Butchblog

Young and Dumb

I’d just graduated from college and had no idea what to do with myself. I moved back to Philadelphia and into my parent’s house. My father soon suggested I enlist in the army, even though the Vietnam War was raging. He said, “It will make a man of you.”

            “Maybe,” I agreed, and began packing my bag. The next day I found a one-bedroom apartment with a shared bath for $50 a month. I signed up to be a substitute teacher and began to receive calls at 6AM telling me where to show up and what I would teach that day. It was a punishing job, but one I felt I deserved.

            Other than at work, I didn’t talk to anyone. Didn’t own a television. Listened to the radio and read Russian novels late into the night. I began to think that maybe my father was right and went to talk to the Army recruiter. He seemed happy to see me. The recruiter suggested a guy with my education should apply for Officer Candidate School. That evening I called my college girlfriend. “We’re either going to get married now or I’m going to Vietnam,” I threatened. She agreed hesitantly to marriage. At spring break I drove out to Ohio, where she was in her last year of college, and married this person I barely knew. Neither of us told anyone about it, not even our families.

            I didn’t really want to get married. I was too young; the girlfriend was even younger. We barely knew who we were or where we wanted to go. I mostly liked her because she had been nice to me at a time when I had too little niceness in my life. I don’t remember us ever having a serious conversation. I wouldn’t have known where to begin. I wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to this hasty marriage. I’d just be guessing if I said. But this was 1967 and people like us, kids really, who were about to go out into the world and didn’t have a clue as to what to do with themselves, often plowed ahead into foolish (and usually short-lived) marriages.

            We drove to Parkersburg, West Virginia to do the deed because there was no waiting period there. We bought a pair of cheap gold rings in a pawn shop. I wanted to go to the local city hall and find a justice of the peace or whoever was available to perform such ceremonies. But the girlfriend said that she wanted to be married in a church. I think it was the first time I’d heard her express a preference for anything in particular. Maybe strawberry rather than chocolate ice cream. I didn’t much care. None of this truly matters, is what I was thinking. Man, was I wrong.

            Somehow, she managed to find us a church and a minister who was willing to marry us. On the spot, as it were. That is, after subjecting us (mostly me) to a barrage of irritating and embarrassing questions.

            “Do you truly love this beautiful young woman?” he asked me while smiling beatifically at her. It was pretty clear whose side he was on.

            If I had answered honestly, I might have said something along the lines of—I have no fucking idea of what love is. Instead I said, looking down at my feet, “That’s none of your business.”

            He was shocked. I could tell. He was probably one of those guys who think because they have a collar around their neck, they get to declare everything that is right and wrong about the world. But he pressed on, because, he, like me, thought the girlfriend was quite pretty and wholesome—blue eyes, blonde hair, the whole sorority girl package. I think he just couldn’t figure out what she was doing with me—a long-haired, skinny Jewish kid.

            “So, Robert,” he began. “How do you plan to support this marriage.”

            “It’s not all on me, you know,” I said.

            “The man, though, you’ll agree,” Mr. Preacher said, “is the primary bread winner.”

            My dark mood grew darker. “What’s bread got to do with anything,” I muttered. I looked over at my intended. She was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, smiling as if everything in the world was just peachy. What the hell am I doing here? I thought. That’s when I should have grabbed my pea-coat and booked. But I didn’t. We both would have been a lot happier if I had. The girlfriend could have gone back to school, met an upstanding fraternity boy who could have appreciated her in a way I was never going to be able. And I could have gone back to Philadelphia and struggled with all the existential angst that surrounded me, and if that led me to Vietnam or to draft-dodging or rampant drug addiction, so be it. That’s how you find yourself, I knew. Not by copping out in the offices of some two-bit self-righteous “man of god.” But, instead I stayed where I was.

            He asked a few more questions and got the same hostile answers from me until he gave up, and turned to the girlfriend. “Are you sure about this?” he asked her. she nodded her head yes. I had the distinct feeling she had not followed any of the previous conversation. “Okay, then.” He shrugged, stood up. “Follow me.” He then led us into the church proper, all stained glass and wood pews, right up to an altar with crosses and Jesus statues everywhere. In the lingo of the times, I was “totally freaked.” I don’t think I took a single breath through the entire service, short though it was. It was just me, the girlfriend, and this reverend—who I now thoroughly hated.

             I was so nervous that my body shook throughout the whole service, like it was trying to tell me something. I said “I do,” when the man asked. She said the same. The rings were slipped on. He pronounced his pronouncement. The reverend and I shook hands, then he leaned into me and whispered, “You owe the church one hundred dollars.”