Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other

If you MUST know, I've been experiencing a goodly amount of guilt about the fact that I not only never wrote a blogpost about the Haiti earthquake, I'm not really inclined to opine about Chile. Or Taiwan. And if one happens tomorrow, I may not write about that, either.

I think Kenya has kind of maxed me out on the sight of people of African descent suffering untold horror. Granted, even though I've been to Kibera and refugee camps and seen myriad other examples of poverty and human suffering on the Continent, I'm certain nothing I've witnessed would compare to the death and destruction in Haiti. It's just anything I'd write would probably come off pompous and melodramatic. At least, moreso than usual.

But for some reason, all of a sudden, I feel like writing about polygamy. And I had two choices to illustrate this post....a picture of South African President Jacob Zuma, or the one I went with, Academy Award-nominated actress Mo'Nique. (Full disclosure: I LOVE MO'NIQUE. She is hilarious, she is real, and she was astonishing in "Precious." I'm praying she'll win.)

Now, in case you haven't heard about Prezzo Zuma's antics, that 67-year-old goat just married his 5th wife (one of the others killed herself, so technically he only has 4). And word has it there's another one on deck. But hey, he's a member of the Zulu tribe, which proudly practices polygamy, so that's not so much "news" in these parts.

What WAS news recently is that Zuma slept with the 39 year old daughter of one of his friends and got her pregnant. With his 20th child. Oh, and I forgot to mention that he was accused of rape a few years back, and that he had sex with an HIV positive woman once, but then said he was okay because he took a shower afterwards.

Not exactly the poster child for healthy sexuality and relationships, but then the information in the last paragraph isn't so much what this posting is about. What Zuma seems to embody is the age old debate about whether it's even biologically natural for a man to only have one mate. In quite a few cultures, men are free to marry as many women as they want. (Technically, religious leaders in those cultures insist that men must only marry as many women as they can afford to support. So why are most polygamists as poor as church mice, and don't seem to give a crap about comfortably feeding and clothing 4 or 5 wives and goo gobs of kids? It's like, "While God is figuring out a way to provide, let me just keep gettin' my freak on.")

My own views about man's ability to cleave to just one partner have shifted dramatically in the past few years. Well, technically, that shift began while I was still in the US, and found myself sharing several of my own men with other women. There's nothing more maddening than realizing, after you thought you'd been sizzling in the kitchen, the boardroom and the bedroom, that your man has a side dish (or two) on the sideboard. You're like, "Wasn't I enough? What was I doing wrong? What should I have been doing to keep him interested in only me??"

Apparently, Ms. Mo'Nique doesn't worry herself with those kinds of agonizing doubts. When she got married a few years ago, to a man she'd known for decades and who she considered her best friend, her fans were thrilled for her. Then came whispers and rumors that hubby had some outside interests, which Mo'Nique quickly countered by hinting at their "open marriage." Well, now those hints have been verified, because she recently confirmed her open marriage to Barbara Walters in a pre-Oscars special. And she added that she wasn't threatened or bothered by her husband's sexual dalliances.

10 years ago, I would have thought, "Yuck." Today, I'm mostly thinking, "Mo', girlfriend, that is WAAAAAYYY too much information." Look, if she isn't worried about diseases, and if she's emotionally secure enough to not consider his recreational diddling as rejection, then who's to say she hasn't just devised a healthy approach to modern relationships?

Thank GOD my sister Julie isn't able to physically slap the shit out of me for writing that. But a lot of people, men and women, all around the world, actually, think polygamy makes a lot of sense. After all, a lot of people, men and women, all around the world, sleep around on their partners. At least with polygamy, there's an attempt at some sort of legal responsibility for one's actions. At least when a mature woman agrees to be one of several wives, she knows what she's getting into from jump street. Sure, a lot of women can't really foresee just how jealous they're gonna feel until after they've made that choice. But nobody can say they didn't know what they were signing up for.

Moreso than The Four Mrs. Zumas, Mo'Nique has taken a pretty bold stand, one that African American women have been nudged toward in various guises for many decades now. We've been asked to consider "sharing" our men, even though we haven't had the legal cover of polygamy. Or we've been advised to just accept that men are dogs, and they're gonna cheat anyway, so we better get over it or get some on the side ourselves. I've never been able to adopt any of those strategies.

As someone who's actually fielded a polygamous proposal, I will say I'm a work in progress, kinda. Most days I think I wanna get married, to just one hilariously smart and sexy guy, preferably a grandfather of several children under age 6. Then I look at the odds and the pickins, and I become even more convinced it may never happen. But here's the thing: under the right circumstances, with the right guy, I would probably take more than the hour I spent convincing the Muslim chef from Lamu that I wasn't gonna be Wife Number 2, to consider all the reasons why, at this point in my life, it just might make sense.

After all, it's six of one, and half a dozen of the other, eh?