the exotic, spicy thrill of it all scenting the skin. Rachel— Raquel— is a young sculptor living the bohemian dream in the Mission District, a squalid, rousing pastiche of artists, Central American immigrants, drug addicts, homeless, hippies, dykes, and urban-minded sorts who prefer the rainbow-colored sunny side of the city to its more rarefied hills and heights (Nob, Russian, Pacific).
Her loft, which she shares with an aspiring chef named Sue Banicek, opens languidly to the city’s exquisite light. It sits on top of a taqueria-tamale parlor. The tamales are filled with ropy cheese and succulent chicken,
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