Wedding Attendance Jitters

I usually think that I do not like weddings.  Too many weekends have been spent watching a marathon of whatever reality-TV screechfest is set in a David’s Bridal that week on the Style Network, WE, or Oxygen.  The one thing that these shows have taught me is that tequila and tulle can be a dangerous combination

I have come to realize, however, that these shows have influenced me in subtler ways, making me skittish about other people’s “big day.”  I don’t mind watching screaming and crying on TV, I just have no desire to witness it in my own life.

Unfortunately, I have attended some weddings which were intense.  They tend to be coworkers’ weddings or some distant relation.  The first wedding I attended was for the daughter of one of my dad’s coworkers.  The priest cracked jokes during the ceremony; my favorite was when he asked the groom how long they had been dating and then gaped when he heard the answer.  He then snapped, what took you so long?  Which was unfortunately a point of contention with the couple for the past 7 years leading up to the wedding.  To be reminded of it on the day was a little too much.    Apparently, there were some reasons for hesitation as the bride was a golddigger and not in a danceable Kanye West way.  The reception was spent making bets on how long the marriage would last.   Good money was on three months.  It actually lasted 17.

I have also sat through some painful best man toasts.  For example, I learned from a best man that the golddigging bride met her husband at a club and that they did it in the car that night.  Many a love story may begin in this way, but I don’t think that I needed to know the details of it over a plate of chicken.  I have listened to passive aggressive toasts from siblings, who take the wedding as an opportunity to air past rivalries.

Don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with how difficult it can be to stand in front of 100 or so people and give a speech.  My own maid-of-honor toast was particularly shakey.  However, I have just noticed that some best men like to take the wedding as an opportunity to humiliate their friend and anticipating this possibility stresses me out.

I have also seen, at the end of the reception, the bar counter dotted with drunk and crying women.  I have seen men puking in the bushes.  I have seen family members slurring their good wishes with cruel words.

As reality television highlights the seething tension in planning the reception and some weddings have displayed weird interpersonal dynamics, I tend to associate these events with stress.

It is not something I was aware of before, but it occurred to me this weekend.  I went to a friend’s wedding and truly enjoyed myself.  I sat in the dark wood pew looking up at the richly blue stained glass of the chapel and thought how beautiful this wedding was.  As I considered it for longer periods of time, I remembered all of my friends’ weddings and thought about how wonderful they each were in their own way.  The grinning joy and the unrestrained hugs and the tables of laughter.

Hopefully, I will remember these thoughts the next time an invitation comes in the mail.

Delinquent

This is not quite The Outsiders or a James Dean film, but I have been dabbling in delinquency.  My inbox warns that library books are overdue and bills are looming.  Worse, I have all but abandoned this little pixelated page.

First, I wanted to thank the people who commented on the post about my dog’s passing. There were so many kind words and good thoughts.

I have been thinking about him quite a bit. Two days after Danny Boy was put to sleep, my mother quietly said into the phone,  “there is just a lot to remember.”  It seems such a simple thing to say but I can’t help but feel it is true.  There is something so strange about being aware of all of those little things.

My mom, my brother and I have spent hours discussing how Danny Boy would cross his little feet when he was sleeping and how his head would turn to the side when he was listening.  It feels almost silly to think about those things.   But that was what we remembered–all those gestures that we did not need to remember before because we knew he would always do them again.

After we talked about his little unique ways, we thought about how different our lives are now compared to that month in October when his paws first slipped on the hardwood floors.  We lived together then.  My brother and I were young and our minds held the thoughts of young people.  We were anxious and hopeful about the future in a way we no longer are.  We fought like we no longer do.

There is just a lot to remember.

Second, my part-time job has been heating up.  Apparently, my two immediate supervisors quit and they were not able to fill the vacancies quickly enough.  I am now the only one who has institutional knowledge.

This would be a natural enough in many jobs, but is ridiculous in this case because I only worked 6 hours a week before.  48 hours is not a lot of institutional knowledge.  The training manual knows more than I do.  Yet, still somehow I supervise two other workers.  It should end by the beginning of October, but is a funny thing nonetheless.

Third, I have had one of the most erratic sleep schedules.  I fell asleep yesterday at 8:30 and woke today at 5:30.  Hopefully, this is not a new trend.

Doing so many jobs has made me a little more absent-minded than usual.  I have had no groceries or toilet paper for two days now. I was going to say that I do not notice, but I do.  The realization passes through my mind, but I can only regret the situation rather than remedy it.  I get home so late and have to start so early that there is not much I can do.  Perhaps, this is the reason behind the 8:30 bedtime.

Now that I think about it, my form of delinquency could not be less like James Dean’s if I tried.

The pipes, the pipes are calling…

My family dog was put to sleep a few hours ago.

He came into our home 12 years ago and had already been passed around five different families.  He had been chained up outside, beaten, starved, taunted, and finally rescued.  His name changed four times; he began life as Bobo, he learned to answer to a kick against his ribs, was rechristened Rocky before he got the name that stuck.  Danny Boy, Danny Man, D Man, D Monster.

All of that abuse and neglect had taken its toll.  We could not even be in the same room when he was given food, we could not hold him the way we did our other dog, we could not take him on walks.  All of these things illicited a deep, low growl and an intimation that he was always prepared to fight.

His first Christmas, a month and half after he waddled into our home, he bit me.  He was this close to moving to his sixth home in his first year of life.  I argued that he should stay, I had inadvertently provoked him.  I had forgotten that his first memories were of cruelty and that a game that my first dog loved would seem threatening  to him.

Time went on and he settled in.

We discovered that he was stubborn, mischievous, and very smart.  Any barricade we devised to keep him from one of the bedrooms would be dismantled by his ingenuity.  His little black nose would push aside chairs and his stout body would hop over horizontal speakers.  My mother and he were locked in a battle of wills.  She was Javert and he Jean Valjean, she was Wile E. Coyote and he the Road Runner, or maybe they were both in a Michael Mann film where the law and the criminal share the same way of thinking.  They could have appraised each other coolly, like Al Pacino and Robert de Niro in Heat, separated only by the Formica finished table at the diner.

We knew something was wrong when he stopped barking.  This is an activity which has occupied his every waking hour since he was a puppy.  His bark is on the answering machine (I just tried calling a few minutes ago, and his two sharp barks still interrupt my brother’s message.  A reminder of a sound that is gone).

His most recent seizue was a bad one.  He could not eat any more and his ribs poked through his coat, like they did when he was starved as a puppy.  So my brother took him in to the vet and now our dog is gone.

Smoking

I am of two minds when it comes to smoking. I have abstained most of my life; however, I grew up surrounded by smokers.

I laughed at my older brother when I saw a picture of my mother, pregnant and smoking.  I started taunting him by calling him a cigarette baby.  It was less funny, when he informed me that I was the one concealed under the end-of-disco print maternity dress.

My mother quit smoking when I was six, but I vividly recall it as a traumatic time.  Mommy was not happy without her cancer sticks.  After she had made it through the worst of the withdrawal, my brother went into the pantry and rattled a cardboard box.  He called out to her that he found a lost carton and there was one pack left.  I ran around the corner in a fit of anxiety, fretting that she would seize the pack and would undo all that hard work.  My mother reassured me by letting me know that, if there had been even a single cigarette left in the house, she would have found it three weeks ago during the peak of her cravings.  Sure enough, my brother was shaking a box of crackers, trying to determine whether she had quit for good or just for the month.  She passed his test and has never smoked again.

My father, on the other hand, has a several-pack-a-day habit.  It is expensive, he hates being chained to it, he spends every moment trying to make sure his kids would not start smoking, and keeps waiting for the miracle science that will wrest him from tobacco’s snares.

When I imagine me smoking, I experience what a cult follower must feel.  My response is automatic and programmed.  No.  No way.  Disgusting.

I find, however, that underneath this Pavlovian conditioning is a certain sentimentality towards the cigarette and cigar.

As my childhood was spent around smokers, I sometimes have positive associations with smoking too.   I, like many children of my era, bought candy cigarettes and fell victim to the strategy of big business.  Worse, I exceeded any expectations they may have had in hooking kids on cigarette-themed sweets.  When the money was tight and candy was not in the household budget, I did the equivalent of “rolling” my own pretend cigarettes.  I would take pretzel rods and pretend to smoke them.  This was an elaborate ritual that involved great attention to detail.    I would carve a line around one end, so it resembled the filter mark on my neighbor’s Parliaments.  I would bite off the other end and “ash” the pretzel dust.  I never dreamed of smoking cigarettes, but I loved pretending to.

Beyond that, my grandmother oversaw a 6-person cigar-making factory and my uncle owned a smoke shop. The first perfume I knew was the sweet and smokey scent of tobacco leaves.

I was entranced, as the factory workers handled the dark and damp leaves, peeling the edges up and rolling them.  Each thin layer swaddled the next, building in dimension until a single cigar was produced.  Their expert hands moved in a quick and soft dance.

My yearly road trip to visit my cousins began with a stop at my uncle’s store, before it went bankrupt.  (My grandmother’s business suffered, too, in the era before Arnold Schwarzenegger graced the covers of Cigar Aficionado.)  Before the market for cigars crashed and before it was later resurrected, all roadtrips led to the smoke shop.  Summertime and adventures were caught up with images of pipes and cigars and the sound of the shop bell ringing when the door swung open.

I had forgotten all about these things because life has diverted my mind, distracting me with thoughts about now, rather than with memories of then.  But, in a fit of procrastination, I indulged in a Mad Men marathon and I found myself wanting to watch smoke draw patterns in the air.  I wanted to exhale in a long sigh, to tap my cigarette on the ashtray, and to let those toxic chemicals relax my brain.

I bought a cheap cigar from the gas station the other day.  I listened, as the clerk told me in conspiratorial tones that  there is a common local practice of cutting open the cigar, filling it with pot, and resealing it.  The cigar scent masked the pot, making it easier to smoke in public.

As cheap as my Dutch Masters cigar was, it still carried that distinctive perfume and I got lost in memories of then. I hope this is not the start of another nasty habit.

Goodnight Summer, Goodnight Moon

The students are back on campus and that makes my commute more difficult.  The lines at Chipotle are longer and the sidewalks are thick with people wearing the contents of the Abercrombie catalog.  Their return, however, also brings some positives, not limited to the following:

* Increased levels of befuddlement as I wonder why the students congregate in such odd formations.  I am sure they gather in clumps because they need to participate in guided tours or team building activities.  I secretly hope, however, that it is really just a side effect of this generation’s exposure to the High School Musical installments.  I know they want to break out into an intricately choreographed routine.  I just know it.

* More opportunities to cackle.  I love to watch the freshman try to act like they belong.  They stand in a way that still has touches of high school about it, but also tries to capture the spirit of Parisian indifference.

* Overhearing earnest conversations.

*Better food stocked in the bodegas.  Although, the increase in organic options has coincided with an increase in Ramen noodles and jerky selection.

* Having people think I could pass for a college student.  Proximity to a college campus subtracts years from your age.

* Seeing someone define what it means to be comfortable in your work and in yourself.  Presumably hired by the university, a man wearing an Uncle Sam suit, tottering on stilts, and balancing a small basketball hoop on his head walked through the neighborhood.  He wandered up to disaffected youth, handed them a spongy ball, and then asked them to throw it at his head.  Part of me wanted to give him a hug because it definitely looked like it could rank pretty high on the chart of terrible jobs.  Then, I realized that he didn’t need my sympathy.  He was a professional and he made a group of dour kids participate in a game they initially dismissed as stupid.  Keep on walking, Uncle Sam!

*Remembering how exciting it was to be young and full of potential.

*Being thankful I don’t have to deal with any of the hassle of being young  and full of potential again.

Coo Coo Ka-Cha

Senior year of high school, I missed about a month of classes and had to scramble to complete my overdue assignments.  As a result, I developed my first and only study skills habit.  It is a nasty one that has followed me to this day.

I procrastinated until the strain of homework was unbearable, then I watched Grease on an endless loop.  Three days were lost in a coma of hybrid nostalgia for two decades I had never lived in (the 1950’s and 1970’s). On the plus side, I learned the handjive.

Even now, if I have an assignment or project looming, I will drown my mind out with television.

As a deadline is drawing nigh, I am currently watching a random sequence of Arrested Development episodes.  This is just one of the many reasons why that show was wonderful.  I am now trying to develop my own Bluthian chicken impression.  There are a lot of “ka” and “cha” sounds to play around with.  I may incorporate some of the moves from the handjive.

Not Exactly the Female Equivalent of the Movie “The Hangover”

Yesterday, a bachelorette party kicked off the night by getting their nails did at an upscale salon and spa.  These were not the type of women who would wear pink-feather-boas and urban-cowboy-hats for their friend’s last night of singledom.  They were mostly in their late-30s and early-40s.  Their thumbs spun the wheel on the side of their Blackberries, scrolling through work email even though it was afterhours on a Friday.  Their hair was highlighted and their sandals had high narrow heels.  They accessorized stylish and expensive boho dresses with thin gold necklaces, not penis jewelry.

Their group was so large that their appointments had to be staggered and, as a result, there were rotating shifts of women splitting time between the dimly lit ladies lounge and the nail bar.  The matron-of honor was in the waiting room with two other women, while the bride-to-be was mid-service in the room next door.  Thankfully, she was far from her friends’ conversation.

The matron-of-honor walked to one of the plush chaise lounges and sat down heavily, complaining that she had nothing to do.  If she had known she was going to have to wait, she would have brought her work.  Although the music and lighting was designed to aid relaxation, her jaw was rigidly set.

The two women who flanked her were occupied with their phone screens and the most recent copy of UsWeekly, so only managed to grunt in sympathy.   She leaned back against the lounger, but could not get comfortable because she was keenly aware that her expensive dress was wrinkling.  She sighed again and then jumped up to retrieve her phone from the lockers.  When she returned, she texted and the room lapsed into silence.

There must not have been enough to keep her busy, especially as her phone could not access the internet.  She snapped it shut, sighed again, and then looked around the room.  She turned to the woman on her right and, in a sweet voice that attempted to play off a serious request as a joke, said: “I need Julie to be my ghostwriter for my speech tomorrow.”

Julie looked up from her magazine and gave her a questioning look.  The M-o-H continued, “I didn’t even think that I would need to give a speech at the wedding until I saw that program today.  I have no idea what I am going to say.  And, well,  you are the writer of the group.  Maybe you have some ideas and can help me organize my thoughts?”  Poor Julie.  She did not realize that she was the Anthony Michael Hall to this woman’s Molly Ringwald.  She was moments away from being asked to stay after detention to write the essay for the group.

Julie, however, loved the faint praise and became animated.  They began brainstorming possible toasts for the wedding the next day.  The matron of honor offered her tentative plans for what she wanted to cover: “I was thinking I would talk about Alicia.  Ummm, and then I would talk about Michael.  Umm and then I planned on talking about how they are together.”  She did not expand on this theme, nor was she aware that she had not said anything of use.  Julie merely blinked.

Realizing that she did not have much to go on, Julie suggested a variation on her own plan to use movie quotes to describe the couple’s love.  The M-o-H harrumphed, “But that is your thing, what am I going to do?”  Julie gestured lamely, unable to come up with anything.  “Uhh, how about quoting from songs instead?  You could say something like, ‘I found this beautiful quote and it speaks to the love Alicia and Michael share…’ or ‘In the immortal words of’ and then quote from, like, an 80’s song or something.”

This seemed funny and easy enough, so it replaced the M-o-H’s original plan.  Unfortunately, it had three major flaws.  None of the women knew much about music in general and they knew even less about their friend’s tastes. This perhaps would not be so bad, but they needed to work hard to find a song that would be appropriate for what sounded like a tumultuous and highly problematic relationship. It also seemed clear that they did not like the man their friend was marrying.

Sadly, every song they could come up with referenced the bad parts of the couple’s relationship.  For example, they remembered that the bride’s favorite band was Bon Jovi, so they thought “I’ll Be There for You” would be a perfect choice.  The matron-of-honor barked at Cheryl, the woman on her left, and told her to locate the lyrics online.  The very first lines made it clear that this song would not do:

I guess this time you’re really leaving
I heard your suitcase say goodbye
And as my broken heart lies bleeding
You say true love is suicide

The woman coughed out the last line.  They move on to “Living on a Prayer,” which they remembered for its hopeful promise of: “take my hand and we’ll make it I swear.”   Unfortunately, this chorus supports a bleak storyline where a young couple is pushed to the brink because of money problems.  Although their friend is not exactly like “Gina, the waitress” trying to support her man during a union strike, financial snags have plagued her relationship with Michael.

Beyond the potential financial drama, these lyrics do not exactly set the right tone for building a life with someone:

Tommy’s got his six string in hock
Now he’s holding in what he used
To make it talk – so tough, it’s tough
Gina dreams of running away
When she cries in the night
Tommy whispers: Baby it’s okay, someday

The ladies nixed the song and the band, deciding to change tack.  They switched to Journey, remembering that “Don’t Stop Believing” used to be the bride’s ringtone.  They also realized that it could put a positive spin on the couple’s rocky relationship.  They got excited and felt the matter was close to being settled.

That is until Cheryl summarized the song’s story.

Even though a small town girl living in a lonely world takes a train to anywhere, it is unclear whether she will be one of the ones who “wins” or one of the ones who “loses.”  At this point, the M-o-H got impatient with the task and decided that, even if the story was depressing, the chorus was uplifting.  Cheryl agreed and began to read the three-line chorus enthusiastically, but stumbled on the last line:

Dont stop believin
Hold on to the feelin
Streetlight people

I wish desperately to go to this wedding, to hear the clink of a fork against a champagne flute signaling the toast will begin, and to watch the matron of honor send her friend off to marital bliss with the phrase: “Streetlight people.”

P.S.  I need Ricky Bobby to pray to tiny, infant Jesus for me. John C. Reilly can send one out to tuxedo shirt Jesus, too.

GTT-Friends

I suppose I am not good at following directions, so I am going to take the topic mommymelee proposed in a slightly different direction.  Rather than describe activities, I want to talk about female friendship in general.

This has been on my mind, in part, because the Nora Ephron film Julie and Julia references it tangentially.  I wanted to see the movie because the New Yorker article on the director and the subject matter made it seem worthwhile.

Like she did in You’ve Got Mail, Ephron proves that her instincts are on track, as she is willing to break ground on new technological terrain.  Although she recognizes that emailing and blogging are culturally significant, she does not really explore the ways in which these technological innovations involve a shift in social relations.

The blogging half of the story depicts how a woman, unable to create in established genre forms like the novel, ultimately finds an avenue for self-expression through the new format of the blog post.  I can respect the muted radicalism of such a storyline.  I think it is no coincidence that a female writer/director, who struggled to succeed in male-heavy industry, promotes the efforts of a female writer to make money through her craft.  Moreover, I think it is no coincidence that any writer/director would want to describe how someone experiences the thrill of early artistic expression and the joy in discovering a new medium.

Yet, the last line of the movie is that Julie’s blog has been turned into <gasp!> a movie.  This is her Cinderella story and all that could be wanted. If You Got Mail showcased the premise that there was something personally satisfying about the chime of an AOL email notification, then this movie relishes in the sound of a paypal account being activated.

When Ephron plays up the lucrative business aspect of blogging, I think she misses out on the potential the film has to reveal shifting social relations. As much as Julie connects with her sense of the chef Julia Childs, she also derives a certain energy from her online community.  This, however, is downplayed.  It might have been more interesting to explore the tension between the poverty of her daily real-life relationships and the feeling of community online.

One of the moments that was most blithely written is also the one that holds the greatest promise to reveal the complexity of current social relations.  In a dreary weekly (or perhaps monthly) ritual, Julie and her friends meet for what sounds like a cafeteria lunch special (“Cobb Salad Wednesdays” or whatever it was called).  Her high-powered friends are so engrossed in their blackberries and their own professional success that they are unable to empathize with her struggles.

Rather than evaluate whether they are friends any longer, she muses forlornly “Is it bad if you don’t like your friends?” A less successful female friend, who does not balk at Julie’s formulation or its implications on their relationship, is quick to assuage her that it is very common.  Her husband counters by saying “I like my friends.”  To which the female friend responds with the quip: “We aren’t talking about men.”

It was meant for comic relief, a breezy comment and not much more, but it implies a great deal.  Why is it assumed that women will not or should not like their female friends? Why doesn’t Ephron describe the support Julie finds in the online community?  If Julie’s story is about her getting a book deal, are we really expected to rejoice that she now can walk into the next Cobb Salad Reunion with her own blackberry and a means of ignoring the “friends” at her table?

Perhaps this is an unfair characterization of the movie.  One could argue that I have had the good fortune of strong friendships and the bad fortune of minimal professional success, so I could not understand what this movie describes.  One could even claim that, as I am not a threat professionally, I can have friendships.  Maybe.  If so, it seems that that is a problem with the workplace and the values it promotes.  All I know is that if a friend of mine is struggling, I will reach across the table or across the pixelated page to offer support.  I can only pity those who don’t.