Why it pays to know your spouse

Some time ago, I had a friend I will call “A.” I met A. at a science fiction convention. She was, and is, an intelligent, witty, attractive woman, and indeed, she even dated a close friend of mine for almost two years.

A. was for quite some time one of my favorite models. In fact, she was even on the cover of Xero Magazine, the small press magazine lordfuckbeast and I have published for the last six years or so. A. is featured prominently in my portfolio, and it’s always been her goal to be in said portfolio more often than any of my other models.

A couple of months ago, A. dumped her boyfriend–a man she had once had a restraining order against because he had spent quite a lot of energy stalking her. (Yes, she was dating him; yes, she dated him AFTER he stalked her; no, I don’t understand it either.)

Well, today I received a call from her for the first time in about six weeks. “Hey, Frankin, can you do me a favor? I’m having a fight with my husband–”

“Your husband? Huh?”

“Yeah, I just got married last month. He wants me to tell you to take all the pictures of me off your porn site.”

“Huh?”

“We’re having a big fight…can you take all the pictures of me off your Web site?.

This call came almost simultaneously with an email from an address I don’t recognize: “I demand you remove all pictures of [A.’s name] off your Web site at once or face criminal charges of pornography!”

Okay. So she has evidently married someone she just met, and apparently, this person has some…um, let’s be delicate and call them “conservative social values.” And apparently, this person is…well, let’s NOT be delicate and call a spade a spade. This person is dumb as a post, not even being aware that there is no way a “criminal charge of pornography”–whatever that might be–is even remotely a possibility in the context of this reality.

So.

What is it about intelligent, well-educated chicks who seem to have an obsessive need to marry people they don’t even know?

I mean, it seems intuitively obvious that one’s happiness rests in no small part on the foundation of satisfaction with one’s personal life, said satisfaction being difficult to achieve if one is…um, married to a dumbfuck with whom one shares no traits in common, such as a framework of shared philosophical beliefs and values, or indeed even an opposable thumb[1].

There is an interesting science-fiction writer named J. G. Ballard (writer of works like “Crash”–turned into a movie by David Croneburg). Ballard’s works tend to be unsettling–at least when they aren’t downright nightmarish–and through many of them runs a common theme–an arc of characters who brilliantly, creatively, elaborately destroy themselves.

In many of Ballard’s works, there will come a moment in the story that is much like the moment when a roller coaster reaches the top of the first hill and begins its initial descent. It’s a moment where things aren’t really so bad, but nevertheless a point of no return has just been reached, and you know, right down to your very bones, that there is nowhere to go but down. You’re committed to your course, nothing can stop the roller coaster, and as you descend you will do nothing but gather speed.

I have seen some of my friends take this course, self-destructing in fiery ruin, past saving and beyond any hope of redemption. Tonight, I think I witnessed that moment again.

It’s a pity, too. She deserves better. But ultimately, we all sleep in the beds we make.

[1] In all honesty, I know nothing about her new husband–not even his name. So I do not know from direct experience that he has no opposable thumb, that being only an inference from his behavioral traits.