Tonight my wife and I celebrate 27 years of marriage and the beginning of our 28th. We actually celebrate a day early, on New Years Eve. Every year we ask a few couples to join us, friends we respect, admire and love. Our “tradition” is to have dinner at the local Outback Steakhouse where we buy all our guests dinner and hopefully show them just how much fun marriage can be. Yes, we like to show off our success. But, we do it because we want our close friends to know how wonderful a relationship can be when it’s worked for. And believe me when I say that it hasn’t always been a bed of roses.
You see, a lot of folks have given me shit for being in a relationship where the woman makes all the dough, where the woman is the career junkie, and where the man assumes the household duties. They are under the impression that I somehow manage to manipulate my way into, and through my marriage, that I’m some sort of male gold digger. But, by doing so, they insult my wife’s extreme intelligence, and quite frankly, they make me laugh. So I want to convey a tiny portion of what they don’t know about me and my marriage.
28 years ago I was managing a roller rink in a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was here that I met my wife in 1982. The year before that I had been wandering the country as a musician and roadie. A band I was working for at the time performed in this small town. During the week we were there, I became friends with a local tavern owner who was also a regular visitor to the club we were playing at. Bryan and I hit it off from the get go. He was warm, friendly and funny. More on him later. Anyway, the band broke up a few months later and I was out of work. I decided to head for Hollywood, California in hopes of finding a job with another band. It was the beginning of winter when I left Minnesota. It was cold and miserable. I had some cash to take a plane, one way, and a few bucks to keep me going for a short time while there. Soon after arriving in L.A. , I got a job in a boiler room selling pens over the phone. I was shitty at it. I couldn’t sell a pen to a piece of paper. On top of that, I couldn’t find a working band to play with. After a couple of weeks, the sales job wasn’t paying shit, the music thing wasn’t working out, and I was living in a roach infested motel, eating Cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew to survive. Things were bad, but they were about to get worse.
I woke up one morning and went to my cash stash. I found three dollars. That’s all that was left. I hadn’t been paying attention. I called into work to ask them about my paycheck. They said the check was only going to be fifty bucks and that it wouldn’t be ready for another week. I hung up. Frustrated and pissed off, I decided it was time to pack it in and head back east. I wasn’t sure where I was going to go at first, but then I recalled a conversation I’d had with my friend Bryan, the tavern owner back in Michigan. He’d told me I could always find a room above the bar, and that he’d be happy to put me to work tending it if anything happened to the band. I packed my stuff into my backpack and hit the road.
I hitched some rides out of California with a couple of truckers. I was fortunate to get out of California alive, but that’s another story. Anyway, the route to I’d chosen to Michigan was through the northern part of the country, along Interstate 80. There was a lot of snow through the Rockies that year. It was also fucking cold. Temperatures were into the teens during the day and single digits at night. I had prepared for a possible return road trip by packing a snow suit before I left. It was a good thing I did.
It was 2 am, somewhere in Wyoming along the Interstate. I had managed to get a ride from a Wyoming local who I had run into at an Idaho truck stop earlier that evening. We arrived at the guy’s exit, in the middle of nowhere, and unfortunately for me the next town was over an hour away. The guy who picked me up wasn’t too friendly to begin with, but it was very apparent that I had worn out my welcome. He stopped at the entrance to the exit and dropped me off, then he made his way up the ramp, across the bridge and down a dark county road, his tail lights disappearing into the blowing snow. The Interstate was amazingly quiet with not a vehicle in sight. I had my snow suit on so I wasn’t terribly cold…yet. I walked around a bit, trying to keep myself moving and generate some heat, but soon the long road day had sleep calling to me. I was a little scared of hypothermia, but I also knew that I needed to sleep. I laid down just before the eastbound exit and just off the shoulder. I propped my head up on my backpack, covering my face as well as I could with my hoody and my stocking cap. There were two street lights. One was over the west bound exit and the other was just over my head. I stayed under the light. I wanted to be seen and not run over. As I dozed off, I wondered if I was ever going to wake up. I knew the chances of doing so were slim to none if someone didn’t come by in the next few hours. As I contemplated my fate, it never once occurred to me to ask anyone I knew for help. Why? Because I was in the middle of nowhere, and I was, and am, a stubborn son-of-a-bitch.
I woke up a couple of hours later to the sound of a large truck and the voice of a man yelling at me. “What the fuck? Are you alright?” I opened my eyes and looked up. “Yeah, I’m fine” I replied. “But, I’m fuckin’ cold”. The guy reached down to help me up. “I’ll give you a ride if you want one. There’s a town about an hour up the interstate”. I stood up and thanked him. “Yeah, I’d appreciate that ” I said. The guy and I chatted little during the trip. I told him I was a musician and he told me he was a rancher. He was friendly enough, but when I mentioned the musician part, he frowned. He didn’t say anything about it though. As our hour together came to a close we approached the town. The old pickup truck exited the highway and the man dropped me off at the only truck stop in town. I thanked him and said goodbye. I walked in and sat down at the counter inside the coffee shop. I still had my three dollars and thought it might be a good idea to order a cup of hot chocolate. As I sat there, I figured I’d better call my friend in Michigan and let him know what was up. I hadn’t talked to him in quite a while, and I was sure he knew the band had broken up through his connections at the club.
I dialed the payphone and asked the operator to place a collect call for me. Bryan answered the phone and accepted the charges. “Where the fuck are you?” he asked. “I’m in Wyoming” was my reply. “Wyoming? What the hell are you doing there? I haven’t heard from you in a long time. I was beginning to worry. What the hell is up?” I told him the story about the band, which he already knew, my search for work in Hollywood, and my cold, snowy, overnight adventure. “Look man, let me get you a bus ticket back here.” I declined. “Bullshit!” he yelled at me over the phone. “It’s the fuckin’ dead of winter. I don’t care how many times you’ve hitch hiked across the country, it’s too fucking dangerous. Now let me send you a ticket!” he insisted. “Alright. But, only if you let me work it off at the bar” I replied. “Yeah, you can work it off”. My friend made the travel arrangements and soon I was on a bus to the Upper Peninsula.
A couple of days later I arrived at my destination. It was late, about eleven o’clock at night. The streets were ankle-deep in snow, and there wasn’t a soul around. However, Bryan was there waiting for me. “Glad you made it you stubborn bastard” he said with a smile. So was I. So was I.
I made it. I always have. And I work hard to make it. And regardless of the impression folks get when they see me living the lap of luxury (all things being relative), they have not a clue as to where I’ve been, and what I have done to get here. They don’t know the years of struggle in my life, or my marriage. They haven’t the foggiest idea how hard I have worked, and what I have done to survive. They don’t know that my wife and I lived on macaroni and cheese, noodles and broth in our first year of marriage. They don’t know that our first house was a 1950’s dump, that our cars were always in need of repair, and that I was the one that did all the work on them. They don’t know that I replaced transmissions, clutches, engines. I did it all. They don’t know that I worked three jobs to supplement my wife’s salary as an engineer early in her career, in order to make ends meet. They don’t know about my violent outbursts, the physical abuse I put my wife through the first three years of our marriage, brought on by self-induced shame, and my stupid insecurity of not making as much, or more, money than she did.
I could go on and on and on. The fact is that I will continue to be scoffed at, thought of as a kept man, and that’s just fine. I laugh at ignorance. But, I must defend my wife’s intelligence. She stood up to me, and for me, and we have worked hard to make our marriage successful, AND our life together a wonderful journey. Both of us had a lot of growing up to do. Both of us had a lot of deep introspection. And in our self-examination, we’ve learned that hard work, and our commitment to one another, is what has made our marriage strong and lasting. Additionally, I no longer let my ego, my pride, get in the way of our relationship.
My wife makes more money than I could ever make. That’s a fact, and it’s one that I can live with. But, I certainly don’t have things handed to me. I’ve never had them handed to me. I have, and continue to, work my ass off proudly to make sure that my Queen’s castle is always just right. I also do everything within my power to support her career aspirations, her life goals and her dreams. She is truly my Queen. I adore her, and I will love her with all my heart until death.
Throughout our marriage, I have always told my wife that I would rather be poor and happy with her, than rich and miserable without her. And, I really mean that. So, to those who don’t know, to those who are ignorant and blind… I laugh heartily at you and your verbal barbs. You have not a clue. You see, what I’ve revealed today is just the tip of the iceberg that is my life, and my marriage. And believe me, there’s a whole hell of a lot that you’ll never know. So, do yourself a favor and give it a rest. I have housework to do and a anniversary to celebrate. In the meantime, those of you who believe in a skydaddy need to ask yourself a question… “How can these godless heathen’s be so fucking happy?”
