I want to tell you about my girlfriend. She’s funny, she’s sweet, she’s both insecure and very confident at the same time. She’s pretty, she’s smart and she loves murder mysteries. She also sings Willie Nelson like she means it, which isn’t easy to do. She saw ‘Six String Samurai’ in the theater and watches ‘Deadwood’ at home. She thinks I am a sadistic mother fucker and she thinks that’s a good thing.
It’s been a year since my divorce. I feel like I have aged ten years as a person in that time. I’ve learned to like myself and I’ve learned to trust myself, which are two things I didn’t even know I had lost. I love myself too much to not marry this wonderful girl. I’m fucking 35 and that is too long to have been without this woman.
Being a cerebral type, I didn’t realize this until I heard Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Blind Mary’. The first time I heard it, I loved it. It’s simple but aren’t the best love songs simple? The song rattled around in my head and I kept singing it to myself. It was the only song I knew that captured the feelings I was going through. She doesn’t know that I am ugly.
And one morning, I came out of the shower and walked into the bedroom. My girlfriend was awake but still in bed. I was still singing but I had substituted her name for Mary.
And I sang to her,
I lo-ve Mary,
Blind Mary marry me.
I lo-ve Mary,
Blind Mary marry me
The pure joy on my girlfriend’s face was beautiful. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
“Yes,” I said quickly. It wasn’t my intention at the moment but what the Hell. You learn not to pause in moments like these. “Yes I am.”