OPINION

‘To be or not to Be’

I’m not a betting man but to knock my point home I entered into a bet with two folks who swore to god that I’ll be married in the next 10-years. We betted R10 000 each ways, they are two and I’m alone, which means I’ll need to pop out R20 000 if I am enticed to walk an innocent senhorita down the aisle in say 2018 or earlier. Maybe that senhorita will be some loaded chick who will proudly pop the moolah to settle my debt.

But my point was simple; not in a million years do I see myself getting hitched. I don’t have anything against the institution but it’s just one of those which I don’t intend to enter. I told them I was excited to have entered into this bet since it means that when my daughter is thirteen I’ll have R20 000 to buy her a VW Beetle and pimp it, courtesy of the two folks who are destined to lose badly.

Now, this other sista was saying to me that to remain a bachelor is a sign of cowardice and left me wondering what is there to fear about waking up next to a pound of flesh called a wife every morning? Sometimes a pound becomes two or sixteen depending on how settled she is.

We then argued and I said that my feeling is that people marry mainly for companionship, which is something I am not lacking. Every night before I sleep I always read a good book which is a companion enough for me. I don’t want a she who’ll be whispering lies in my ear, her lies being the last sermon I hear before I pass out. I don’t want someone who’ll be bringing her problems to my world as the parting shot before I close my eyes.

Second, people marry for warmth and comfort. They are done feeling cold in Winter and want someone who’ll hold them tightly when their toes are cold and they owe R67000 to ABSA and tell them everything will be alright. Excuse me things won’t be alright because you say so, I’ll still need to pop the moolah with interest from somewhere else. Talk is cheap woman! All I do when I feel cold is to put on an extra blanket and comforter and I’m sorted. When I’m stressed I puff a pound of grass and sip my red wine.

Thirdly, people marry because they are afraid that once they get ill there’ll be no one to take care of them and put the diapers on and off. My question has always been, what is the point of hospitals if people want to lie at home and listen to their pains gobbling Paracetamol? What about AIDS? One person asked. Yeah, that’s why there are hospices and Medical Aids and suicide pills.

Fourth, people marry to prove to their parents that they are grown. Poet Taban Lo Liyong had a very inspiring poem in his book Corpse Lovers and Corpose Haters, which had these inspiring lines, ‘liyong the mother of Taban died yesterday/ in her hands I gave this message/ a memo to my father, dead ten years before her;../ tell him the wife he married for me has run away with my children/ tell him I will marry another chosen by me and to live for me/ this time a wife to satisfy me and not a wife to show my father and mother that I am fully grown and able to marry’

Quite telling I guess.

Now, I’ll rather be a bachelor until I am recalled than to have been divorcee. People are so focused of the aisle that they don’t bother to look beyond. The trail beyond the aisle if littered with broken hearts, hopes and promises and nobody dares to go there – but me.

And when I am challenged that my reasons for not wanting to marry are based on paranoia my argument is simple; ‘I am not paranoid, I am too adventurous to be afraid of a woman. To make it better I am raising a woman and have no reason to tread femininity’.

It’s just that marriage is an adventure for the uninspired, and I am more inspired to follow a road travelled by millions before me, because there’s no adventure left there.