I just found an article by a guy named Ethan Watters that interested me. Summing-up a generation of people, a-la Time Magazine, trying to create a demographic with a book or a few articles, or trendspotting is generally repulsive to me. But none-the-less, it seems my existence is being thrown into relief up on the wall, my own mind can not escape it. I don't give a shit if it's on Good Morning America but it's fucking me and my friends up. I'm in my 30's and not married. Apparently I'm a "never-married". I should marry but I DON'T. It's a phenomenon that Ethan is labeling "Urban Tribes". Mr. Watters (although he's apparently engaged) counts himself among this group. And now that screenplays about dotcom life are not selling so well, they're reshaped into the old, "My Generation" sort of drivel that he's going to pack into "URBAN trIBES OF THE NEVER MARRIEDS: Secrets of Community from an Unlikely Source"

Read what he says about Urban Tribes. He's describing life in San Francisco. You're young, smart, got a job and great friends, had a few serious relationships, but you can't...seem...to.....make...one....work.... Your parents were divorced, sure, your married friends are boring, well some of them, but your biological clock is hammering on you night and day and still, you don't get married. And though it all, you know how you're gonna spend the 4th of July: BBQ'ing with those same old friends that you watched the Super Bowl with. From Ethan's perspective (already, it seems, sliding into the world as viewed from marriage) we substitute the closeness and support that marriage provides with a group of friends (that sticks around at least as long as the most hard-core of them can hold out). He implies that as soon as the comfort of your tribe gone, (everyone gets married?) you’ll go running into a marriage.

I don't think I have an Urban Tribe. I don’t think I’ll get married. Does this mean I should get one? Will I be unprotected in the coming disasters of my life? Will I have no one to share the exhilarating triumphs with? Who will change my diapers? Fuck it. I never cared up to now...

I've spotted the tribes, yes they exist and San Francisco is a particularly fertile breeding ground for them, but I keep moving. Maybe it was because the tribes felt like stale marriages already. What's troubling is the fact that Ethan must come up with a meme to counter the societal pressure to get married. It shows that saying "no" to marriage isn't enough. I rant on this subject continually. I'm not even going to discuss the desire to have children. But I should say that I never assumed that I was going to have kids, thinking that I’d probably hate their mother at some point, and they didn’t need to be put through that. So marriage seem superfluous and once I forgot about marriage, having kids didn't make much sense.

Every "never-married" has a reason why they are not married. Some say selectively, "I would but I haven't found THE ONE", some say humbly, "I want to make sure I'm ready" some say shamefully, "I missed my shot" but how many truly forget all about marriage and rise above it? I'm talking about some evolved, modern shit. I mean, if you have gone through all the self-help training of the 90's, enjoyed all the wealth and freedom of those same 90's, and you've straightened your existential shit out like no human has in history, then what's with the marriage stuff? You got yourself to the point where you are completely self-sufficient (a point where normally you'd be more than ready for marriage) and now you NEED something else? What’s the matter? Life’s too easy for you? You bored?

Here's a thought: marriage is not necessary. Like everything else in this culture, it is a lifestyle product, marketed and bought like any of those finished IKEA rooms. You can ignore the seductive music of it or you can not. I believe, the backwards intellectual that I am, that you get what you want, but what you need is only given to you. At its most useful it's a shorthand way of describing your life with another person to society. "Married? Oh ok, I won't ask you out on a date then." Folks, this is not something to ruin your life over! It's not that hard to explain why your finger has no ring on it.

One could say that marriage provides you with a mental reality that focuses your behavior toward the long-term. It allows you to relax and be more forgiving. Instead of "living together" and constantly re-evaluating the relationship on a day-to-day basis, you get a "lease". Instead of constantly judging the other person for worthiness and, it follows, instead of them constantly being in interview mode and putting their best foot forward, you really get to see the other person. Wow!

Fine! But I contend (and I don't have to remind you that I've never been married) that giving yourself the "lease" isn't something that you should sit and yearn for when you are single. This supposedly perfect state of affairs has people wallowing in loneliness. It is something that may be bestowed on an already working relationship. How can you go shopping for that? You don't. And I don't know if it's a good remedy the supposed purgatory of "living together" either. The only people who get themselves in that state of constant judgmental re-evaluation are people who are dying to get married for whatever reason and could give a fuck if they have a perfectly fine, short term relationship on their hands.

Everything thing that I’ve just said is subject to revision, of course.