I've even raped and killed a mountain panda in the hills of Shaanxi.

I just finished Marriage: a History. Basically what it says, takes the views of marriage in Greek and Roman times, to Middle Ages, to Enlightenment, to Victorian, to the 20s, 30s, 50s etc. Mostly America but the trends for Western Europe are virtually identical, and most of the rest of the literate world is at worst a few decades behind. It clears up a few misconceptions and points out that the idea of a nuclear family is incredibly new, at least in the "man and woman meet, fall in love, marry and have babies and a wonderful life" sense. It doesn't really say where marriage is going now, just points out that things are in a serious state of flux since women were allowed to have their own checking accounts. The author concludes by saying what marriage means to her, personally, after years of being afraid of repeating her parents' mistakes.

But anyway it kind of helped me see where the anti-gay-marriage folks are coming from, while at the same time seeing how incredibly misguided they are. Even Nixon said "gay marriage - that's for the year 2000." Even the most "traditional" American marriage in 2006 has almost nothing in common with any American marriage in 1906, let alone 1806.

I am finally feeling better. I whipped that headache into shape and packed some more, then we had Pies (but no Pints) and then bought shit at Fred Meyer for the new place, and put it there (I inaguarated the toilet) and then went home and packed some more. Also there was a shower in there somewhere. I was beat and wanted to sleep. So I did.

The last dream I remember was some cop taking me on a secret Seattle route to avoid rush-hour traffic on I-5.

Anyway. I've been reading a bunch of stuff about how this generation is afraid to grow up. Whether it's emotional or financial fears. Which is utterly strange to me because a) I grew up in Louisiana and b) I went to Duke. Almost everyone I had a casual acquaintance with in either of these two categories is currently married if not having-been-married-for-years. Of course, I think of expensive private colleges as breeding grounds for upper-class snobs, and back home everyone is still expected to get married in college at the latest. My brother was 22, I mean.

But my closest friends weren't anywhere near marriage or expecting to get married when I graduated, and this seems to still be the case, so I always thought those people who were rushing into adulthood were freaks. On the other hand we did all have good decent jobs and probably could have bought houses if we wanted to. This was before the dot-com economy collapsed on itself, things are different now, but even then the mentality of not wanting "responsibility" was omnipresent. I had enough trouble taking care of a pair of gerbils.

The bride in one of the first post-college weddings I attended later slept with a friend of mine, which further led me to believe that these people weren't rushing to adulthood so much as running away from childhood. Fear of being alone, yadda yadda yadda. It's a lot harder to be alone at 21 than 28.

I know very few people that are getting married or are married or are engaged, and those people aren't really my "friends" mostly. Now granted this is partly because I don't have a million people I call friends, but also partly because we're self-selecting anti-establishment types. Or perhaps that's too strong a word, maybe anti-bourgeoise is better?

But I also have friends who are just putting things off till they're "old enough." (This is rather dependent on where one is from. Also, cough cough, how many people one has dated. The fewer, the younger "old enough" seems to be.) To a certain extent this drives me crazy because the assumption is that certain behaviors can be indulged in when young, but not when older. And to a certain extent this is true, but my belief is, if you can pay all your bills and do your job, what difference does the rest of it make?

Not that that has anything to do with anything, I do know other married people who haven't exactly settled down. Which is pleasing , but too many others just get all sucked in. Although, who knows whom one is conforming to in these cases. When your friends are all anti-establishment types, you just do what they do too.