Bahamians Getting Married In Their 30’s: The Elegant Sin

By Drew

 

So my boy Shannon is getting married and, because he hates me, he put me in his wedding much to my chagrin. I’ve surmised that theres a conspiracy theory by all of my friends to make sure I’m in one wedding a year so I’m forced to look like an actual adult.

Shannon is about 38…..or 30…I actually don’t know, to be honest.

He went to NCA, and trying to guess their age is always hit or miss. I’m not kidding. RIP to my cousin Baby who we called “Baby” because she looked 17 for 30 years and no one could tell the difference.

Think I’m kidding?

Meet Kyran, who is also my friend, in the wedding, and none of us truly know how old he is….I’m telling you its an NCA thing.

I just assume we’re all in our 30’s and keep it pushing. We had a wedding rehearsal Wednesday night and I’m starting to realise that getting married in your 30’s is the most elegant and worthy sin one can commit and we need to talk about it.

Yes, I know: “The Elegant Sin” sounds like some weird anime about a Lobster falling in love with an earth girl only for her to realise, at the very end of the series, that the lobster she thought she loved was really a 5,000 year old demon named Mordecai who faked his lobster form to teach her the meaning of true love.

No, I’m calling it an elegant sin because, lets just be honest: Once you hit 30 all the traditional Christian values of courting are thrown right the fuck out the door like garbage.

 

Premarital sex? Lol…been done.

 

“Shacking up”? Yip…lil while now.

 

Kid out of wedlock and not marrying the father/mother of said kid? Can you find a nigga without a kid over 30 these days?

Shit….even when you don’t have a child you have a child because it really does take a village. Just ask my friend/not-baby’s mother, Josette.

In essence, everything our mothers tried to make happen hasn’t happened and now they’ve given up and come over to the dark side of things.

 

Behold the steady, but necessary, decline into sin of the Bahamian mother.

 

At 18?

 

At 25?

At 30?

35+???

So, now…this is my poor, saintly, mother….

Getting married in your 30’s is the best decision you can make ESPECIALLY if its your first marriage.

Last night, at that wedding rehearsal, I heard Shannon and his wife-to-be say, “It don’t matter” about 15 times….and mean it.  Shannon knew nothing of what was going on in his own wedding. In fact, we only found out we were in the goddamn wedding in goddamn December.

LATE December.

Also, they are getting married on a Friday. I mean…..how genius is that. You cut the fat and only those who TRULY give a fuck will attend…the way white Jesus intended.

It’s like getting married in Mayaguana on a Wednesday in the middle of summer. You’re gonna have to make some life changing decisions and really define your friendship at that point.

Such a G move.

 

Then…theres no reception after.

 

Y’all ain hearing me in this church this evening.

 

There.

 

Is.

 

No.

 

Reception.

 

After.

 

Y’all better praise MY Lord God Jehovah in this church this evening!!

That’s like a chick coming over, fucking you within the first 5 minutes and then leaving right after without all the “talking” and “caring about her as a person”.

That’s the next thing….theres only like 2 groomsman, 1 best man and that’s it.

Do you know what the size of this wedding would have been if Shannon was 25 and stupid?

Every 5 years we cut the fat and weed out the friends who we’ll mess with for the next 10 years or so, then hold another draft at that time. I can’t wait to turn 40 and hold yet another “Friends I ga keep” draft.

I’m sorry but does it get much better than this?

A 30 minute wedding, followed by nothing, on a day when most people have to work, dealing with an adult bride and groom who truly could care less because they have each other and, once again, love truly wins. Well, by the power of grayskull, sign me up for that shit!

 

Shit….I may wait until I’m 40 to get married cause then at that point its just like….

I talk alotta shit about the conveniences and simplicity of their wedding and the preparations but, honestly….I’ve never seen 2 people so at peace with each other. Love is fun and all but peace of mind is way funner. Peace of mind is knowing a wedding doesn’t matter. Peace of mind is realising, at a very late stage in life (at least for our mothers), that you’re exactly as bitter, broken, tired, out of shape and anti-people as the person you want to spend your life with. You understand that it’s not about finding your heaven but the person that has the same demons and cracks in the vase as you do.

Listen, we’re 30+ and we’re all a little fucked up by now.

She just came out of a horrible 5 year relationship with an unemployed drug dealer named LiL Arundel, took a year off and traveled to figure her shit out….had a one night stand with some guy she met at brunch after endless mimosas in the back of his KIA Sportage in the middle of the day….she’s seen some shit.

He was a hoe in college and now victim to a failed marriage that went left after about a year. Fucked around and got her crazy ass pregnant so now he has to co-parent with this disaster while trying to be a good dad and trying to date in a world he has been out of for about 5 years or so…

It sounds like a Lifetime movie only with niggas and real life consequences and I think that’s beautiful.

I’m not here to say that getting married in your 30’s actually works. I have 0 evidence of that. I also won’t claim that waiting is necessarily right or wrong. Love who you love, when you want to love, how you want to love.

What I am saying is, at this age, you have fewer regrets. At this age you see the forest for the trees. I know who I am a little bit more than I did back when I thought I was going to marry Elisha, or Ashlyn, or Janice, or Kandice, or Topanga from “Boy Meets World”…

I started to lose faith that the race was worth it.

I really did.

When you see so many marriages and relationships crash and burn you get a little jaded. A bit deflated of any hope that there is life at the end of the tunnel for a broken instrument like myself.

But then I watched a man I’ve never seen cry in my life breakdown at a wedding rehearsal. They both had on scrubs. No one’s hair was groomed. We all looked homeless outside of Kyran because he sleeps in well tailored suits I imagine.

There were no pics taken. No one recording images of a man breaking down due to the gravity of his love for his woman during a rehearsal for a glorified stage play that, we as a society, decided exemplifies the pinnacle of “true love”.

Nothing was staged, nothing was captured. It was the most un-millenial thing I’ve ever seen. We were ALL 30 years old in that moment.

It was a mans tears, a friends embrace, a woman in love…..and the few remains of friendship circles long past.

 

Kyran wiped his tears. I called him a bitch. And then we all went home….with a little bit more hope in our hearts.

 

Congrats, Mr & Mrs Davis.

 

Godspeed.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments