My husband and I celebrate a milestone this month, guys: We have now been together for a grand 33 years. WOW! Right? To put it into more mind-blowing terms, that’s one-third of an entire century. All you “traditional marriage” drumbeaters, match that!
I highly recommend everyone marrying well. Be patient, my pets: He/she is out there. Settle for the improper mate and nothing else much matters in life. Howard’s advice? Rank the priorities of what you’re seeking in a spouse. My own No. 1, for instance, was always “high intelligence,” with “driving ambition” following closely at No. 2. “Tall” was No. 3 — I immediately disqualify dating all men shorter than 6-foot-2. Built-in dealbreakers just make the labyrinthine dating process far easier.
And never, ever date someone based exclusively upon the girth, width and/or length of his penis. Understand me here, bois? Ignore this advice at your own peril. Dubious, are you? Well, just take a good long gander at the current inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: Have you ever, in your life, witnessed any bigger size-queen than our Orangutan L’Orange?
If you’ll recall, during Trump’s very first day in office back in January of 2017, he ordered his then-press secretary, Sean Spicer, to march out before an elbow-to-elbow clique of White House reporters and shout vehemently — with a straight face, mind you — that the sparsely populated National Mall had just played host to, quote, “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration — PERIOD!”
L’Orange’s obsession with size — his plane having to be the biggest any national leader ever flew in; his arch having to dwarf the Arc de Triomphe, his ballroom so colossal as to create its own weather — only serves to draw attention to the elephant already stampeding the room, from which everyone the world over draws exactly the same conclusion.
Nonetheless, all things being unequal, what percentage of humanity truly cares if those eternal rumors about Trump being hung like a light switch can be substantiated or not?
Certainly none of the wives are talking. At least, not the still living ones. Melania knows fully well whose gravy train she’s riding, and Marla has obviously signed a nondisclosure agreement for, minimally, the remainder of L’Orange’s life. How spookily unfortunate that Ivana already met her maker via an untimely tumble down the staircase of her Upper East Side townhome (one of those schlocky, horror flick demises too absurd even to warrant conspiracy theorization).
For what little it’s worth, I’d imagine L’Orange’s three wives suffered far worse than even we.
As the old chestnut goes, all human motives can be traced back to either money or sex. Personally, I blow a kiss to my angels every single day for having been blessed to come of age in pre-internet, pre-Facebook, pre-Instagram world where either you mastered the art of conversation, and quick, or you weren’t landing no dick.
But alas, the art of vivaciousness has today gone the way of copper pennies — something quaint of yesteryear, no longer in circulation, buried away in a drawer for reasons you don’t know why. One trenchant shovelful of dirt at a time, conversation has slowly been buried alive. Gen Zeers, sitting next to one another across a table, are incapable of vocally conversing, at all; their fingers do the talking. High school and college classrooms now echo with all the lively chatter of a morgue.
I would never have met my husband in today’s world. Same-sex marriage, back in ’93, was so far off anybody’s radar of possibilities that it wasn’t even dreamed of. Flash forward to 2018 — exactly 25 years later from the day my spouse and I met — and our wedding ceremony was resplendent. Our cake stood tall as my new husband, whose words as we cut the first slice together still bring a lump to my throat: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcomed guests, may I propose a toast?” Nodding toward me, he lifted his champagne flute, beaming, “You don’t marry the person you can live with; you marry the person you can’t live without.”
Now, so far as the question that I’m most frequently asked these days: Howard, what’s the secret to successfully maintaining a long-distance/long-term marriage?
My own husband and I are apart, on average, nine months out of any given year. His employment keeps him fully three time zones away, up in a land of glaciers, where reindeer and polar bear roam, and the sun never sets in the summer nor rises in the winter. And yet we’ve successfully navigated, as a couple, the cards dealt us.
Actually, the trick is quite easy: All that’s required is speaking to one another, just once, every . . . single . . . day. You don’t even have to say much: “Hi. I’m in a meeting. Can’t talk. Love you. Bye.” And that’s all it takes.
Big things rise out of the smallest acknowledgements.
The only caveat is that you cannot skip a day. For, if you skip one day, before you know it, you’ll skip two. And then it all starts collapsing. My husband and I selected 9:30 in the evening, CST. No matter where in the world he is, at 9:30 p.m. here in Dallas, my phone rings. Not at 9:31, nor 9:32. No, it rings precisely at 9:30. No texting allowed. Texting is the death knell of all long-term/long-distance relationships. Pick up the friggin’ phone, people. Speak, in person, one-on-one, to the individual whom you’ve chosen to travel through life with.
No exceptions. PERIOD
—Howard Lewis Russell
Alrighty then, kidz. Any questions on your mind, commentary to share, or if you just need to vent, y’all know where to go: AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.