The Taming of the Groom

So I just got back from dinner with my friend KP up in Da Bronx, where we gorged ourselves on chicken and chorizo and plantains and rice and beans and too much Sangria at this restaurant of-unkown-ethnic-origin (Dominican? Puerto Rican? Peruvian? Uzbeki?) underneath the 1 train. I wouldn't say that I am pleasantly full, it's much more of an awkward tightness in my belly which is fading at about the same, slow rate as my Meat Coma.

And our two-hour dinner conversation left me with two unanswered questions.

First: why do people in the Bronx feel the need to garnish everything with Maraschino cherries?

We had sixteen of them floating in our Sangria along with a pound of sliced bananas, five oranges and a pineapple tree. And then a drug rep sent breakfast over to one of my Friday morning meetings last month, part of which was a beautiful fruit plate on which had been strewn piles of fresh cantaloupe, honeydew, strawberries, pineapple.........and at least one full jar of Maraschino cherries, complete with Maraschino cherry juice, topped off with walnuts. There is a fine line between Fresh Fruit Plate and Fruit Plate Sundae.

Second: does marriage have some sort of de facto corrective effect on couples?

KP was telling me how, when she was first married, she used to be a little bit of a nightmare when it came to arguments with her husband. Now, some years later, she has mended her ways. M. was telling me earlier in the week about a girl he goes to school with, who was telling him how she and her husband would get into nasty drunken arguments when they were first married, which have since subsided. The list goes on, been-there bride after been-there bride, seen-it groom after seen-it groom, talking about then vs. now, first-married vs. married-married.

This leads me to wonder what I will be saying four years from now, which should put me about a year or two past the "first married" stage of my marriage. Because really, I am already a little bit more than a complete nightmare of a boyfriend. I argue like a trial lawyer. I'm a nit-picker. I'm never wrong. I give my friends free reign but expect M. to sit, beg and heel on a two-inch leash. I have too much to drink, get pissed off at M., and lock him out of the house.

Will marriage make me better?

Do I get a forgiveness period between now and two years into my marriage, maintaining my insanity until my marriage has had a chance to cure me? After all, if I were to fix everything now, what would I be able to say about how I behaved when I was first married?

Worse still: since we're not married yet, does this mean I'm only going to get worse before I get better? All of my current bad behaviors are technically pre-married, not first-married. Before I can speak, with a knowing grin, a shake of the head, a roll of the eyes, of my own first-married years, do I need to first get married, and then figure out some sort of even worse, erratic personality glitch on which my marriage might work its magic?

Or, as M. and I have traveled the same road as many a modern couple, gay and straight, cohabitating for four years before we finally take the Plunge, are we already technically in our first years of marriage? Am I already making an example of myself, the "Before" photo that I'll be able to look back on in a few years from the safe vantage point of being the "After" photo?

Am I already a work in progress?

What is it about marriage - official or otherwise - that makes us want to be better people? What is it about marriage that makes us have to be better people? Maybe the real question is a little bit of both of these, and maybe the answers are pretty obvious.

Sanity. Exhaustion. Love. Growth.

Just as there will come a day when I am ready to move out of this maddeningly accessible, endearingly multifaceted, but undeniably overpriced and infuriatingly loud city (cue fire truck racing down 9th Avenue past screaming girls opening door to deafening roar of bar), there will likewise come a day when I am tired of the drunken arguments, finished with the over-controlling-ness, too frail to jam the stepladder under the front doorknob. And I will still be imperfect, I will still be doing something that, ten years later, I'll be able to say I used to do. I'll also still be doing some things that I'll keep right on doing until I hit my grave (read: arguing like a lawyer).

At the risk of sounding vaguely like that God-awful new "The L Word" theme song, this is life. This is love. This is marriage.