I was fortunate to grow up in one of those families that had a lot of kids around my age, where every holiday or birthday the extended family would have a get-together to celebrate. It’s kind of strange to think about in retrospect, how I would literally see all of my relatives like once every two weeks. My mom has three sisters, and altogether the four of them had like 10 kids. Add in the grandparents, and the husbands, and all-in it was not uncommon to see everyone like 25 or 30 times a year. Crazy.
It was great when the collection of us boys were all like 9-12, because we would just go swimming or play baseball in the yard or walk around in packs around the neighborhood just to end up at the corner store to pick up a slurpy, or whatever. At that time the real world was as foreign to any of us as the present thought is of being a kid. I think we all looked forward to those family parties, because it gave us an excuse to play.
I don’t know when exactly that changed, but for me I know I was pretty young. Maybe 13. I’ve no idea why, there were just a lot of get-togethers where I inevitably ended up in one of those easily-stackable white plastic chairs with the armrests on either side listening to the grownups talk while my mom and dad smoked cigarettes. A lot of the other kids were still swimming and talking about music or playing catch in the yard. I sat around mostly silent because I didn’t have very much to add to any of the adult conversations.
There was one day, though, when I was in my aunt and uncle’s backyard, sitting in one of those white plastic chairs. My uncle was probably barbecuing shish-kabobs while the women were all gossiping about celebrity drama or interpersonal problems. I can’t pinpoint with any certainty the precise dynamics of the conversation, but in general everything usually devolved into that. I figure that must’ve been the case, since my crazy aunt had just got done bitching about her ex-husband and made some generic comments about why her oldest daughter’s high school relationship didn’t work out. And on it went.
I sat and listened, even though I didn’t care. It was a typical conversation. Then my crazy aunt had some unquenchable revelation that for some reason she couldn’t keep to herself, speaking about me, my older brother, and my two male cousins — all of us within a year or two of one another. She said something along the lines of: “How come none of you [gesturing towards me but talking about all of us boys] have any girlfriends? Are all of you, like, gay or something?” She said it very tongue-in-cheek and clearly got a kick out of herself because she started laughing.
I wasn’t even involved in the conversation but I immediately perked up since, you know, even at that age I wasn’t one to let anything slip past me or allow anyone to get one over on me. I imagine my demeanor and delivery were spot on, pitch-perfect, since I easily got the biggest pop, or bang, out of any of the adults in my whole life up to that point. I simply asked my crazy aunt, “Why? So we could all end up as fucked up as you?”
It’s been like 20 years so I don’t remember exactly how I phrased it, but the eruption I received from everyone was worth it. My crazy aunt didn’t appreciate it very much. Everyone else did, though, and she was kind of a punchline to everyone in the family even though she wasn’t aware of it at the time. Occasionally you have to sacrifice an extended family member for the greater good of a I’m-joking-but-I’m-really-not-joking type of joke.
I’m unaware of what I was trying to get at by telling that story, other than the reality that a lot of people put unnecessary pressure on everyone to be in relationships in the first place. I’ve said it before and likely written it before, even semi-recently, that when I started in the casino industry I was 24 years old and had no wife and no kids. The adults who constantly asked me about my marital status, and my childless status, but especially the males, told me an innumerable amount how smart I was and even lamented to me that if they could go back, if only they could go back and do it all over again, their wish is that they would have gone about it like I was going about it.
The irony to it all, as I imagine you already know, is that I am now 33 and have never been married and still have no children. My reputation around the department I work in is no longer the sweet and innocent single and childless young man. It’s that I’m a player. I’m a dog. The hugs and hand-pounds I received as a 24-year old have become questions, such as “Why aren’t you married?” Or “Why don’t you have kids?” As if it’s some sort of problem.
I don’t take genuine offense to it or accept it as some kind of slight. After all, nearly 100 percent of those who query me on such a topic are in their mid-40’s or 50’s and know of no world other than the one they were brought up in, where they remember what it was like to be my age, where they had already been married and had kids. I don’t come from their time. I have always had a weird if not accurate sense of my own worth, which may come across as prideful and arrogant and extremely picky when it comes to the opposite sex but that’s just me.
And, again, these older types feel the need — whenever the conversation arrises — to reassure me that “It’ll all work out in the end,” or that “You’ll find someone,” or whatever. I don’t try to correct them on it. But I feel like no one has any idea that I am not, and truly never have been, on the lookout for the stable and normal life that a wife and kids would allow me to have. If I wanted that I could have had that a long time ago. I could choose many different partners, pick my time and place, and decide that it’s time for me to have kids.
That is not, however, the business I am in. It takes a lot for me to even want to do anything, such as go on a “date,” for in all honestly the partners I speculate with are not competing with one another but rather competing with me eating Cheese It crackers while I play video games or watch highlights on YouTube of an NFL game that was played three weeks ago. I’m fairly certain there is a woman out there who is currently fucking around with some substandard guy, or eating ice cream while she watches a smut show on Netflix, or, who knows, taking care of her own kid(s), whose destiny it is to run into an unassuming man such as myself and live happily ever after with me. And I’m fairly certain I am existing here, right now, writing these words on some random blog on the Internet that very few people in the world knows is even here, that will be there, for her, in the life to come.
But this isn’t something I dwell on in any meaningful sense. As is the mundane way, the moments that have ever made me and gotten me truly excited were when I wasn’t seeking it. They happened when I was comfortable and enjoying my lot in life. Where I was fat and happy. And whenever I went on the ride I found myself better off after the fact, blinded by the ways of the world while the rollercoaster rose and descended in the meantime. I think I appreciated what I learned about myself as it was all happening, but the lessons that manifested themselves have less to do with what I saw and more with eliminating the blind spots for future reference. That is what they say about elephants in rooms; they are so big and so in your face that it’s difficult to see.
What’s most important about elephants is they remember. Maybe none of this existence, or life, is about striving for excellence all the time. Maybe we just use all of our knowledge looking forward to minimize the damage.
Future Bets 
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