Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Slippery Slope People

And a voice said, “I know you don’t approve, but you’re going to need to just buck up.”

I blinked and I peered out around my monitor, trying to see who or what was speaking. Had I imagined the voice? What I finally said was, “Approve of what?” but what I was thinking was, “How long have I been sitting here? In this office? Looking at this porn? Have I always been here?”

And the voice said, “Darnell and Damien and me,” and it was my boss, Adri, who was saying it. Right there. Tapping the heel of her shoe on the floor in that annoying way she always did. That annoying way she always does.

What I said was, “Duh... Dar… Darnell?” but what I was thinking was, “Could I really have been looking at porn for five whole hours?”

I was thinking, “Is that even possible?”

The room had a fuzzy and slightly underwater quality to it and I had no feeling in my legs and I had forgotten to eat lunch. And breakfast.

And Adri said, “Look. Darnell and Damien and I are in love. We are getting married. The people around here are going to have to get used to that or else not work here anymore.”

I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” What I was thinking was, “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

Adri said, “I just brought Darnell and Damien in here and introduced them to you not five minutes ago.”

She said, “Are you stoned?”

I was reasonably certain I was not. There was no way to know for sure.

I said, “Married? All three of y’all?” and then it started coming back to me, little by little and drip by drip. Adri with Darnell and with Damien, like Michonne leading her pet walkers across the post-apocalyptic Georgian landscape. Yeah… Of course.

I yelled my congratulations out after her as she left my office. I meant it. To be honest, I thought it was helpful that there were two of them – Darnell AND Damien – since they were each roughly half her age and half her I.Q. The three of them made an excellent couple.

Even two years back, I would have told you Adri was crazy for trying something like this. You know, trying to challenge polygamy laws and all. I would have told you something about how it was not the same thing as gay marriage. Because it is not the same thing as gay marriage.

But then, later on, I heard something else and I am no longer so sure.

What I heard was this: I heard the state attorneys general try and defend state marriage laws in court. I heard them and they were terrible at it. Junior high debate team awful. Mushy. Confused. Like they’d been awakened suddenly from deep slumbers and then unexpectedly thrown in front of an appeals court panel.

And when they tried to defend the laws, it became apparent to everybody that they did not understand the laws. That they didn’t know why their states had marriage laws to begin with. They stammered and they sweated and they quoted Scripture. They mumbled something about “Children!” even though their marriage laws and their parentage laws had nothing to do with one another, had no overlap at all.

So now… Well, will their powers of speech and reasoning and debate magically return to them down the road, when two egrets and the letter H sue to marry an ironing board? Or when every denizen of Boulder, Colorado decides they want the dignity and inheritance rights that only a group marriage can bring? When Aunt Suzie decides she wants to make it official with her dearly departed great-great-great Uncle Otis? Or when Carroll O’Connor and Archie Bunker tie the knot in an ornate double wedding with the square root of x and the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, 1945?

I do not know. I do not possess that information.

Perhaps Adri’s Vaguely Creepy Cougar Polygamy is the future.

I walked down to Adri’s office and I knocked on her door. She was there, sitting at her desk, working, with a fiancé standing at each arm.

And she looked up and I said, “Adri, Darnell, Damien, promise me something.”

I said, “Promise me you’ll take me with you when you go to buy your wedding cake.” What I was thinking was, “I’m going to bring a camera. And popcorn.”

Somewhere, the Slippery Slope People rub their eyes and stumble out from their caves into the light. 


Words:  Katy Anders
Pictures:  Tanya Miller
Music:  Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians

34 comments:

  1. Hahahahaha, love that ending! And my dear, I hate to be a nitpicker but technically Adri is involved in Cougar Polyandry. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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    1. Thanks Debra.

      It's generally pretty easy to see when I wander past the outskirts of topics I know anything about for just this reason. But the laws governing plural marriage use "polygamy" as a generic, all-encompassing term, so I went with it.

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  2. Slippery Slope Minions...

    Minions have been known to don a maid costume for house cleaning purposes, and wear starfish on their nipples for beach scenes, but are all very definitely male.

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    1. I have heard of these things you call... males. I think perhps I've met one, although I can't be sure. They sound awful, though, always starting wars and so forth...

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  3. "There was no way to know for sure," if you were high!?! You might not be getting high right.
    If everyone is consenting, go for the pluralist marriage. The divorce stats for a couple are staggering, I can only imagine what it will be like for a triad. When one person wants out, does that dissolve the entire marriage or can two of them stay married while the other takes 1/3 of their triad's assets? Or, what if two of them want a divorce from the third, does the one they are ousting have to pay 2/3 of his/her net worth? So many complications. I'm glad we have people so adept at the law to clarify such jigger pokery...We're all doomed.

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    1. I am hardly the person to be casting stones at others relationships or marriages. After all, I was a bigamist until quite recently. Technically, I mean. And also legally.

      I have know a few people in these 3-person+ relationships and without exception, they have broken down for the reasons my grandmother would have predicted. Jealousy, mostly.

      That doesn't mean they can't work or that they aren't good while they last or that they should not be tried, I guess. After all, most heterosexual 2-person arrangements end up breaking down, too.

      I'm quite fine on my own.

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  4. It's always about the Children. Mixed race marriage, Gay marriage, ....you name it, and the argument is "What about the children!" Well what about them? ;-)

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    1. I have a friend who is black and married to a white guy. her mother initially didn't approve of the marriage because "Mixed race kids have a very hard time and are never accepted." Not even the fact that the President of the United States is mixed race would convince her otherwise.

      In general, kids seem to handle this stuff better than adults do.

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  5. Debra beat me to the Polyandry remark. But you know what? You ought to take advantage of this to marry a tarantula. A female tarantula. Preferably a pregnant female tarantula. Who's got tattoos and an attitude. Like you.

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    1. I wonder what a tarantula would get a tattoo of... Anyway, it's a brave new world out there and my chances of finding a spouse rise every time a barrier is broken. I might be typing this on the keyboard which is my future wife right this moment.

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  6. Marriage: my favorite spectator sport. Please pass the popcorn.

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    1. Yup. If someone is ambitious enough for that shit, let 'em try.

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  7. Loved this one. Hits the spot in a big way.

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    1. Thanks, Rupert. Felt like kind of a throwaway post, but I feel obligated to post once a week no matter what.

      This is going to be my final marriage post!

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  8. Where are those thousands of pastors who were going to off themselves over the legalization of gay marriage? I heard tell of a lady here in Tennessee who wants to marry her Macaw named Humphrey Bogart. Like your boss's decision and the SCOTUS, s'got naught to do with me. I don't care what she rubs her bird against either. as long as it isn't me.

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    1. I believe it's going to be okay. There have been a lot of pro-gay marriage people and anti-gay marriage people who have been angry for a long time now, and they aren't going to all calm down all at once. But it's been a month now, and the grumbling is dying down.

      Now, if the gay marriage folks can just stop being sore winners, we can all live happy ever after. Right?

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  9. Katy. Interesting you mention celebrations in this context. I heard a man--old white guy in town here to Santa Fe from over to Arkansas--who said, and I'll attempt to quote the racist bastard, "The faggots are worse than the blacks were when they got desegregation. A faggot will throw a party on Main Street for his new underwear. Blacks know to party at home."

    My sister and her wife toasted a hearty "Cheers" and went back to their lives when they heard the news. Me, had I lived my years as a gay man persecuted for my sexual preferences I'd still be partying it up. Me, I'd be creating a glitter shortage over to the Party Pig.

    Me, I'd try to insure that every bigoted mother fucker in Santa Fe, New Mexico was trying to wash fine-grained particles of silver and gold plastic off their faces. Hell, I'd dress like Tinker Bell and make a name for myself and make headlines:

    "Six-foot-four-inch Tinker Bell terrorizes church goers at anti-abortion protest. Three hospitalized with apoplexy."

    Now, can't we all just get along and Fuck Walmart!

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    1. It's always great fun when the bigots decide to explain their Hierarchy of Hate. I had a great uncle (I mean, he was a generation removed, not that he was a "great" uncle) who once explained to me why Latinos are worse than blacks.

      Of course, he didn't use the word Latino or black. At the time, I wasn't even familiar with the term "beaner" as a slur.

      Anyway, apparently Latinos are even worse than the African-Americans, because at least the African-Americans know English. "Best place for a [Latino] is six feet underground."

      I should also point out that this guy was NOT a Southerner.

      Why did I go into this story?

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  10. I'm still in awe of five hours of porn at work. I've got to get me a job like that! I might get too glazed over to be of much use for anything else, though. Polyandry, polygamy, amazes me. Hell, I can hardly deal with just ONE other person as it is. Maybe if I was young enough I could....naw!

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    1. Well, based on my limited understanding of men, I would think that guys probably don't do the porn thing 5 hours straight. Isn't it usually just in like 15-minute intervals with y'all?

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  11. Why do polygamists cross the road?

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    1. I give up. Why do polygamists cross the road?

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    2. To run away from the wives.

      To marry another bride.

      To ask a Mormon for advice.

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    3. I'll tell you what. I had one wife and I felt like hiding half of the time. And she was a veritable saint. I can't even imagine having multiple people to answer to.

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    4. What about one, just one person to answer to? The one person to talk to at night, to wake up with on the morning after, to share your life with, to share all your triumph and sorrows. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

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    5. I am certain that works very well for some people, as it did for me at one point in my life. And maybe it will again.

      Not everyone has to live exactly the same way.

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    6. I would think that trying to be happy with our life is probably the most fundamental human desire. We then do the best we can with what we are given and what we can create. But when we were twelve we suddenly learned that in order to survive and succeed in society, we have to do all of the above while not harming or hurting other people, especially those closest to us.

      So the truth may be that we all live in very similar ways, way more than we realize or want to admit. But guess what? Who cares how much we look alike or different in the mirror? The only thing that matters is what makes us happy, right?

      Many things in life make me happy, kids, family, food, game, hobby. Yet few can compare to having that one good friend, someone we trust and rely on with our life.

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    7. I haven't had very good luck with having ONE person to trust with things. And I actually believe that's sort of a male thing, anyway. Women tend to have networks of people filling different roles, whereas guys tend to end up putting all their eggs in one basket.

      Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: "Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to."

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    8. Hey, you speak like a man, you know. Isn't it normally the other way around, where men have incentive to spread around their genes while women need the stability of a marriage to provide for her offspring, at least for ten or twenty years at a time? Don't many women file for divorce after their kids grew up?

      So a man who actually puts all his eggs in one basket would be a model husband, right?

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    9. Probably. I'm not exactly out there sowing my wild oats, though. Being in a relaitonship of any kind just hasn't been a priority for me for a long time. I don't care how "perfect" the other person is. And I know a lot of people like this. I don't get lonely very often.

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  12. ^^ I thought the joke was this.

    Q: Why did the polygamist cross the road?
    A: To get to the other bride.

    One of my friends is in a poly relationship with 2 lesbians (they're married, though I guess that makes them bi now rather than lesbians). He thinks it's the coolest thing ever. Like, every guy's dream come to life. Each one is roughly 300 lbs (not exaggerating), one of them sports a mullet, and the other doesn't shave her legs. He likes to tell me that I'm probably a little jealous deep down...

    I am most definitely not. Personally, I'm more of a "quality over quantity" kind of guy.

    Oh... also, he lives in Boulder, so it seems your reference was apt.

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    1. Haha. First of all, you win the joke contest this week.

      People can do whatever works for them, I guess. I just know that I don't live with anybody else, and if my phone rings more than once in an evening I start getting annoyed. Being alone is a sacrament.

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  13. What I finally said was, “Approve of what?” but what I was thinking was, “How long have I been sitting here? In this office? Looking at this porn? Have I always been here?”

    Well Katy, lines like these are why I keep coming back. I mean, that and everything else I like, but especially lines like that.

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    1. Thank you, Alex! You're the one who is showing up for the writing. Everybody else is just ehre for the free snacks. Plus, I actually pay one or two of them to comment.

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