The Wedding

"The Wedding"
                                   

    For the bridesmaids dresses she chose pink. Perky, pretty carnation pink with delicate ambrosia accent. Pink, and she wore white, naturally. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. The cheery color almost rectified my blanched complexion. I brushed out my tangled mess of hair and gave myself the old once over. I had missed the fitting, (intentionally) so the dress kind of hung off me. My arms looked like wire hangers under the thin straps and I could see two pale legs poking out beneath the hem like skinny chopsticks. It didn't matter, the dress was a one time wear and then it was off to the salvation army to become some kid's halloween costume, or some low budget prom dress. With a final glance over my bony shoulder I switched off the light and headed out.
    The parking lot wasn't yet full when I arrived, only a dozen people or so milling around outside in the churchyard, hugging, swapping stories. Vauge acquaintances to one another, and utter strangers to me which certainly saved time on small talk. I made my way into the building and let the usher seat me early. I'd take my place with the others when the time came, but in the mean time I had my tattered old copy of Kafka's "The Trial" I'd brought along to ward off potential conversation. It seemed to work, no one approaching as I sat there in the rock hard pew, skimming over passages I'd read a thousand times before. Anyway, once things got started I sort of lost my nerve, decided I didn't want to stand up there with the others. So I motioned to the usher and made an exuse, asked him if he could please tell the bride that I wouldn't be able to do it; I felt faint, had a headache, was trembling all over with diptheria, parkinsons, anorexia nervosa. I would stay and watch from the pew if that was alright....."Of course" he said gently, brow furrowed with concern, laying a hand on my shoulder. He rushed off to the deliver the message as I settled in and tried to look a little sicker, rested Kafka on the seat beside me and waited. Then the organ started up and the doors opened. An ocean of oohs and ahhs rose up around me as she strode up the aisle, basking in all the attention. The dress was bleached silk and bell-shaped, slinky about her narrow waist. Everyone mouthing how beautiful, how gorgeous, how stunning she looked as she glided along. I didn't turn. Underneath all that gauzy white stuff I knew she was scarred, black-ugly on the inside, just like anyone else. Lousy with suburban ambition; white house, white fence, white cadillac to match. Actually, it could be a red house, or a yellow one or blue or something. I guess I was just picturing white because of that gaudy goddamned dress and the way it clashed, stark against the mahogany tones of the cavernous cathedral behind her.
    These dark thoughts all rolled in like storm clouds as she passed by, on her way to the alter like some dolled up sacrifice. I won't bore you with the rest of the gory, grimy details. He did, she did, it was done. Fast foward to the reception. Tragically typical; everyone dancing to eighties chart-toppers, singing, laughing, champagne. Me in the pink tulle, back to the wall, just trying to keep my lunch down. The whole thing was all pretty corny. I love the things newly weds (or soon-to-bes) say to each other during the ceremony. Words thrown in like: "cherish", "solemn", "eternity". Things so seldom spoken they gather dust in the absence of the human tongue. Anyway, I took their photographs for them, if only out of some duty to my profession as a photographer. 35mm black and whites which she later framed in teak and hung along the staircase to be cherished (with tepid interest) for all eternity.
    None of it would have bothered me had I not known. Had I never heard her tell me, voice dread-heavy and labored, eyes bleary with tire, blurred with tears. "I'm gay" she said, and we'd spent the night together. Me, without reservation, and her, vainly seeking some sort of answer, something she thought she might find inside me. And later, when she'd met him, when her voice had recovered, when she'd found something more concrete, she only said "I'm sorry" as her fingers traced invisible paths along the silver lined edges of the scripted invitation. "I'm sorry". Two words and a single meaning. What she really meant was: nothing feels as good as new love, as new money.
    In retrospect, I'm not sure why I went. Just a reminder I suppose, to the both of us, that nothing was eternal. Not youth or love or money, or the seemingly fixed sexual nature of a person. Because one day you meet this guy, and he has that answer that you wanted, or at least a really fine substitute. He's charming, but not overly so, and entirely carefree with all that inheritance. Suddenly, everything clicks into place quite neatly. You're vastly relieved to learn your needs are surface deep; materialistic and easily appeased. Of course, you mask the bones of your desire with entitlement, with illusion. You're well deserving, after all. All those years struggling, harrowed, hungry. And that whole gay thing? Just a phase. Just another unfruitful path you've taken, to be left behind in refuse, piled with the others like used cadavers.
    I didn't need her apology, she certainly didn't have my heart, not then, and not now. Our entanglement was borne of her desperation, of my accomodation, and in the end, meant nothing to either of us. Her betrayal, slight as it was in the eventual scheme of things, only stood a monument to a conclusion I'd long since arrived at. People were, are, and always will be self-serving and superficial if nothing else.
    I'm telling all of this to you now as a sort of practice run. Beacause in five, or ten, or twenty years from now, when I visit her in her white house, with her white fence and white cadillac, white mugs of black coffee,  when her voice is dread-heavy, her eyes bleary and blurred, I want it to sound exactly right, I really do.