A Confession

On this day, 76 years ago, an atomic bomb, nicknamed “Fat Boy,” was dropped by an American B-29 Superfortress and detonated at 11:02 Japanese Time at an altitude of 1,650 ± 33 ft above a tennis court in the industrial valley of Nagasaki City. 46 years later, August 9, 1991, at 10:30 Pacific Time at an elevation of 3,965 ft, I got married for the first time in a municipal courthouse in Fallon, Nevada. I was 33. The woman was 19. 

I was sitting alone in my trailer on the outskirts of Fallon just sixty-four days before my wedding day when a car belonging to a friend pulled up outside. When I let him in, my friend (I’ll call him Chad) introduced me to a girl who was with him who was visiting from Texas (I’ll call her Belle). They had been in high school together and he was showing her off to everyone he knew. She sat in the middle of my living room wearing shorts, her (dyed) red hair falling down to her shoulders. In the two and a half years I’d been living in Fallon, I hadn’t seen anything so fresh and beautiful. I must’ve fallen for her then and there. 

That was a Thursday. On Friday I went with a girl I barely knew (her name now escapes me, so I’ll call her Suzy) on a triple date to Reno to dinner and to see the Bill Murray film What About Bob? Murray played an agoraphobic loon who was terrified to venture beyond his Manhattan apartment without the encouragement of his analyst, played by Richard Dreyfus. Since it was the weekend and Fallon was an hour’s drive east, after the movie Belle invited Suzy and me to spend the night at her hotel in Reno. We stopped at a gas station and bought beer and wine coolers and went to the hotel. It was the first time I’d gone out with Suzy, who was all of 17. After a few drinks she waited for a moment alone to ask me if I was a Christian. Somehow the phoney baloney answer I gave her was assurance enough. Since there was no bed, we tossed for it and I won. Chad and Belle got the floor. I wasn’t intending to do anything but sleep that night until certain tell tale noises emanated from the floor below. Suzy whispered excitedly, “This is like sex education!” 

In the morning the four of us drove back to Fallon. On entering my trailer I found my answering machine had several messages on it. A woman with whom Chad was romantically involved had called inquiring on his whereabouts. Using my phone, he called her back. When he was done, he went outside with Belle and explained his situation: he was involved with this other woman and if he didn’t go back to her immediately she was going to throw all his shit in the street. Chad asked me to look after Belle until her flight home Monday morning. I drove Suzy home. Belle spent the rest of the weekend with me. 

Weeks later, with Belle back in Denver, I was with another friend in a Fallon bar. It was there that I came up with the plan that resulted in my marrying Belle. I pitched it to her as a marriage of convenience. Since I was in the Navy (the only reason I was in Fallon, a small town in the high alkali desert of Nevada), she would remain in Denver and enjoy the benefits of being my dependent and I would finally be compensated for my rent, which was taking a big bite out of my paycheck. Since I was single, I was provided with free room and board - in a barracks. But since I was in my thirties, I refused to be a barracks rat, my bed and locker subject to periodic inspections, and having to share the TV with roommates not of my choosing. I don’t know how I did it, but I persuaded Belle to go through with it. 

Over the following weeks, however, something happened that I failed to bring to her attention. I had fallen in love with her. I should have told her, but my reason for not doing so were selfish and unforgiveable. To her, it was a fun, impulsive masquerade. But I wanted it to be real, and I stupidly believed I could make it so. The only thing I did wrong was not telling her. 

I picked her up in Reno. She brought a friend along to be her bridesmaid. And the feeling of an impending disaster closed in on me. We were married by a judge that Friday morning. I was wearing a suit I’d worn at a good friend’s wedding in Pittsburgh the year before. Belle wore a used gown that was too big for her. We had a reception at the very same bar in which I came up with the plan to marry her. We drank to excess. There was no consummation, but that was the least of my problems. We drove around in the desert and watched the shooting stars and watched a lot of videos and, the honeymoon over, I took her to the airport. I got orders to Okinawa but I would only accept them and reenlist if she promised to come with me. She lied – and promised. When she failed to show up in Okinawa, the Navy told me I had to give her my allowance for quarters or get the marriage dissolved. I did the latter. I hired a divorce lawyer in Reno and the marriage was annulled in November 1993. I never saw or heard from her again. 

I’m calling this a confession, but while I’ve done plenty of penance in 30 years, I never asked for absolution. The Welsh poet Alun Lewis wrote, 

Never fear to venture 

Where the last light trembles 

Because you were in love 

Love never dissembles. 

Baloney. Love will do whatever it has to do to survive. I’ve been in love four times in my life and it never worked out. 

So...

Kiss today goodbye 

The sweetness and the sorrow 

Wish me luck, the same to you 

But I can't regret 

What I did for love, what I did for love.

Postscript

After publishing this post yesterday evening, I read the following in Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March:

I had wanted to marry her, but there isn't any possession. No, no, wives don't own husbands, nor husbands wives, nor parents children. They go away, or they die. So the only possessing is of the moment. If you're able. And while any wish lives, it lives in the face of its negative. This is why we make the obstinate sign of possession. Like deeds, certificates, rings, pledges, and other permanent things.