Where My 'Zilla At?

If the last remaining shard of sanity in a gay Groomzilla's brain peels off and melts out of his ear, but nobody's there to see it, did it really happen?

I'm feeling an eerie sense of calm which I feel can only be attributed to some crucial synapse in my head overheating, or combusting, or running off to the beach for the weekend. I'm like one of those buddhas floating on a little cloud in lotus pose, or like one of those guys in the Matrix movies who just kind of hang out while the world spins around them, or one of those - - what do you call them? - - oh, right, one of those deers you see standing in the middle of the road zoning out in the warm glare of your headlights right before you send them floating off to the happy deer farm.

Maybe the rollercoaster metaphor was more effective.

We're tying up loose ends here. Gift bags bought. Programs printed. Wedding Readings Version 23.6 agreed upon.

I had a day of beauty yesterday which included a pleasantly intense massage, a manicure and pedicure during which Laura the Russian pedicurist told me I had to stop cutting my toenails so short because they looked like a baby's (I chose not to mention that I do not cut them, I pick at them violently while watching television to offset my mental anguish at not allowing myself to bite my nails anymore), and a tune-up with Kiki - - who, earlier in the week, suffered the tragic and unfair and existential angst-eliciting death of a man he was only just beginning to know and to love, which at the very least served as a sad reminder of the Fleeting Nature of Love and Everything Else.

I spent Friday night and today doing very un-NYC things which almost made me forget how much I want to leave NYC:

Friday, M.'s office had a surprise shower for him in Staten Island at Danny O's, which is one of those bars one walks by in the middle of the day and wonders what travesty must have occured in the lives of the three 70 year old men sitting inside to make them...sit in a bar like that in the middle of the day. The bartender's name is Trish and she's seriously the coolest bartender ever, and this bar used to be a gay bar in the 70's but now it's just kind of old and musty and there are literally cobwebs hanging eight inches off the ceiling in the men's room, but...we had the best time there, and there's a lot of potential, plus you get to take the Staten Island ferry there and back for free, and drink 16oz cans on Budweiser and eat cheap hotdogs, so it's like a little mini cruise. Kind of. For poor people. Like us.



And then today, in between printing the program covers and making our Costco list, M. and I walked over to the 54th Street Beach to get some sunburns that would heal nicely in time for the ceremony, only to find that the city now sponsors free kayaking in the little mini-harbor/cess-pool right there - - M. was a little bit braver than I was when it came to entering the questionable world of the Hudson River, but when he came back thirty minutes later and hadn't grown an extra arm or lost any visible epidermis, I decided I'd try it too. And it was great. The Hudson didn't even seem that dirty, and floating out there in my own little kayak with a cool little pool of water under my bum and a nice breeze coming in from New Jersey, I almost forgot where I was. Until the trailer truck barreling down the West Side Highway gunned its engines towards the Lincoln Tunnel and the barge carrying 600 tons of Lower Manhattan refuse came sauntering up the river and the family of swimming sewer rats squeaked at me to watch where I was fuckin' goin'.

And now here I am. Sitting on the couch searching for Beach Barbecue music while M. sits hunched over the printer waiting for his ninety-seventh program cover to come out the other end. We sat down calmly this morning and calmly read through our ceremony readings and calmly decided what would stay and what would get tossed, and then calmly talked about some of the vows we'd include in our vows and calmly laughed about the funny ones. In fact, other than a brief bump about the awkwardness of wedding finances, I'd say it's been at least a week of relative calm.

Part of me wonders about all the waves we've (I've) created over the past year, but a bigger part of me is just happy for the calm.

Interestingly enough, a sudden and pervasive outbreak of tiny bumps on my stomach and back would appear to signal that this Calm is somewhat of an illusion, and that my body has done me the favor of channeling the better portion of my anxiety into miniscule blips of subcutaneous agita which, while giving me pause for concern, are also well-concealed under my clothes. Unless I'm shirtlessly kayaking or weblogging.



Of course, anyone who's superstitious knows that all of this writing about Peace and Calm will all but ensure that the Peace and Calm will soon cease and desist.

The solution to this may lie in the ten equally tiny Pills of Tranquility sitting in their peaceful little orange ashram on the kitchen shelf, which a friend of a friend a friend prescribed for us Just In Case of Emergency. Or in deep and pensive staring into the caramel-glazed eyes of my newfound friend in the neighboring cubby.



For posterity, here's a sentimentally significant card my mom included with our shower present a couple months back, which was temporaily lost in the post-shower shuffle, but which now rests - - peacefully, calmly - - on my bedside table.*







*and also just happens to be the very same card which accompanied our chicken pot. Everyone likes the paper cut-out gays.