Wedding Season

T
HIS CAN’T BE TRUE
.

But, of course, it is. And I am, therefore, by various connections, alliances, and accidents, happy and not, for one reason or another, hereby obligated to attend seventeen weddings in the next six months.

How I’ve managed to avoid confronting such a state of affairs, what with save-the-date cards and engagement party announcements and solicitations for bridal shower gifts fluttering down on me for months, a blizzard of tastefully engraved handmade paper collecting in heavy cream-colored drifts around the apartment—well, it’s a testament to something. My capacity for denial, probably.

See, most rituals I hate. Which is not to say that I’m not a creature of habit, because I am, in the most profound of ways; I am a walking antonym for spontaneity. This, however, should not be confused with an affection for ceremony, and particularly not for the wedding ceremony.

This afternoon was given over to one of the few rituals I don’t mind: the biannual transfer of my upcoming social and professional appointments from many, many small scraps of paper to the laminated six-month calendar that I keep on the wall above my desk at work, and which I have dragged home for this purpose. It usually gives me a sort of thrill, a bracing sense of victory over the forces of chaos. Not
today, though. Today my study became the site of a psychic massacre, as I plucked wedding invitation after wedding invitation from the piles of paper around my desk, and felt my anxiety mount in spectacularly direct proportion to the number of ceremonies I have promised to attend.

“Goddamn,” I tell the air around my desk.

“Goddamn,” I tell Francis, the elderly and long-suffering dachshund asleep on my left foot.

“Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn,” I tell the nearby photographs of my mother, my father, and my younger brother, Josh, whose third, second, and first marriages, respectively, are among those requiring my attendance. I blow a kiss at the photo of my elder brother, James, who in addition to being gay is also a certified, off-the-chart commitment-phobe, and unlikely to get hitched any time soon. I’m very fond of James.

“Goddamn,” I add one more time, loudly, for good measure.

“Oh, don’t stop.” Gabriel pokes his head into the study. “I love it when you talk dirty, Joy. Don’t stop.” He has smudges on his face and a feather duster in his back pocket.

“Are you aware that we have seventeen weddings to go to between now and mid-September?” I wave a handful of the offending invitations at him.

“I hadn’t counted, but it makes sense.” Gabe slouches against the door frame.

“Beg to differ. It’s totally senseless.”

“Probably just a by-product of everyone you know turning thirty. Same thing happened to me a couple of years ago.”

“To this extent?”

“Well, no. Seventeen? No.” Gabe shrugs. “Something like five in a year. Guess that’s not quite the same, is it?”

“Not quite.”

“Hey, maybe someone dosed the national water supply.” He laughs. “A nation of brides. You remember that Cheever story where there’s a costume party, and people are supposed to dress as they wish they were, and all the women come in their wedding dresses, and all the men come in their old football uniforms?”

“Gabe, I’m going to throw up.”

“Don’t do that. The bathroom is spotless.” He assumes the Olympic victory pose, chest thrust out, arms raised above his head. “And the kitchen. I even defrosted the freezer.”

“Truly uncommon valor. May I take you out for dinner?”

“Hero sandwiches? Veal medallions? Army bratwurst?” Gabe has an unredeemable fondness for puns, and the more like blunt instruments they are, the more pleased with himself he becomes.

“Not if you keep that up.”

“Anyway, it’s Girls’ Night,” he says. On cue, the phone rings, and I pick up.

“Hello, Henry,” I say into the receiver.

“Hello, smartass,” she answers. Henry is my best friend. By the grace of whatever forces govern student housing, she was assigned as my roommate freshman year at college, and my life hasn’t been the same since. Henry, or Hank, if you prefer, is short and shorter for Henrietta, god forgive her parents, who must have named her with some kind of eerie prescience about and totem against her magnificent beauty—though ostensibly it was after a great-grandmother. Henry: six feet, one inch in stockings, with a body that would make
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit models gnash their little capped teeth in envy. Bales of blonde hair, Aegean eyes, an elegant nose, just slightly and winsomely too small for her face. A faint Louisiana accent, which she trots out at full strength for
special occasions. Et cetera. And, to the everlasting chagrin of red-blooded boys worldwide, she’s a lesbian.

“Want to meet me early for a drink?” Henry asks.

“No.”

“That’s my girl!” she yells.

“I’ll be there in half an hour.” I hold the phone away from my ear.

“Give Pretty Boy my best,” Henry says, and hangs up. Really, she likes Gabe well enough. And it’s a fact that Gabe is possessed of those fine-boned, patrician good looks only minutely removed from overt prettiness by a square jaw and a jaunty, assured, I-just-finished-my-rowing-practice glow of testosterone. However, the first time we met, Hank introduced herself to me as, quote, swamp trash hauled dripping from the Louisiana bayou by a state scholarship fund and the kindness of strangers, unquote. So it’s not a wild leap to say that class resentment may be the basis of a tiny grudge she bears my boyfriend, whose family, through absolutely no fault of his own, is listed in the Social Register.

“Hank sends her love,” I tell Gabe, who is perched on the edge of my desk, flipping through the stack of invitations. “This is going to be a season in hell.”

“Nah, it’ll be fine.” He looks at my calendar. “Inconvenient, is all.”

“And annoying. And expensive.”

“Don’t worry about that, Red. You can leave the wedding gifts to me. Just think of the dancing. We haven’t gone dancing for months.”

“Think of all the people asking when we plan to tie the knot.”

“Opportunity for witty remarks.” Gabe pushes his hair out of his eyes, languid and unperturbed. “Bon mot body building. We’ll find so many different variations on ’when hell freezes over’.”

“Thereby exposing ourselves to impertinent personal questions, peer pressure, and misguided ridicule.”

“You’re funny. Hey, I know what.” Gabe snaps his fingers. “We’ll make a documentary out of it.”

“
Lifestyles of the White and Foolish?
”

“A sort of Wildlife Safari nature special.
Mating Rituals of the American Upper-Middle Class.
You can be the fearless anthropologist, and I’ll be the trusty cinematographer.” He hoists an imaginary camera onto his shoulder and zooms in on my face. “Here we see the intrepid Adventurer Silverman approaching that most dangerous of all connubial creatures, the mother of the bride. She’s made contact! Note the Adventurer’s mode of engagement here: downcast eyes, limp-wristed handshake, demure manner, all deployed to communicate passive acceptance of authority and avoid being set up with one of the bride’s horrible medical student cousins.” Gabe sets down the invisible camera. “In the end, I’ll be attacked and devoured by a rabid band of bridesmaids and you’ll have to forge on bravely without me. Ah, look at that. I got a smile.”