All by myself

I'm home sick today with what is either a nasty cold or a nasty new wave of allergies. Either way, it feels like someone is gently but firmly pulling on my uvula while simultaneously spraying a fine Tobasco sauce mist down my throat. I'm sure that my Saturday night - which started off with too much beer, plateaued with dancing at the Pyramid club with mainly out-of-town gays and heavyset bachelorettes, and culminated with barricading M. out of our apartment with two kitchen chairs and a step-ladder (because I am also Boyfriendzilla) - did not help matters.

So I'm feeling sorry for myself, which leads me to feeling alone, which - with just a little stretch - leads me to feeling like the only gay Groomzilla in town.

I googled "Groomzilla" the other night to see if my new blog had made it to the webcrawlers yet. I was dismayed to find that it had not, but even more dismayed to receive what, in Google circles, might be considered a successful hit search - the full ten pages of results with the right-arrow indicating an indefinite number of pages to follow.

In other words, I had not coined the term. This makes sense, as "Bridezilla" has become fairly commonplace in the marriage lexicon, and it does not take an inordinate amount of creativity to achieve the masculine form.

After my initial dismay and resignation that my GroomzillaTM coffee mugs and baseball caps might not come to be, I felt a sense of tentative hope - - if there were 100+ pages of Groomzillas out there, surely there must be others of my kind that could lead me to our Mothership, to our homeland, where I might bask in the comradery of other lonely, obsessive-compulsive gay grooms. But click after click, all I found was one example after another of a creature that makes no sense at all: the obsessive-compulsive straight groom. What's up with that? Who let them in? It's not enough that they own the world, now the hetero guys want to own the wedding plan as well? Fucking misogynists.

It was similar to the feeling I had when my recently-married friend MK directed me to a couple of different bride-to-be online forums she thought might help me get started with my own planning. One of them, she noted, had an entire discussion thread devoted to grooms. I didn't need to be asked twice, I headed straight to indiebride.com, certain that enlightenment and kinship were soon to be mine. What I found instead, however, was a subtle ploy by a thousand crazy brides-to-be to gain control over the one territory they had yet to claim: their fiances. With increasing urgency, I clicked and back-clicked, and found myself slowly drowning in a sea of bridal hysteria: "Where do I find a 'manly' hair accessory for my fiance's ponytail?" "How do I get my color-loving boyfriend to settle for a charcoal tux?" "How do I get my fiance to take my name?" "My boyfriend thinks I'm crazy!"

Am I really doomed to roam the planet alone? I wasn't serious when I wrote that first entry, it was just artistic license. I was kidding. Seriously, where are My People? I scan the wedding photos in the Sunday Times, and - on the rare occasion when I find anything - all I see are middle-aged gay urban professionals hanging out of their rented trolleys with one arm, champagne glasses tilted towards the camera with the other arm, eyes glittering frantically with the secure knowledge that they have not only Made It as head curator of the historical Mewley estate in Croton-on-Hudson and founding partner of Greeleigh Boggs and Matthewson, respectively, but they have Made It to the Sunday New York Times Weddings Section!

My People are not in the Sunday Times. Or the Monday New York Post, for that matter, where I just read about a man who is suing the David Barton Gym for $25,000 for emotional distress suffered from repeatedly witnessing patrons giving each other bathroom stall blowjobs and participating in impromptu steamroom three-ways. In a gym in Chelsea....? I never. Groomzillas are too busy over-planning and being monogamous to waste time on anonymous gymnasium sex.

They've got to be out there somewhere. I can't be the only one. Could it be that we are all holed up at our PCs, desperately seeking electronic signs of solace? Or do we tend to live in places other than Manhattan, where temptation and activity and hustle and bustle prevent us from even finding a relationship in which to nurture and develop our inner, crazed grooms? This Sunday's Times also had a big article on lesbian brides, who make up something like 80% of all gay weddings in the US. Between the lesbians and the middle-aged guppies, I'm not left with much, am I?

That guy sitting alone in the coffee shop downstairs, is he one? The guy struggling with his Bird of Paradise in my yoga class, maybe him? Do I go back to indiebride.com, my head hung in shame, and pick off whatever scraps of comfort they might have left for me on the great carcass of group kvetch? Do I get the prototype coffee mug made, carry it around town, nonchalantly waving it in front of me in the hope that it catches the eye of a kindred soul?

Or do I make the most of my sick day, run down the street for a Medium Number Two with a Diet Coke to go, and drown my sorrows in the copy of Hotel Rwanda we just NetFlixxed?