On Bachelorhoodby Ron WilsonI was thinking the other day about why I have never married. Somehow, I don't think I could ever accept the idea that I had a wife, that I would go home each night and the same woman would be there. No matter where I went and whatever I did, I would have this wife who would always have to be taken into account, either negatively or positively, but always taken into account. There would be no escape. People would know I had a wife (you can't really keep a thing like that secret) and they would always ask, "How's your wife?" and I would always have to say something in response. I'd always have to report on the condition of my wife — to anybody who asked. And if my wife was not well, if she set fire to the curtains or ate Milkbones or fashioned her douche kit into a miniature set of bag pipes and played them morn 'til night, I'd have to lie. In fact I'd have to voice two lies — one for her and one for me. "Oh, she's fine and I'm fine too." Whatever I did, good or bad, I'd have to do twice as much of it if I had a wife. Now, Lord love you, what happens if people don't see your wife for long periods of time? They get curious and want to know where she is. If you're a married man, people always want to know where your wife is. They say, "Haven't seen your wife, where is she?" as if you must give a personal account of your wife's whereabouts on demand to anybody who requests it. Again, you have to lie. You can't say, for example, "Oh, she misbehaved yesterday and I had to lock her in the closet." Another consideration: privacy. When I've had relationships with women in the past, I seldom told anybody about the fact or gave any of the details. The women on the other hand were continuously telling their friends and family about me, nothing bad you know, but just what I was doing and where and why and how and if I liked it and if I didn't and if it cost a lot of money and if I planned to do it again or never did ... all of these things became common knowledge and I felt after awhile that I no longer had any privacy. Mind you, this chitchat on their part was almost entirely of a sincere, almost boastful nature. "Well, Ron does this and Ron does that, and Ron is about the greatest person in the world when it comes to the other." But it did weigh on me that I no longer had a "private life" and was constantly running into people who'd say, "Oh, hi, Ron ... I hear you're doing this and that and the other." And I'd either have to fess up and own it or say that my girlfriend was a lying sack that should never be believed for an instant.
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