A couple of weeks or so ago, I finally had time (and reason) to check on the paperwork of Ellen's and my Chinese divorce of our Chinese marriage, which I thought I had put on a bureaucratic fast-track many moons past and was happily done with. To cut to the skinny of a long and tedious story that took some four days of stupefying confusion and bouncing between several government edifices (and law offices, unfortunately) to get to the bottom of, I learned that there were no "divorce papers" because there was no marriage!
That's right. It turns out that the on-the-spot notarized certificate witnessing a "wedding ceremony" on the beach of the Nanshan Buddhist Resort just a bit southwest of an adventurous motorized pedicab ride from Sanya, Hainan, was the only paperwork filed by the officials in China's laid-back, sleepy, self-styled answer to Hawaii, and nothing more. Apparently, being smarter than most other folks involved, they never bothered to file a "Marriage Certificate" for what must have seemed to them a couple of very goofy Americans who decided to get married on a romantic impulse while on an exotic "Tree House" vacation in one of the gods' most special places.
In all fairness, I should note that the following day was Chinese New Year, 2003. That might have had something to do with the notaries' inattention to piddling Laowai details. Ellen greatly appreciated the spectacularcelebration--and never tired of telling everyone in earshot for days, weeks and years, exactly how much--that a resort, a city, a province, and a nation threw for our "wedding."
Not wishing to get too deeply into the sublimity of an "I told you so" conceit, I will only briefly point out that on dozens of occasions (at the very moment of the "ceremony" and immediately thereafter being only the first) I remarked somewhat meanly under any number of situations and emotional stimuli to Ellen that "We aren't really married!" (I have never laid claim to being a good or even a nice human being, only an emotionally honest one at any moment in question.) To be sure, those words were never well received by Ellen. That is until I informed her via e-mail of the facts in China--she is back living in the States, and has been for quite some time now. To my relief, she also was relieved by the news of the non-marriage.
Without edging too closely into rancor that I don't feel, I must admit that I do not at all mind again being able to say that I have only been married once, to Linda, my childhood sweetheart and former wife of 31 years. That is not to say I will never marry again--I have no wish to live out the several decades ahead of me alone, or worse yet, to die alone.
The only sorrowful part of this silly tale is the amount of money no one will ever be able to make me confess that I paid Chinese lawyers to get a divorce from someone I was not married to! That's for my shame alone--okay, a few other folks know the amount, but they are sworn to secrecy.
I will now wax philosophical for a moment (and only a moment, I promise). Ellen and I are the poster children for the admonition that very dear friends and fellow writers should not monkey with that double-blessed relationship and get hitched! There was no good reason on this spinning rock for us to get married and destroy the truly righteous friendship and mutual admiration society we had for one another before that fateful day in the shade of magically entwined and redolent tropical flora on a virtually undeveloped beach along the South China Sea.
Ellen Jane Sander is a woman of character with few equals. She is a writer who in many ways has no equals--her voice and style (poetry and prose) are truly unique and have been ever since she became a famous rock journalist in the cultural capitals of America while I was still completely unknown and struggling financially just to get out of a then obscure Mississippi university with a BFA in Theatre, and well more than a decade before I became a published writer, much less an effective one.
Whatever: welldone or not, at least we can write 'Trails End' to a saga of which I know we both have much to regret. Perhaps someday we can be something close to the friends we were before we were stupid enough to screw it up with "wedding vows" we did not mutually understand the reasons for making.
NOTE: In other forums, for whatever benighted reasons, some folks whom are overly obsessed with other folk's business are saying that the post above and its central theme are not true; that I am in effect lying about Ellen and me not being legally married. Well, I just received further confirmation that the "marriage" was "invalid" from an attorney with the State Administration of Commerce and Industry (SAIC). End of story.
P.S.: I have not posted to these pages for a very long time. Other than the new English Language Drama Program that I was tasked to build from scratch here at Beiwai, which had me occupied almost 24/7 for months, I have not posted due to reasons that have become shamefully endemic to the blogosphere. This was one of the last blogs--and virtually all news sites, large and small--to hold out for the allowance of anonymous, unmonitored comments. That turned out to be one of the most stupid ideas I've ever had and I had to all but shut down these pages because of it. It was not to preserve my 'name' and character, which was so vehemently attacked--that comes without legitimate complaint with the public territory I long ago chose to inhabit--but to protect the same of completely innocent third parties.
I will soon be posting an essay on that so ugly mess and what it means for the future of these pages. And I will be posting again--when I can. I have decided that such idiot-kind must not be allowed to assume they have prevailed; as if winning and losing has anything to do with the sick, small minds and empty souls that have little else to do but attempt to destroy that which they cannot understand, have, or experience, no matter how lustful is their empty, vainglorious covetousness of it.
