Why I Have Penis Envy

I have penis envy.

When my cousin got married to a 16-year-old, she cried the whole way down the aisle.  And not in an I’m so happy! way.  More like in an I’m making a third huge mistake in a row, the first two being an 18 month-old baby and the fetus currently gestating in my uterus way. I have a big Catholic family, so I have attended more weddings than I can count.  But this one stuck in my mind for some reason.  Can’t imagine why!

My great-grandfather tried to marry a girl with whom he was completely smitten, but her parents told him to return in two years because she was too young.  Girlfriend was twelve.

If there’s one thing that I relish about being a modern woman– aside from pedicures and cosmopolitans, amirite ladies?!– it’s that I don’t have to worry about my parents marrying me off at fourteen to some random Canadian.  (True story: my great-grandfather did return two years later, and they married.  I have some impressive motherfucking stubbornness in my genes.  Also, the salty tears of child brides.)  The downfall to being a modern woman is that everyone expects me to get married and pop out some babies as soon as possible anyway.

Being a college-educated twentysomething, I am right in the middle of Marrying Friends Stage Phase I.  People are getting married all over the goddamned place: Mexico, Montana, Iowa, St.-Freaking-Thomas, Seattle, Orlando, Laguna Beach… you get the picture.  I can pretty much guarantee that every wedding invitation I receive will be to some place that is too far away to drive in a reasonable amount of time and will cost me an exorbitant amount of money.  Honestly, I like weddings as long as there is an open bar and something besides a keg of Old Style, but if I have to eat any more buttercream I’m going to drive to New York and burn down the Magnolia bakery.  And not with one of those cute crème brulée torches– I’m talking flame-throwers.  I swear to God I’ll do it.

But like I said: I like weddings!  I love dressing up, and I even like dancing to “Mustang Sally.”  I have this patented elbow-to-thumb-waving move.  It’s awesome.  Trust me.

But marriage?  Now that’s scary.  Let’s go back to my cousin for a moment.  One could, after much careful consideration, ascertain that getting married under such circumstances might not lead to the most stable and fulfilling marriage.  Brace yourselves– it didn’t last.  They went through a messy divorce, and one of their kids likes to kick other kids in the shins and stuff them in lockers.

They’re not the only divorcées among my forty-odd cousins.  A lot of my cousins are divorced, as are some of my friends.  One of my younger friends has been married, divorced, re-married, and now has a baby with her second husband.  My aunt and uncle divorced and remarried each other twice. I am a product of a stable, happy, marriage–or so I thought until one night my mother was so furious with my father that she told me that she sometimes wondered if she would be better off had she divorced him a long time ago.

Thanks for crushing my happy-kid-with-the-perfect-family memories, Ma.

I see my friends getting married young and I don’t know whether to be jealous of them or be relieved that it’s not me.  Two friends of mine are in an “open” marriage, though this really means that they just fuck other people.  They don’t let anyone else in– maybe physically, but definitely not emotionally.  I think they’re too scared of letting what they have unravel, since sometimes it seems like it doesn’t take much picking at it at all for that kind of intimacy to fall apart.

This is why I have penis envy.  I totally get why men don’t want to get married young– they’re scared shitless by the prospect of lifelong commitment.  Newsflash: so am I! And so, I bet, are a lot of women.  But I have these goddamned ovaries and every time I turn around, there’s Giuliana Rancic’s skeletor eyes tearfully imploring me to not forget that my reproductive organs are precious and that even if my grandma had babies at 46, I might not have that luxury.  So I’m stuck in a place where biology tells me to just goddamned settle already for that high school ex-boyfriend who is looking for a stepmom for his bastard child while my head is all OH HELL NO STEP AWAY FROM MY RING FINGER AND BATHING SUIT AREA.

So unattached men, take a moment to savor the fact that you can continue to reproduce little swimmers throughout your life.  Even if, like Arnold, you shrink your balls by injecting gallons of steroids.  Even then, they still work!  You could be knocking chicks up in between getting your sponge bath and watching Jeopardy at the nursing home!  Wonders never cease.

I’m so jealous.

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