Wife

I refer to Marcy as my wife.

My reality is strictly notional. My reality is that Marcy and I have chosen to be married to one another: It was our decision to make and to enforce upon ourselves, and it’s really no one else’s business, be they governmental or religious organization or private individual.

It is a real thing, this notion, though I have recently been apprised (yet again) that my reality does not matter when it comes to the rules of large corporations.

But I have begun in the middle of the story.

Not fair.

Over time I have written multiple stories, notes, poems, comments, discussing my family and its various members. I am not a habitual liar (though what, exactly, a storyteller is, if not a truly compelling liar, is subject to some debate), but I find that I have misled anyone who cared to read my stories/my life for some time.

It’s time to come clean.

Back in Ashland (remember Ashland?) I married an exceeding wonderful woman who chose me to be her mate because I was willing to do it on the date she had picked as her wedding day. I was young, she was steadfast in her intent, and none of her other lovers had any interest in even the decorative performance of a marriage, and so we had a wedding in the park. It was a good day.

She said, from the beginning, that it didn’t have to be a real wedding. That we didn’t have to stay married. We were pretty happy. She had four kids, and they were pretty happy, too, though they also had a father who lived up the street and around the corner and helped with the whole definitive happiness family objective. When I began to realize that the happiness objective was the only one that we had together, and didn’t really refer to any happiness or intention I had of my own, the object became much less happy for me and my wife. (I do not use her name or say much about her and will continue this about others no longer present (I have perhaps already said too much), as she is quite recognizable to a certain group of people, some of whom are much less than kind.)

In any case, we decided to separate. There is much more to this story, but I will tell it another time. It is not flattering to me, but that’s not my main motivation, here. I have an apology to get to, and there’s still lots of story to tell.

I moved into a little trailer outside of town. I had a catering business that I worked at most afternoons and evenings out of the front half of the trailer, and did musical instrument repair most mornings in an old garage I rented near downtown. Monday nights I worked in a lovely vegetarian restaurant. I was busy, and distracted. It was a good life. I wrote a lot of poetry.

One evening I was working in my little repair shop making a set of speaker cabinets for an old friend.

The date was Thursday, April 1, 1993.

There was a pounding at the door, then she burst in, crying, wailing that she was sorry. That she had destroyed my guitar, my bass, my saxophone. That she had been angry, furious with me. So angry. I tried to calm her, but she would not be calmed.

What do I care for things? I said. They don’t matter. Are you okay?

How can I be? she said. All of your things. Your books? They’re all gone.

I became more concerned. What was she talking about? She could see my confusion.

Your house. I burned it. It’s gone. But I saved your flute; it was in my car.

Gradually the story came out. She had gone to my house with her youngest daughter to cook some lunch. (This was common, once we separated. She would drop in and fix for herself and her children a bit of soup or a salad, then be on her way. I never locked the door.) While she was boiling water on the the gas stove (and fuming at me inside), a tiny jet of flame puffed out of the front of the stove near the knob. She looked at it and didn’t know what to do. It grew rapidly, and soon was boiling out of the front of the stove a distance of five or six feet. She grabbed her daughter (seven years old at the time) and ran out of the house. Soon other things in the kitchen caught and the trailer was fully engulfed by the time she got to the nearest neighbor a few hundred yards up the road and called the fire department. They contained the flames to keep any brush from catching. Everything was destroyed. I found out later the regulator had gone out on the tank, blasting high-pressure liquefied propane in a roaring blast of flame out of and around the stove.

I stayed at her apartment that night and rode out to the house the next day. It was well and truly gone. There was no trace of any musical instrument; a few scattered pages of books. Even my catering truck had been destroyed by the blaze, though its blackened carcass still sat next to the rubble of the trailer. I had the clothes on my back, a silver flute, a small wood-shop.

I rented a truck and began the cleanup. Slept in my shop a few nights, then found a friend to room with. It was the talk of the town for a few days. Folks gathered up what they thought they could spare, or were going to donate anyway — I ended up with several bags of children’s clothing and toys — and provided for me. More clothing than I could wear, bedding, cookware. …

Nothing in my life felt … attached. It was a long, cool Spring, and I labored through my time working nights and riding my bicycle days, finishing up a few guitar repairs for friends. I sat in on flute for a couple gigs.

One June morning I packed up some clothes and stuffed them in panniers. Got together some rice and a small pot and bowl and spoon, and a single burner. A jug of water. A silver flute. A sleeping bag and tent.

And I rode away from my favorite place in the universe.

I went up the Greensprings Highway all the way to Keno, then kept going south down past Tule Lake, Copic, Mammoth, Adin; all the way to Eagle Lake. I camped there for a few days, eating rice and any vegetables I could find. I befriended an injured nightjar — a fierce little bird who would only eat what it could catch on its own, so I parked it in the middle of my sleeping bag in the tent with its injured wing strapped to its body, and tossed crickets and sow bugs toward it. It would lunge upward, flapping and snapping and spinning madly. Somehow it got enough to eat. Once the wing healed I let it go, shooed it away from the tent to where some termites had been swarming the previous evening, then made my way down to Susanville, and Reno.

I am not really ready to write about Reno, nor the years after. I’m not actually finished with Ashland. But this is a different story.

I camped out near where the Steamboat Ditch Trail emptied out into the desert, at the far southwestern corner of town. There were a few scattered houses, but it was pretty barren. After a few days I gave away my bike to some kids at a park and made my way on foot. I have always been more of a walker.

If I kept up a steady trot, I could get to downtown in about 90 minutes.

After a week of wandering amidst the scalding lights, gathered up my courage and applied for a job at Harrah’s. They immediately hired me as second chef in the banquet department, for a reasonable wage and as many hours as I wanted to work. In a month I found a roommate. I had friends. A girl who decided I would be a good husband (sound familiar?) and pursued me to that end.

By the time she finally captured me (she was not the only one at fault, just the initiator of the proceeding) we had been together for two years. I left Harrah’s and opened two different restaurants, worked in a warehouse and finally abandoned it all (with her, firmly pregnant) for a little cabin in Arkansas, where we were finally wed.

Arkansas did not suit, so we went to New Mexico, where I had traveled some years before, and I worked as a Sous Chef in Taos, had another daughter, then moved north to open a grand restaurant in Colorado Springs. On the side I ran a catering business and did graphic design, and built speakers for friends. Eventually my wife imploded. I took over the kitchen at a Holiday Inn in Pueblo, Colorado. She tried to kill herself. Twice.

Eventually she told me she had enough of me. I was to leave.

So I moved back to Taos, made desserts in the sky above the ski resort, called my children every night and told them a bedtime story.

That didn’t work, either. She caught pneumonia and almost died. I moved back in to take care of her and the girls. I was making preparations for yet another career when the world fell apart.

She had a doctor prescribe fentanyl patches for pain, at triple the usual dose. I found her the next morning as I was getting the girls ready for pre-school, a little foam on her lips, totally unconscious.

At the hospital I was told to prepare the children; she probably wouldn’t make it.

In some ways she didn’t. There was permanent brain and nerve damage, and deep personality issues. But she wanted to stay with me. We lasted until 2009. The girls were starting high school. I was to leave. Again.

I moved across town (we lived in Winston, Oregon, by this time) into my partially converted Greyhound bus. we divorced soon after. I followed my family to NE Oregon (Hermiston, for those who crave geographic specificity or love Cucurbitaceae).

I did an odd thing in Hermiston (more odd than usual for me).

I decided that I would start searching for a relationship with someone I wanted to be with. Someone who liked me as I actually am, and who would take the trouble to learn of me, and trouble to show me who they were as well.

I subscribed to dating services and pen pal sites. I blogged. I hung out in lots of places online and IRL. I spent some time getting to know some people who seemed to like me.

I initially resisted putting my picture on sites because I didn’t trust the kind of instant connection one gets with a picture. I wanted the kind of connection one gets by needing to see the person whose thoughts I could be thinking with my own mind. Eventually I put a few pictures up because no one would talk to me without them.

Eventually I met a lot of people. Eventually I made a small handful of friends.

Eventually I met Marcy. We wrote back and forth for a couple weeks, then had a phone call, then another. Then began speaking most of our free waking time. She said she needed me. I needed her.

She is an extraordinary poet and observer of humans, and is the smartest person I know.

I came to New Hampshire for a visit December 19, 2010 and never left. The only time we have been apart since then is when I went to Oregon alone after my Father’s death in April of this year, for five days.

Marcy has two children, boys, born 1990 and 1995. I have two children, girls, born 1995 and 1996. Their names are Noah, Max, Hannalore, and Katarina. They approve of this message.

Marcy and I have been talking about marriage since the first month we met in person. I proposed in March of 2011 on her birthday. We decided to wait until we could afford a nice wedding; a celebration with our friends and family, a joyful occasion without much debt. Time passed.

The company I work for (a small, regional cable company) was purchased by a much larger internet company this year, with the takeover to be complete on 4 January 2018. About three weeks ago we were informed of the insurance plans we employees would have to choose from. As part of that little seminar, we were told that Atlantic Broadband would only ensure legal dependents, with documentary proof. (The previous company, Metrocast Cable, while much smaller, was happy to insure domestic partners of any stripe.)

And so we will be wedding on December 22. We have been forced into a rush of planning and negotiating for space and travel and decoration and music and food, and it is truly glorious. Still, there is a little resentment. We’ve been denied the slow buildup and the time to make choices about so many things, and my girls will not be able to be there due to the short notice and general lack of piles of money. We really were planning for approximately Fall of 2019. Approximately.

To my friends and casual readers both, I apologize. I feel I have misled you more than my writing will bear. Despite my story telling nature, I am a largely honest writer, and I hope this long-ish note clarifies the timeline of my married and family life. As a matter of compensation, you are all invited to the wedding, if you will be in Portsmouth, New Hampshire the evening of December 22. The ceremony will be at 4:30 or so; If you cannot be quite on time, please enter by the back door so as not to interrupt.