The other night, I went out to meet two girlfriends for a drink. I picked a bar in the 1st and showed up to find one of them already there with another friend she'd brought along. Within 10 seconds of my arrival, this other friend insisted that the music was too loud and that we must find another bar. So just as the last of our quartet arrived, we took off for another spot, all chatting as we walked across the Pont Neuf into the Saint-Germain area. This other girl was British but my two friends are françaises so French was what we were speaking. After I said something, the Brit turned her head to me and coldly said, "I think it's silly speaking French to other anglophones." And thus I met little Miss Bad Vibe (not her real name, oddly).
Miss Bad Vibe had come over to Paris for a year of study and decided to stay on for a few extra months of watching dubbed Sex and the City episodes and slinging beers at an English Pub in town. Apparently an expert on several subjects, she enlightened us all evening with her personal display of wisdom. After a few months in Paris, she could explain all aspects of French culture. French girls? They don't have girlfriends because they don't trust eachother. Nevermind the fact that we were sitting there drinking wine with two French girls who are indeed quite good friends. But that's insufficient evidence because their parents aren't all French-born and raised.
Eventually, one of my friends asked me something about my wedding last year. Bad Vibe's big mouth gaped open as she turned to me and and whined, "You're marrieeeed??" much in the same tone of voice one would say "You're abandoning your medical career to join the circuuuus??"
"Why are you married? You're so young!"
She followed this with a lengthy soliloquy of merde stating that marriage is when you concede all the excitement and vitality of your youth to begin a long, slow life of burden that causes body and soul to rot until there's nothing left of you. You know, suicide.
You give up all projects, travel plans and adventures to bed down and watch the rest of the world continue on. One day you're the Mona Lisa, the next you're the manly looking wife in American Gothic. You get the point. Marriage=bad. Bad Vibe wrapped it up with an attribution of her facts to personal experience and an article she read in some magazine.
Wow, I thought. Have I thrown it all away too soon?
What was the deal? Are married people supposed to be totally dull as opposed to the sparkles and mystery of the single life? In a society that gobbled up Sex and the City and Bridget Jones' Diary, are we to the point where married people are just cows put out to pasture? This can't be. Look at the fascinating husbands and wives who dazzle today's world.
David and Cathy Guetta. Serge and Tatiana Sorokko. Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel. You want them at your parties- they're glamorous, captivating, interesting and married. There's tons of cool married couples. And they're not all doing it just to celebrate bikini-clad on a yacht in Saint Tropez, only to divorce when the party's over. (You may know of whom I speak.)
I know plenty of American Gothics who are just as fun now as when they were Mona Lisas. They still stay out til the wee hours, sipping the latest cocktails at Hotel Costes and listening to sub-groove deep house with dubby elements in the downtempo range. And everything else the cool kids are doing .
Even without all the fun, it's not like marriage is a bunch of lovey-dovey, sugar-covered bliss all the time.
As Nick Hornby writes in How to Be Good, "What you don't ever catch a glimpse of on your wedding day...is that somedays you will hate your spouse, that you will look at him and regret ever exchanging a word with him... if anyone thought about these things, then no one would ever get married... the impulse to get married would come from the same place as the impulse to drink a bottle of bleach."
But just understand this, Miss Bad Vibe- whether married at 21 or still single at 50, you are the only one responsible for your life's happiness. It's not a question of whether you are betrothed or not. And if you go around criticizing strangers' lifestyles, you may develop a weird skin virus that will turn your skin green and give you scales. I read an article about it in some medical journal. (Ha, you're not the only one fluent in boollsheet.)
Miss Bad Vibe had come over to Paris for a year of study and decided to stay on for a few extra months of watching dubbed Sex and the City episodes and slinging beers at an English Pub in town. Apparently an expert on several subjects, she enlightened us all evening with her personal display of wisdom. After a few months in Paris, she could explain all aspects of French culture. French girls? They don't have girlfriends because they don't trust eachother. Nevermind the fact that we were sitting there drinking wine with two French girls who are indeed quite good friends. But that's insufficient evidence because their parents aren't all French-born and raised.
Eventually, one of my friends asked me something about my wedding last year. Bad Vibe's big mouth gaped open as she turned to me and and whined, "You're marrieeeed??" much in the same tone of voice one would say "You're abandoning your medical career to join the circuuuus??"
"Why are you married? You're so young!"
She followed this with a lengthy soliloquy of merde stating that marriage is when you concede all the excitement and vitality of your youth to begin a long, slow life of burden that causes body and soul to rot until there's nothing left of you. You know, suicide.
You give up all projects, travel plans and adventures to bed down and watch the rest of the world continue on. One day you're the Mona Lisa, the next you're the manly looking wife in American Gothic. You get the point. Marriage=bad. Bad Vibe wrapped it up with an attribution of her facts to personal experience and an article she read in some magazine.
Wow, I thought. Have I thrown it all away too soon?
What was the deal? Are married people supposed to be totally dull as opposed to the sparkles and mystery of the single life? In a society that gobbled up Sex and the City and Bridget Jones' Diary, are we to the point where married people are just cows put out to pasture? This can't be. Look at the fascinating husbands and wives who dazzle today's world.
David and Cathy Guetta. Serge and Tatiana Sorokko. Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel. You want them at your parties- they're glamorous, captivating, interesting and married. There's tons of cool married couples. And they're not all doing it just to celebrate bikini-clad on a yacht in Saint Tropez, only to divorce when the party's over. (You may know of whom I speak.)
I know plenty of American Gothics who are just as fun now as when they were Mona Lisas. They still stay out til the wee hours, sipping the latest cocktails at Hotel Costes and listening to sub-groove deep house with dubby elements in the downtempo range. And everything else the cool kids are doing .
Even without all the fun, it's not like marriage is a bunch of lovey-dovey, sugar-covered bliss all the time.
As Nick Hornby writes in How to Be Good, "What you don't ever catch a glimpse of on your wedding day...is that somedays you will hate your spouse, that you will look at him and regret ever exchanging a word with him... if anyone thought about these things, then no one would ever get married... the impulse to get married would come from the same place as the impulse to drink a bottle of bleach."
But just understand this, Miss Bad Vibe- whether married at 21 or still single at 50, you are the only one responsible for your life's happiness. It's not a question of whether you are betrothed or not. And if you go around criticizing strangers' lifestyles, you may develop a weird skin virus that will turn your skin green and give you scales. I read an article about it in some medical journal. (Ha, you're not the only one fluent in boollsheet.)
