“It’s a gay wedding, Oliver,” I reminded him for what might have been the hundredth time. “There’s no point trying to make it not-alternative because in the eyes of the law and most of society it’s alternative by definition.” Moving a stack of papers that I tried really hard to keep in the right order, I sat on the sofa. “Besides, it’s not like Priya has no sense of occasion. She wouldn’t send us somebody who’d play lesbian thrash metal over the vows. And also, would there be anything wrong with having a DJ playing lesbian thrash metal?”
Oliver looked up sharply from his spot on the rug. “Yes. The fact that it would be thrash metal. I am not getting married to thrash metal, lesbian or otherwise. I don’t think that’s a personality flaw, I think that’s a very reasonable preference.”
“Fine, I’ll book us a string quartet.”
“I didn’t say book a string quartet. You can book whoever you like.”
I tried to roll my eyes without Oliver noticing; it didn’t work. “What I would like is to save a few quid, get a bloke with a laptop, and not have to use my zero musical knowledge to decide which of nine identical-seeming groups of blokes in waistcoats are going to do covers of Ed Sheeran songs at the only wedding we’re ever going to have. Especially since neither of us like Ed Sheeran.”
“I thought ‘Photograph’ had its moments.”
“‘Photograph’ does not have its moments,” I yelled. “No Ed Sheeran song has moments. I can’t believe I’m marrying someone who thought ‘Photograph’ had moments.”
Oliver threw his hands in the air again. “You’re marrying someone who is occasionally able to resist the hipsterish urge to dislike popular things.”
“I like plenty of popular things.” My head was starting to hurt.
Talking to my boyfriend was actually giving me a headache. “It’s just none of them are made by smug ginger men.”
“Lucien.” Clutching at his forehead like he too was getting a headache, Oliver ticked something decisively off his list. “Hire. A.
Band. I don’t care which band, but hire a band.”
“Fine. Do you want the Shine, Harvest Moon, or Ulysses?”
“What part of I don’t care am I failing to communicate?” snarled Oliver.
“And do you not think,” I asked, “that it is kind of fucked up that you don’t care what band we hire?”
“There’s no point caring—the wedding is in three weeks. The choice now is either band or no band.”
“Or DJ,” I pointed out.
There was a pause, then Oliver turned around and stared like he didn’t recognise me. “Oh my God, this was your plan all along, wasn’t it? We agreed on a band—”
“We didn’t agree.”
“You said that you’d book one—”
“You told me to book one.”
“And then you just dragged your feet until it was too late so you could get your own way regardless. And that, Lucien, is exactly the kind of thing your father would do.”
It was, but that was pretty fucking rich coming from Mr. My-Way-or-the-Highway. “Oh, right, yeah, I’m definitely the one acting like his father here. Because this high-handed, controlling, patriarchal weirdly heteronormative attitude you’re taking doesn’t remind me of anybody at all.”
One of the many difficult quirks of my relationship with Oliver was that we had diametrically opposed anger reactions. And now Oliver was anger-reacting all over the place, which for him meant getting very tense and calm. “It isn’t weirdly heteronormative,” he said, “not to want to get married in a pub.”
That was another old argument, and another one where we’d sort of stopped talking and then Oliver had invented a compromise out of nowhere. “It wasn’t a pub, it was a vintage venue space with an attached bar, and I thought it was nice. You on the other hand
wanted to get married in a Victorian banqueting hall full of pictures of dead white men.”
“Firstly”—Oliver began counting on his fingers—“it’s Elizabethan.
Secondly, it seems a little appropriative and disingenuous to complain about pictures of dead white men when we are ourselves both white men. Thirdly, that venue was at Gray’s Inn, which has personal significance for me because it’s a body I actually belong to.
And fourthly, we didn’t go with that venue either, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”