What I Learn About Love From A Touch of Mink

You have to question cultural socialization. Ok, I have to question it. It is like this, I used to stay up and watch movies. I could exist on three hours of sleep every other night and it would not phase me a bit.

Damn I miss those days!



A Cary Grant movie was like required viewing. It was a reading of how men acted, talked and could be toward women. I did not care if he was scruff or in a tux and tails. He was and shall ever be all right with me.

I didn't learn until later that he was an illusion. I don't care, he was a grand illusion. Special shout out to Houseboat and Holiday with Katherine Hepburn. Oh, and Indiscreet.

So there I am watching this movie in the 70s and the Doris character does not want to shag the Cary dude. I didn't get it.

I thought she was plum crazy. I'm thinking what is wrong with a little making out? The movie continues and I'm getting more steamed. I could hear someone driving down the street in their car with "do it, do it til your satisfied" traveling down the street. Yet this full grown woman is saying nyet to that hair, those eyes and the body in the suit.

By the end of the movie I was cussing her out. I was mad. I would have taken the one perfect night and been dang glad of it. I was so mad I voluntarily refused to watch another Doris Day movie for years.

Hindsight. I am no longer mad at Doris. It wasn't really Doris it was some of the characters that she played on screen. Miss Day is a great singer and a fine actress and no disrespect is intended.

I didn't like this sophisticated form of matrimony game playing. It was the 1962 version of "Put a ring on it."

I can now appreciate a little bit about not bonking just any old body. I even get that it is ok to say you have requirements that you don't want to wavier from for the sake of a slap dash.

Not disagreeing with it and have employed it when my life required common sense approaches to human behavior.

I just didn't like the movie's implication that in order to get the rich dude you had to hold out for as long as possible and then you could trap him. No, no and no. Men are human beings. Not supposed to trap humans.

I knew that at 15 and I still believe it now.

So my lesson was actually the anti-lesson. Not to marry for the sake of sex or having a husband. Marry because you actually love the person and can live with the faults as well as the joys.

Shag him or not, it is your choice and responsibility. Unless he is Cary Grant. Then I say rug burn and be glad.

Accidental Love Song on the Finally Friday Freakout

I am going to start with a song cuz this guy has nothing to do with the current cultural angst about getting married. He is a singer. It is his job to sing songs of love, love lost and found again. It is a love song of a young man.

A song that continues the tradition of a line of people crooning you are the one and only with the added kicker of "I'm not about to let you go." This is Andy Kong with Accidental Love Song.

"Accidental Love Song" by Andy Kong from Eugenia Loli-Queru on Vimeo.

Love doesn't seem to have much to do with marriage anymore. Maybe it never did. There is a never ending bar room argument about settling for the kinda sorta man of your not quiet dreams. It is the new imperative of old school thinking of "hold your nose and marry something." Not a person. Not a companion.

A person that meet 77.5% of your marital requirements? Too ambitious. 55% should be enough. Forsake the idea seeking the person with a spirit or soul that resonates with your being. It is being spun to get hitched to an icon cuz you want to be not single.

Oh, yeah. It would help if you knew what I was talking about. There is this book called: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for "Mr. Good Enough." It is based on an Atlantic article from 2008 by the same author, Lori Gottleib.

I feel like the person on the hill trying to talk to the lemmings before they head off the cliff. I should know better. I've been a lemming a time or two.

Here is my short version. Don't marry out of fear. Don't marry because you want to have a child. To marry means to join and if you truly don't care about the person you are about to join with I can't imagine a greater hell.

Really, don't.

I have a story. Once upon a time an older woman met with a few friends to go out and socialize. Kiki met this guy. He seemed ok. They went out a few times. Did the Sealy shimmy, it was assumed, with modest but acceptable performance.

Kiki wanted companionship. She was willing to settle. Kiki fested up that she liked him but did not love him. Few months into Sunday dinners they decided to marry.

Turned out the dude liked having dinner, TV and well, more TV. And not much else. Yep. Kiki married a couch potato. Spuds, in this case spousal duds are not known to be good conversationalists.

That is what you get when you play the percentages. Hurt. You take the good with the bad and the bitter with the sweet. A great song lyric. I can't remember which song it goes to? Wait, I got it, Jackie Moore's Precious, Precious.

Kiki wanted a warm body. He wanted a hot pot roast dinner and some beer. They both got what they wanted. They were miserable. To do extra laundry without any additional benefit other than to keep the stench level down?

Gee, I don't think it is a good idea.

I'm back on the hill. I see the next wave of lemmings coming. Well, you live and hopefully you learn. The lemmings? Let them be. Might make it easier to find the good folks.