ask already

I would love to push these assholes into shark infested waters

I knew what I had to do, it was perhaps the most important part of getting married.  We had a dress, a date, and a place but I still had not dropped down to one knee and asked Jaime to marry me.

I had never pictured myself proposing before, I had no mental image of what I always thought it should look like.  This doesn’t sound romantic but I found that while idea of getting on one knee and professing my undying love for Jaime and then asking her a question I already knew the answer to with a ring she’d already seen... a little embarrassing.

My plan was to really surprise her in the hope that her shock would take the pressure off me and put it back onto her.

I have never been a creative question asker.  I wasn’t the guy in high school with the inventive way of asking a girl out to the dance.  The most creative I ever got was putting roses and a letter on her car.  Who really remembers how you were asked to homecoming when you’re 73?  Who even wants to know how you were asked to homecoming?

Needless to say I was short on ideas and took to carrying the ring in my pocket hoping the right moment would strike and I would ask.  The moment never came and as each day went by and I didn’t ask I could feel Jaime’s frustration mounting.

By the end of April I decided the time was right, I don’t remember the exact day but come hell or high water I would ask.  I had been getting the sense from Jaime that if I didn’t do it soon a major fight would arise, the topic of said fight would certainly concern commitment.

We were going to a show that evening, our friend Molly was performing her show That Girl at the Comedy Central stage on Santa Monica boulevard in West Hollywood. (If your not familiar with Molly Prather, you need to be.)

My plan had been to take Jaime up to the Griffith Observatory and ask her to marry me as the sun set over the ever expanding city of Los Angeles.  I was going to do it before we left for the show however as it crept closer I was running out of time and became afraid that a romantic act like that would be so out of character that she would know what we were going up there to do the whole drive up.  I lost my nerve.

As we left for the theater I was desperately thinking of how I should ask, but I drew a blank.  Jaime on the other hand was becoming visibly frustrated with me, almost as if she’d read my mind, knew my original plan and was angry that I did not follow through. (I have an uncanny ability of knowing exactly how far I can push Jaime and have an even more uncanny ability to ignore my instinct and push her too far.)

If you’ve ever been to “Theater Row” on Santa Monica boulevard then you are aware that it is not considered to be one of LA’s more scenic locations.  It’s a dirty rundown area where the tranny hookers appear like cockroaches at nightfall.

Jaime parked the car and like I had become a puppet  no longer in control of my actions I found myself running around the car and opening her door before she could get out.  I dropped to one knee next to an old cigarette, a syringe, and a used condom and there I professed to her my undying love.

It wasn’t picture worthy, it wasn’t how little girls everywhere imagine it, this was just some schmuck dropping to his knee on a dingy side street.  I’ve often thought about what I would have done if I could do it all over again, if I could ask her anywhere at anytime, and without a doubt I wouldn’t change a thing.  It was done, it was official, it was exactly how I pictured myself doing it.

posted by: brian snider

let's get engaged

let's get engaged....sure.

Jaime and I have talked endlessly about how best to tell the story of our engagement and subsequent marriage.  This included an ill fated performance at IO West theater in Los Angeles.  Much of the following blogs involving the year of our engagement are drawn from that performance and our discussions.

As if our first year in a new city wasn’t hard enough; as if money wasn’t tight enough, as if everyday life wasn’t taking enough out of us, Jaime and I decided to make our like even harder by getting engaged.

How did this whole thing begin?  As best as I can remember it was the middle of April on a beautiful warm day.  Both Jaime and I were off work early and we had an afternoon to burn, without much money we decided to stay in and...well do what you sometimes do when you’re at home and have no money.  Afterwards we found ourselves laying in bed together, I can remember looking out the window and watching the bird fly up and land on the roof.  Somehow and even now I cannot fully remember Jaime brought up the topic of marriage.

The previous October we attended my brothers wedding and when people 

would turn to us and ask when we would be getting married we laughed.  

Half jokingly we told them that when all our friends were divorced we 

would get married.

Truth be told I only entered this conversation with Jaime because I could sense that to attempt to blow off marriage talk would only instigate a fight and I was far too exposed and relaxed for a fight.  I humored her, we talked about who we would invite, family and close friends only, where we would do it, at my mom’s house with a pot luck dinner.  We decided when, mid May of 2009 perhaps the 16th.

I imagine that this is where female readers will close their eyes and slowly shake their head from side to side wondering exactly how men can be so oblivious.  I understood that we were getting married but what I took away from the conversation was that this would happen somewhere in the future like buying a new car or going to Europe.  That date we set was loose and not set in stone.

We went the rest of the night without discussing the wedding and Jaime did not rush to tell anyone, the following morning was the same and I was almost able to forget about the entire thing.  On her way home from work that evening I learned how wrong I was, she had spent the entire morning looking at engagement rings and had told everyone at work that she was engaged.

“Look,” I said “I don’t want every conversation to be about weddings now.”  As soon as I said it I wished that I could take it back.  

An argument ensued and it nearly ended in a break up.  We discussed things further that evening and I began to understand that our conversation the afternoon before had not been a bunch of loose ideas and dreams, it was for real and I was acting like a total asshole.  We talked not about wedding plans but rather about why it was that I didn’t want to get married.

I didn’t have a good answer, the best I could come up with was that I wanted to wait until I had the money to throw a big lavish wedding.  I didn’t really want that, I believed that expensive weddings were a waste of money.  Sure you had memories and memories are important but it is just a day and with the money saved you could do so much more.  What I think my real fear was, was telling my parents.  In our situation and at a time when everyone was warning of a second depression it did not seem to make much sense to be getting married and I really didn’t want to have to justify our decision.

I had some time to think about what I wanted to do, by the next day it was clear to me that I had no reason not to marry Jaime.  I loved her, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and that was reason enough.  I called her that afternoon and told her that when she picked me up from work that we would head out to the Glendale Mall and go to Zales to buy her engagement ring.

Through out the entire process of getting engaged and eventually married we did very little conventionally.  Picking out the ring was far from conventional, she’d seen it on their website and loved it.  Unable to afford anything expensive it was to our benefit that technically this was a promise ring and priced at less than $120.  Jaime pointed it out to me in the case, she tried it on and then I insisted that she leave while I purchased it.  I didn’t let her wear it out of the store, it went into the box and sat in my dresser drawer.

We were technically engaged, preparing and planning for a mid May wedding.  There were dresses to buy, invitations to send out, parents to tell.  I was also holding onto a ring and I knew that at some point I would need to get down on one knee and ask her to marry me.  I didn’t know when or where or how I was going to do it but I did know that I was going to make her sweat about it a little.