The Time I Married a Bum

Mmm, that's marriage material right there!

Last night I dreamt that I was married, but I was also away from my husband, working. He kept asking me to come back and live with him. (That is pretty much my real-life roommate's situation, but I digress.) When I finally did quit my job and fly out to meet my husband, expecting ever-so anachronistically that he would take care of me, I discovered that my husband was homeless. He also may or may not have lived in Alaska, which you may notice is the worst possible place to be an urban beggar.

He was white, tall, and overly thin, and his brown hair was shaggy and smelled like sweat and dry skin, as if he hadn't washed it for five days. (Yep, I smell in dreams. It sucks.) In addition, he was wearing the standard-issue drab green and gray multilayer outfit that homeless guys are so fond of. I let him hug me, but all I could think was Lice! Scabies! Aah! Must burn clothes and shower in the next ten minutes!

Naturally, I refused to join my husband on the mean streets of Juneau, so I was a couch-surfer or something. My husband said I was dishonoring my marriage vows by not living with him, and I said he was dishonoring his marriage vows by not bathing or getting a job. I was working at a fish cannery or somewhere equally sad. Then my husband showed up one day and said he'd gotten an apartment, so I should move in with him. I agreed.

Home sweet home!

The so-called apartment was one room in a stinky motel with a dirty blanket on the floor for sleeping. We lay down together on the filthy floor, my husband cuddled me with his olive-green clad arm, and then I woke up.