P and the Second Wife

As many of you know, my friend P has been a consistent part of my life and this blog for a while. He's my mildly douchey Muslim bff from college. For those of you who don't know, I used to like him, he didn't like me, we somehow forged a friendship despite his personality and my emotions, he went to Africa to get married and moved his wife and son here shortly after. Yes, there have been a lot of changes in the past ten years, but I think that biggest change is yet to come.
"What would you say if I told you that I was going to get a second wife?" he asked me out of the blue during one of our latest conversations.
"Would it be me?" I asked.
"No."
"Then I don't care," I quipped. That was my way of ending the conversation. Needlesstosay, I am not really down with the multiple wives deal, and we have discussed it over and over again over the years. You see, him having up to four wives is part of his rights as a Muslim man. Now, let's get to the good part: how P's personal life and decisions affect me.
For one, it is a miracle that we are still friends now that he is married. As you all know well, when my male friends have gotten a wife or even so much as a steady girlfriend they have dropped me like a bad habit. By the grace of God, his wife likes me, or at least tolerates me enough to let me stick around. Who knows what the second wife will think of me. I imagine that she will be looking at me with the same side eye that I will be looking at her with.
I'm old and I have taken a Drake outlook on life: no new friends. P is a big part of my friend circle, and if he flies the coupe, that will be a big hole to fill. Not wanting him to do something that would make him happy because of what the outcome would be for me is selfish, but it's where I'm at. My life is a house of cards. One freak move, like P taking on a second family, could cause my whole house to crumble. And quite frankly, I don't think I have enough juice life in me to try to impress another one of my guy friends' ladies. It just takes too much.
You have to be able to provide the same household for your second wife as you did the first, which takes a lot of money. So it may be a minute before P jumps the broom again. I guess this gives me time to prepare to be friend dumped AGAIN. Sigh.

Homecoming Post 2: Sand to the Beach

My first day on the campus of my college, I saw a bunch of interesting stuff. I saw my old speech teacher, class of '97, drunk. This teacher introduced me to the guy that plays Basie Skanks on the show Greenleaf. I ran into one of my favorite nuns (I went to a Catholic college). But one thing that I found, well, interesting, was the number of my classmates that brought their spouses to the homecoming. Question: WHY ON EARTH WOULD SOMEONE BRING THEIR SPOUSE TO HOMECOMING? Is that not the prime example of bringing sand to the beach?

I mean, I really thought about this. Why would you bring your spouse, who most likely didn't go to the school, to your homecoming? They don't know anyone, and you are going to spend a chunk of your time (that could be spent drinking) introducing them to people that you yourself haven't talked to in years. I met a number of significant others who were all nice, but they seemed bored. I was bored for them. When I got tired, I took an Uber back to my hotel. You can't Uber back to Chicago or wherever you came from. 

Immediately, I thought that this had something to do with lack of trust. Husband comes with Wife because he doesn't trust her to come alone. Wife brings Husband because she doesn't trust him to spend time at home alone without her. So they stay bound to each other with invisible handcuffs, smiling all the while and being social, while keeping a watchful eye out for one another. This is possible. 

On the flip side, one may actually want to introduce their spouse to the life that they once lived at the college they once attended. They may actually find joy in introducing their spouse to their old friends and teachers. I would find no joy in this at all. In fact, it would annoy me, rehashing pieces of my past every fifteen minutes. 

Then I had to take off my hater glasses and really reflect: Holly, why would you bring your husband, if you were married, to your homecoming? I would do it for one reason and one reason only: TO SHOW OFF! I never had a boyfriend during my college days, so I would bring my husband and wear him like a cute purse, just to prove to my classmates (who, in reality, probably wouldn't care) that I could actually pull a man. And I would dress him up cute and take him to everything, posing for pics with him with my hand on his chest, the diamonds of my wedding ring catching the flash of the camera. Not for nothing, many of my old peers have some FINE husbands. I mean, really fun 8s out of 10s. 

As a single, thirsty homecoming goer, I will say that seeing people paired off helped me decipher who was attached and who wasn't. It also helped to remind me of the ultimate goal: to find a man of my own and start my own family one day. Seeing girls I knew when I was 18 married with a kid at 32 showed me that this is not only possible but ideal. I actually found myself fantasizing about what my husband would be like when I get one. I will tell you about him here. I'm totally not bringing him to homecoming.