Getting Married (13 page)

H
aving goals is the only possible way to be productive when you work as your own boss, particularly on Fridays, when every fiber of my being longs for five o’clock to roll around, so I can turn off my computer and go downtown to drink beer.

Five o’clock finally comes, and I go to Mickie’s to wait for everyone to arrive. There is a large crowd of men sitting next to me. I can’t help overhearing their conversation. From the context, I gather that the men are all teachers at the local high school.

I take out my notebook that I carry with me everywhere and I jot down a to-do list of things to do this weekend for WP and for the wedding.

“Are you getting this all down?”

“What?” I look up from my notebook.

“It looks like you’re taking notes on all that we’re saying,” one of the men says.

I smile. “Don’t worry. You’re safe. I’m working on something else entirely.”

“No, no, you should get this down. This is a good line: ‘They like to rename the wheel before they rebuild the wheel.’ Huh? What do you think?”

I’m not actually sure what the hell he’s talking about, but I say, “That’s a pretty good line.”

The men keep talking and laughing and including me in their conversation. I make sure to flash my engagement ring around a lot so they know I’m not available.

I know it’s okay to talk with strange men at a bar, but it feels a lot like flirting, and I’m not even attracted to any of these men. I realize suddenly that my flirting days are over. I can’t say I’m exactly upset about it. I never much cared for flirting in my single days. I always imagined that one day I’d somehow miraculously become a flirting machine, but it never happened. (Hence the reason I had to meet my husband-to-be over the Internet.) That life I imagined—where I am a sexy, courageous woman who can chat up a roomful of men—is never going to come to pass. That dream is over.

Abby and Jerry are the first ones to arrive and we stake out a table for six. Abby and Jerry, like many of our friends, have been together for years and have never gotten married. Abby would like to get married, but she’s not dying to. She, just like me, is unsure about whether to have kids, and without kids in the picture, she’s all right with doing the living-together thing without a ring on her finger.

Richard and James arrive a few minutes later, and Will arrives seconds after them. Richard is tall with dark hair and glasses. Abby and Jerry are both petite and thin; Abby is Korean with thick, long straight hair and Jerry has a thick swirl of dark curls kept under control by frequent haircuts. James has the thick neck and crushingly broad chest of a defensive lineman and the blond hair and blue eyes of an angelic-looking choirboy.

After everyone says their hellos and we have a very “Cheers” moment—being at a place where everybody knows our name—I ask Richard if he ever went on that date with the sister-in-law of his coworker.

“It was all set up for last Saturday,” he says. “We’d talked on the phone a few times. We were going to meet at Marlowe’s downtown. I went there and I waited outside for about fifteen minutes, and then I went inside and nursed a drink for twenty minutes. I called her on my cell phone, but there was no answer. Twenty-five more minutes went by. I called her again. No answer. I left another message, this time saying that I was leaving.”

“Are you sure you didn’t miss her? How were you supposed to recognize her?” I ask.

“My coworker, Mary, the one who set us up, she’d given me a picture of Brenda, that’s how I knew what she’d look like. I didn’t hear a word from her all day Sunday. I didn’t know if she somehow got a glimpse of me and decided I was hideous and snuck away before we could meet, or if she chickened out. I don’t know what happened. So I went into work Monday morning and Mary came up to me first thing looking all apologetic. She said, ‘I’m so sorry Brenda wasn’t able to make it.’ I said, ‘What happened? It would have been nice if she could have called me to tell me she couldn’t make it.’ Mary said, ‘She only had one phone call, and she used that to call her lawyer, because she was
arrested and sent to prison
.’”

Richard can make a facial expression of the hapless, put-upon sap like nobody I know, and between his story and his beleaguered appearance, we all hoot with laughter, a pound-the-fist-on-the-table laugh riot.

“So that really didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped,” he says when the laughter dies down.

“Poor Richard,” I say. “What are we going to do with you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened with your last girlfriend? Why didn’t that work out?”

“It was a long-distance thing. We met at a wedding. She lived in D.C. working as a lobbyist; I live here. It was fun for awhile, but it’s hard. You visit each other on the weekends, and you feel like every single second has to be fun and sexy and exciting. It’s not real life. But the main thing was that she wasn’t going to leave D.C. and I wasn’t going to move to D.C., so there was no way it could work out.”

“Do you want to get married some day?” I ask him. One of Will’s friends had been so soured on the idea of commitment after his divorce that he told me he didn’t believe in sticking around in a relationship for more than three or four months. Then, seconds after he told me that, he asked me if I had any single friends I could set him up with. I told him the truth: For you buddy, I don’t think so.

Richard nods. “Sure. Some day.”

I nod my approval. I know some women over thirty think there aren’t any more good men out there, but the world is full of guys like Richard. Guys are out there, they’re just not out at bars hitting on women. Instead, they’re at home playing computer games, like Everquest and Dungeon Siege, and hence you have no way to find them.

James, Jerry, Will, and Richard have worked in the computer industry for the last ten years. The programming community is small enough in Denver that they have all worked together at one point or another. When Will first got out of college, he worked at a company with James. At his next job, he worked with Richard. Then Richard left that company and took a job working alongside James and Jerry. You get the idea.

Computer games, current events, movies, and politics make up the bulk of our happy hour conversation. We always laugh a lot when we’re together, mostly because the guys tease each other relentlessly. They’ll give Will a hard time about his increasingly bald head or James a dig about his weight or torment Jerry about being “a cheap Scottish bastard” or taunt Richard about his lack of a girlfriend. If someone teased me about my appearance, weight, character flaw, or pathetic love life, I’d burst into tears and hide under the covers for a week. But when guys do it to each other, it’s gut-bustingly hilarious.

“My brother is having a white trash party in a couple weeks,” Richard says. “Maybe I’ll meet someone there.”

“A white trash party?” Will asks.

“You have to dress up in your finest trailer trash garb, and you’ll be expected to eat hot dogs and potato chips, that kind of thing.”

“Sounds great.”

Will and I get our email invite to the trailer trash barbeque the next day. Moments after I mull over the email, which instructs us that we have to dress up, the phone rings. It’s Gabrielle.

“Hey, Gabrielle, what’s up?”

“Nothing. Is something wrong? You sound distracted.”

“No, sorry, I was just reading email. Sorry. Will and I just got invited to a white trash barbeque.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not really sure. I just know we have to dress up and bring food like Cheez Whiz and crackers or Jell-O or franks and beans, that sort of thing.”

“Who’s hosting the party?”

“Friends of Will’s. He’s got a group of married friends that I never see because they’re too busy being married and raising kids and living far, far away in the suburbs. Apparently, they like to throw theme parties.”

“You’re not really going to go to this party, are you?”

“Um, I think so. Why?”

“Don’t you realize how classist that is? You wouldn’t go to a party that made fun of black people, would you?”

“Of course not.”

“Don’t you see how working class white people are the last group it’s socially acceptable to mock? You wouldn’t engage in racist or sexist behavior, but this kind of classism is okay?”

“Ah…I see what you’re saying. Let me ask you this: Would you have a problem with us dressing up like rich people and pretending we liked opera and caviar?”

“That’s different. There’s a striking power differential with the upper class…”

Gabrielle and I argue about this for awhile longer. “Argue” isn’t really the right word. “Discuss” is more like it. I like Gabrielle for just this reason. When I talk to her it’s like being an undergraduate student again—I question things I normally wouldn’t think twice about.

Gabrielle talks about stereotyping and prejudice and fear of the “other,” whatever that is. I see Gabrielle’s point, but I think it sounds kind of fun to drink cheap beer and eat crackers with Cheez Whiz. Anyway, I want to meet these friends of Will’s. I don’t want to refuse to go to the party for political reasons and have them decide I’m a politically correct lunatic before we even meet. I have to pick my battles, and I just don’t think this is going to be one of them. I end our conversation by agreeing to disagree with her and then asking what’s new with her.

“I’ve got a date,” she announces.

“That’s great. With a guy you met online?”

“With a woman.”

“Um, excuse me, what?”

“With a woman. Her name is Cara. I met her through Bev. Bev is that really cute bisexual meat-eater who thinks she is a lesbian vegetarian who sometimes slips up. She has blue eyes and short black hair?”

“Yeah, I remember Bev. What I’m stuck on here is the part about you going out on a date with woman. A date-date?”

“A date-date. I believe that sexuality is artificially constructed by society, you know that.”

“But you’ve just happened artificially to choose men as your sex partners up until now?”

“I was married for seven years, dating women wasn’t an option. Anyway, so I met Bev and her girlfriend, Ashley, for lunch last week, and they brought along Cara and right away I was attracted to her and I thought, why not? Later I called Bev to find out the story with Cara, whether she was dating anybody, whether she might be interested in me, you know. So Bev set up a sort of group date for us Saturday night, and I want you to go. Just you. No boys allowed.”

“Why me?”

“It’s my first date. I’ll just feel better if you’re there.”

“Ah, okay, I guess I could come.”

“You’re the best. Thank you.”

T
hat afternoon Will gets home from playing basketball with Richard, James, and Jerry. His skin is still damp to the touch, but his sweat has mostly dried.

He leans in to give me a kiss, and the visor of his baseball cap hits my forehead, keeping our lips several inches apart. He smiles and lifts his cap and readjusts it so it’s on backward, and there is something so boyish and cute and sexy about that simple move, with his forearms flexing ever so slightly, and it reminds me that even when I want to plonk him on the head, I’m still hopelessly attracted to him. We kiss, and the kiss leads to groping, and the groping leads me to take him by the hand up to the bedroom, where we make love, slowly.

Afterward, our naked bodies lying entwined, I tell him about how Gabrielle has a date with a woman and I’m going with her.

“Huh,” he says.

“Would you ever want to have sex with me and another woman at the same time?”

“No, of course not.”

I smile. I love this man so much, even if he is a complete and utter liar.

I
used to go to gay bars a lot in college, mostly because they had better music than most of the straight bars. But it’s been awhile since I’ve been to one, and as Saturday dawns, I’m feeling apprehensive about fitting in.

Thus begins Operation-Pass-for-a-Dyke. This involves going sans makeup, of course, and wearing copious amounts of flannel, obviously. I pull my curly hair back into a loose ponytail and inspect my visage. Verdict: I’ll never pass. They are going to know.

Gabrielle picks me up and we drive down to the bar.

“Do I know any of these women?” I ask.

I’ve met many of her lesbian friends at various parties she’s held over the years, mostly women from her sociology program.

“Yeah. There’s Susan, that cute Latina.”

“Was she the one that was in the total standard, cliché lesbian attire, the Doc Martens, the bad attitude?”

“Yeah, but she can surprise you. When she takes those combat boots off, her toes are painted bright red or orange.”

“No way.”

“Way. I completely love that about her. Then there’s Ashley.”

“I remember Ashley.” Ashley had bleached white hair with two-inch black roots. She worked at a coffee shop and reveled in her poverty. She was always talking about being a member of the working poor. She still hadn’t gotten over Ani DiFranco getting a boyfriend.

When we got to the club, Susan, Bev, Ashley, and Cara are already there.

“I need something to eat. Where’s the waitress? I’m famished,” Susan says.

“I can’t believe this drink cost five dollars. That’s sinful,” Ashley says. “Three dollar cover, five dollar drinks. This place is exploitive. I mean, really.”

“Did I tell you guys I bumped into my ex-girlfriend Gina last week?” Bev says.

“You didn’t tell me,” Cara says.

“Ooh, Gi-naaa,” says Susan.

“Who’s Gina?” Ashley asks.

I keep alternating my gaze from Cara to Gabrielle, trying to see if I can discern any chemistry between them. Nothing seems obvious to me, but then, the entire situation feels surreal.

“Gina is this woman that I was madly in love with in college. She’s the sexiest woman on the planet, no question. I was just crazy about her. So was every other lesbian in New England.”

“Bitter, party of one,” Susan says.

“I’m not bitter. So here’s the deal, I was at lunch last week with some clients, and I see her there. Even though I’m totally over her,” she gives Susan a look, “she’s still a babe. I excuse myself from the table and walk up to her. She tells me she’s living in New York now. She didn’t know I was living in Denver. I tell her I’m a graphic designer, and she tells me that she’s still doing the photography thing, but now she’s also modeling. Turns out she’s in town promoting the ‘Women Only’ calendar.”