I Won’t Ask Much Of My Future Wife, Just That She’s Perfect In Every Way
“Don’t settle. Wait for the perfect one.” That’s what my parents always tell me. But I’m not that picky. I know there’s no flawless angel lying in wait for me, no one with exactly the right hair color, astrological sign, and taste in music. I don’t really care what color her hair is anyway, as long as it’s thick, wavy, and chestnut brown. Her sign? As long as she’s a seventh house Cancer with a Libra moon and Venus in Leo, no biggie. I’m not too persnickety about music either. As long as she knows that Morton Gould conducted the best version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and it’s not that the Beatles are overrated, they’re just not that sexual, which makes their status as a “rock ’n’ roll” band rather debatable, and she’s kind of into glam rock and New Wave but not too much, and she knows that Prince is criminally underrated even though he’s already pretty highly rated, and that what today’s music lacks most of all is the spiritual substance and poetic power to truly force you to question your place in the universe, then we’re all good!
How about her style? Oh, I’m not too particular about that. She can wear whatever she wants. It just has to bring out her deep green eyes and her old soul with a particular earthy elegance, and I wouldn’t mind if she wore some “I read the New Yorker” glasses every once in a while, because I kind of like a little intimidating elitism here and there, and when we go out on the weekends I want her to wear a sleek black dress that draws eyes from men and women, and they’re all a little jealous of me, and in bed it doesn’t matter much what she wears either, as long as it’s the Blue Envy silky two-piece set from Victoria’s Secret.
And her personality? I don’t need too much on that front either. I just want her to be herself. And by “herself” I mean a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Queen Daenerys Targaryen. That is, she’s tantalizingly demure, glowing with that old world femininity, but also she could utterly ravage me with her mere glance.
What about kids? I definitely want my own little family someday, but I don’t care too much when it happens. So long as I’m successful enough in my creative endeavors to cover all the bills and famous enough to have my own cult following, and my wife is no older than thirty because after that her eggs shrivel up and die, it doesn’t matter to me! Where will we raise them? Anywhere. As long as there’s world class food, theater, education, cultural diversity, affordable housing lotteries, and the feeling that something revolutionary could happen at any moment, and we’ve got at least four acres to ourselves, complete with windmills, a vineyard, and an ivy-covered castle, let’s get Zillowing!
And then we’ll grow old together, won’t we? Now, everyone knows that the key to life’s third and final act is not getting too worked up about things. My wife and I will have known each other so long by then that all our itty bitty conflicts and frictions will have been smoothed over like pebbles on a river bed. All we’ve got to do is enjoy our lives now. All I ask is that she bakes my favorite gluten-free pumpkin bread every week without my having to ask her, and she spends a good stretch of each day in her art studio, working on pieces we can show off in local galleries that prove to our fellow middle-aged neighbors that we’re way hipper than they are, and she lets me smoke my pipe in my study, and she’s a little turned on by my signature turtleneck-tweed jacket look at cocktail parties, and she doesn’t mind too much if I watch sports and curse the away team to an early, savage death if they win, and she still wants to explore new fantasies in the bedroom, and she sells her late mother’s jewelry to buy us a little flat on Paris’ Left Bank so I can finally wear a scarf every day and not feel like a creep. There are roughly 1,428 other requirements I’d ask of my wife, but these are definitely the main ones. Ah, growing old is a cinch when you’re with the right person.
See? I’m pretty laid back when it comes to finding a life partner. So, future wife, if you’re reading this, I want you to know that I’ll love you exactly the way you are, as long as you’re perfect in every way, because if you’re perfect for me, then I’m perfect for you, too.
