Let’s start at the beginning. Ladies and gentlemen, I have defied long-standing societal norms. I am living with a member of the opposite sex, and let me tell you – living in sin is delicious. Shocking? Vulgar? Uncivilized?
No.
Apparently, what was once vice-ladden and subject to nasty glares in the supermarket produce aisle is now totally commonplace. Just barely more than one month into this cohabitation experiment, my girlfriend and I have found the experience to be not only exhilarating, but strangely normal.
I was surprised to realize that living in sin no longer even provokes a public shunning, much less a scarlet letter. OK, so while I know cohabitation is not technically one of the seven deadly sins, cohabitation isn’t totally on the up-and-up either, right?
I mean, isn’t this the country where the first mainstream couple to share a bed on television was the Flintstones? In our new apartment we have one bedroom with one double-sized mattress, and I don’t sleep on the sofa – surely that’s got to count as a vice.
Could it be that my newly adopted vice has already gone the way of tattoos and body piercing, which are now standard attire for not just mom and dad, but grandma and the kids as well?
Sadly, this seems to be the case. There are no pesky neighbors peeking through our windows, no overbearing minister-mayor breaking down my door, and my girlfriend’s family has even substantially warmed to the situation.
When they came to town last weekend to see our new apartment for the first time, we braced for the worst. Her family is from the old country, and I don’t mean a steel town in Pennsylvania, I mean Odessa, Ukraine. Our cross-cultural romance has sometimes meant that her father was less than enthusiastic about our liberated American dating plans.
For example, last month, we suddenly realized that her family hadn’t told anyone else that we were living together.
“What did they tell you to tell the rest of your family when we go up to Portland?” I asked.
“My mom joked that I should tell them I’m living in a cardboard box,” she said in mock horror.
“I think I’m the black sheep of the family.”
Driving home from work to see her parents at our new home, I realized the language barrier wouldn’t help either.
For the most part, her family speaks Ukrainian to each other, or even directly at me even though I don’t understand. Without the advantage of the traditional American cries like, “You son of a bitch,” or “I’ll kill you,” I could easily imagine a heavy object being hurled at my head with no warning.
By the time I walked through the door her parents had already outfitted our house with several month’s worth of toilet paper and food, and I could see by the smiles on their faces that my hopes of enjoying a decent vice were dashed.
I’m thinking of getting a piercing now.

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