My first marriage was ideal in terms of amicability & mutual respect. From one vantage point it was an arranged marriage, though I don’t want to step on any cultural toes. My husband could only have been more absent if he were a ghost. Which suited us both, me being queer & he just wanting to stay in America. For a while, anyway. It was a match made in immigration policy & irreverent, pacifist hearts.

It all began when I was 20 & about as aimless as a person can be. My sister Du had introduced me to a really witty/smart girl she worked with at The B&O Espresso, AN. AN & I had been friends not that long before she called me one day & asked as soon as I picked up “Will you marry Jerome?” The pregnant pause that ensued as I tried to tell whether her tone was joking or not, since she had a great dry delivery, made me eventually land on “What?”

Jerome I’d only met a few times, more friend-adjacent. A fellow arty type, kinda brooding. & French. AN continued with “He wants to stay in the U.S. but his visa’s expiring.” My logical response “Why can’t you marry him?” received the reply “Because I’m Canadian.”

“Since when?” I said because it obviously hadn’t come up in the several months that I’d known her.

“Since I was born there. Duh,” was her snarky comeback. “He has to marry a U.S. citizen.”

“Doesn’t he know any other girls? What about his girlfriend?” I was struggling to figure why me?

“She broke up with him. He’s a mess over it.” I’m never in the gossip loop until someone’s asking me to marry an almost-stranger. She could hear my uncertainty in the nothing I was saying, so she added “He’s facing a mandatory 2-yr stint in the army if he goes back to France.”

“Really? They do that there? Weird. I would’ve thought the French more, I don’t know, fashionably anti-service.” I was conjuring images of the purportedly snooty & put-out French waitstaff of legend. Then I added “What does he think of this? Does he want to marry me specifically?”

“It’s perfect because you’re queer,” came her answer.

“Did he say that?” Now I felt like I was being profiled somehow, although it did make sense.

“Not in so many words, but yeah,” she said.

“Oh. Well then, sure?” came out of my mouth even though why anyone would want to stay in this country was beyond me. I mostly wanted to be elsewhere. We both laughed at the absurdity then hung up. I still suspected this to be a prank of some type. Until the day Jerome called me to plan our wedding.

It was to be a small, informal affair, starting with getting the marriage license. Then we booked a courthouse date & told some friends. The judge that officiated must’ve found it odd that upon the completion of our vows we faced each other & shook hands. The 2 witnesses were friends of mine, so they merely giggled. 14 people, including the bride & groom & whoever took the photos (I don’t remember who this was, & since they weren’t in any of the pics I’ll never know), attended the reception. Who doesn’t like a sham marriage for a reason to party? It was held as a picnic at Freeway Park, with cake & champagne, & possibly gifts but I can’t really say. When I look at the photos now, I’m amazed my sister invited 3 of her boyfriends! Like Scrooge’s ghosts: boyfriends past, present, & future.

Here’s me pouring my new hubby some bubbly, then cutting the cake:

Ours was an excellent marriage: we never fought, there was zero drama, & we enjoyed each other’s company– however infrequent that may be. We were committed to making it work… for immigration purposes. Speaking of, we even went so far as to memorize stuff about each other in case we were taken to separate rooms & grilled on our spouse’s favorite foods, side of the bed, parents’ names, color of toothbrush (I know that’s a stretch but we wanted to be thorough). Turned out they weren’t in the least concerned about French emigres. Our marriage certificate easily rubber-stamped his stay, no questions asked. It’s probably different today. & that’s brilliantly understated, if I do say so myself.

My eldest sister was completely affronted upon news of my marriage. Ironically, this avowed feminist was aghast I hadn’t married for love but to thumb my nose at military service & the (patriarchal) institution of marriage. Pick a lane, sis! Then there were other family members’ objections: what if my husband ruined me financially with legally-binding debt? I thought of my minimum wage, part-time jobs & lax money management, more risk for him than myself by leagues, & the expression I shot back shouted ‘Have you met me?’

Though we rarely hung out, we were in a band together for a minute with like 4 other people. We wrote & recorded a song about the soul-sucking tedium of work in a factory, a poke in the eye of capitalism, titled Down at the Plant. The rhythm track was created by looping the sound of a marble rolling around inside a large coffee can, intensified by having the mic sealed within. The amplified, circuitous echo to mimic the monotony of machinery. Only a couple of us had actual experience working in a factory, & I lasted at that job for just an afternoon. But we told it like it was.

At one point during our marriage I got to meet my mother-in-law. Aside from the language barrier (she wasn’t fluent in English), we hit it off. She was awesome, profusely thanking me for marrying her son, told me it was her idea for him stay out of the army. & she invited me to stay with her if I should ever visit France! Because of our marriage the French gov’t considered me to have dual residence privileges. I could live there, if I ever got up enough money for airfare. I would’ve dropped by to see her when I finally did go to Europe, but I’d lost contact with Jerome when he moved to LA, & I couldn’t remember her last name (it wasn’t the same). I could’ve been an expat. C’est la vie.

We had 15 (?) lovely years together/apart. I sometimes wish we’d stayed wedded. Then I wouldn’t have been able to marry someone else once gay marriage was legalized. In my experience, that was a mixed blessing of legislation. I now firmly believe that the best unions are spirit marriages, technically not the same but it’s what I consider ours to have been. & I’d remarry that absent husband in a heartbeat to be living in some other country right about now.