How I Ended Up Half Married and All the Way Annulled

Back when my hair was still shiny and my waist still apparent, I ran with some crazy girls..  Medical professionals who would eventually cause the local medical reputation to be what it is today, but that’s another story.

We had a routine. Meet where someone had a big mirror, primp for three hours, create cleavage, check to be sure our butts looked fantastic, and prime our man getting skills by critiquing what we had done the last time we went out.

It went like this….approach the club. Stop outside to be sure the “girls” are still in place, with cleavage still showing. Walk slowly, in a group, slinging our hair and looking beautifully bored… Take a slow gander around the room… Pick out a man.

Now, understand, we had man picking rules:

Check his teeth . Crooked was acceptable, green was not.

Chose one without a comb- over or a mullet, with his belt actually on his waist.

Never chose one wearing a lot of rings or with his shirt unbuttoned to his belly.

Check to see if he is wearing more than one chain necklace.

He’d be a no go if his eyes were close together, or if his hips were wider than his shoulders.

Ask about his mother. If he lives with her, let him buy you a drink and then walk off in a huff. If he follows and asks what’s wrong, use that old proven proverb…… “Nothing.”

When we had each picked our man, we had to see if he would dance. More importantly, HOW he would dance. Never close enough to feel the belt buckle or far away enough to look like he’s dancing alone. If he raised his hands in the air more than once during a dance, we’d let him buy us a drink, and then walk off. That way, he wouldn’t know what he had done wrong, and we would get satisfaction no end.

One ill fated night I spotted a black haired man in a red shirt. His back was to me, and he was at a table far from the door. He had white, straight teeth. I pointed faster than an English setter in a whiskey ad.

Then, I made the move that would eventually wreck havoc…and make me infamous for my ingenious use of an ink pen…I approached and said those dastardly words… “Let’s dance.”

“I don’t dance.” He said, and I should have listened.

“You do now.” I said, abandoning all that was good and right in my life.

Even though he danced much like Pee Wee Herman, I was smitten.

His black hair was long and shining. He smelled good. He was tall. He appeared shy. He must have been all I wanted in a man, because when he said he drove a truck for a living, I let him buy me a beer, and I didn’t walk off in a huff.

Months later he moved into my apartment. Rather, I moved him into my apartment. He had a bit of a headache. I had one as well…it just hadn’t started hurting yet.

I would have walked in flip flops on hot coals, crawled naked to a crack house in New York City on broken glass, slept nude at a coon hunt…lived in a hovel with cannibals, cooked spaghetti every night.

That’s all my Indian Love Song ate, spaghetti, and a little chorizo. I didn’t know what chorizo was at the time; it looked like nasty, but remember, I was in love. And he smelled good.

The truck driving went on and on and on. The money didn’t. I found myself working two jobs, with almost no time to rub his temples, make chorizo, or Son of a Gun his dashboard.

 I turned my whole house into a truck drivers dream. It was nothing for me to have a girlie calendar on the dining room wall….he said she looked a little like me…if I had some hips and boobs and grew my hair a little longer and had better skin.. I worked at that for a little while…..but then Lent came and I had to give up something….

He kept saying he was Cherokee Indian. I never doubted it, as he did have black hair and couldn’t hold his liquor. He even told me his Indian name…Eyestone. He asked me to paint feathers on the fenders of his truck. He tied leather shoestrings around his head…He stared, and got teary when we passed a teepee by the side of the road. He never resorted to wearing a head dress or doing rain dances, but if he had…… I was in love, remember…

When I realized he was taking two days to deliver something to a local factory, I decided maybe the chorizo could get cold and I would scope out the situation. Of COURSE, there was a good reason for a two day trip thirty miles away!!

I got a friend to go with me to witness his murder and testify to my temporary insanity. We put about two hundred miles on the car, and finally found him by the side of the road with a group of guys.

 I think he was really upset about getting stabbed a couple of times in front of his macho trucking buddies…it was with a black, fine point Bic Pen I found in the floor board of his truck…this one act has caused more talk than Monica Lewinsky and her blue dress, but I have never felt so gratified..…but that’s another story…

Finally, someone with a clue called and told me my Indian Love Song was not gonna ever, ever get sung, and that my Indian had a sqaw in Chicago, one in Cherokee, and a 21 year old half breed son somewhere up north. After I threw up and threw several breakable household items, I decided to bide my time….and…

Never underestimate a screwed over woman.

The landlord called and said we hadn’t paid the rent in three months and what were we planning on doing about it? I figured my Indian Love Song was over, considering he probably had hoarded my hard earned rent money, and had enough money for a getaway……

I looked in the newspaper and found the following ad…” Divorces, Adoptions and Annulments: $99.00.” Since I didn’t really want to adopt a fake American Indian, I decided to just break down for a while.

 I lay in my mother’s floor for seven days. She finally announced, with her arms crossed, shaking a dish rag.. (This meant she meant it)….. that, Good God, Girl… the Lord had enough time to make the earth and all that was in it in seven days, and what was I gonna do?

I went for my 99 dollar annulment. The lawyer told my Indian Love Song that he had to pay for it.

When he said he didn’t have any money, he was told he had fifteen minutes to come up with it or he was going to jail for the weekend. The sweat running off his face was more satisfying than a giant frozen margarita. I was shocked when he made the fifteen minute deadline!

The happiest moment came when the judge looked at the new sqaw on his arm and cheerfully said “You had a woman who was too good for you, little Buddy. Now I see you have one that’s appropriate for a lying, cheating scoundrel like you.”

I rented a dark little apartment, filled it with yard sale and thrift store furniture and settled in with my Ramen Noodles, a huge stack of paperback true crime novels, and my illegal cable TV which came from a source unknown even to me….but who was gonna check??

I had been married 13 years once, springing forth two children and struggling to keep body and soul together. Nowadays when people ask if I have ever been married before, I say yes. I was married once, and thought I was married once, so maybe I have been married one and a half times before I was really married.

I have come to realize it’s true that all roads lead home….

My husband is as good as a man gets. He is kind and considerate to a fault, except when a person or a dog steps on his bad foot. Then all hell breaks loose and I get to see that he really does have a bit of the bad boy in him. Then, he will use every southern cuss word he knows in one sentence, which makes me raise my eyebrows in shock and awe.

He appreciates the imperfections of my body, hair and skin, and has never compared me to a calendar. Heck, he has never even compared me to the Farmers Almanac.

He eats a variety of foods, never lies, would never ask me to paint feathers on anything he owns. I believe he would throw up if I served chorizo.  I don’t think he even knows his own ethnicity. He did announce that he had a civil war hero somewhere in his ancestry, but who in the south doesn’t? I will give him that little bit of historical braggadocio. I did talk him into getting hearing aids, as it seems the selective hearing I accused him of having was not selective, but real..

After 15 years, my heart still skips a beat when he drives in from work. I tell my friends I finally married a man who can actually get out of the horizontal position! He holds my hand! He walks through Wal-Mart with me to Christmas shop! He goes to Chucky Cheese Hell with the grandkids! He mows grass!

And I tell them I thank God for Bic Fine Point Pens, cheap annulments, and that a thirty mile delivery by truck can take two days.