Ahead of the wave

My cohort—mid thirties—is going through a major divorce cycle. What triggers some of these divorces is so mundane (“we don’t talk any more,” “we have grown apart,” and the most puzzling of it all: “it is time for change”) that I am starting to think staying married is a terrible signal about my coolness-factor.

According to this article, by having two kids exactly five years apart, and surviving the first five years of my marriage, I have significantly reduced the odds of getting a divorce:

Worldwide, not only did couples tend to divorce most often at year four, but divorces peaked among those in their late 20s, often with no children or just one child. The more children a couple had, the less likely they were to divorce.

The truth is I like the status quo. I am too lazy. I have no evidence that I would do better in another relationship. My husband bears 50¢ of each dollar I spend. I find it extremely easy to stay married.

My sister, being on the hip side, is on her third husband. She is so ahead of the wave that her three marriages chronicle the rapid changes economic liberalization has brought to my home country—a developing country tucked somewhere between Asia and Europe.

In late 80s, even as a little girl, I knew that diplomats and university professors, especially those in social sciences, were prime husband material. Because market opportunities were limited by centrally enforced controls, entrepreneurship paid little and garnered little respect. Civil servants were all the rage. They were not rich, but they were polymaths. They knew their opera and their wines.

My sister married to a leading example of this species: a France-educated, Gaolouises-smoking professor of political science, son of a small town businessman whose conglomerate amounted to a gas station, a flour mill, and a large scale sunflower oil factory. Husband #1 did know his wine, and drank it too, to the point that he would pass out on the floor. Soon, he received his gentle riddance.

By the time husband #2 came around, great changes were taking place. Trade barriers were down; the country was rapidly privatizing and small businesses were mushrooming. Tastes also shifted from the high-brow to the traditional: the Eurovision was out, pop-music with local beats was in. Husband #2, of the nouveau riche, owned a small factory that produced nuts and bolts. He lied about having a college degree, could not speak a foreign language, and liked gambling. He lasted 3 years.

Husband #3—he is a great guy—came a few years later, as the country, at least its big cities, were transitioning towards a service oriented economy. He runs a consulting business, advising small, family businesses that are now transitioning into formalized, more professional companies. Husband #2 could be a client!

Photos of Industrial Decay

Photos of industrial decay often look so good. They make me think that movie sets must be rather dinky places.

This photo from Waylon Brinck is one of my favorites.

American nightmare

She spills red wine on my friend’s antique tablecloth. In a frenzy, we are trying to rush the spill to the sink. She talks incessantly, mixing apologies with instructions, but it is hard to follow her rapid mumble. Unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the house, she is clumsy. My friend is annoyed.

We are at a Thanksgiving party. She claims it is her first, and the cranberry sauce and the sweet potatoes bemuse her. Having played the part of the clueless foreigner myself, her cute little remarks about American oddities do not charm me. Yes, yes, they eat in their cars, sip tea from paper cups with plastic lids. Men wear white socks with dressing pants, pants that have shrunk with years of dry cleaning.

She tells us about her move from France about a year ago. She lies about the timing. We had a similar conversation over lunch, also attended by her husband—a fanged-toothed Dane with the presence of a wilted lettuce—and that was easily two years ago. Having dismissed me as a third-world riff-raff then, she does not remember.

The post-spill commotion is now over, and she resumes her monologue on the shortcomings of the American life while gulping down Chesapeake Bay oysters. The cheese is so rubbery here, she informs us, and there are only three cuts of meat. Carpets are charged with static energy. Things are too shiny.

Next comes a long list of refined, cultured things, missed by the uncouth folks of this country. The list is suspiciously long; one part local things, one part stuff too ancient to be found anywhere. I concede the point that buying cheese made with fresh goat piss is next to impossible here, but put any aspiring chef in a well-stocked neighborhood grocery store and you will observe a candid assessment of availability in France. With its three varieties of sea salt and twelve feet long mushroom display, my local Wegmans is better than Disneyland.

I can quickly sum what I think are her true objections to a life here: the banality of the United States offends her. She cannot stand being a part of a large middle class, and the competition it brings from those whose looks and lives are so different from hers. She is not used to sharing the neighborhood with exotic people who smell of cardamom or fried fish, or finding in fine restaurants loud customers who talk with their entire bodies. In her world, such people live on welfare, tucked away into projects, away from elegant city centers, away from the beautiful people.

She has a 19-year-old son who is starting Columbia next year. He and I discover that we both like Wilco and read Luis Sepulveda. He is very cool.

I Heart Colin Firth

Here I am, furiously researching Colin Firth on the web, in pursuit of something that could cure my infatuation with him. I just saw Pride and Prejudice on public television and I am now hopelessly in love. The whole thing is decidedly pathetic, completely hormonal, curiously out of control, and somehow related to my pending thirty-sixth birthday. Making things worse is my husband’s absence—not that he would have been able to prevent this fascination. He is away for three weeks, seeking bureaucratic fortunes in some Ethiopian village. And I am alone with two kids, five years apart, both teething. As much as I love my children, taking care of them on my own has made me feel anonymous, empty, and melancholic.

This happened once before, I think about six years ago. Then, nearly thirty, childless, and into the seventh year of my marriage, I found myself outright in love with Kevin Spacey upon watching American Beauty. Contractually obliged to live with me, my husband managed to dismiss the whole thing as a joke. Yet, I went somewhat public with my newly found love, hanging a web-printed photo of Kevin Spacey in my office.

With Colin Firth, I have been able to control that particular urge. The only photograph of a famous person in my office now belongs to my Facebook friend Frederich A. Hayek, hung on my door, under a crayon painting of Christopher Columbus. (Now I come to think of it, Hayek did write Prices and Production). The moron who inhabits the office next door asked who the old man was, and when I said “Pinochet,” he knowingly shook his head and promptly went back to hibernation. Although I am not able to question him on this gesture until late spring, I am familiar with that dim-witted headshake. This man—the boring colleague, not Firth, Hayek or Spacey—obtained two masters degrees, one in musical composition, from the University of Isle of He-Man, while riding the commuter train. I am grossly overeducated, too, but my life shines in comparison.

Before falling in love with Kevin Spacey, I never had a crush on what in all practicality amounts to an imaginary person. In fact, I have generally directed my crushes carefully, to people with whom I could have bilateral relations, and at some point, I married one. I blamed the Spacey episode on fatigue-induced cracks in my marriage that needed immediate sealing through propagation. With two urchins to show for it, my marriage now is just so awesome. Therefore, I must admit that my love for Colin Firth is slightly disturbing even to me, and I could use a few words of comfort, especially from Mr. Firth himself.

Knowledge is power, they say, and in the end, it was knowledge that helped me ditch Kevin. I found out that he harbors crazy aspirations with respect to other people’s money; yet he could not have been who he is now in the world he defends. Oh, I forget, I also saw the movie Seven, and that was it; I was cured.

Hmm…that gives me an idea. I should research Colin Firth’s political beliefs. There, he seems to be supporting Oxfam…there is hope after all.

Now, can anyone recommend a bad Colin Firth movie?