by Theresa Alan
“Oh, he knows my feelings on strippers.”
“Do you really think that if his friends wanted to take him to a strip club, he would say, ‘No, Eva doesn’t want me to’? He’d never hear the end of it. You know how guys are. They act all tough, but secretly they’re gutless. The homosexual taboo is just too strong. Heterosexual men constantly have to prove to their friends just what manly men they are.”
I lose my appetite, mostly because I know Gabrielle is right. Will loves me, but I’m genuinely not sure he’s strong enough to stand up to his friends on this issue, particularly since he doesn’t share my feelings about how the stripping industry is manipulative and degrading to everyone involved. (Plus, it makes me hate men a little bit that they’d squander their money in such a ludicrous way. Hello, they can’t touch you, you can’t touch them or yourself, why would you put yourself into such a situation á là Tantalus—the guy who was condemned to an eternity of hunger and thirst with satisfaction always just out of reach—seems the height of stupidity.)
“Ah, well, I was hoping you’d stand up for me in the wedding,” I say to veer the conversation in a less depressing direction.
“Of course I will,” she says.
“I wasn’t sure what color dresses you guys should wear. It’ll be you and Rachel and Sienna.”
“Whatever color is fine.”
We talk a little more about how Will proposed and what my thoughts for the wedding are, and I leave the majority of my lunch uneaten.
When I come home, I feel incredibly depressed. Why can’t I just believe that now that the man of my dreams has asked me to marry him, my major goal in life has been accomplished and I can now get started on the happily-ever-after portion of my life? I wanted to marry Will, I wanted to get engaged, so what the hell is my problem? Why am I so scared?
In bed that night, just after I turn the lights off, I ask Will about the end of his marriage. “When did things start going wrong?”
“The first few years were pretty good, but then the last year…we fought a lot. About everything. And we couldn’t talk about it. When I tried to talk about things, she just exploded, like I was accusing her, like I was trying to blame things on her. I offered to go to counseling, but she’d had a bad experience with counseling in high school and didn’t trust it.”
“Did you leave her or did she leave you?”
“She came home one day and said she’d rented an apartment and was moving out.”
“How…what was that like for you?”
“It felt like a personal failure. Nobody thinks their marriage is going to end in divorce.”
Nobody thinks their marriage is going to end in divorce . I turn these words over in my mind again and again. He was willing to go to counseling. That seems to me a very positive sign for us. But I have to say, I’m extremely curious to hear X’s side of the story about how things ended.
Then I think about my conversation with Gabrielle and I turn on the light beside the bed.
“Ouch,” Will says, shielding his eyes.
“Sorry. I just need to tell you, I feel really strongly that I don’t want strippers at your bachelor party.”
“Who even said there is going to be a bachelor party?”
“I know your friends. There will be a bachelor party, and I don’t want there to be any strippers there.”
“Okay.”
His tone is casual when what I really want is a zealous response along the lines of, “I’d sooner have my scrotum pummeled by a sledgehammer than be subjected to the sight of a naked woman other than you!”
“No, Will, I mean it. This is a big deal for me.”
“Okay. I get it.”
But I can tell that he’s just trying to agree with me so I’ll turn off the light and let him sleep. “I don’t think you do get it. It’s not okay with me that you go off and pay a woman to take her clothes off.”
He lets out an exasperated sigh, which infuriates me.
“I’m sure your ex-wife wouldn’t have a problem with it.” I hiss. “God, I hate that you were married to a stripper.”
He sighs again. “I’m sorry. There is nothing I can do about my past.”
And, even though I know he’s right, I’m irrationally angry with him anyway. I grab my pillow and stomp downstairs to the living room, where I take an afghan out of the closet and make a bed on the couch. I’m crying and my breath is jagged and I hate all men right now and I vow to become a lesbian.
Except, God, can you imagine how much time it would take to get two women off? You’d be there for days.
I would absolutely become a lesbian, though, if it weren’t for the time-constraint issue.
There is a distant part of my brain that knows it was completely illogical of me to get enraged at Will for crimes he hasn’t even committed yet, but I’m still angry: Angry at Will for being a typical guy when I want more than that; angry at culture in general for treating women like background decoration; and angry at Gabrielle for taking her bad mood out on my good news.
It takes awhile, but eventually I cry myself to sleep.
Chapter 12
I n the morning, I wake up when Will walks through the living room as he’s getting his things to go to work. I quickly shut my eyes and pretend to be asleep because I don’t feel like talking to him right now—that’s just how mature I am. I hear him leave, and the next thing I hear is the phone ringing. Apparently, I’d fallen back to sleep, because the ringing phone wakes me up.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” It’s Gabrielle. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I’m sorry I was such a bitch. I was just upset about Jeremy. And Dan. And life. But I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I’m happy for you, I really am. Will is a great guy. I think you two will be really happy together.”
“Thanks. Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
“Are you busy today?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“No reason. I just called in sick because I couldn’t face the office and I was wondering if you wanted to play hooky. Maybe we could look at wedding dresses or something.”
My bad mood vanishes entirely. I’m thrilled by the prospect. “Really? That sounds like so much more fun than crunching numbers all day. I really should work though. Although the work will all still be here tomorrow, and I can put in a few hours on the weekend if I have to, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. I’m convinced. Let me shower. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
I pick Gabrielle up and drive us to Cherry Creek, an upscale neighborhood with several bridal stores. I tell the sales consultant that I don’t want anything puffy, and she keeps bringing me dresses that look like they have hoop skirts built into them.
“No, I don’t want a puffy skirt,” I tell her for the tenth time. “That’s puffy. I don’t puff. No puff. Puff-free please.”
Finally, she brings me a couple dresses that don’t look awful, and Gabrielle and I go into the large dressing room with a plush velvet curtain. I take off my clothes, and before I can get the dress on, I catch sight of my nearly naked body and wish I hadn’t. My hair looks limp, my skin looks yellow, and I have more than my fair share of belly pooch and upper arm fat.
“Ick,” I declare. “Look at me. I need to get highlights. And maybe dermabrasion. I’ve heard that makes your pores look smaller. And I may even have to get really drastic: I may actually have to start working out.”
“The lighting in here is bad, don’t let it get to you.”
“I don’t think we can blame the lighting on me being overweight and out of shape.”
“You’re not overweight. You’re not out of shape. Your hair is beautiful. Your skin is nearly flawless. You are just believing the crap that advertisers tell you. Advertisers want you to think you’re imperfect because then they can get you to think that buying their product will make you thinner and prettier and then you’ll be happy. If people loved themselves, they wouldn’t go out and spend money on clothes and jewelry and m
akeup they didn’t need in a useless exercise in trying to feel better about themselves. Loving yourself is the most radical political statement you can make against a consumer culture that tries its damnedest to convince you that you’re not good enough as you are.”
When she says that, I’m reminded of why I love her so much. Loving yourself is the most radical political statement you can make. She’s absolutely right. I have to work on loving myself, on focusing on my good qualities. Then I try on the first dress and I look like a wiener dog in taffeta, and I decide that whatever might be good about me is clearly all on the inside. I try on the other two dresses and my suspicions are confirmed. I’m hideous.
“Let’s get lunch,” I say.
We grab burritos at a fast food restaurant nearby and I take a too big bite and half the burrito pours into my lap and cheese and sour cream drips onto my hands and down my face and all I can think is, What kind of bride am I? Is this bride-like behavior? I think not.
“You seem pretty calm for a bride,” Gabrielle says, and I laugh.
“No. I’m not. I guess in some ways it hasn’t all hit me. But…I don’t know, I’m happy, but I’m also just terrified, too. There are so many things I’m scared of.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like last night Will and I got into a fight. No, that’s not true. I screamed at Will over nothing and then stomped off to sleep on the couch. I mean, with communication ‘skills’ like that, there’s no way our marriage stands a chance.”
“But you’re aware of it, which means you can change, which means your marriage does stand a chance. What did you get mad about?”
“I told him I didn’t want him to have strippers at his bachelor party, and he said that was fine, but he wasn’t taking it as seriously as I wanted him to take it. I couldn’t communicate that this is a really big deal to me. The whole thing reminds me so much of the way my parents fought. Dad would say nothing while Mom screamed about everything. I sort of feel like my communication style is a cross between theirs. Mom’s accusatory and confrontational approach coupled with Dad’s retreat and ignore tactics.”
“That’s pretty common to adopt your parents’ argument style. It becomes very ingrained after years of living with it.”
“Well, how am I supposed to change?”
“Practice. Communication is a skill you have to learn like any other. Next time you want to stomp off in a huff, you have to force yourself to take a deep breath and try to communicate the emotions you are feeling.”
“That sounds easy, but in practice…well, I’ll try.”
“What else are you scared about?”
“What?”
“You said there were so many things you were scared of. What else?”
“I guess I just have residual fears from my parents’ divorce. After they divorced, Mom couldn’t get credit cards in her name for seven years because when Mom and Dad were in the really ugly bitter throes of divorce, Dad hid his money and he didn’t make the mortgage payments or pay off their credit cards for a few months in a row and it just ravaged their credit rating. But Dad already had credit, so he could keep his credit cards, but Mom couldn’t get any new ones on her own because she’d only ever had a joint account. And I’m just so terrified of becoming dependent like that.”
“Eva, you’ve got an MBA. You own your own home. That’s not going to happen to you.”
“I know, I know. I’m not making sense. It’s just…I have a real fear of being vulnerable, and so the whole thing is really scary. I just worry…I don’t know, I don’t really think Will would ever cheat on me, but you never know. I’m trying to think of all the bad things that could happen to us and whether I’m strong enough to be able to get through the hard times. Like what if Will suddenly becomes a gambling addict or if he quits his job as soon as we get married? I had a girlfriend in college who that happened to. Her husband almost never worked the entire decade they were married.”
“Man, Eva, your anxiety disorder is out of control. Calm down. Of course, a lot of bad things could happen, but you’ll be gaining a partner, somebody who can look after you when you get sick. Someone whose shoulder you can cry on when you have a crappy day.”
“I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to be vulnerable.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you are going to get sick. There are going to be times when you need help whether you like it or not. That’s what brings people together. By opening yourself up, you make yourself vulnerable, but you also get the opportunity to connect with someone on a deep, authentic level, and that’s really something.”
“I guess. Let’s not talk about love and commitment. Let’s talk about something fun. Like weddings. Any ideas where I should have mine? Where did you and Dan get married?”
“We just said vows by ourselves at a botanic garden, and then we spent the weekend at this cabin in the mountains making love.”
“Oh. That’s nice. But it doesn’t help me any.”
She shrugs. “Sorry. Maybe you can ask Rachel.”
“I already did. She had her mother throw something together in just a couple months. She and Jon just showed up and got married and five months later it was Mom and Dad and baby Isaac makes three. Why do I have to have such nontraditional friends?”
“Maybe because you’re a nontraditional girl?”
Chapter 13
T he night passes and Will and I don’t say anything about the tiff we had the night before. Will and I don’t argue often, and it’s because both of us aren’t fans of confrontation. He doesn’t mention a word about our squabble, and I sure as heck am not going to bring it up, in part because I don’t even know what to say or how I feel. How am I supposed to communicate my feelings when I don’t know what it is I’m feeling?
The next morning, I wake up early and work hard on the Woodruff Pharmaceutical project for several hours. The sense of accomplishment makes me feel good, and I allow myself to take a break in the afternoon. Foolishly, I begin searching for information on weddings online. At first, I look up practical stuff about what Will and I will need to do to get hitched in the eyes of the law in Colorado, but then I’m quickly off looking at wedding dresses and bridesmaids’ dresses and sites that offer wedding tips. At some point, I admit to myself that I’m not going to be getting any more work done today, and I head off to the bookstore, where I do my best to give away all of my money buying every book that I can find on planning a low-budget wedding. I spend so much on books there is no way the adjective “low-budget” can be applied to my wedding any longer. I buy every bridal magazine I can get my hands on and books on wedding traditions and how to write your own vows. I’m embarrassed about the vow book because the whole idea of writing your own vows is to be original and not worry about what other people have done, but when I see the book, I snap it up instantly, because I have no idea how to even begin writing vows. I feel like it has been decades since the last time I went to a wedding.
There were summers in my midtwenties when it felt as if I went to weddings every weekend, but eventually, after everyone I knew was married, the pace of the weddings I was invited to slowed considerably. The last wedding I attended was last summer and I can’t remember anything about it. I wish I’d taken notes.
I flip through the planning books, and instead of feeling like I’m beginning to get a handle on what it will take to plan a wedding, I’m starting to get alarmed because there are so many things I never realized I should be worrying about. The book admonishes me about the importance of a centerpiece for the tables, and I’m suddenly thrown into a panic. What makes for a good centerpiece? I can’t even begin to imagine, and even though I shelled out hundreds of bucks at the bookstore, apparently none of the books I bought have suggestions for this particular topic. Where is help when you need it?
Then I read about how some reception halls won’t let you have a family member cut your wedding cake for you, yet they insist on charging $1.50 for every slice they cut. $1.50 a slice! Th
e more I read, the more I learn about how everyone who comes in contact with the bride and groom are going to try to screw them out of money at every possible opportunity. Like the photographers who insist on holding on to the negatives so if you want extra copies of a particular shot, you have to pay them exorbitant prices for it. I read how you can’t bring your own bottles of wine to a reception hall so you have to buy the wine from them, which naturally costs twice what it would to buy it wholesale. Bastards one and all.
When Will gets home from work, I get started on making us dinner. Tonight, I’m going with a Middle Eastern theme—falafel and hummus and couscous and pita.
When dinner’s ready, I call up the stairs to him, “Will! Dinner’s ready!” Right after the words come out of my mouth, I’m struck by this weird feeling, like I’m playing house, and somebody is going to catch me pretending to be a grown-up.
We sit down to eat and the odd feeling passes. The dinner turns out to be highly edible, which is a pleasantly surprising and unexpected development.
“Do you care if we have a wedding?” I ask Will as I stuff a pita full of falafel and onion and tomato.
“I’d be happy just to elope.”
I nod. “I figured you’d say that. Mom sort of talked me into a wedding, and at first I thought I agreed with her, but then today I went and bought a ton of books on planning a wedding, and now I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Whatever you want, hon.”
I tell him about all the dastardly evil-doers out in the world who wanted to cheat brides and grooms out of their money, but then I go on and on about how much fun it would be to get all of the family together.
“Except for Mom and Dad, of course. There is some serious potential for ugliness between those two, especially if they get some alcohol in them. The last time they were together was for Sienna’s graduation, and they fought like caged animals. I hope they’ve grown up since then, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
I ask him to make up a list of people he wants to invite, and how many family members he thinks he’ll ask to come. Will’s father died two years earlier of a heart attack, and so his mother is the only close family he has. It makes me sad that Will had to mourn the loss of his father without me in his life. There are all these huge life events that Will has experienced that I wasn’t a part of, and I hate it. I hate that I wasn’t there for him.
