So where did I leave you?
The wedding. Seems like a year ago.
It went off a little late, which was great as Toastgirl and I ran across the back alley separating her house from the small, old yellow-brick church. The bridesmaid's were gathering outside, the bride stepping out of her limo, as we ran in our summer finery, Toastgirl in the lead and me bringing up the rear dressed as Rhoda and screaming to the wedding party, "Wait! let us go in first....for the Love of God - STOP EVERYTHING!"
We got into the Church and settled in a pew with some of our other friends.
A few minutes later I turned around and the bridesmaid's started their two step up the aisle. They looked gorgeous in white and avacado growns, the white spaghetti straps bejeweled in clear rhinestones with the white tops looking like tanktops paired with avacado taffeta tea-length skirts.
They passed and then the flower girls, unsure of what they were doing off the beach, in party dresses with stachels of rose petals to keep them busy decorating the floor, also worked their way up the aisle.
And then I looked back and saw the bride. She was standing in the vestibule of the church with the golden sunlight streaming in behind her and lighting her up with the most ethereal glow. Her arm was linked with her father's and she appeared to be the most invividual and yet common bride at once. Common meaning representative of all the bride's in the world, standing back there, strong like the Phoenix rising from the proverbial ashes, more beautiful from its struggle to rise from the fire and ash to survive - she was breathtaking.
Her dress was simple: sleeveless, high-crew-necked, formfitting until it met her hips and fell into an A-line down to her ankles, dipping in a low-V down her tan back. Her face was hidden in a haze of white netting but you could feel the energy coming from her, filled with happiness and confidence in her decision and excitement to move into this next phrase of life.
To see this transformation was so incredible, it not only took my breath away, but it also made me well up. To have seen what it took for her to get there, from who she was when she met him to what she was standing in that dress and to see the concept, what could be called the culmination, happening, took my emotions by surprise.
The wedding went off without a hitch and as they were pronounced husband-and-wife, I looked down at my oldest friend C. and her husband who married a few months ago, and we motioned to wipe sweat off our brows and breathe a sigh of relief. The deal was done with no drama or trauma. There is a God.
After the ceremony, I ran around and invited guests to Toastgirl's for our party. It went well and was mobbed.
Later we headed 10 blocks away for the reception at one of the area's old boardwalk hotels. By the way, a 6-hour wedding reception is bad news. Especially for our crowd, which was like inviting 150 Sex Pistols fans to mix with 100 Opera Season Tix holders. It got ugly.
Our guys were the guys in high school in your area that everyone talked about because they had gotten shot and came into school two days later looking for a new problem. One's been shot twice. Another one of our friends took a knife for a mistaken identity, the side of his torso was gutted like a fish. If you pissed them off back in the day and told them to quiet down during late night, they might have done something like jumped in the bay and knifed out the bottom of your 18-ft sailboat in the middle of night so you'd wake up to find your Ocean Joy slowly taking water like the Titanic. Someone's 15-year old brother got picked up for making counterfeit 20's last month. They work construction or own landscaping companies. Others balance the group by being attorney's so they can bail the rest of us out or manage money so when we come up with some (don't ask how we got it!), they can make more of it. They lived for and traveled with the Dead, but they also own pistols. If you can't hold your own in any given situation you will be picked over like a rotting corpse.
The night was just trouble. The bride and groom walked in to the tune of The Rolling Stones singing "Honkey Tonk Woman," which is so all right in my book that I almost want to patent it. Room keys were passed among party guests who needed to get their buzz on in private.
I ended up in room 610 after the reception with a roomful of overdressed people up to no good pulling beers out of iced crates set up on a brass hotel luggage carrier with wheels. That went on for a few hours. The bride and groom came in and the room collectively roared.
Soon Toastgirl and D. stood up and announced there were leaving and frankly, Toastgirl was looking seriously pallid so I quickly said good-bye. Toastgirl had hit the wall. She had to remove herself.
About an hour and 2 "PG, I love to see you, I forget how much fun you are, I've got to see you more often's" later, my roommate T. and I decided to call it quits also. She had beaten the Battle of Gin at Tonic and I had ridden out some other pollutants. I let her out the door of the room first and as I backed out of the door, I turned to the room and proclaimed "I have one parting remark." Then all of the little conversations grew silent in the room and everyone, bride and groom turned to look at me. I continued,"Everyone's knows that I make the party. Now I am leaving, so this party, is officially over" and as I finished and shut the door, my roommate reached in and shut out the lights. As the door clicked close, I heard mass chaos erupt in the room and walked tall down the hall even as the I heard the door open behind me and someone yell something unintelligible out. We made it down to the lobby and found Toastgirl and D., both still in bad shape and hour later, still waiting for a taxi in total confusion. I had to laugh. Somehow, as we were calling for the taxi, Toastgirl must have spotted her taxi and ran out of the hotel, jumped in with D. and stranded T. and me.
And I had run out of cigarettes.
Internally, I was letting out that "Yowl" that Eddie Vedder does in the video "Jeremy." And he unleased a lion...
I worked to remain calm as T. hit the vending machines for snacks. I mentally ran through options of ways to obtain cigarettes and/or get home in this sleepy ocean hamlet that shuts down at midnight and has too few taxi's.
Halfway through the caramel's with icing in the middle, the drunkest groomsman of the bunch stumbled out of the hotel. He also happens to be my brother's roommate. He was luggage and now we were stuck with him.
After waiting for the taxi forever, he suggested we walk the 15 or so blocks of boardwalk home. Without many options in our favor, we did so. Dressed in high finery, we slugged our way home. I had my shoes in one hand, and barefoot, concentrated on lifting feet to take steps. At the first block we stopped to call the taxi again. The number was busy so we kept on. The next block the other two had to sit on a bench while I called again.
I told them to keep moving and we trucked a few more blocks, passing legions of teenagers in packs up to obviously no good, who jeered at us and made comments like "Hey, look at that drunk guy with those two girls. That's funny, man." I think I snarled at them in Johnny Rotten fashion.
The groomsman, who was half cocktails and half flesh at this point, kept mumbling something about making a "groomsman sandwhich" with my roommate and I when we got to his place. My roommate was trying to persuade him to drive us home from there, and in my desparation I stopped at the payphone and pulled out my last 35 cents to make the dreaded early morning call: The Parents. Yes, at 28, I have no qualms about waking the 'rents and asking them to pick my and my friends' drunk asses in the middle of the night on the boardwalk.
Except that I dropped the quarter and it fell through the slits in the boards. I think the tear filled with my last hope to getting home that night slipped through that slit as well. In the words of Nancy Kerrigan," Whhhhhhhhhhyyy Meeeeeeeee?"
And so I had both dropped the proverbial ball and put the last nail in the cotton in one burner move. I fucked up. And so we walked to his place. We got there and I cut a deal to take his bike and in one fell swope I left my roommate to deal with her way home as I hiked up my ankle length Rhoda skirt and tried to man his mountain bike, barefeet on spiked pedals, purse and shoes in hand and half a mind to pilot. For the first portion of the ride, I was blind. I couldn't see anything. I managed to regain my sight and maintain enough balance to make it home. It wasn't pretty.
I felt like I had escaped Alcatraz as I mounted three flights of stairs, whipped off my clothing and fell into my bed.
And that was the wedding.
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