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august 20, 2000. (need visual aids? this way to the hall of wedding pictures.) the reception: a chaotic revel in two parts. ~ part the second ~ For our first dance, the Boy & I had agreed on "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys. I like it because it starts, "I may not always love you," and the Boy likes because it's a Brian Wilson song and he thinks the man is God. We were drifting along, not thinking of anything in particular, when disaster hit. Hilarious disaster... I was feeling weirdly shy about the whole garter toss in the days leading up to the ceremony: not because I had a problem with it ideologically (although I kind of do) but because I suddenly had no wish to appear trampy to my wedding day. (This from a girl with a pimp-fur edged black miniskirt.) So I came up with what I thought was a brilliantly funny idea: we'd get two garters and put one on the Boy…then, after he went through the tired business of trying to find the garter on me, he could make a theatrical "oh yeah!" gesture and lift his own kilt to get the garter off his leg. The throw would be a practise and it would be a nice way of skewering the "kilts are skirts" demographic. But. My mom had made the garters at the last minute, and she never got a chance to measure the Boy's leg before the day. So when he donned it, it was a trifle too loose…and when we were dancing, it ceased to be bound by uplifting thoughts and fell down the poor Boy's leg. He was - how could I say this? - wracked with hilarity and embarrassment. He murmured "please god, kill me," in between bouts of laughter, and kept trying to pull away. I have to admit, it was pretty funny. My dad & I talked about it all through our dance, "What a Wonderful World." Meanwhile, the other members of the party reported that they were incredibly uncomfortable during their portion of our first dance, but you wouldn't know it to look at them. At least, I couldn't tell...and I was very concerned/amused with all the things that could possibly go wrong with, for example, pairing the Boy's youngest sister with his best friend. But unhappily for the purposes of melodrama, nothing happened. As a final note to the programmed dancing: my parents were not scheduled to dance, but their friends engineered a surprise dance for them that turned into a parents' dance (all three sets.) My mother was quite embarrassed. Oh well. (I found it hard to relate to my parents that day - they seemed so emotionally distant from what was going on that I couldn't relax around them. Upon reflection, I realize that they acted and felt the way I was afraid I would act & feel: cold & mostly annoyed. Maybe that's why I stayed away. But they said later that they had the time of their lives, so what do I know anyway.) The dancing started slowly - I think people were a bit uncomfortable with the lack of structure (i.e. no one told them that it was their turn, we just started the Rosemary Clooney and left it to sort itself out.) It was also not at all like I expected. There were, of course, lots of wonderful songs that made me ecstatic. But other than my friends and a few others, no one under the age of 30 ventured onto the floor. I'm told that without a driving processed beat, they couldn't figure out how to dance to the music (I'm not making this up.) But I got the Smiths, the Sisters of Mercy, Time Warp, Spirit of the West, B-52's and three Cure songs, so I couldn't be bothered to care. If you can't dance to rock, you deserve to be bored. It didn't seem to bother the older people, of course. Every once in awhile Shannon would start playing mainstream 70's rock - "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" comes to mind - and I would take the opportunity to flee the floor for a rest...and on my way off, I'd get nearly trampled in the (older) stampede to get on the floor. Fun. There were songs I enjoyed because they seemed so appropriate to the night: "White Wedding," for instance. Then there were songs that linked me with so many different people through so many nights long vanished. The song "Love Cats," for instance, represents Little Spider & Morgan at the Rock but also Stacy & Palaver & Dav at the Garden. "Home For a Rest" was played at every high school house party from 94-96...but I know that it has special significance for Stacy, too, so I could share her joy. Further: one of the reasons I became friends with Little Spider & Morgan was our shared love of the Rocky Horror Picture Show…that I've attended with Dirk…and danced at the Cave with St. Stephen & Tymothi:J… When those songs came on, I floated around the floor, moving everywhere I could & dancing with 10 different people at once. The middle verse of "How Soon is Now," so often quoted back & forth between myself & Dirk became emotionally intense, as we danced & shouted the words directly to the other's grinning face. Closer to the middle of the evening, the Boy's friend Burke made me promise to dance with him during the next slow song, which was Bob Marley. That's um, a bit weird to dance to. Especially since when the song started, the Boy rushed up to me, literally begging me to dance with him. But since I didn't want to disappoint Burke, I gave my new husband the brush off…only to see Burke leading Morgan to the dance floor. She says that my look would've blunted lead - but it wasn't for her. The intended recipient was outside of more than a dozen drinks at that point, and chances are he never noticed. (Gossip alert! That little interchange was the tip of some serious weirdness in and of itself, as I found out later. I'm told that as the night wore on, Burke and another friend of the Boy spent their time jockeying for position with Morgan on the dance floor - when one would grab her for a song, the other would grab her for the next. I've also heard a Nic-reported but essentially unconfirmed report that the frustration from this mating dance led the-one-who-wasn't-Burke to punch a hole in the wall near the bathrooms. Kooky boys.) "Kooky" also describes my dance with Paris. We barely see each other these days, but there's always the apocalyptic days of early '97 hanging there in the background whenever we get together. I knew I had to dance with him, moreover, I wanted to dance with him - it would be the final touch of weirdness in the whole story, an epilogue of That Tuesday in which Alexi has vanished, Ophelia is estranged and I'm marrying someone I didn't know at that time. So we danced. And since I got to choose the tune, I chose one of the songs from the 18-song-extravaganza, the song that Paris always insisted was about fisting no matter how much I protested: Frank Sinatra's "I've Got You Under My Skin." Magic. This brings to mind what I consider the only legitimate complaint of the night by my guests, which is that the esteemed dj didn't play enough slow music to dance smoochily. I can't argue with that…I expected to dance with more people myself. But you can't fault a club dj for concentrating on the lively danceables. However, when she did play the slow stuff, the oddity of the guest list became apparent. To whit: the lack of single women. During one dance, I looked over to see Agamemnon dancing with Tymothi:J, and St. Jack & St. Stephen similarly paired up. And the really great thing is that they weren't camping it up to avoid looking gay; they danced quite tenderly. (I love my friends.) There was also room for some weird stuff. (As if that wasn't weird enough, I mean.) There was, for instance, a 9-person kick line in effect during Boney M's "Rasputin," that included Agamemnon, Guy, my brother and two of my uncles. I personally led two little kick lines into the merged whole (for once in my life, I had no interest in being a Rockette). Further weirdness: since we requested it at her '96 wedding, Morgan set up Guns n' Roses' "My Michelle" near the end of the night. I tried my hardest to go back to my 16-year-old heavy-metal listening persona and thrashed my little heart out. And Q almost died of happiness. He doesn't get enough sleaze metal in his daily diet, I suppose. When it was time to throw the bouquet I grabbed some coffee creamer to fake people out, told Shannon to cue up "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," and got the few single girls assembled. As usual, it was a mix of reluctant young adults, cynical fiancées and very young girls - some hiding, some jockeying for position. I surveyed them while I thought about my weak, girlish athletic skills: would my throw be pathetic? I was determined. I was ready. I threw…way over the crowd, all the way to the back. Right to where Stacy was hiding, the last person in the world who wanted my bouquet but showing her loyalty by participating anyway. Stacy, who had separated from her S.O. Scott a scant week before the wedding. It was just one of those moments, folks. I was horrified by the coincidence…but at the same time, it was so very funny… And that is why all the pictures show me laughing hysterically after the toss. Not because it was funny, really. But because it was just perfect, a gorgeous ending of perfect melodrama-that-wasn't. Little Spider also distinguished herself at this moment. When I was 19, she and her then-boyfriend Mr. Shoreleave told me that they had something good to tell me; but they would only do so if I promised to sign over my soul. So against the advice of my then-boyfriend Alexi, I signed a paper that transferred ownership of my soul to LS & Mr.S. The information I got in return notified me that Spider Robinson was appearing at a local convention, which led me in turn to attend my first and only sf con. I had a fabulous time; remind me to tell you about it someday. But the salient point is that they have owned my soul since that day. (Pause for Simpsons' reference: And to tell the complete truth, I'd just about forgotten the whole thing. That is, until Little Spider got on the mike to make me a very special presentation. No doubt everyone thought I was nuts - but then again, who can say that in a lifetime of weirdness, this would've tipped the balance? In any case, I got my soul back. And just when I thought the night couldn't get any more special. But weddings are like that. I discovered something as the tunes spun into the night: you can only have so much fun with one body, even if you're wearing a wedding dress. It didn't bother me exactly, I just found myself wishing that I were five different people. There was an almost continuous sing-along out on the curb, featuring most of my friends from university, cigars, whiskey drinking and two full renditions of "Barrett's Privateers." I wanted to be there all night long, but I could only stay a bare 10 minutes before someone came to fetch me. And in those 10 minutes, I'd missed Morgan's request for "Love Cats." Drat. (Speaking of the places I would normally be in a given situation, I also spent a good 5 minutes perched on Tymothi:J's lap between courses, to the general delight of the table. "His cigarette was a hair's breadth from your veil," reported Fast Eddie & Kandyraver Kat the next day. "We knew it wasn't going to end well." But I emerged unsinged & totally oblivious to my impending doom. Obviously they didn't count on Bride's Luck.) Even with my heightened sense of social responsibility, I dropped a few balls. We didn't end up cutting the cake until the next day. And there are no formal family pictures with the Boy's parents. But that was the great thing about the angelic, all-encompassing good mood I was in: it didn't matter. It didn't matter then that some things on the mental checklist will never be checked off. It doesn't matter now. What does matter is that I couldn't stop talking about how beautiful it all was. What does matter is that I made the absolute most of my wedding day. Those things matter the most of all. The end of the night came quickly. Before we knew it, the air was full of Sisters of Mercy and the hall was nearly empty. I commandeered the last song of the night, using Bobby Darin's "Beginning to See the Light" as an excuse to dance with Agamemnon, my good friend & officiating priest. He was very preoccupied though, which he later claimed was due to his alcohol content. But we had fun. And we were just separating when the Boy put in his bid for last song of the night: the execrable William Shatner version of "Mr. Tambourine Man." I suppose this is what happens when nerds marry one another. The lights came up, Captain Kirk continued to wail, and the hardcore survivors danced or cleaned up the hall, according to their level of intoxication/feelings of responsibility. It was then that Dirk found the handheld mike. I'd like to interject here that by the end of the night, Dirk was slightly the worse for wear. Both he and Agamemnon were awesomely, magnificently drunk - although it was Dirk who was covered in sweat and falling down. (Common consensus is that the spectacle of Dirk lying on the floor - partly under the head table - will never be forgotten.) So. He's totalled and he's found the mike. Cpt. James Tiberius was still emoting away, causing Dirk to decide to sing a song to me, which he called "Amoret In the Sky with Diamonds." He sang this in the fake Scottish brogue that had been creeping steadily into his speech throughout the night, and he just about put me into a headlock to show his affection. The guy. Q also took this opportunity to say something really moving. (This takes several steps.) First, he was very touched at his own wedding when the Boy told him that he (the Boy) appreciated finally having a brother (Q) after all this time. Q elaborated on this by saying that as an expatriate, he needed all the family he could get up here. And that he was glad to have another sister. I was, and I remain, deeply touched. (Wow. That was a lot simpler in my head. Did you get it all? I feel like I should draw you a football diagram or something.) There was one more rendition of "Barrett's Privateers" before we all hit the road, verse after verse spilling out in the empty room. I wandered through my boys, videotaping the rare spectacle of intellectuals singing sea shanties in a banquet hall. Tymothi:J offered to take over so that I could sing, but I just wanted to watch. It was oddly beautiful in a way that I don't think I can describe. Even my parents were impressed. And then we got into the big old rented Lincoln & went to the hotel; tired, happy, radiant. We were sure that we had gotten our money's worth of wedding. As for the rest...Amoret became Rocketbride, the Boy became her long-suffering sidekick Jimmy Silverthumb. Use your imagination to fill in the gaps.
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