As you all know, I work very hard not to offend, but sometimes I want to talk about subjects which might inadvertently lead me down a path resulting in broad, sweeping generalizations about an entire phylum, species, or…
…gender.
I’ve learned a lot about women since successfully proposing to one of them on a tropical island a couple weeks ago.
Ever since, she’s been engaging in strange and private rituals of a mysterious nature. I’ll walk into the room (which happens a lot – my apartment only has one room, so you can’t help but walk into it fairly often), and I’ll see a lighting-quick blur in the corner - a swirling maelstrom of space and time which settles after a nanosecond to be replaced by my fiancée, Aydika, in a chair, looking up at me with those, “Nothing! I wasn’t doing anything!” eyes, which is just the less obvious way of saying “Everything! I was doing everything!”.
She had never done this sort of thing before, but this scene became a regular occurrence following the symbolic lassoing of engagement. I am now utterly convinced that marriage is something which lives happily in our DNA, and that there is a special female Marriage Gene which is switched on at the time of engagement. It changes the nature of the woman, and leads her to do things that even she might find odd.
At first, I didn’t know what was going on with these blurs of activity, but after a few such incidents, I started putting the pieces together.
A clue here, and a clue there – what she wouldn’t tell me, I was able to learn through observation.
The first thing I saw was a magazine that she had stowed in her backpack, which she had left open and against the wall. The magazine was right on top. At first, I thought it was a publication for pastry enthusiasts, but upon closer inspection realized that the large cream-puffy thing on the cover was actually a woman in her bridal gown, smiling at the camera on what she was pretending (pretending because she was just a model) was the happiest day of her life.
Then, more and more, I saw other similar things around the apartment: Bridal magazines stuffed in the middle of other stacks of magazines, bridal magazines placed in the corners of rarely visited cupboards, bridal magazines in the freezer, and then it hit me – There were bridal magazines all over the god damned place. They were like cockroaches, except that they typically didn’t scamper when I switched on the light or eat my cereal while I was sleeping.
Turns out that these quick movements in the corner were Aydika swiftly hiding one of her bridal magazines before I got a chance to spot her with it.
I wondered what all the secrecy was about. I mean, I’m happy we’re getting married, so I’d like to take part in the bridal magazine perusing.
One day when she was gone, I picked up one of these magazines and flipped through it. Five minutes passed, and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen a single article – it was a 200 page ring/gown ad.
My hands began to tremble. An ache began in a distant place… Below the chin… Off to the side… Around my… No, it wasn’t my heart… Further down… There we go… Further… Further…
Eureka! My wallet was crying…
I could barely hear it: A soft, distant, high-pitched whimpering, like a dog with its head down and its tail between its legs, expecting a scolding for having eaten all the toilet paper and then pooped it up later (which, when you think about it, is kind of efficient – the stuff wipes all by itself on the way out – but I digress).
In spite of the protestations of my checking account, I’m willing to accept some financial pain. I knew what I was getting into when I asked her to marry me, and that there are certain traditional obligations, and that things like rings rank at the top.
We talked a bit about the ring, and that began a whole new series of furtive activities.
Aydika began coming home late, and leaving at strange times.
“Where are you going?” I’d ask.
“Oh, I just have a few errands to run.”
It all sounded innocent enough.
Come the weekend, I learned something about what was going on.
“Let’s go for a walk today,” Aydika said.
As a geek, I’m innately averse to using my legs to get anywhere, but she asked so sweetly and so innocently that I agreed.
We passed by some familiar spots, stopped for tea on the way, and enjoyed each other’s company in a manner familiar to the both of us.
But then we turned a corner, and I understood the purpose of the walk.
“Oh, my!”
Aydika feigned surprise, although she didn’t know that I knew that she was a feigner.
“Look! A jewelry store!”
I could see that. A jewelry store is definitely what it was.
“They might have rings!” she added.
That’s true. They might.
“Do you think they’d have anything you’d want? Do we even know anything about choosing an engagement ring?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. But I’ve learned a lot from reading my magazines. I bet we could find something, or at least get some ideas. But I’ve never been into one of these stores, so I don’t know what to expect.”
I was down for a little window shopping and research, so I agreed to go in.
We walked through the door, and the entire store stopped at once.
“AYDIKA!!!”
The employees were in a state of absolute bliss. I heard the popping of champagne corks in every corner, balloons fell from the ceiling, Mexican fireworks were set off, a crystal flute for the fermented berries was shoved into Aydika’s right hand, and then she was escorted over to a glass case by several jewelers, leaving the ol’ Rodawgg at the doorway, alone and forgotten.
Following along, I tried to squeeze my way through the throng of drooling diamond peddlers, hearing bits and pieces of different conversations on the way…
“…but he says that the sapphires won’t arrive from our African operation until the 3rd…”
“…these are what you wanted, right? We can still go with platinum if you don’t think these are nice enough…”
“…it’s going to take longer than expected because the boat sank off the coast of India, and took the stones with it, but it’s OK because we can just add that to the bill and move along without a delay…”
“…they’ve never seen a ruby of this size, so they’re hiring a special team of elite German engineers to build a device with which to cut it…”
My wallet transitioned from its quiet whimper into a full-blown sob. If it had any hands at all, it would have cradled its face (which it also didn’t have) in them.
A half hour and two bottles of bubbly later, we left the store.
“Friends of yours?” I asked.
“That was strange, wasn’t it?” she answered. “They probably treat everybody like that.”
“But they knew your name, like you had been there before.”
“Yeah – Like I said: strange.”
Hey, Paul – Can I get a raise, please?