My Wife Borat

Yesterday I wrote a mediocre joke for Twitter (I don't believe in deadnaming, but his mama named him Twitter and I'ma call him Twitter) about how now that I've been married for a week, I'm ready to share what I've learned. Then I said I was kidding and threatened to start a Substack on the subject. Of course, I'm not doing that. Marriage is still completely new and thrilling to me--just wearing a ring on the regular is a massive change in my life.

I also wrote yesterday about how I'll be co-directing my wife Nkechi's one-woman show this January. Part of what has been so compelling about our life together over the past 18 months or so is how creative we are together. We talk about our work, we talk about our process, we try on bits and spend a lot of our time fucking around and trying to crack each other up. Kechi wins the game on a regular basis, but I do a decent job holding my own.

Kechi started standup around the time I took a step back to finish my novel and generally work on getting my life together. By the time we got together, I had decided that while I was not closed-off to the idea of marriage or building a life with someone, I was not going to actively pursue such an arrangement anymore. I intended to focus on my career and growing my skills as I got my work out to the world. I'm still relatively career focused, but working on that even as I work on my health and my teaching career has shown me that I don't have to choose just one thing. I've even started doing standup again here and there. More on that another time, though.

Getting engaged to Kechi was not a surprise. We'd been talking about it for months, and over Thanksgiving break, I'd traveled with her from New Orleans to El Paso to meet her family. Kochi's father seemed impressed that I cared enough about Nigerian culture to want a traditional wedding. He also seemed very impressed that I had read Things Fall Apart and No Longer At Ease in high school, and that I consider both those novels essential cornerstones of my literary perspective.

Kechi and I will definitely travel to Nigeria for our traditional wedding, but my brother Brandon's sudden death in June showed me that I didn't want to waste any more time waiting to be married to my favorite person. We kept things very small, with a dinner and a little ceremony attended by maybe ten people on the stage out back of Bar Redux. After that, we decamped to the Country Club and swam until they closed down early that night.

My parents have suggested that I marry most every partner of mine they've ever met, but when my father visited New Orleans in February of 2022, he spent a few hours accompanying us to a poetry reading at the Allways Lounge and sharing a meal or two, then privately told me that he thought this was the one, that I should propose to Kechi and marry her sooner than later. Usually, I brush such advice, but as soon as he said it, I knew he was right. He had recognized Kechi as one of our own.

Have I learned anything of consequence in the slightly-more-than-a week that I've spent as a married man? Probably not to others, but I've learned something important to me: I love being Kechi's husband. Months ago, we promised each other that we'd take turns being the "wife" in our relationship--supporting, cheering from the sidelines, and lifting each other up as we pursue our goals, both personal and shared. I'm not sure which I love more--being Kechi's husband or being her wife.