An American in Paris

Over the last weekend, Helmut and I got married. This is both much bigger and smaller than it seems, or at least it started out that way. Smaller, because the main reason for doing it was the paperwork: I am here as a tourist and I need to have more reason to be in Paris than being a tourist. It is bigger for me because marriage has never been on my radar, so it was never anything I aspired to. Helmut has been deep in this pool, and has had a very long relationship with a woman (3 children) but never married because he doesn't believe in marriage for anyone (too many benefits arbitrarily given to those within and withheld from those without the institution). So, even with this, we decided to do it. After we decided to do it, Helmut decided he wanted to have rings. Wow, that made it somehow bigger and more important. We decided to do this in NYC. France and Paris, specifically, love their paperwork. Since neither of us are French, we would have had to get our birth certifica...