The wedding, overall, was a great time. Completely decadent, but fun. E. got completely drunk and I found her complaining about her new marriage to my mother, who stroked E.'s arm and said to her, "E. don't look for trouble where you don't have any. There will always be things about you that drive him crazy, and there will always be things about him that drive you crazy. The most important thing for you to do right now, is to figure out how to live with him." And then E. raised her glass of chardoney, slurred and screamed in my mother's face, "SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-CIAL!" and placed the plastic glass on the top of her head, turned in a circle like a model in training, retrieved the glass of wine, and chugged it.

I turned to my mother and said, "Now you know what I'm dealing with," as I partially listened to E.'s husband tell my Father about meeting a stripper and Paul McCartney (not together) at the Stones last weekend.

Everyone was out of hand. Apparently, when the groom's college frat boys did their "marriage ritual" on the dance floor, which is basically 20 or so drunk and high guys rushing the groom like a mosh pits while chanting something, my Dad exclaimed, "Doesn't that crush his balls!" My brother spewed his drink out at that, just as my Dad said, "I hope they don't to that to the bride, they'll crush her tits!"

These are my people.

And where was I? I was on addict detail. Doing everything I swore I would never do again. Babysitting a really cute guy who's been in rehab more than 3 times, one of those times being a year long stint. And he and I sat, under a tree, with our own bottle of wine.

He and I had fun the night before, running around the bar like kids in a candy store, before the groomsmen were whisked off to the groom's parents house.

He started ordering a bottle of Vueve, I finished by ordering 4 very, very expensive bottles of champagne, two of them Roset's (sp?).

I was very hungover the day of the wedding, and with no aspirin, I took one of the valium's I had brought for the groom. This resulted in my alternately crying with joy for the happy couple and giggling uncontrollably in church.

And then the reception. And the addict. After elongated exposure to this drunkard, whom somehow had conviced the bartender to continually give him bottles of Cote de Rhone for him to take around with him, I had an epiphany.

As he sat and talked about himself endlessly, how smart he is and what a progeny he was, I asked him one question, "Are you going to be ok?" And he said, "yeah, yeah," laughing like a maniac, and I said, "no, beyond tonight, do you think you are going to be okay?"

He stopped laughing and *almost* thought and then drunkenly stumbled over his words, "Yeah, I don't know, I think so...I don't know."

I left him after that, hoping to break my pattern of following completely fucked up men down a dark path and didn't meet up with him until after the wedding.

He came up to me at the bar, and asked, "So what do you do?" and I cheekily responded, "I'm a basket weaver, I make baskets."

I would think, that if you were interested, you would recognize that as a falsehood and probe. I would think that if you had spoken with me at all, you would recognize that I have a more corporate and straegic background. I would think.

He didn't think. He said he liked baskets. He's not good with color, but he liked baskets.

Shortly after this conversation, and directly after we drank a bottle of de fleur (the white man's crystal) and a magnum of Vueve was uncorked, I took my glass of champagne, and sneaked off into the night.

Breaking my pattern.

That night I dreamt of walking into my apartment and each time I opened the door to my kitchen, tiny little stray kittens came out from all corners of the room, mewing at me to pet them and feed them and love them. They were adorable, irresistable.

Each time, I would try to pet them all and feed them but I kept having to leave the apartment. Each time I came back, they would be a little bit bigger, and a little bit more aggressive toward me for having left them. They were hungrier for more food and for more love. I wasn't enough for them, there were too many of them and they needed too much from me.

The last time I walked into my kitchen, they were full grown, almost like dogs, and they leapt at me and dug their nails into my flesh and started ripping at me, showing me sharp teeth as I fought them all, ripped cat after cat off of my bleeding body and closed my kitchen door and ran from my apartment. I ran for my life.

I woke up with my answer. No more of these people in my life, no more of these men. I deserve more than that, and I will settle for nothing less.

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