Thursday, June 29, 2006

Blogus interruptus

I swear, once the post-partum depression has lifted and I have some time to pause for reflection and take stock and clean house and shine the chicken pot, I'm going to post everything needed for a Virtual Gay Wedding Experience multimedia extravaganza -- including a 3D hysterically sobbing Groomzilla head that literally breaks through the computer screen and snots all over your shoulder -- but in the meantime, I'd like to direct everyone's attention to two weblog acquaintances who should be able to provide everyone with hours and hours of humorously productive blogscaping. Enjoi.

A Day in the Life
The Dewey Dismal System

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

I'm Alive



Whew.

Well.....hmm.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

I'm still in blissy zoney outerspace mode so I'll keep this brief -- M. and I just drove back from Provincetown about three hours ago, followed by copious amounts of box-carrying and stair-climbing and unpacking and sweating and sighing -- but I figure I should at least make a brief post-nuptial reappearance, if for no other other reason than to announce that I survived The Event relatively intact, vomit-free, and with a smile on my face.

I'll try to think of something brief and creative to write. How about the Top Three Things I Learned At My Wedding:

1. They love me, they really love me. Both of us. And we love them. I've never felt as completely surrounded by and filled with and drunk from love as I felt on Saturday night. This was particularly evident during the final forty-five minutes of the reception -- and the thirty minutes after that -- during which I cried in a continuous and pitiful and auditorily alarming fashion and assaulted everyone from my highschool and college and post-college friends, to my mother, our DJ, our innkeeper, and one of our hors d'ouevres waitresses with a series of sweaty, tear-soaked, sobbing embraces. I think it had something to do with the whole thing Coming To An End, although of course Doing What I Do I managed to make an unnecessarily morbid connection to the feeling I would imagine one might feel if one were to visit one's own funeral -- not because it felt like a funeral in any way, just that the feeling of quite literally having everyone one holds Most Dear in the World all under one tent, and dancing and talking and drinking and laughing and crying with them all, and being with the Man You Love and standing up with him and proclaiming your promises to him and commiting yourself to him in front of All These People, and then hearing the DJ announce the last dance, and knowing that in a matter of minutes it's all going to be over, and then in a matter of hours they're all going to be gone.......well, it's just more than a little bit overwhelming. Thankfully, I'm not dead and I'll see them all again, but the feeling was there. Gulp.





2. Wedding planning is a cruel mirage meant to keep us busy and think we're in control and prevent us from letting our attentions stray from our Betrothed. In other words, our wedding got rained out. As in, Record Rainfall. And I panicked. And the walk up the aisle was three paces instead of twenty, and instead of Posed Photos framed by sand and sailboats and sunshine we had ones framed by tent and...more tent. And and and. But, it all worked out. Just like it always does. Maybe even better than it would have otherwise, because once you get Rained Out -- or Rained In -- all bets are off, and everyone can just relax and have fun and take a load off because, let's be honest, The Wedding's Ruined, right? That's the way it felt, anyways, until everyone had the best time ever, and Goth DJ rocked the rock of all rocks, and the food was delicious, and the signature cocktails were a hit, and there were five straight hours of pure and unadulterated and did-I-mention-sweat-soaked dancing, and Everyone Loves Cannolis, and everyone talked with everyone and danced with everyone and loved everyone and why didn't I think of this, of course this is perfect, I love the rain, everyone should have such luck to be rained in under one enormous and music- and food- and booze- and love-filled tent, and I wouldn't have planned it any other way.

3. I'm a Crazy Person. This has already been established as fact. But seriously? I amped up the crazy at least 20 notches on Friday night, when I was forced to excuse myself from the Beach Blanket Barcecue to go stand in the men's room and rub my face and mentally will myself to exit the bathroom as a different, calmer, saner man. Which, predictably, had short-lived results. But by the time M. and I had led the Chicken Dance, the knots released and the butterflies died or flew away and my stomach loosened its grip on my esophagus and I Just Had Fun. Just Let Myself Have Fun. This continued, more or less, through the rest of the weekend, other than the moment when I went to hand someone something three minutes before walking down our three-foot aisle and saw for the very first time what my hand might look like if I had Parkinson's disease....but that's probably normal. The moral of the story is that, yes, I am insane, potentially certifiably so, but I am also trainable. My psychosis is maleable. I can change. Even if it's only briefly, or if I learn a Huge Lesson from simultaneous vomiting and pooping and then completely forget that lesson a mere two days later when it becomes clear that the beach blankets for the Beach Blanket Barbecue were a terrible idea and everyone may as well just go home. Because yes, I am cursed with mental illness, but part of that mental illness is Multiple Personality Disorder, which allows me to talk Groomzilla down from the ledge and swap him out with little pigtailed Susie who likes to laugh and eat cheeseburgers and do the Chicken Dance.





It's late, and I'm tired, and I need to go to bed with my new Husband -- keep saying it keep saying it keep saying it -- but, for what it's worth, and I hate to break the fifth wall and address my audience........a) Thanks for Listening, and b) It Was All Worth It.

More to follow.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Wedding; or, Think Twice Before You Read This

Last night, a mere five days before I am to realize my Very Greatest Dream, I experienced my Very Worst Nightmare:

Throwing up and pooping at the same time.

I started feeling sick right after my Sicilian slice and Diet Pepsi at the pizza joint around the corner from the hospital, a feeling which progressed throughout several visits with patients and conversations with colleagues, until finally I was riding home on the subway, tapping my feet and breathing through the stomach cramps and dizziness and willing myself to Just Make It Home Without Humiliating Myself.

I got home, made a brief visit to the boys room - - nothing unusual so far - - and put myself to bed, where I proceeded to writhe around and contort myself into various pseudo-yoga poses as I tried to quell the rumbling and the moaning and the General Feeling That Something Wasn't Quite Right. Then I went back to the bathroom, and that's when it happened. The certain knowledge that I was about to vomit. Complicated by the certain fact that I could not remove myself from my current seated position.

It wasn't nearly as flawlessly executed as I had always hoped it might be, whilst worrying that it might Ever Happen over the years, but it also wasn't nearly as violent or horrific. I simply picked up the trash can and went to town, staring down at the empty toilet paper roll, used dental floss and discarded Irish Spring box and wondering if perhaps an empty can might provide for a purer, more simple, less encumbered experience.

The next hour was spent sitting on my come-to-find-out Filthy bathroom floor wrapped in M.'s towel (after a brief attempt at propriety, I'd wrenched mine off the towel rack to mop my sweaty and sullied brow), returning to bed, shivering and sweating and shivering again, more writhing and positioning, more moaning (it's interesting to discover what words one locks onto as one's mantra during these situations; mine are, apparently, "Jesus" and "Fuck"), and then returning to the bathroom where I turned around in panicky circles like my dog used to do before he vomited, before finally throwing up like a Normal Person into the toilet.

Then M. came home with Saltines and Ginger Ale and Advil and played nurse while I lay in bed watching Wifeswap and Super Nanny and How to Get the Man on our screwy antenna-less bedroom television, before finally passing out on the couch with the fan blasting on my face.

It's over now, save for a generalized feeling of weakness and battle-weariness and the sense that the fire blazing under my skin all night has now died down to a smoldering pile of dying embers.

There are suspicious rumblings from Myself and Others that there is a psychosomatic wedding-related element to all of this, although I feel like if it was all in my head I would have at least enough mind control to spare myself the embarrassment of the Double Whammy. Then again, I did tell my body, in a very stern tone, that it had exactly one night's sleep to enjoy its little party, but after that I didn't want to hear any more about it. And it listened.

So who knows.

The Lesson Learned is that I need to relax. This came to me his while propped up against the side of the tub last night, pondering whether or not there might be an element of emotional stress or mental anguish involved in this Whole Disaster. I thought to myself, God, if any of this could have been abated by a little less internal tension and anxiety, you really ought to reconsider how you handle things.

So, psychosomatics or otherwise, maybe this is just what I needed as I enter the Final Countdown. Because no matter how bad things get, how neurotic I am about the decorations or the red wine or the vows or my father or the weather, nothing can be as bad as last night.

Unless Goth DJ doesn't show up. In which case I will internally combust and disintegrate into a billion little pieces which, while unsightly, won't be nearly as drawn-out or humiliating or untidy.

Deep breaths.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Well, it's back.

My 'Zilla, that is. My neurotic, nervous, anxious, overpowering, overcontrolling, micromanaging, stomach-churning, hive-producing, impatient, hot-tempered, psychopathic Inner Child.

Seriously, I feel like my hands are going to shake right off my wrists and go scrambling back home to fold wedding programs or send hysterical emails or crawl inside the safe confines of the chicken pot with a bottle of vodka and a few Xanax.

No particular reason, to speak of. Just back. It'll pass. I hope.

Pant pant pant.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

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.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Loss for Words

I'm running out the door but will be doing so in a completely tenuous state of physical coordination, as I am completely weak in the knees with joy that finally, at long last, I have been reunited with my 50-lb caramel-colored bundle of joy, and I owe it all to my Official New Best Friend Erin Turkey, whom I will now be marrying on June 24th. Here's a preliminary picture. I'm tempted to stay home and cuddle with her on the couch, but I have to go pick up a belated paycheck so that I can afford to feed her. More to come...

No Whammies No Whammies

Let's everyone all hold hold our breath, shall we? The Friday and Sunday bookends make me feel a bit queasy...although, really, nothing says Beach BBQ and Goodbye Donuts like a good thunderstorm.




The other good news is that the ABC weather guy announced this morning that it will only take about 30 minutes of direct sunlight to get a sunburn today. Can anyone say shirtless social worker?

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Me Yin, You Yang

Something's horribly wrong.

Suddenly, M. is staying up until 3 in the morning doing online searches for replacement wedding readings and creating our Weekend Itinerary Handout and making extensive lists of Things Still Left Undone, while I'm going to bed at 10:30 and sleeping like a brick and feeling like we can just write our vows in the car ride up to Wellfleet or maybe just on our way up the aisle.

Is it the nighttime dental guard? The self-tanning lotion? The moon cycle?

Or are the two of us simply destined to live in perpetual, sometimes tragic, but ultimately beautifully simplistic and dysfuntionally functional, equal and opposing life spheres?

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

The price of beauty

Perhaps weary of listening to me drone on and on and on about my lack of golden skin tone for the wedding, M. went out on Sunday and bought us some moisturizer with "subtle self-tanners." Which we both proceeded to slop on, remarking on how nice it smelled. Now, two days and nine bucks later, I'm less concerned with the perhaps slightly more orange tone of my skin, and more concerned with the unpleasant odor emanating from my forearms. Hard to describe, except to say that it is the very same smell which pervaded my body following my first and only foray into spray tanning four years ago, when I found myself shedding large sheets of burnt umber-colored skin and leaving a trail of indescribable stink in my wake for a full five days. More or less of a just-stepped-out-of-the-swamp kind of scent.



All of which leaves me feeling torn between my desire to perpetuate the acceptably natural-looking glow I've developed since Sunday - - a glow which is a poor but adequate substitute for the actual sun tan I won't have due to the fact that I am constantly indoors either working or planning seating arrangements, and which will offset my khaki suit rather nicely, certainly moreso than would my previous Winter brine - - and my sense of being cheated by a company which, granted, makes a mean body wash, but which really ought to substitute "subtle" with "starts out pretty, ends up stanky."

Shame on you, Dove(TM).

And shame on me for needing you so badly, even though you hurt me.


addendum:
One of the doctors just told me I had a nice tan. Any and all complaints about NEW Dove® Energy Glow™ Daily Moisturizer with Subtle Self-Tanners, which gradually adds a beautiful summer glow to skin and is fast-absorbing and with a delightful fragrance, and also moisturizes and gradually enhances your natural skin color, should be disregarded as bitter, jealous and uninformed hearsay.

Monday, June 12, 2006

To Whee or Not to Whee

Greetings from halfway down the second 90-degree drop on the great big rollercoaster ride of impending union.

I'm feeling rather calm and taciturn this morning, so maybe I'm on one of the loops. Right at the top of the curve. Stuck upside-down.

The rest of the pieces are all falling into place. M. and I both found our shirts yesterday, mere moments after I'd finished declaring that Banana Republic was Officially Dead To Me, and in the very same hues that we'd hoped for. We bought paper for the programs. We bought new underwear. We realized that the color scheme from our invitations is the same as the color scheme for our tent decorations is the same as the color scheme for our shirts. Luckily, Old Navy doesn't sell boxer briefs in Citrus Green and Sky Blue. We've got our Participant Gifts. One of which was all dented, which prompted me to fire off a letter of complaint to the meek and mild manager at the Participant Gift place which included a hastily drawn diagram detailing the extent and location of the damage - - a response which nicely matched my newfound interests in letter-writing, wedding-planning and obsessive-compulsing, but which may have turned mild manager's hair white. We've got our party favors. We've reestablished meaningful contact with Goth DJ - - come to find out he had a collapsed lung, the same of which cannot be said for the butterfingered Participant Gifts guy - - and agreed on a tentative and mutually-loved song list. We're making place cards.

I've been soliciting advice from other Married Friends, sometimes actively and more often passively, as they attempt to squelch the fire blazing atop my head.

My married friend FBZ suggested that we Delegate Tasks to minimize wedding-day stress. I'm not so sure that this is a good idea for someone with my Control Issues, but I'll try. It may turn out to be a bit of a slippery slope, but if anyone complains that they don't want to help me pull up my new underwear, I'll just have to direct them to her.

My married friend Bronx Betty normalized, just like a good Social Worker Friend should. She also gave me our cream and sugar set, which is always a helpful distraction for the greedy.

My married friend Bobby suggested that this should be the fun part, where I've done all my planning and can just sit back and relax and enjoy. Clearly, she doesn't understand that even when I am dead and buried I will still have at least a few things remaining on my Internal To-Do List but, again, I'll try. Actually, I did try, just the other day on the subway. I sat right there on the subway seat and willed myself to stop considering the merits of sixty-seven paper lanterns over sixty-three, and By Golly she was right, it did feel kind of nice, and for just the briefest of moments I took my hands off the safety bar and tentatively raised them up in the air even though I could still feel the certain and troublesome rumbling beneath me, and I felt what it could be like to just let myself Enjoy It, and it was good. Short-lived, but good.

I would end with something sage and optimistic about how I'm going to post this entry and then go try and Enjoy It again, but I think everyone would agree we're beyond that.

The good news - - to continue a metaphor - - is that I'm pretty sure M. and I have moved beyond the part of the ride where we're fighting over who has the better seat, and into the part where we wrap our arms around one another and dig our fingers in and hold on for dear life.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Ineffective Coping Mechanism

Thanks to a growing protuberance around my midsection, it occurred to me yesterday morning, as I felt my tummy rumbling, that perhaps now would be an appropriate time to rediscover the fruit-yogurt-water-KashiGoodFriends(TM) diet I had going a few weeks back. Better yet, the Self-Starvation thing I had going a few weeks before that, an ill-conceived but undeniably creative synergistic solution to both my physical and financial woes.

And I'm pleased to announce that when I bought my iced coffee yesterday on my way to work, I resisted the beckoning - - nay, pleading - - calls of the Amish Market pastry display, and my coffee and I went solo.

Until I ran headlong into a coffee cart at the next street corner, and there was a Don't Walk sign so I was pretty much stranded there, and I thought to myself, 'What, you're going to stand here stranded for who knows how long on this desert street corner and just let yourself starve to death until help arrives?' So, in the interest of survival, I bought a donut.

Okay, that's a lie. I almost gave in, but I resisted that donut.

And then spent the next three blocks desperately sniffing out another coffee cart like some sort of lard-thirsty attack hound, and then walked a full block out of my way when I finally spotted one, even though I had a perfectly timed Walk sign which would have led me safely and swiftly into the breakfast-less depths of the 49th Street N/R station, and that's when I bought my donut.



An enormous, half-cooked, glazed donut.

The good news is that pregnant brides are kind of a Thing in my family.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Coulda Shoulda Woulda

M. and I spent the latter portion of this evening figuring out how much beer and wine to buy for the wedding (hint: too much) and we stumbled upon costco.com in the course of our research.

I don't know if I should be duly impressed or truly haunted by the fact that one can not only buy a cherry wood casket, gourmet cheese and a vending machine all in one place, but one can also buy all three online.

And have them delivered overnight.





I'm beginning to think someone could have been a bit more prudent and efficient with her wedding registry.

Oh, and the wedding is going to cost us, like, ten thousand dollars more than we expected. -ish.

Attack! Attack!

Seems like the good people over at Macy's find it easier to cave in to The Crazies than stand up for The Gays.





I'm just glad we weren't desperate and/or greedy enough to open a fourth gift registry. Because Lord knows my need for presents would surely have eclipsed my need for self-respect and public acceptance, and while my kitchen cabinets would be full, my soul would be black and empty.

To anyone who's listening, I'd encourage you to Bring Your Business Elsewhere until Macy's mends their wicked ways. Better yet, email them!

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Moral Support

Here's a supportive email I just got from one of my mom's favorite (and only) bad-ass Leftist pals. She's so taking home a centerpiece.


From: Bad-Ass Leftist Friend
To: Groomzilla

Subject: Bout 2 weeks and counting
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2006 01:01:40 -0400

Whhhhheeeew!!!!!!
The countdown begins!! Are you really excited??? We can't wait to be there for/with you, and of course party with you later. So happy that you picked this June......as we watch Beavis Bushie scrambling hard to pull a 21st century Lester Maddox move with his constitutional amendment brainstorm. You go, you two.

xx oo

My Retainer!

After waking up in the wee hours of yesterday morning in searing and agonizing pain, having worked my jaw at just the right angle so that the prong of one of my upper molars nailed my freshly-crowned tooth square in the middle of its most sensitive spot during the course of my nightly bruxism, I decided that Something Must Be Done.

So I did my online research, got me to Duane Reade, and last night placed this in my mouth before going to bed:




And I'm happy to report that I did not wake up in the middle of the night crying in agony or choking to death on a half-swallowed piece of silicone-based dental equipment, nor did I have any nightmares that M. was forcing me to eat a dental guard-sized computer mouse, or a hockey puck, or a miniature rubberized chicken pot.

I did, however, suffer immediate and traumatizing flashbacks to the last time I'd worn a mouth guard, which was during my ill-fated experiment with Pop Warner football in 1987, otherwise known as the Watershed Year During Which I First Learned To Question My Allegiance to Contact Sports, Physical Exertion, Hand-Eye Coordination, Protective Cups, and the Hegemony of Western-Based Myths of Masculinity, but also to Appreciate Men with Fiery Tempers and Tight Pants.

Monday, June 05, 2006

RED ALERT! RED ALERT! RED ALERT!




(if you listen hard enough, you'll hear the soft tinkling bells of an angel getting his wings)

A lesson

Today my married friend Kathy Cockpit reminded me about a Very Important Thing to Remember: When it comes to planning a wedding, none of it is really all that important.

In other words, it's a Very Special Day, but it's not the end all and be all, the end of the world, the What Have You.

As I ruminate on how the wrong First Dance song or tent decorations will inevitably lead to unsatisfactory wedding cake and an all-but-certain dismal first year of marriage resulting in miserable children and a bitter divorce after fifty years following a spiteful and indiscrete liaison with a pool boy who was only in it for the vintage KitchenAid Mixer in Pistachio, it occurs to me that this will be a rather important reminder to remember.

While we're on the subject, though, we did end up with the exact perfect number and colors and sizes of Wedding Tent Lanterns yesterday at Pearl River, which I can only assume will be an auspicious sign of things to some.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Catharsis; or, three weeks from this very minute, I'll be probably pacing, possibly vomiting and definitely crying

Wouldn't you know it, I'm crying again.

M. and I just got off the phone from our first conversation with the priest who will be conducting our ceremony. And it was great, a relief, a comfort, a validation, a calming exhale. But it also made me terribly sad, and scared, and wistful, and ten thousand other things.

The priest was terrific - totally on the same page as us, totally wanting to celebrate this thing with us in as full-flowered a way as he possibly could. And as a queer and questioning Catholic whose life has felt somehow less-than since I stopped going to Church, talking to a Man of God brought up all sorts of good and peaceful and comforting, but also somewhat sad, things, and probably made my inner subconscious guilty altar boy feel like maybe he might go to Heaven after all. But it also made me sad that we even needed to be discussing some of the things we discussed - - the particulars of what he would and would not be allowed to say or do as an Episcopal priest celebrating this union, some of the current goings-on in the Episcopal and other churches, how our parents and my dad in particular have handled the Whole Thing - - and that's when I started to cry (the first time). And of course this is nothing new, but between M. and me and the priest, all of us were clearly wishing we could just focus on who was walking in when and who was reading what, rather than on how we could maneuver and sidestep and negotiate in a way that made everyone, church hierarchy included, happy. And then, like I said, we started talking about our parents, and I started talking about my dad, and as M., my mother and my therapist know all too well, sometimes all it takes for the floodgates to open is for me to verbalize something out loud......so as soon as I started talking about my dad, and to a priest no less, the tears started to creep up again. Then the priest started suggesting some possible blessings for the end of the ceremony, and he just kind of pulled this really beautiful one out of thin air, and suddenly there I was standing on the lawn in my suit and facing M. in front of everyone and hearing the priest delivering this blessing, and that is when I had to hold the phone away from my face (I was in the bedroom on one extension, M. was in the living room on the other) and take my glasses off and heave and sniffle into the crook of my elbow.

Whew.

Anyways. It was all very cathartic. And I think between the pain of having to talk about Things Which Shouldn't Need to Be Talked About, and the simultaneous joy and pain of talking about my dad, and the sudden Holy Shit It's Really Happening feeling of discussing the specifics of the ceremony, and the glowing relief and ecstasy that It's All Really Happening and I'm in love and getting married and Won't It All Be So Fun, and the mixed emotional bag of doing all of the above with a Man of God - - between all of these things, I think perhaps a certain gay groom-to-be just needed a little cry. Because she's just a bit overwhelmed. But in a good way.

She's also grossed out by the fact that even though she just swiffered and swept and vacuumed her apartment, her feet are still black on the bottom from the unending supply of dust and grime floating through the window and onto the floor from Ninth Avenue.

And also disgusted, but in kind of an exhausted and Calgon Take Me Away kind of way, by the fact that mere minutes before this whole cathartic telephone conversation, President Bush was delivering a national radio address telling the country that Gays Aren't Good Enough to Get Married.

And also more than a little bit guilty and hypocritical and am-I-apathetic about missing the HRC Wedding March across the Brooklyn Bridge, but the priest took precedence, and plus it's raining, so I'll have to get over it.

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