I Do. I Do. Lost Love And A Green Card
How I became Montreal's version of Elizabeth Taylor
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I am a bona fide American Citizen now. This story unravelled many moons ago in a distant land when the semblance of ‘normality’ was still in the air. It now feels like a past life in this life. Do ya know what I mean? This was back when I was still a young adult. It was 1998, and Google was founded that year. The Boy Is Mine hit the charts, the dot-com boom was accelerating, and Clinton was embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
I was still living in the matrix as a Canadian in need of a green card.
At one point, my old friends referred to me as Montreal's very own Elizabeth Taylor. For this story, you can refer to me as Alien Number 7005634.
I want to say straight off the bat, I think modern-day marriage is a mirage. But I still partook in the husband-and-wife design. To be precise, it's more like I pimped and spat on its sanctity. I was after a piece of the American Dream, and for a wallet-sized green card, I lied not once but twice.
Each time, not only did I not walk down the aisle and collect my honeymoon in Hawaii, but I also risked going straight to jail. A pretty cheap deal, considering it only took a few fibs to the feds and a couple of broken hearts.
Yet if you ask me whether I harbor any regrets, I'll gently lift my veil and whisper, "I do." Because deep, deep inside, I too wanted to reach happily ever after. Not end up stripped and jaded, believing that our natural tendency is to form a temporary pair bond, only to separate and go in search of a new brief, tenuous attachment -- over and over.
I met Husband One at age 22, during a visit from Montreal to Los Angeles. I believed that I'd stumbled upon a Mickey-and-Mallory, Natural Born Killers kind of love. That’s what I wanted: Us against the Universe -- a bond so fatalistic, we planned on building our very own wooden caskets. We clicked instantly. Manic, depressive with a hippie streak and a high IQ -- I fell in love with his wicked genius. He read Scientific American (now a more progressive publication), grew mushrooms in his parents' attic, and worked at a hospital on weekends, studying moles, spores, and molecular structures.
He textured my initial perception of El Lay with The Doors, Hendrix, and Eucalyptus-scented drives through rolling canyons. "We're gonna 'hold hands and watch the sun rise from the bottom of the sea,' like Jimi says," he promised.
One year and a journalism degree later, I sold my belongings, packed up my old life, and headed west in a Black Suzuki for a new life. It was California or bust, baby. But once in the U.S, I became an unauthorized "alien," banned from benefits. I couldn't get a Social Security number, a driver's license, a credit card, or an apartment. Let alone a career.
I tried landing a job. Journalists, however, weren't part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a program that facilitates cross-border movement for certain Canadian citizens. Meanwhile, media outlets wouldn't hire me without proper work documents, and I couldn't get the appropriate visa without a company sponsoring me. I was stuck in Catch-22.
So I proposed we get hitched -- on paper. We were planning on being together for lifetimes; why not help me jump-start my livelihood in Los Angeles? There was resistance. And then I reminded him that I'd left everything I knew for him.
I was young, and I still didn’t know who I was.
Unlike other brides, I didn't have to agonize over the look of invitation cards or make trips to Crate and Barrel to create a gift registry. I had no time to read articles, such as "Choosing the Right Lingerie for your Dress" or "How to Plan a Bad-Ass Bachelorette Road Trip." Instead of a church, my shotgun ceremony unfolded in a dismal industrialized city called Norwalk, CA, at the L.A. County Clerk's Office, where a million marriage licenses are doled out every year. Oh, yeah, but first we stopped by Wendy's for lunch. (I would NEVER eat at Wendy’s today under any circumstances.)
When it was our turn, we were escorted into a fluorescent-lit courtroom that had been converted into a makeshift chapel. The altar was made out of Formica; a tawdry paper bell dangled over our heads. Pitiful isn't even the word. And yet, I still managed to tear up as the Justice of the Peace recited the vows: "Do you, Husband One-To-Be, take Alien Number 7005634 to be your lawfully wedded wife? To love and to care for as long as you both shall live?"
"What are you doing?" my husband-to-be snipped in my ear. "Are you crying? This isn't real! Remember?"
Hollywood Sets, Adultery & Husband-Two-To-Be
What are you doing? I asked myself that very same question by the end of year four. Communication had deteriorated; our relationship had rotted into his stolid attitude and my nagging voice, begging him to ease up on the incessant bong hits. He resented my focused ambition. I hated his emotional vacancy; the pothead he'd become. We barely saw one another anymore, now that I had my own place. His parents forbid him to live with me since we hadn't gotten married "in front of the eyes of God."
Despite my misery, I stuck around. Didn't the fable go something like, "for better or worse, till death do us part?" I suggested we consult a therapist, but he refused. I even purchased Give in or Give up -- A Step-by-Step Marriage Improvement Manual from a used bookstore for $2.75.
I gave up. I gave up on the marriage, and I wasn't even thinking about my Green Card. If that were the case, I would have waited till it was nestled between my new credit cards before getting involved with Husband-Two-To-Be.
I met him when I was an extra on an Enrique Iglesias …