The Marriage Scam

Many years ago, I was in love. With a perfect boy. He was sweet, he was funny, he was attentive, he asked me to come to Costa Rica with him. I booked our tickets, I was happy, I was overjoyed.... and then I found out he was sleeping with my roommate.

My heart broke into a million tiny pieces. My face puffed up from crying everyday. I couldn't have a conversation without bursting into tears. Friends of mine started hanging out with him and his new girlfriend (my former roommate) because I was no fun, and they were such a blast to hang out with. I wore pajamas everyday, rarely washed my hair, cried into my tub of ice cream every night and had anxiety attacks over whether I should stay up and watch Letterman or go to sleep.

My mother, in her infinite wisdom, suggested I take my ticket to Costa Rica and trade it in for a ticket to London where I have lots of friends. Unable to make any sound decisions on my own at this point, I decided I would do just that. My ticket to London cost much more than the ticket to Costa Rica, so most of my savings went to paying the difference. But it didn't matter, I just had to escape. I couldn't be in the same city as that wretched happy couple and all of my back-stabbing fair-weather friends.

So off I went to England, with my shiny new ticket and probably about $800 Canadian dollars, which in my insanity I thought would be more than enough to last me 8 months. That's right, you heard me. 8 months! Yeah, I had free places to stay, but this is England we're talking about, not Thailand, and although it was about 12 or 13 years ago, even the most thrifty person can't make $800 Canadian last 8 months in England. Hell, most people would be lucky to last a week on that much.

My friend R and I decided to travel around together. Between the two of us, we barely had a cent, so we began sneaking onto trains and buses and crashing on couches until we got tired. R had a guitar and I can sing (well, I can kind of sing) so we began busking everywhere we went.

We did pretty well, and most days we'd manage to score about thirty odd pounds which would get us through until the next day.

But then I had an idea. An idea so fabulous that I know I'm going to regret sharing it, but you people have been good to me, so I'll reciprocate. This is like your grandmother's secret lemon cake recipe that she never shares with anyone, or like the secret to your mother-in-law's perfect lasagne, so I want you all to appreciate the value of the information I am about to pass on.

I call it The Marriage Scam.

R and I would busk until we had made enough to eat a nice meal in a decent restaurant. We would tidy up first though, because you can't pull a good scam unless you look the part, so we'd scrub our faces and clean the dirt out from under our nails and put on the cleanest clothes in our packs and then we'd go to dinner. Always a new place. Never the same place twice.

Then we would order our meals. Usually a salad to start. He would hold my hand on the table and I would smile at him like he was dipped in chocolate and diamonds. You know, like JLo does when she's trying to play the cute young ingenue type in any one of her many forgettable romantic comedies. Then I would leave and head for the washroom (the loo in England, for you international types). R would then flag down the waiter and hand him a ring (an old ring my grandmother gave me) and tell the guy he was going to propose to me. Then he would arrange to have the waiter hide the ring in my salad or on the plate somewhere.

Well, word carries fast in most restaurants, and generally by the time I got back to my seat, most places were buzzing with the news of R's imminent proposal. People at the next table would whisper and try not to be too obvious about staring. Kitchen staffs would gather at the swinging doors and peek out at us. And I would pretend to be oblivious to this happening all around me.

So, I would take a bite of the salad...sometimes two or three just to torture the crowd a little. And then lo and behold! I would "discover" the ring. Everyone loves a proposal, and I, the heart-broken cynic and theatre school drop-out, would milk it for all it was worth. I deserve an Oscar for some of the crying I did on these nights. And then R would get down on his knee, night after night, and say to me:

"Katie, the first time I met you I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. " Then, every night, he would go "off-script" and say something totally ridiculous designed to crack me up, like, "when I broke my leg in Nepal and you carried me down that mountain, I knew I couldn't survive without you in my life. You carried my body, now please, allow me to carry your heart forever. Would you make me the happiest man in the world and be my wife?" He should really be working for Hallmark, I'm not kidding.

And the best part about this whole thing is that women who've just been proposed to are nervous and crazy, so if I was feeling anxious about whether we'd pull the whole thing off, my shaking and laughing and crying only made it seem more convincing.

So I would stammer and cry, and try to get a reply out until someone in the room would say, "answer him!"

And I would shout yes! Oh yes R! I want to marry you! I love you so much! And the room would erupt and people would laugh and cry and clap their hands, and everyone around us would be so happy!

Every. Single. Night.

And, every single night, the restaurant would promo something--a bottle of wine, sometimes even champagne, a lovely dessert, and once or twice, our whole meal. And people at surrounding tables would send us drinks and start talking to us and asking how we met, and every single night we'd invent some crazy bullshit story and the room would be alive with happy people, celebrating the sweet young Canadian couple and their lovely romance, and they would order drink after drink after drink until most restaurant managers were in the back having orgasms over their liquor sales that evening.

And R and I would stagger out, holding hands and addresses of lovely people who insisted we come and stay with them while we were in England, our stomachs full, our livers hurting and our heads spinning.

Every. Single. Night.

Night guys--see you in a few days!