June Swoon

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, you’ve probably heard, but in case you’ve been out of touch, we’ve got the full month of summertime June to face coming up, like a squashed bug on the windshield as you wind your way Up North toward a rental cold-water cabin on a dinky lake up by Hayward or Crivitz there, what the fock.

Yes sir, it’s the time of year where everything seems to be blooming, especially idiots, like those flowering in the Freedumb Caucus in the House of Reprehensitives.

But on the way we go. June—the month that will, now post-COVID they say, begin the psychological racket about to be raised by all the good-timey gemütlich-focking-keit that gushes to and fro around Our Town this festival time of year, I kid you not

Yeah yeah, there’s just too much outdoor entertainment going on every time you turn around here and there, and I don’t have the constitution for the outdoors—I get worn out just trying to find a goddamn ashtray for christ sakes. And if you’re talking outdoors, you’re talking bugs and companion insects; so forget about it, especially those focking insects that sleep all the day long whilst the sun’s up, and so what’s the first thing these winged fockers do when they come out at nighttime? They head for the nearest light source.

That’s exactly the kind of stupid-ass behavioral aggravation that drives me indoors this time of year, not to mention all the music, all the time, everywhere. Hey, music’s been around reaming the eardrum of the homo Sapien for a couple, three hundred-focking-thousand years if not longer. There are essentially 12 notes to be sounded. Enough already. Take a break, for crying out loud. We’ve heard it already, ain’a?

Did I mention it’s now June? Seems to be most popular month for brides and grooms to lower anchor and declare that they will be husband and wife, or husband and husband, or wife and wife, god bless them all. 

But that’s not the kind of thing you newlyweds of this month need to hear. You want to hear something even more uplifting and hunky-dory.

And so I present my occasionally annual address to the soon-to-be betrothed lovebirds, which follows:

Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century poet, playwright, essayist, etcetera-etcetera-etcetera, said when he heard of a friend getting married for the second time after his first wife croaked, remarked how he found that admirable ’cause it celebrated the spirit of hope over experience. How ’bout that, ain’a?

And since I’m quite sure that none of you’s happy couples will invite me to your shindigs, even for the open bar portion, where I could’ve wished you all the best and blah-blah in person, I did a little research to find some bright words of wisdom about the wedded state I could at least pass on to you through the power of this essay. I checked the Bible and you can just imagine the kind of gas they were passing on the topic. Of course they’d be all gung-ho on marriage back when a wedding cost next to nothing. For christ sakes, think what you’d save on the reception alone. You wouldn’t have to pay a photographer since the snapshot had yet to be discovered; and as far as a band goes, hey, how much do you think a couple guys tooting on potato pipes would’ve run you? Hey, you tell me. 

And then I’ll tell you that what the Bible had to say sounded trite and contrived to me, and I figured you already heard it all before, anyways. Then I came across a couple things from the ancient Greeks. One was a proverb that said, “Marriage is the only evil that men pray for,” and the other was from some guy named Hipponax out of the 6th century B.C., “Two days are the best of a man’s wedded life: The days when he marries and buries his wife.” Sounds kind of sort of misogynistic for this day of age, so I kept researching.

I leapt ahead a couple, three thousand years to Helen Rowland in 1922’s A Guide to Men, “A Husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted”; and Ambrose Bierce wrote in his The Devil’s Dictionary almost a century ago, “Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.” And speaking of happiness, the ol’ ray of sunshine himself, Friedrich Nietzsche, had this to say: “If married couples did not live together, happy marriages would be more frequent.” 

What the fock, I thought of Shakespeare. He’s known for having a way with words and I found this out of his Twelfth Night play: “Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.” That kind of statement might work for our Supreme Court in trying to reconcile a capital punishment thing with a family values thing, but I don’t know what it does for you newlyweds, I kid you not.

In fact, none of the quotes I found had anything good to say about marriage, which turns out to be the same thing I could’ve said myself on the subject in the first focking place—nothing good. So you’re on your own. Looks like you’ll have to come up with something swell to say about marriage yourselves. Don’t worry, you got a whole lifetime to find it, but since you’re married, it’ll only seem like two lifetimes ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.