Why Not Me? (4 page)

I find that when I want to take an unpopular opinion about a controversial subject, it’s useful to be really organized. The rest of this essay will discuss the various mild injustices that I have experienced at the many weddings I have attended and explain, hopefully compassionately, why I dislike them so much.

There are so few nonreligious rituals we have with our best friends. We can marry our boyfriends and we can baptize our children, but we can’t do anything “official” with our best friends, except get matching tattoos of clovers, which no one actually does because who would let a friend do that? So the only real ritual we have is asking each other to be maids of honor or bridesmaids.

Asking your friend to be a bridesmaid is one of the modern paradoxes: no one actually wants to do it, but everyone would be offended if you didn’t ask.

And why doesn’t anyone want to be a bridesmaid? Because what women who have never done it before don’t realize is that, when you are a bridesmaid, you are required to be a literal
maid
for the duration of the wedding. You are in charge of the practicalities and logistics of the ceremony, and not the fun parts, such as providing emotional support, making music playlists, offering fashion advice, and gossiping about which people from college got fat. The only difference between you and an actual maid is that you aren’t getting paid and you are supposed to love every second of your job. You even have to wear a uniform: a dress in the same color as the other maids so everyone at the party knows whom to ask when someone is looking for a fridge in which to put her breast milk.

This is particularly outrageous because the groomsmen do absolutely nothing. And I mean
nothing
. Being asked to be a groomsman means you get to give an incredibly inappropriate two-minute speech and every woman there will still want to sleep with you. As a bridesmaid, on the morning of the wedding you will be unfolding the rusty metal legs of a banquet table and in the distance you will see a useless groomsman playing Frisbee with a dog. To rub salt in the wound, he might lightly ask, “Is there anything I can do to help?” knowing full well no self-respecting bridesmaid will task him with any job because he will do it too slowly.

But at least being a bridesmaid is a social activity and can be emotionally rewarding. What is not emotionally rewarding is a honeyfund. There are few things that I have more ideological problems with than the concept of the “honeyfund.” Hear me out: I love the idea of giving my newly married friends a meaningful present. But I don’t love being asked to be an investor in a crowd-funded honeymoon. Here is why: it’s not especially emotionally rewarding to know that I paid for three of five nights of a yurt rental in Big Sur. It’s so transactional. Sure, everyone knows all wedding registries are essentially transactional, but at least they are transactional about objects, not about people and experiences. I know you say you have too much stuff in your apartment and what you really want is a killer honeymoon in Thailand. But I feel like, if you have every material good you want, you’re probably doing well enough to plan a honeymoon that is within your means. Because a honeymoon is, after all, a sex vacation you’re giving yourself after a massive party in your honor.

This brings me to the most common misconception I think couples have about a wedding registry. A gift registry is not about the relationship between man and wife; that’s what vows and a marriage are for. The registry is about the relationship between the wedding guest and the couple. It’s about your loved ones being able to give you a souvenir of their affection in the form of a tangible house-helpful gift. This is my long-winded way of telling you that you will take my Calphalon wire cooling rack and you will like it.

So why do I participate in any of it? Why not RSVP “no thanks” and hide behind my very busy schedule? Well, a) sometimes I do, and b) when I don’t, the simple fact is that the brides are often my closest friends.

With my friends, the sad truth is that our best “best friend” days are behind us. In college, we used to be able to meet each other in the common area of our off-campus housing, excited about our evening ahead, which consisted of someone making an enormous tureen of pasta and drinking wine from a box while we took turns regaling each other with details of our terrible love lives. Playful arguments would become fits of uncontrollable laughter, and, like magic, that experience would be crystallized into a private joke, and the private joke would get boiled down to a simple phrase, which became a souvenir of the entire experience. For years to come, the phrase alone could uncork hours of renewed laughter. And as everyone knows, the best kind of laughter is laughter born of a shared memory.

In my late twenties, when I moved to Los Angeles and all my friends seemed to spread out around the country, I would tell myself, Once I am on hiatus from the show, I will visit them and everything will be the same. But the hiatus would come and go, and a movie role or rewrite job would keep me in L.A. Until I realized: this long expanse of free time to rekindle friendships is not real. We will never come home to each other again and we will never again have each other’s undivided attention. That version of our friendship is over forever.

And when I remember this, and it usually happens in those awful, quiet evening hours on Sunday nights, after dinner but before bed, I just lie on my sofa and cry for half an hour. I slip into a melancholy that I know is somehow tied to a deep-seated fear about not being married and having kids myself. Because, at its heart, my annoyance or impatience with my friends’ weddings stems from my own panic and abandonment issues.
Why are you leaving me behind like this, friend? What am I supposed to do all by myself now that you are gone?

It’s traumatizing to think that a best friend could become just a friend. That’s because there is virtually no difference between an acquaintance and a friend. But the gulf between a friend and a best friend is enormous and profound. And if I look at it that way, I think I can see the value of a wedding. If you’re my best friend and the only way I get to have dinner with you is by traveling thousands of miles, selecting a chicken or fish option, and wearing a dress in the same shade of lavender as six other girls, I will do that. I won’t love it. But I love you.

MINDY KALING, SORORITY GIRL

T
HOUGH I WENT
to a very artsy private high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I wasn’t raised by parents with a liberal attitude toward alcohol. There was no whimsical “sip of wine at Thanksgiving” for us kids while we were still teenagers, like we were in a Noah Baumbach movie. That was for the cool Jewish kids. This was the Clinton era, and my parents were already worried about the moral deterioration of the country. So I drank skim milk with dinner, and did so pretty much every night until I was a story editor at
The Office
.

Thus, I never learned moderation. When I arrived at Dartmouth College in 1997, my attitude toward alcohol was that it was a delicious and dangerous treat that, when obtained, needed to be ingested quickly in case someone tried to take it away. You know, the way a raccoon eats from a garbage can.

People who hear I went to Dartmouth are often surprised by how much I liked it. I think it’s because they correctly assume that Dartmouth is extremely white, fairly conservative, outdoorsy, and in the middle of nowhere. And while all these things are true, I still loved it. How is that possible, you ask? How could a nature-hating, sedentary, aspiring (can I still say this?) fag hag feel so at home in rural New Hampshire?

I’ll tell you how. All that hunky blond tail is how! Just kidding. I find blond men creepy and unnatural! Just kidding. Every guy hated me! I loved Dartmouth because the minute you set foot on campus, it’s like you’re in a watercolor painting from your dentist’s office called
New England College
. Because it looked so much like the idealized film version of college, I always felt that cinematic college-y things were going to happen to me. Also, most of my fellow students did not look like me or share my interests, which actually made me feel special. Dear old Dartmouth, whose motto is “
Vox Clamantis in Deserto
,” which translated from Latin means “White men crawling out of the forest.” In Hanover, New Hampshire, a chirpy, Indian improv comedian who was constantly talking was something of a novelty to the scores of wordless men named Brian. And because Dartmouth was founded in 1769, it had lots of those quintessentially old East Coast college traditions like secret societies, ghost stories, catchy old fight songs that are later deemed racist, and, most important, a Greek system.

For a moment let’s pretend that I was born a white man. Chris Christie?
How dare you.
Obviously I would be Jon Lovitz. Now imagine the white male version of me as a freshman at Dartmouth in the late ’90s. Kind of a sweet bozo, right? Awful cargo pants, boat shoes, inviting everyone back to the basement of his frat to drink and play pong. This sweet young Lovitz version of me would probably have died of alcohol poisoning before sophomore year, since frat guys had ready, daily access to alcohol and, because at eighteen, I must admit, I loved to drink. At Dartmouth in 1997 you would walk into the basement of any fraternity and there was a 100 percent chance you would find a warm keg of Bud and a glassy-eyed young man with undiagnosed depression eager to pour you some. I could not have handled that.

Luckily, I was not born a white man.
¹
I was born a socially anxious Indian woman. And while I loved my college and my extracurricular activities, I didn’t have access to any kind of parties. Which is why I wanted to be in a sorority.

SEEKING FRIENDSHIPS AS SEEN ON TV

I have a complicated relationship with the Greek system. One side of my personality is absolutely suited for sorority life. I’m an organized person who loves the structure of weekly meetings and scheduled socializing, and I even see the value in hierarchies. I think gentle hazing of the “pledges must wear such-and-such outfits” variety is charming and fun. I am a firm believer that the best friendships come from mandatory time doing tedious chores. Like when a bad kid and a good kid have to spend Saturday cleaning the teachers’ lounge and learn they’re not so different after all. That said, I do think that perpetrators of some of the worst, most sexist, and most dangerous behavior at Dartmouth were from the Greek system. But, I thought, those are fraternities, not sororities. I’ll never make another woman drink her own urine while my friends chant, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” Sure, it’s hilarious and probably cements friendships for a lifetime (not to mention I once half-read an article about Madonna drinking her pee for health reasons), but it’s wrong. So, I thought, maybe I’ll join a sorority.

At Dartmouth, there are many sororities, each with its own reputation. To paint a picture of my options at the time, I will describe some of them now. Please know that these are all subjective, probably offensive, doubtlessly incorrect sentiments based on attending Dartmouth College in a pre-9/11 era.

Kappa Kappa Gamma—
Svelte blond or East Asian women, frequently seen running a seven-minute mile on the treadmills in the Zimmerman Fitness Center, mouthing words to Dixie Chicks songs. Who I would cast in a movie about them: Rosamund Pike.

Delta Delta Delta—
Never not smiling, never not baking cookies. Their finely toned arms replace a finely honed sense of irony. Who I would cast in a movie about them: Carrie Underwood.

Kappa Delta Epsilon—
Brunette Kappa. Most rumored access to cocaine. Highest proportion of tramp stamps. Sexy party girls who could do cool things like rip a condom open with their teeth. Who I would cast in a movie about them: Mila Kunis.

Sigma Delta—
Brassy girls, athletes, drinkers who could “party like the guys.” Girls who owned dogs. Feminist and lesbian-friendly. Who I would cast in a movie about them: the background actresses of
Orange Is the New Black
.