...fully engaged...

...the ballad of footeastman [part seven]...

…this is part 7 of a 9 part story I am telling about my relationship with my ladyfriend Sarina….this is the engagement article…previous published articles in this series can be found here…

PART ONE – https://cansafis.substack.com/p/hungry-like-the-wolf

PART TWO – https://cansafis.substack.com/p/bad-paradise

PART THREE – https://cansafis.substack.com/p/alien-love-forms

PART FOUR – https://cansafis.substack.com/p/and-she-was

PART FIVE – https://cansafis.substack.com/p/home-is-where-the-art-is

PART SIX – https://cansafis.substack.com/p/minnesota

PART SIX PART TWO – https://cansafis.substack.com/p/sidney

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“Let not our proposal be disregarded on the score of our youth.”

-Virgil-

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I never wanted to grow up when I grew up.  My future was supposed to be surfing on lazerboards, living in an abandoned mall, and eating ice cream for every meal.  But as the future came and went, I had settled on surfing couches, abandoned malls for warehouses, and kept my ice cream consumption down to one meal a day.  I guess my grown-up wasn’t up for all I had wished it might grow up to be.

I never wanted to get married. 18 years living inside of my maker's malfunctioned union repeatedly reminded me that marriage’s meaning was less white doves and wedding cake than pissy pigeons and ho-hos. I liked love as a lyric or music video moments. Abstract love in facsimile felt more feel-ly than the passion my parents pantomimed.  Mom and Dad loved each other like papercuts.  They shared pain, annoyance and the inability to resolve themselves with just a bandaid. 

There is no proper education on love and marriage.  Harvard doesn’t teach marriage classes beyond family law (so you know what to do when you get divorced).  Marriage was magic to me, a sorcery I had no concrete plans to go backstage and understand.  Yet somewhere in my mind’s recesses the concept was still sucking down chocolate milk after a double round of tetherball.  Love was a textbook I kept in my backpack in case there ever might be a pop quiz. And marriage was a cheat sheet tucked sweaty inside of my dirty white thigh high socks.

A lack of knowledge has never stopped me from doing anything in this world.  Ignorance is the super power I use to break down the brick walls of can’t. Without stupidity I’d have never ended up in a thong and bird mask playing amplified backwards saxophone at a bowling alley.  Without idiocy I couldn’t have shared hand drawn nude portraits of my neighbor girls with their dad. Breaking down the walls of good taste is how I learned to eat TacoBell every meal for a year.  My mistakes were gifts that taught me the same shame and confusion that kept me safe from ever becoming bored.

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If you have read any previous iterations of this story you might know that I met a woman named Sarina whom was also called Champagne, whose tooth I chipped, and who over ALF focused techno communication I dated poorly until we eventually made a home out of art and dogs with names too long to repeat here. 

Life with Sarina is never boring.  

We have explored treehouses in ghillie suits, avoided night murder post skydive in Lodi, and swam with river otters organizing music festivals in drunken redwood towns.  We dressed up as dual Leslie Nielsons and did improv coughing at a reggae club.  We adopted a blow up doll and hand drew tchotchkes for the strangers we played records for every Sunday.  We camped and grew gardens. Cooked calzones and collected crystals. 

From the day I met Sarina I sensed we should share time with each other. The doings that filled it up mattered less than the filling itself.   Love is time.  Love is finding time and making time. It is sharing time and taking time.  When you have love a second can last forever, and days and years can condense into just a single moment. 

Love is a time machine to all eras of its existence.  Love is furry unshaved cave grunts on a wooly mammoth blanket.  Love is sharing dysentery on a splintered buggy headed west on the Oregon trail.  Love is eating the world’s last can of corn on a pile of pizza boxes in the middle of an apocalyptic abandoned 2047 A.I. snake shack shake shack. 

Time changes. Love doesn’t.

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“Love, what is it but space and time rendered perceptible by the heart.”

-Marcel Proust-

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There is no better time to ask someone something important than when they are considering couch sleep cuddled to two tongue dangling dogs.  Sarina was half awake on the corner of our couch, her head heavy from a night spent drinking in the foggy streets of bayside San Francisco.  

Months earlier while rubbing shampoo on my armpit hair I had decided that here and now on our nine year anniversary would be a good time to see if she wanted to get married. Marriage wasn’t a plan for either of us, but it is a good excuse to plan a party, and we like to party.  That might sound unromantic, but I ask you, what can be more romantic than casually & legally entwining yourself to another human being after a night spent slurping limoncellos and rose´?

Believe it or not I am a romantic man. I plan dates to see monster truck rallies, I give thoughtful gifts like socks and soap, and I brush my teeth sometimes.  I’m a dumpster Don Juan. Every month I give her a comic, something that she can read while I stare at the funny color pictures.  Celebrating nine years of love required my romantic gift game to seek new heights.  

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The number nine (…aka 9 or 9ine…) has always been a special friend to me. 9 is a man looking left grinning at what might come right after him.  

…meet 9…

9 is a number with magical powers.  Add 9 to itself as many times as you like and whatever number you create will add right back up to 9 when peeled away to its basics and becoming a single digit again.  

• For example 9+9+9+9 = 36 → 3+6 = 9

• Going a bit harder 9 x 924,328,216 = 8,318,953,944 → 8+3+1+8+9+5+3+9+4+4 = 54 → 5+4 = 9

• 9 also contains all the numbers that came before it.  1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8= 36 =3+6 =9

9 can make you think about Denmark, Kangaroos, and Oranges.¹

The mojo of 9 has always meant much to me. 

You see I am a 9. I was born on 9/18/1980 and if you do the math there 9+1+8+1+9+8+0=36 and 3+6 = 9.  I am never not a 9.  I look left and grin.  And as luck or stupid math tricks would have it Sarina is also herself a 9.  Now a man doesn’t divulge a lady's age, but trust me when I say her numbers add up (to 9).  

9 is an expressive number.  People say “a cat has 9 lives”, or “I am up on cloud 9” while they are “dressed to the nines” going “the whole nine yards” to solve their problems today because “a stitch in time saves nine”.  Nevermind that they are sewing space, they know 9 to be helpful.  And so do I.  

On realizing this shared trait between us, I knew that I had to celebrate our 9 years of togetherness in a way befitting this number.  So what did I do?  I grinned and looked left.  I bought a ring with 9 stones. I did 9 different dances for 9 different days planning 9 different ways to ask this one woman if she might spend another 9 or 99 years with me.  My only worry was that she might say 9 back to me, as in nein, no, neener.  But I reject myself enough that fear of a nein had nein effect on me.

There on the couch, dazed and in dogs, I handed Sarina a ring, and a cardboard comic I drew explaining 9 ways I’d like to be with her (well really I just drew the 9 stones and gave them faces and names…i guess i might have been saying I wanted to be stoned with her).  She incredulously questioned my seriousness, which respectfully I understood.  I was never someone who saw myself getting married.  I still wanted lazerboards, to live in an abandoned mall, and to eat ice cream for every meal. Only now I wanted to do that with her. 

I guess I had grown up.

[…to be continued…]

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“I'm really, basically, nine, and I've always been that. I've never, ever allowed the child within me to die.”

-Jerry Lewis-

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FOOTENOTES

1. https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/the-magic-of-number-9-part-1/