Fuck Love, Get Greece

When I was younger I had all sorts of ideas about marriage. And I don’t mean the fairy tale, lovey dovey, fantasy ideas about marriage you had. As a kid growing up in households where divorces were the norm, I didn’t have the luxury of believing in Prince Charming and ever after and all that.

Instead, I had very practical ideas about marriage; do it only when you’re ready, not when you “should”. Having a baby DOES NOT EQUAL marriage. Have your emotional, mental and financial life in order. For God’s sake, make sure you believe the same things and live your life the same way. You might want to look into actually loving them, too.

And maybe it was naïve and overly romantic of me, to want to be in love with someone and, you know, actually desire to spend the rest of my life with them. But when I heard other women and their calculated checklists of things to want in a mate and by extension marriage, I shook my head at them. So what about his job? I would think in my head. What about his soul? What about his commitment? What about whether or not he would take me to a swinger’s club in a city where neither of us knows anyone?

I would think to myself, as they prattled on about the joys of a two-income household or, better yet, snagging a man who earned enough so she could snag the coveted Stay-at-Home-Mom promotion, that I knew something they didn’t. That I was hip to the joys and pitfalls of marriage and divorce in ways that kids whose parents had been married forever without allowing any insight into how their marriage worked just couldn’t get. I knew better. I was better.

But now, fuck all that.

Fuck marrying for love. Just, fuck it. Somebody find me a well off man who will pay off all my debts and give me a platinum card with my name on it. I’ll let him have a chick on the side. Hell, CHICKS, PLURAL, on the side. Just somebody come see about these student loans.

I was still holding on to a little shred of my unmarried, self-righteous, get-married-for-the-“right”-reasons dignity last week when I had to go on my lunch break to get a nail fixed I’d broken while masturbating cooking.

And important detail to note about this story is that my office is in a fairly well-to-do area of town. There are no McMansions around here; no, there are ACTUAL multimillion dollar mansions, many of them situated around a lake and reminiscent of Italian villas. Keep in mind that I live in the land of oil money; that is to say, if you don’t already know, oil and gas magistrates SHIT ON YOUR CITY’S MILLIONAIRES EACH AND EVERYDAY.

I am well aware that I am just a visitor in these parts, and if ever I had any doubt of that, this particular day helped put it all in prospective.

As I sat down, glancing at the time on my Black.berry, hoping I can get done, grab lunch, and still clock back in on time at work, a black Maserati pulls up next to my sad little SUV with the black eyed bumper. Out of it floats a tiny little lady who wafts into the nail shop smelling like Hermes. It is not until that very moment that I realized that rich people don’t walk; they ACTUALLY FLOAT ON AIR.

She sits down, polite and dainty, and smiles like a Crest commercial as she starts chatting up the other ladies who lunch in the spa chairs beside her. She is pretty in that soft, southern way many women in this region age; where you can tell from their meticulously kept buttery blond hair and their bright blue eyes that they were considered quite country beautiful in their day.

Before long, the woman is sharing why she is here; she needs to get her nails and toes done before her trip. What trip? you ask.

Oh, just her and about half a dozen of her closest girlfriends staying at an exclusive resort in Santorini. She and her hubby were supposed to go but he has to fly to Dubai. Instead, he has INSISTED she take the plane and go with some of her girlfriends, all expenses paid.

At this point, I am violently jealous of her and her girlfriends and wondering if she is looking to adopt a little black girl with curly hair who is fun at parties. She and her comrades in Cavalli, continue discussing their upcoming summer plans; Bridgehampton, naturally, and Fiji are mentioned. As are the Seychelles and Maldives. I literally want to burst into tears. They continue on until she is done and rushing out the door to make her personal shopping appointment at Carolina Herrera. As she stops at the desk to hand over her black card, my favorite gossipy gay asks her in a hushed voice about “Natalie.” She blushes, smiles, and says that she is doing just fine before gliding back out to her car.

After she pulls away from the curb and gossipy gay sits me in the chair to fix my errant fingernail, the ladies who lunch invariably take up gossiping about their frienemy who just exited.

“I am surprised,” the dark haired one says, in a Paula Deen drawl, “that she is taking her girlfriends. I thought she would just take her girlfriend.” She puts emphasis on that last word, her sentence punctuated by the lifting of an impeccably shaped eyebrow.

“She couldn’t get away with that!” says the blond one, seriously overworking her fake shock.
“Oh, of course she could,” Paula Deen replies. “They have an unspoken agreement; he keeps the money coming in, she keeps the house and the social calendar, the both keep girlfriends. It works for them.”

Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You mean to tell me there’s a program out there where you can live in luxury, travel to exotic locales at your leisure and YOU GET TO KEEP A GIRLFRIEND ON THE SIDE?!?!

I quit life.

I have been going about this shit all wrong.

Fuck love. Get Greece.