Five Weddings

The first time my wife and I got married, a global pandemic spread across the earth, shutting down civilization. With nothing to do but rub our avocados with Clorox wipes, we started bickering about things like—is it safe to eat avocados rubbed with Clorox wipes? In a moment of whimsy, we drove to the desert and stood in the sun with our four best friends and got married on the dry spiderwebbed mud. My wife’s dress was see-through. The photographer said, “I feel like a pornographer.” I said, “I hope you got the money shot.” Afterwards, all the guests soaked in geothermal hot springs, and the traumatized photographer went home. Eventually, my wife and I snuck off and consummated our marriage in a metal trailer without air conditioning, pausing occasionally to make sure neither of us had heat stroke.

Our second wedding was a year later. Our friends and family drove across America to be there. Nobody cared about the pandemic anymore. We said our vows, and everybody clapped, and then we slow danced to a Townes Van Zandt song. At one point, my wife whispered, “I feel like all of this has happened before.” I said, “What are you doing next Tuesday?”

Our third wedding was the following Tuesday. We’d spent two years planning and having weddings and didn’t know how to do anything else. We drove to the courthouse. The clerk said, “According to our files, you’re already married.”

We said, “Yeah, we know.”

The clerk said, “You need to get divorced if you want to get married again.”

We said, “That is literally the opposite of our vows.”

We got mad and went outside. There was a protest. We joined in and waved our fists, demanding justice for all the suffering people of the world.

At one point a police officer arrested us. We said, “Wait, will you marry us first?”

He said, “I’m not a priest.”

We said, “Close enough.”

He said, “By the power invested in me…” as he handcuffed us with zip ties.

Our fourth wedding was the following winter. The pandemic was back. They let us out of jail. We were free people who couldn’t go anywhere because all the businesses were closed again. It rained every day. Our street flooded, and we watched salmon migrate and spawn from our living room window.

My wife said, “I’m bored. We should get married.”

I said, “Our friends must be getting sick of all these weddings.”

She said, “Our weddings are literally the only thing happening right now.”

We fashioned a boat from the discarded arbor we built for Wedding #2 and floated around the city, visiting friends.

They said, “Cool boat. You aren’t getting married again, are you?”

We said, “We’re still in love. We can’t help it.”

They got dressed up and followed us in inner tubes that we towed behind us using an intricate system of ropes and zip ties that the police used to handcuff us in Wedding #3. We floated out to sea, where we were married in international waters by a foul-mouthed ship captain who asked us, “Do ye salty lovebirds swear to adore each other in stormy waters and in fair? In mutiny and in bounty?” We said, “Aye aye.”

Our fifth wedding was last week. We were lying in bed watching The Bachelorette. It was hometowns. One of the contestants, Bryan, took the bachelorette on a merry-go-round, then introduced her to his cranky uncle Henry. Later, Bryan said, “I’m not just falling in love with you. I’m in love with you.”

My wife said, “This show’s stupid.”

I said, “It’s the best.”

She said, “Did we sound like that when we were falling in love?”

I said, “No, we were cool.”

There was a commercial, so we decided to get married. Our cat officiated. We put a copy of the Tao Te Ching in front of him. We consummated the marriage before the show came back on. Afterwards, we started planning our next wedding.

My wife said, “We gotta up the ante. Hear me out. Space?”

I said, “I’m thinking the opposite. A wedding so tiny that nobody realizes it’s happening. Not even us.”

My wife just looked at me. Eventually she said, “Isn’t that just… being married?”

I said, “I guess so.”

That’s when it occurred to us. It was time to do something else. We held each other as the weight of our non-wedding lives crashed down on us, trying to pull us apart.