“I hate when couples write their own vows,” whispered Merris. “It takes so much longer than a standard civil ceremony, and no one is ever able to access any gravitas.”
After Jiro turned me down on the department steps, I had resolved to attend the wedding alone, and felt good about this idea until the morning of the event, when, in a panic, I went upstairs and asked Merris if she owned any formalwear. The idea of facing it all—the ceremony, the slow dancing, the small talk—without a sarcastic hand to hold was simply too much. We watched as Emily told Patrick it would be an honor to stay out of his way on game day for as long as they both should live. Merris rolled her eyes as the rest of the guests giggled conspiratorially.
There were falteringly delivered readings, and the photographer made them redo the kiss after Patrick dipped his bride away from the camera in a fit of passion. We waited through the awkward document-signing portion, and the happy couple was presented to us, officially, as husband and wife. Everyone clapped. A four-piece band started playing a jazzy cover of a pop song about living forever, and the bridesmaids self-consciously sidled down the aisle, clinging to their respective groomsmen. We blew bubbles as Emily and Patrick passed by, beaming and laughing with relief: This was it, forever! Maybe!
4:30pm COCKTAIL HOUR—Enjoy a signature drink and nibbles in the indoor courtyard or try your hand at some lawn games!
“What’s this?” Merris asked when I brought her a drink, pink and bright, with something shimmering around the rim. She reached out and felt the granules between her fingers.
I shrugged. “Salt, maybe? The bartender said it was a Canadian riff on a Mexican classic, so I think it’s some kind of maple margarita.”
Merris tasted the powder and made a face. “Oh dear,” she said. “Pop rocks.” She took a small sip, then a bigger one. “How are you, anyway?”
I told her I was doing well, this morning’s panic notwithstanding. I did not mention that my closest friends were sick of me and I did not blame them, or that I’d been romantically humiliated by two men in the same number of weeks. Better to keep it positive: I’d lost five pounds through my tracking app and was trying an intermittent fasting thing, and although my personal life was in shambles, my tweets about it were doing great.
“You pretty much just have to say some version of ‘men are trash’ and dozens of women will agree with you,” I said. The other day I had tweeted men really do be garbage without quite understanding what I was getting at, but the sentiment raked in almost eighty retweets—quite good, for me—so it must have resonated.
I’d recently followed a bunch of accounts that churned out similar content multiple times per day, posting screenshots of bad Tinder exchanges, degrading tales of dates gone wrong, crying selfies featuring deep cleavage, etc. Everyone was ostensibly kidding, though I had to admit none of the posts were particularly funny. Still, they provided a certain comfort. I could act recklessly—meet a stranger at his house at four a.m., double text a woman who was clearly not interested—and if it went badly, as it often did, I could dust myself off and turn it into lighthearted content. Someone might even take it and claim it: literally me. Literally, me! We were in it together.
I liked thinking about my sorority of unhinged internet friends on our respectability rumspringa, single by choice, even if we were sort of hating it. They would understand about the calls and texts, about the therapy mishap, about sometimes still dialing Jon’s number from a decrepit pay phone on a corner near campus, never taking my finger off the switch hook—just standing there thinking about it—until I grew too embarrassed and went back inside, to cry in the third floor bathroom and try something new with eyeliner afterward. I couldn’t tell my real-life friends or family or Merris how badly therapy had gone, and indeed had not even confessed online, but it was comforting to know there were people out there who might get it, in theory.
5pm PHOTOS—The bridal party （and Bacon, the rescue pup!） spend some time with the photographer; guests keep partying!
Amy found me standing next to a lace-swaddled heat lamp, watching the bridal party attempt a “fun one” （truly odd expressions from the men, a few half-hearted tongues out from the women）。 An ambitious groomsman, the shortest of the group, proposed that the rest of them moon the camera. The bride looked at the groom with Please No face, and when the moment came, only the instigator pulled down his pants.
“I feel like you’re avoiding me,” Amy said. She was wearing a flapper dress and had her lips painted in an adorable twenties-style cupid’s bow. “Why didn’t you dress up? You could have done those little flippy bangs.”
I told her short bangs on someone with my hip-to-waist ratio made people feel in danger of a burlesque performance, or a lecture about how Marilyn Monroe wore a size fourteen.
“God, it’s so depressing, isn’t it?” I said.
“I don’t think so,” said Amy. “If you ask me, beauty has no size. Like, I prefer myself when I’m keeping fit and eating healthy, but I think you can look however you want and still be so gorgeous.” She pulled me into an affectionate side hug.
“I meant this,” I said, gesturing at the photo booth and the bean bag toss and the couples referring to themselves as the “Wedding Attenders.” “It’s the beginning of the deluge. It’s going to be wedding after wedding. A whole spring and summer of spending money congratulating other people and needing to have something to say about the color scheme.”
Amy asked if I had a lot of other invites lined up.
“Not yet,” I said, “but they’re coming, and I’ll put them on my fridge, and every time I reach for almond milk, I’ll have to remember that some girl I went to summer camp with has love in her life and I don’t.”
Amy frowned. “Divorce rate is hovering at, like, forty-five percent these days,” she said. “Like half the couples you have to buy expensive place mats for are doomed.”
I looked at Amy, surprised. “That’s quite pessimistic for you.”
She smiled happily. “I know, right? I’m like an empath. I adjust to the emotional output of people around me, even if it’s all goth and intense like yours.”
“I’m wearing Reformation,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “But you are exuding a gothic energy.”
Across the room, Ryan the therapy clown was wearing 1920s-style plus fours that ballooned stupidly below the knee. His outfit was so embarrassing I could tell he really cared for my friend, though I guessed he was also used to wearing ridiculous outfits at work. He did a huge, eager wave in Amy’s direction; Amy waved back and indicated that one of the drinks she was holding was intended for him. She turned to me.
“Can you cheer up, please?” she said. “You already brought an old lady as your date. You can’t bring bad vibes too.”
Amy skipped off, and I tried to figure out how to exude happiness or at least confidence, almost instantly admitting defeat and ordering a tequila soda instead. Across the room, Emily let her new husband hoist her onto his shoulders, his head disappearing beneath the huge, fluffy skirt she’d changed into for the party.