Step Three in my Preventative Measures Plan consisted of using a flashlight and a mirror with magnifying properties only a surgeon would need to scan my chinny-chin-chin in a quest for devious little piggy hairs. I used to think that I had a very kind, sympathetic mirror, but I now lean toward the theory that I bought a defective one, because in my bathroom, I have a regular female jaw. Push me into the power of direct sunlight, however, and I have chin scrub fuller than Grizzly Adams’s. Since I was getting married outside, my mandible foliage had the potential to be a deal breaker, so I had to reap the forest carefully with my trusted tweezers. I relied on my tweezers solely after my encounter with wax strips, which do not disclose in the instructions that repeated usage in the same area after about fifteen applications will indeed rip all remnants of testosterone and most of the skin cells right off your face, leaving exposed bone. I learned that lesson the hard way the night of our engagement party as I and my perfectly proportioned, square-shaped chin scab tried to act cute and engaged, while behind me, my invited guests were exchanging scenarios about how I may have acquired a rug burn in such a precarious and delightful spot.
In Step Four, I layered myself with so much padding that if I had been knifed in the gut by any of my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends or his mom, not so much as a drop would have seeped through to the other side. There was no way I was going to have to borrow a sweatshirt or cardigan to tie around my bustle on my day of all days.
This bride was prepared. She was all set.
Or so she thought.
It wasn’t until I was watching the bridesmaids walk down the aisle to the music of the string quartet that I realized I was at my wedding. My betrothed was already up at the turned-off waterfall with Ellen, watching the procession.
I wasn’t shaking, I hadn’t cried, I wasn’t stuttering or hissing, all of which were good signs, or at least symptomatic of the eight Midols I had recently swallowed. And here we were, I thought, four minutes into the wedding and everything was running smoothly. I smiled and took a deep breath. What was I worried about?
In forty seconds, I was walking down the aisle myself on the arm of my father, who had been either a very wise man and remained absolutely silent for the past year or had sold his tongue to pay for the ice sculpture. I don’t believe he had talked to anybody, including his reflection, since we announced our engagement.
Suddenly, from overhead, an all-enveloping, powerful roar—the kind of roar that urges you to duck and seek cover—was being born above us, and as all two hundred heads looked up, they saw the nose, the windshield, and the pilots—one of whom looked like a guy I went to high school with who sold really bad pot in the darkroom of the yearbook office—of a 747 preparing to land.
It suddenly dawned on me that we were three miles from the airport, and it would have been impossible to be more directly in line with the north runway of the fifth busiest airport in the country and fifteenth busiest airport in the world.
Even I couldn’t hear what Ellen was saying. The noise fell over us like a blanket, smothering everything: the courtyard, the guests, the turned-off waterfall, which would have been a whisper compared to the jet engines that were thundering above us in a deafening, rumbling roar. And no sooner had the jetliner taken its time to blast above us and then retreat than another one popped up, riding on the first one’s heels.
Then a third plane arrived, and a fourth and a fifth, the aggregate roar lasting longer than the complete running time of the ceremony, including the scheduled musical performances, the photographic slide montage, grand finale, and encore.
Our beautiful wedding location was loaded with more airspace activity than Afghanistan. It couldn’t have been louder if we had chosen to get married on an aircraft carrier.
Poor Reverend Ellen. Not even a lifetime of living in a compound with habitual offenders and felons or paying back her own debt to society could have prepared her for this situation. She may have had a spiritual solution to addictions, but her pockets of God were empty when it came to the noise level of a sonic boom. She tried to solve our dilemma by talking as fast as she could when we recognized the threat of approach, and squeezing in as much as possible, until she began to sound like an auctioneer.
“Stand fast in that hope and confidence having faith in your shared destiny just as strongly as you have faith in yourselves and in one another-today,” Ellen said with a stretched smile just before she took a deep, scuba-dive breath and went back in. “Only with this spirit can you forge a union that will strengthen and endure all the days of your lives Jesus I could use a drink right now!”
Even I wasn’t sure which point in the wedding we were at—was I still single, was I loving, was I obeying, was I married, was it time for the fire baton twirlers to swing in on the trapezes?—I had absolutely no idea. I tried to utilize my therapist’s advice and focus in on the positive, as in, “I HAVE NO CHIN HAIR, I HAVE A COTTON FIELD BETWEEN MY LEGS, AND I WON’T HAVE TO SHIT FOR A MONTH,” but I was absolutely positive when I turned around for our march back up the aisle that I would see my now bald mother on a stretcher while a paramedic performed CPR. With every passing plane, she’d have pulled out another fistful of hair and another and another until there wasn’t anything left for her to do but throw a hissy fit in such massive proportions that she would just plain knock herself out.
That’s when I swore I heard an evil chuckle from the back row. If I did, I knew exactly where it came from. It was the same man who an hour before had yelled at Meg when she politely pulled the hand of the three-year-old ring bearer away from his nose, his finger buried deep inside.
“That’s one of the best shots I had all day!” growled the videographer when Meg interrupted the booger taffy pull, although now he was making up for lost footage with his camera pointed directly toward the sky. It wasn’t the first nasty thing he had done that day. I watched as he rolled his eyes when Meg hid bra straps and informed a groomsman that his fly was open as we were taking our wedding pictures, stuff that, no doubt, would be pure gold to the videographer after he sold our wedding video and cashed the check from the funniest-home-video show.
After the ceremony, he followed us around like a loser friend we couldn’t shake. It took him forty minutes to set up the shot of us signing our marriage certificate when we should have been in the receiving line, and amazingly, the only part he clearly got on tape was when I was digging a morsel of a cocktail meatball out of my teeth with my tongue, which required so much concentration that I forgot to keep my engorged cutlet stomach sucked in. He told us when to eat. When to make the toast. When my new husband could kiss me. When we should cut the cake. When we could dance with each other and our parents. I looked up during dinner, and somehow, he had seated himself at my mother-in-law’s table and was sitting next to her, with his camera turned off. He wasn’t filming anything. He was stuffing his fat, nasty face with chicken Parmesan and au gratin potatoes.
His appearance was entirely misleading, and it took me a while to understand that, because although, yes, this man carried around a video camera and had something stuck in his ear, he was no videographer. No, no, no. What he really revealed himself to be was a professional Wedding Ruiner.
During dinner, I had to wrestle a hard roll out of the maid of honor’s hand that was positioned and ready to be fired at his head.
“A roll can’t hurt,” Jamie argued as the bread turned to crumbs in between our fingers.
“I know, but the butter knife you had rammed through it might,” I reminded her. “C’mon, I promised my parents that no one would sue them today!”
Craig, the best man, was behind her, ready to fling a steaming piece of roast beef, spiked on a fork, at the chewing target.
Maybe other newlywed couples had higher tolerance levels than we did, maybe they wanted someone else to take control of their wedding. But I didn’t. I had spent a year planning details, and both my new husband and I knew what we wanted and when we wanted it. I didn’t need the video man to poke m
e in the back with his finger and pronounce, “Hey. You’re losing your crowd. You’d better throw your bouquet now or you can forget the whole thing.”
I had known this man less than twenty-four hours, and in that time, he disrupted our wedding more effectively than the unexpected appearance of an ex-girlfriend with a newborn baby. He was so busy pushing us around, insulting the members of the wedding party, and setting up shots of fake events to film a wedding that didn’t exist that I never got to greet a majority of our guests, let alone take stock of who was shoving centerpieces and the remainder of the meatball pyramid into their purses.
The only time he truly left me alone was when I was with my eighty-four-year-old grandfather, Pop Pop. Pop had come to the wedding in a wheelchair because the medication for his cancer left him a little dizzy, and a wheelchair seemed the best way to make him mobile. I figured, hell, if I could have someone push me around while I went from the meatball pyramid to the cheese tower to the fondue station and it wasn’t an expense my mother made me pay for myself, I’d go for it. After all, isn’t that how Liza Minelli attended every milestone event in her life?
The DJ began playing one of his favorite Frank Sinatra songs, and before Old Blue Eyes even belted out the second line, Pop had thrown his lap blanket to the ground, wiggled out of his wheelchair, grabbed me from the head table, and spun me out to the dance floor.
As he led me in the fox-trot, Pop tossed me around like a rag doll to “Fly Me to the Moon,” and while they looked on, most of my husband’s extended family were stunned. For them, it could have only been a genuine act of God, even without the snakes or an evangelist’s palm-smack to the forehead. Minutes before, some of them whispered to each other, the man who had been confined to a wheelchair had not only freed himself from the chains of his rolling prison and walked but now was dancing. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. “It’s a miracle, it’s like Joseph Smith and the seagulls,” some of them said among themselves, but I didn’t want to ruin it for anybody by informing them, “The old man’s on morphine. You could ram a spear through his foot and he’d still keep going. He’s as numb as Robert Downey, Jr.”
The videographer kept his distance until the dance was over, when he proceeded to torment me about taking the frigging garter off. He was sure to catch a wonderful shot of the drunkest, sweatiest man at the wedding as he unabashedly tackled the three-year-old ring bearer in a shameful yet successful effort to catch the damn thing. This was the same man who had marched around the reception, telling various people, including my parents, what “hot lovers” Italian women were and how the groom, whose name he did not know, was going to have to let the bride, whose name he also did not know, lead in bed, since she looked like she was more than familiar with the trail.
When we discovered that one of my husband’s aunts was now parading around the reception with the garter stretched around her neck, we were also able to figure out that the horrible, drunk, sweaty man was her date.
He was vile, he was vulgar. He was so sweaty that he looked like he had just walked straight out of an adult bookstore, and as he shook his head to the music, droplets scattered as if he were a dog shaking out its coat after an especially wet bath. His head was like a sprinkler. As the sweaty guy contorted his body to make every letter corresponding to “YMCA” that was pumping out over the speakers, he sang along, pointed, and put on the same kind of show I was sure he did every Friday night at karaoke. He was at our wedding, feeding off of it like a virus, and all I could think was “I hope the check you wrote to us as a wedding gift clears my bank account before you die from the heart attack you’re about to have on my dance floor.”
The videographer, however, adored him, and found him such a great form of nonstop entertainment that he’s in our wedding video more than either the bride or groom, combined. It’s all documented as he dances, sings, and tells assorted guests, particularly my Nana, how that poor groom was probably not going to get a wink of sleep for the next week because of his hot and horny ball and chain.
Finally, after the videographer suggested that we stage a fake good-bye shot, I had my chance.
“Did you have a nice time?” I asked him. “Because you ate at my wedding, you drank at my wedding, you made an M with your arms with the human water fountain over there, so I’m thinking that you enjoyed yourself at my wedding, am I right?”
“Oh, sure,” he said as he picked up the camera and started filming me. “I had a great time. Now, when you’re waving good-bye to your crowd, look happy, but a little sad, like a clown. It would be great footage if you could get a couple of tears going.”
“That’s good, I’m glad you had fun,” I continued. “But now it’s my turn to have fun. See, to you, I’m just another chick in a white dress that you get to order around, but this is my wedding. I had to overcome A LOT to get here, including, but not limited to, singing with junkies, getting naked with strangers in dressing rooms, seven days straight of brushing dreads out of my hair, and a scare with VD. I would like to enjoy what is left of my wedding, but in order for that to happen, you must leave.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” he said as he put the camera down. “I was paid to shoot this wedding.”
“No, no, no, no,” I said slyly as I wagged my finger in front of him. “You were only paid a deposit. That’s only half. Since, however, you are a bastard and I hate you, I would suggest you leave the premises right now if you want to see the other half of your fee. And if you don’t believe me, I wouldn’t mind one bit if you called the district attorney’s office or my gynecologist to see exactly how good I am at writing bad checks. It’s just a shame that you won’t be here to film yourself getting thrown out of my wedding, because so far, I think that’s going to be the best part of the whole day. Unless, naturally, a plane lands on you in the parking lot.”
He just looked at me, and I walked away.
“Where’s the videographer going?” my mother said as she watched him pack his stuff into his car and drive off.
“He got eighty-sixed,” I said. “See, this is the time when it pays off to have bar friends, including bouncers who donated their services in lieu of a present.”
“Oh, good,” my mother commented. “A drunk bride. How pretty. You’re acting like Liza Minelli at your wedding! Where is that bartender? I’m going to sue that moron, I paid him extra to pour you weak drinks!”
If my mother wanted to see a good example of inebriation, all she had to do was look at Jamie. She shot out on the dance floor like a bullet, wineglass in her hand, as soon as the DJ played “Walk This Way.”
“I love this song so much,” she shouted as she ran, “that it makes me want to quit my job and become a stripper!”
While my mother’s friends looked on, dancing in their step-together-step Protestant Accountant dance, Jamie planted her legs firmly apart and whipped her head around like she was putting out a fire with it.
“Just give me a keeeeeessssss,” she sang to herself, her eyes closed. “Like this!”
“What is it that she does for a living?” a woman from my father’s office asked me from behind a cupped hand.
“She’s a microbiologist,” I said flatly, not taking my eyes off my best friend’s Aerosmith-induced fit. “Cancer research. She’ll probably save your life one day.”
As soon as the song was over, the DJ announced that it was time for all of the “old maids” to gather on the dance floor, a phrase that did not sit very well with one particularly pickled microbiologist, since she is exactly, to the day, a week older than I am.
She looked at him, pointed her finger with her free hand, staggered several feet, and then shrieked, “Whaddaya mean old maids, ha? The term is unclaimed treasure, buddy, unclaimed treasure!”
Ten minutes later, my mother informed me that the wedding was over. She said that the caterer was tired and wanted to break down the tables and go home.
“And you know, if you get divorced within a year, you owe your father for all th
e liquor your friends drank,” she told me. “Because these people can outdrink the navy! Like the guy that threw up in the fondue pot and that guy over there sleeping under that table. He was the one smoking those horrible-smelling cigarettes! I bet they were French. Young man, where are your friends?”
I told the DJ to play one last song. I took my shoes off and sat down at an empty table.
It was over. Done with. Finished.
In a way, I was happy and relieved, but in another way, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell had happened.
The groom and I got our things together and, still wearing our wedding clothes, piled into his Honda, where my dress proceeded to become garnished with grease and car dirt.
We drove to Circle K and got ThirstBusters, and then went home.
We were married.
It Takes Guts
It was gray, steaming, piled high, and smelled like a sewer when the plate was placed in front of my husband.
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
Despite the reflex that urged me to vomit, I smiled. “Looks good,” I said from behind my teeth. “Dig in!”
He hesitated for a moment, then picked up his fork and pushed around the contents of his plate.
I was trying very hard to concentrate on my own food, chicken-fried steak, which arrived a second after my husband’s. Chicken-fried steak. Tested and true, I live for this stuff. But the smell—or rather stench, shall I call it—wafting over from the other side of the table hit me with the same speed my mother’s open-handed slap did a split second after the first time I called my little sister a “bucktoothed retard.”