2005-06-06
i hate weddings
Weddings have never been high on my list of celebrations. They remind me too much of Easter--another slothful day when you consume mass quantities of food and pretend to be celebrating the selfless side of human nature.
I never really knew my cousin, Bridezilla Sophia, that well. At the church I saw a slew of unrecognizable people in ugly dresses. Babies made inhuman noises during the priest's sermon so I had no idea what he was mumbling about. It didn't matter anyway.
Mama had it better. At first, it appeared she was placating Sasha, the groom's little cousin, who kept twirling whenever the choir burst into another off-key rendition of a hymn. Mama dug into a neverending supply of interactive toys from her purse--Biblical coloring books, miniature board games beyond Sasha's comprehension, and magnetic travel games, like the one where you give the bald guy a mustache or mop of hair with the wave of a wand. What Mama really wanted to do was entertain herself. She perched on the far end of the pew, occasionally disappearing and blaming it on claustrophobia.
The priest might have benefited from Sasha's magnetic wand. I gawked at his follically-challenged head, or rather, the greasy loop of hair he had combed over it. My gaze drifted to the bloated family in the next pew. At first, I couldn't figure out who went with who. The skinny man on the right had the opposite problem of the priest--a crest of hair sprayed perfectly in place. On his left stoof an enormous man. No, a woman in a three-piece suit. Her butch-cut was bleached an impossible shade of yellow-orange. She locked hands with the thin man and a horrible vision appeared in my mind. They were a couple. And they had produced offspring: an androgenous ten-year-old who wore glasses and a dazed expression.
Later, I tried to explain this to Mama, who was in such disbelief, she never figured it out. She said, "That must have been a marriage of convenience," and I knew exactly what she meant.
I slid my eyes into the aisle, where people slouched against the wall and pretended to pay attention to the priest's monotonous voice. He spoke slowly and carefully, as one would to a herd of lobotomized sheep, which is how he must have pictured us.
"And God (dramatic pause) created the earth (another pause) the stars (longer pause) the sun, etc."
After Mass, a stampede of flower-tossing kids surged onto the grass.
Sophie had told me that the wedding-butterflies were raised on ranches, and I knew they weren't in the best condition, because I had peeked inside the envelopes, seen them hunched and disoriented, their antennas flickering, the dust from their wings settling into my skin. They didn't belong here, in this swamp, at this time of year.
f-i-n at 11:44 p.m.