The man who married himself

"Why not?"

A quote from my good friend, Pastor Zetago, changed the course of my life. Before he uttered it, he had just spent two hours on the phone with Bishop Fleming, discussing various chapters of the Bible in depth and detail. He pointed out that the book of Leviticus admonishes Christians not to marry their sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers, mothers-in-law, or even granddaughters - if they entertain such thoughts. Yet, there is nothing in this good book that says you cannot marry yourself. So when I told Pastor Zetago that that was exactly what I wanted to do, he had no choice but to say these far-reaching words.

"Why not?"

Of course, again, the Bible does not explicitly forbid anyone from marrying their great-grandmother, a table, or an ornamental fish. I wouldn't be surprised if one day Bishop Fleming married his beloved French porter or his blanket - after all, they've been sleeping together for years. Either way, once I managed to convince my good priest to let me marry the prince charming of my dreams, I then had to go back to convincing my parents. I have to say that my parents were more difficult to convince than an international religion with 2,000 years of stable roots.

At first, my mother just took it as a joke. Yes, few people would take it seriously, but I needed her to understand that I was serious. My mother kept asking me stupid questions like, "Why do you have to marry yourself - you're already living with yourself?" Or "What are you going to wear to the wedding?"

And the sad thing is that it almost drove my father crazy. Really. For years after I got married, he sat at his computer writing articles and sending them to a variety of newspapers, world record books, and internal NASA newsletters claiming to be the first person to have sex in space. Although his closest encounter with space was just the big button on his computer keyboard, he seemed convinced of it. If asked who he said he had sex with, he would usually pause for dramatic effect and then scream at the person with eyes wide open, "Myself!"

I had hoped that I could trust my best friends to approve of this, but now it seems that it was nothing more than a bit of a laugh for them. They had been so supportive of me in the past, but they made fun of me for a long time after the wedding. Among the wedding gifts, they gave me were many things that hurt: adult magazines, silk gloves, and even ceiling mirrors. It was infuriating to think of them laughing uncontrollably at the wedding when Pastor Zetago pronounced the marriage vows - "Will you see yourself as a husband and live with him? Will you love, comfort, obey and honor yourself in sickness and in health, and be faithful to yourself for as long as you live?" I swear, one of my friends peed his pants laughing at the time.

I had a wonderful honeymoon in Las Vegas. I gambled away all my savings, and no one was going to be around to nag me about how much I spent anyway. On my wedding night, I booked a fancy suite on the top floor of the Pyramid Hotel ......

I got married for many reasons, including the tax benefits aspect (but trying to get the tax man to understand that I was my spouse was a living hell). Ever since I understood what marriage was all about, I have been desperate to have a trustworthy partner. I wanted someone to be there for me all the time, someone I could share my most private and darkest thoughts with without fear of being made fun of. Unfortunately, while having a girlfriend is usually not a big deal for me, my taste in choosing friends proved to be extremely limited. After that, I suddenly realized something that no one else had realized, and that was that my best mate might be close at hand.

Overall, I consider marriage to be a great success to a large extent. I hardly ever argue with my spouse; in fact, I find myself to be the person I talk to the most out of everyone around me. I did disagree a few times, but I won every time. The sex life, uh - I do what I want. Of course, there was some media interference; a lot of sleazy journalists trying to get a leg up on my unusual marriage. I find some of the articles ridiculous and some just offensive, especially those that refer to me as the most arrogant and/or narcissistic person in the world. I don't think I'm that arrogant and self-absorbed, I just happen to enjoy being with myself.

All of a sudden, I wanted to have a child, and I guess it might be hormonal or a phase in life that you have to go through. The very cheesy explanation is that I realized that my life would end, so I wanted to pass on my genes. Therefore, I spent many days weighing the pros and cons. I decided to divorce my husband to get a wife. I talked to Pastor Zetago and he told me I couldn't just divorce when I wanted to. I had to have a legitimate reason. Oddly enough, wanting children does not count as a good reason for divorce.

As my good pastor explained, I can't get a divorce unless my spouse and I have been separated for at least a year, but that's hard to do unless there's major surgery; my spouse has been abusive, or my spouse has been in jail for at least a year. I am not very willing to beat myself up or spend time in jail just to get a divorce. That left me with only one option: adultery. All I had to do was have sex with someone other than myself; as long as it was that normal, heterosexual human sexuality, I could get out of the marriage.

And so, reluctantly, I took off my wedding ring and started looking for a partner. My friends showed me no mercy, saying that I had divorced myself to prevent myself from becoming blind. When I told my mother that my marriage to myself had come to an end, I think she was relieved. For dramatic effect, my father paused for a moment, then turned to me with his eyes wide open and exclaimed, "Myself!" Maybe he was in another world.

I thought it would take a while to find someone willing to sleep with me without reading about my marriage in the newspaper, but I soon found an average-looking Malaysian girl who was relatively easy to seduce. To be honest, that sexual experience was a real disappointment. She seemed to have no idea how to turn a man on, whereas I was an old hand at it. I guess it didn't work for her - I wasn't trained to please women.

Divorce was much easier after that. The church seemed eager to separate me from me as if my marriage had been a big mistake. I felt very lonely for a few months after the breakup because at least the local psychiatrist (who specializes in treating multiple personality disorders) stopped sending me the damn business cards every week.

It took me almost ten years to find a good wife, only she didn't think that being married to me meant being married to two people at once. For most of the decade, I just waited for the media to forget about "the man I married". Meanwhile, I wrote an autobiography under the same name. The book describes my marriage to me in detail, including the ups and downs of my life, how I dealt with everyone's accusations against me and my husband, and some of the lesser-known details of our relationship. I think it was these elements that made the autobiography, which was published several years later, a huge success. People were just curious about the meaning behind such an unusual marriage. I think anyone who reads the autobiography will be provoked to think about it. They read my autobiography and ask themselves, "Am I easy to live with? If I had to live with myself, could I do it?" For a moment, they all stop looking for their Prince Charming or dream man and ask themselves if they would make a good spouse.

I haven't heard any examples of imitations of me marrying myself, either because the media has lost interest in it or because the Church has made up its mind to forbid such events from happening again. Either way, it's all ancient history. My wife and I had just moved into a new house. There is plenty of room in the new house for our other upcoming child. I am very happy now. I can't wipe the smile off my face at this very moment. You see, our next-door neighbors are none other than Bishop Fleming and his lovely wife, the French Porter.