first comment - a color - Scott Jordan: fuchsia
second comment - a woman's name - Arana Estariel: Henrietta
third comment - a movie - Ross Sormani: Hairspray
fourth comment - a song (it has to be one that I know!) - Nancy Sirvent: Jingle Bells
fifth comment - a hobby - Chris Deboard: curling
Dear Topher,
Hey, babe! How the hell are ya? I hope they’re treating you OK up there. I’m sure it can be rough sometimes.
Anyway, maybe you won’t feel so bad about your own situation when you hear about the past few days that I’ve just had.
Let me just say that I have never in my life been so happy to be back in Manhattan.
I think I might have told you in an earlier letter that Bill’s younger brother, Stephen, was getting married. Well, the blessed event was last weekend and Bill was in the wedding party, so we had no choice but to pack it up and fly out to the Great Midwest. I’m not even sure what state I’ve been in since last Thursday, for Christ’s sake! I think it started with an “M”, like Minnesota or Montana or Missouri or something, but I couldn’t even find it on a map if my life depended on it. To be honest, though, I feel like I’ve actually been in some kind of bizarre alternate universe instead of some vast Midwestern state shaped like a Kia Soul, the way events have unfolded. It’s been horrible, both in an excruciating way; and in sort of a fascinating, horrifying yet amusing way like a John Waters movie (and how appropriate, for reasons I’ll get into later…). Half of me felt like I was being boiled in oil and couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there, and the other half kept smiling and mentally taking notes so I could somehow describe the scene to my friends back home, like you.
It started out alright. At least Bill was able to cash in some miles and we were able to fly First Class from New York out to Chicago. I hate flying Coach. It’s not that I’m elitist, really, but Coach is just so depressing. They’ve got them all packed in like cattle and everyone looks so tired and nervous all the time, with the flight attendants walking up and down the aisles and looking disapprovingly at the rows of seats like nuns at a School for Unwed Mothers. All that’s missing is a ruler which they can slap across the palm of their hand as they patrol the aisles, and brandish threateningly at anyone who dares to unfasten their seatbelt or lower their tray table at the wrong time. I much prefer First Class, where there’s room to stretch out and the flight attendant will actually offer you a second glass of champagne instead of making you grovel for a bag of roasted peanuts.
After we arrived at O’Hare, though, we had to change planes to get our flight out to Bill’s hometown. The E-ticket said the flight was on United, but a closer look showed that the fine print read “this portion of your trip will be provided by one of United’s fine regional code-share partners.” Turns out that the “regional partner” who would be taking us to Farmville was called “Traktor Air”, and as we approached their counter, in the basement of the airport, I saw that their logo pictured a pig in overalls waving from the pilot’s seat of a World War I-era biplane. This was the moment when I felt that things were somehow going awry and that I was now stepping into Backwards Crazy Upside-down Bizarro World.
They guy behind the Traktor Air counter was also wearing overalls. I could not tell if he was wearing them because that’s what he usually wore, or if he was supposed to match the pig in the company logo. Incongruously, he said, “Good afternoon, gentlemen, welcome to Chicago O’Hare. How can I help you today?” in a perfectly businesslike manor, despite the fact that he looked exactly like a refugee from “Hee-Haw.” Once we got checked in and had our seat assignments and boarding passes, he said, “I will be at gate B-56 to meet you guys at 2:20.”
“Are you flying the plane, too?” I asked, only half joking.
“Golly, no,” he said, finally breaking his businesslike character. “Jethreen is flying the plane today!”
This did not comfort me.
As it turns out, the logo of Traktor Air isn’t actually too far from its actual business model. We had to board the plane by actually exiting the airport and walking across the tarmac. While the plane wasn’t an actual WWI biplane, it was not much newer than one. It sat about 12 passengers plus the pilot and copilot and looked to be powered by two feeble propellers and an elaborate system of rubber bands. Captain Jethreen boarded the plane after we did, and made her way up to the front seat. She looked exactly like you would expect someone named Jethreen to look: like a linebacker dressed up as a farm girl for Halloween, complete with pigtails and a red gingham -check blouse. She wore overalls, too, with a pin in the shape of wings over her enormous left breast, and a captain’s hat which was two sizes too small for her hair, fastened on with bobby pins. She was followed onto the plane by the “flight attendant”, whom she addressed as “Momma” but who later introduced herself as “Inez, your Director of In-flight Services”. Inez was about 5’3”, probably about 89 years old, and wore a stewardess uniform from about 1964 which she must have bought at a Goodwill. It still had a faded “TWA” patch over the breast pocket. I thought that “Director of In-flight Services” was an impressive title for someone who did nothing more than show us how to open and close a seat belt as the plane was taxiing towards the runway, and point out to us the location of the door which we had just come through. No drinks, no food, not even a copy of USA Today, and Inez was asleep and snoring in the back row 10 minutes after takeoff. Anyway, I leafed through Skymall magazine for a few minutes, marveling at $300 barbecue covers and wondering if anyone ever really orders a whole new set of luggage while they’re sitting in an airplane. There were only two other passengers besides me and Bill, a tired looking businessman who never said a word to anyone and stared out the window the entire flight, and a middle aged housefrau who was reading “50 Shades of Gray” who kept saying “Holy shit!” every 10 minutes as she hungrily turned the pages.
As we flew along, I realized that I was on my way to a wedding and I didn’t even know the bride’s name. “What is Stephen’s fiancée’s name?” I asked Bill.
“Henrietta,” he answered.
“Really?” I said. “How unfortunate.” Henrietta always struck me as the kind of name that parents would give to a young daughter when they had really been hoping for a son. For nine months, they had planned for young Henry to come into the world, painted the nursery blue and got a crib in the shape of a race car; and then when they found out that he was actually a girl, they couldn’t be more creative than to just change his name to “Henrietta.”
“What do her friends call her?” I asked. I mean, if your name is going to be Henrietta, you might as well make the best of it and go by “Etta” or “Ri-ri” or something.
“Henrietta, as far as I know,” Bill answered.
Anyway, I spent the rest of our Traktor Air experience staring at the upholstery on the seats around me. I mean, who picks this stuff out? Who decided that orange fabric with streaks of brown and gray and little flecks of green would be the perfect complement to the interior décor of the Boeing Deathtrap 2000? For the rest of the flight, I couldn’t stop thinking how sad, how very unfair it would be, were this flight to crash in flames into some cornfield out here in Paducahville, that this hideous fabric would be the last thing I would ever see. Fortunately, we landed safely a little while later in a place called Springfield. This does not help me pinpoint exactly where I’ve been the last few days because there is at least one “Springfield” in practically every state in the union, not to mention the fact that it was an additional two hour drive from there to Bill’s parents’ house and further still to the town where the wedding was.
So, we said our goodbyes to Jethreen and Inez, and it was time for us to say hello to Stan and Harriett, Bill’s parents. This was the first time I had ever met them, by the way. Bill always described his folks as “good, honest Midwestern stock,” and judging by first impressions, that’s exactly how I would have described them. Both in their mid-60s, Stan stood about 5’10”, an average build, a windbreaker jacket over a plaid shirt, beige slacks and a white belt, and white sneakers, the no-name brand you buy on sale at Walmart. Harriett was about 5’4” and looked as if she had just stepped out of a JCPenney catalog from 1978. Stan and Harriett know that Bill is gay and that he and I have been “gay married” for over two years, but they don’t exactly approve and it’s not something they like to talk about. Harriett looked vaguely worried and nervous, like she hoped that if I was going to start singing “Hello, Dolly!” or something, that I would at least wait until we were in the car and nobody was watching.
The ride out to Bill’s old home was filled mostly with catching up on the siblings- there are too many of them for me to keep track of. All boys, except for the one sister whose name is Jane, and they all have such white-bread, ordinary names I’m afraid I’ll never figure out who is who. Bill, John, Tom, Steve, Bob- really? Not a Brandon, a Logan or an Ezekiel in the bunch.
Anyway, we finally arrived at the homestead but we were only there for the one night as we had to hit the road early in the morning to get to the wedding, which is even closer to the middle of nowhere, apparently. The town where Bill grew up is called Cabot Cove, just like the one on “Murder, She Wrote.” It’s not so much a town, from what I could see, as it is a quantity of space between some stop signs, although I did see a fire hydrant and a mailbox.
How shall I describe dinner with the in-laws? The food is precisely what I would have expected: meat and potatoes. Pot roast, boiled carrots and a baked russet. As I mentioned before, Bill’s and my “arrangement” is something that Stan and Harriett don’t really discuss, though, and after a while it became something like the proverbial elephant in the room. They were afraid of starting any conversation which might eventually lead into uncomfortable territory, and I had frankly run out of small talk and phony compliments on her bland cooking and her Fingerhut catalog décor. The last half hour of the meal was spent pretty much in silence, each of us pretending to be consumed by the act of eating. All I heard was the clang of silverware on Corelle dinnerware, and the constant tick, tick, tick, of the clock in the next room.
Mercifully, Bill excused us to bed right after dinner, citing a long flight and an early start the next morning. We slept in his childhood bedroom. In twin beds.
Anyway, the next day was when things really started to get colorful, when we actually met the family of Stephen’s fiancée, Henrietta. A three hour drive from Cabot Cove brought us to Oakdale, which is not really the home of the Shoemaker clan, but it is the home of the Château Trois Fontaines and its attendant accommodations, the Three Fountains Motor Lodge; which was to be the setting for the upcoming nuptials. The Shoemaker family live a few towns over, apparently, where they have a “ranch” in a place called Fairview.
We checked in to our room at the Motor Lodge. At least Bill and I would be able to sleep in the same bed, albeit a full-size. I was marveling at the little paper hats they put on the filthy water glasses and the strip of paper across the toilet which said, “Sanitized®! -for your protection!”, when Bill told me we had to get going for the rehearsal. It had to be kind of early because there was something special planned for afterwards, apparently, which involved even more driving.
Fortunately, I was not actually in the wedding party myself, so I did not have to participate in the rehearsal. Instead, I was able to find an inconspicuous spot on a pew in the Trois Fontaine’s “Everlasting Bliss” chapel and simply observe.
Henrietta’s parents, the Shoemakers, are named PeaceDog and Sunflower. Do I need to say more? They were both raised by hippies on a commune in California where they manufactured and sold macramé holders for hanging plants. After being married in a Pagan-Wiccan-Peyote ceremony in the 80s, they moved out to Fairview where they started "the ranch”. Everyone was sort of vague about what went on at “the ranch”, but I get the impression that it involves a lot of people who go for multiple days without showering, and some kind of “crop.”
Henrietta has three sisters: Roberta, Josephine, and Johnna. There must have been a lot of disappointment in that family. They are all totally plain and perfectly ordinary, but something about straight girls at weddings makes them look and act like giggly little schoolgirls playing Princess, and something about that I find kind of amusing.
Bill’s brothers are all tall and handsome just like he is. I actually have a hard time telling them all apart. Anyway, they all shook my hand and acted really happy to meet me; and they all would sort of slap me on the back and say stuff like, “How about those Yankees this year?” in an effort to make me feel comfortable, like “just one of the boys.” Instead, it had the opposite affect.
Anyway, the rehearsal went the way rehearsals do, with everyone bumping into one another and looking awkward and uncomfortable. I didn’t pay too much attention, and eventually it was over. I asked Bill what the special event was which had been planned.
“Curling!” he answered. “Turns out that Henrietta is very active in the Midland County Ladies’ Curling Association, and they thought it would be a fun thing to do as a family.”
I was very happy to hear this. Finally! Something I felt totally at home and comfortable with. Curling! Why, I had even brought along an extra blow dryer and a curling iron, knowing how frantic things can get at a wedding sometimes.
Imagine my dismay, then, when I found out that this had nothing whatsoever to do with aesthetics, cosmetology, fashion, or even sitting in a comfortable salon. Curling, it turns out, is some kind of sport, which involves giant stones, ice, brooms, and sitting in a freezing ice rink for three hours eating party platters from Subway and drinking hot chocolate from a vending machine. It’s kind of like, if Bocce had been invented by compulsively neat Canadians, you would have Curling.
Quite frankly, it was torture. My butt was frozen from sitting on that damp bench in that frigid ice rink, and I had run out of sincere-sounding ways to respond to all the people who kept coming up and saying, “Geez, isn’t this fun?”
By the time we got back to the Three Fountains Motor Lodge, all I could do was change into some dry Calvins, tune in to a Valerie Bertinelli movie on Lifetime and fall asleep with my face in the pillow.
The next day was the day of the actual wedding. The Three Fountains offered a breakfast, so we saw practically everyone from the day before in the breakfast room that morning. The women all looked nervous and had their hair up in curlers, and the men all looked bored and unshaven and like they’d rather be watching a ball game. That’s when Bill told me that the wedding had a theme.
“A theme? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I don’t know. I was afraid it might freak you out or something. I’m sorry,” he answered.
“Well, what is it?” I asked him. “What’s the theme?”
“Hairspray.”
“What?” I asked, incredulous. “They’re theming a wedding based on hair care products? Like “Tying the Aqua-Knot” or something?” I couldn’t believe my ears.
“No, like “Hairspray” the movie,” Bill said. “I guess it’s Henrietta’s favorite.”
I thought for a second. “The John Waters movie, or the John Travolta movie?” I asked, crossing my fingers for the correct response.
“John Travolta.” He must have seen the look on my face, because the next thing he said was, “I know. I’m sorry.”
I went back to our room to get dressed and prepare myself for the day to come.
Well, I hardly recognized the Everlasting Bliss chapel when I arrived and found my seat on the Groom’s side. Theme or no theme, the bride’s color scheme was, apparently, fuchsia on fuchsia. Fuchsia bunting hung from the ends of the pews along the aisle. Fuchsia flowers, fuchsia candles, fuchsia curtains, fuchsia this, that, and the other thing. At the altar, Reverend Jim, a practitioner from the Shoemaker’s earthy-crunchy Church of Hemp and Eternal Happiness, sat in his fuchsia vestments, looking like a cross between “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.
Then the wedding party filed in, and the whole “Hairspray” thing began to come into focus.
“It’s Madison time, hit it!” played through the chapel’s speakers, and one by one the bridesmaids, ushers, and the groom came down the aisle dancing the Madison. I could not believe my eyes.
Henrietta’s father, PeaceDog, had dressed in drag, like John Travolta had as Edna Turnblad. Except PeaceDog is tall and skinny and he came off looking more like Almira Gulch in a crinoline prom dress than a customer at Mr. Pinky’s Hefty Hideaway.
I struggled to take it all in. The men, looking handsome and nervous and a little wobbly, like men at weddings everywhere, in their tuxes rented from Men’s Wearhouse. Across the aisle, the girls, Roberta, Josephine, and Johnna, and Bill’s sister Jane, who was the Maid of Honor, in their “Hairspray”-themed, poofy 1960s dresses, all bathed in the angry reflection of fuchsia bouncing off of everything in the room: and PeaceDog in the front row constantly fiddling with his corset and scratching his head under his wig with a ball point pen. It all made my eyes want to bleed.
All eyes, bleeding or otherwise, turned to the bride when, instead of the traditional Wedding March, the opening bars of “Good Morning Baltimore” started playing, and Henrietta lip-synced, badly, her whole way down the aisle. Problem was, the song is like four and a half minutes long and it only took Henrietta about thirty seconds to make her way to the altar, which left everyone sort of uncomfortable and shifting in their seats as she mouthed the words to “Good Morning Baltimore” to Reverend Jim for four more, long minutes.
I should mention that Henrietta had chosen, as her wedding gown, a version of Tracy Turnblad’s “roach dress”. It was white, but that was where its resemblance to any other wedding dress ended. The dress had been appliquéd throughout with cut-outs of cockroaches, in black, including the veil. The overall impression was that the bride was about to be devoured by flesh-eating insects, and I personally found it rather unsettling. As the day wore on, I found myself at a loss when people would say to me, “Wasn’t the bride just lovely?”
Finally, the song ended, the happy couple exchanged their vows, and the solemn, ceremonial part of the day’s debacle had ended. We all filed in to the Trois Fontaine’s Versailles Ballroom for the reception.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Emory!” the DJ announced. Everyone applauded, and I was relieved to see that Henrietta had removed her veil, which at least lessened the illusion that she was being attacked by mutant cockroaches.
When the clapping died down, the DJ continued. “I’ve been told by Henrietta and Steve about how they met, more than four years ago. It seems they had both gotten seasonal jobs back then, as Happy Helpers over at Santa’s Village in Fairview. Henrietta was a waitress at Frosty’s Cafeteria and young Steve helped to care for the reindeer at Rudolph’s Petting Zoo. They met, they fell in love. And today, on their wedding day, the new couple would like to dance their first dance as man and wife to the same song they danced to together for the very first time, all those years ago, at the Santa’s Village Employee Christmas Party."
This was the moment, Topher, when all sense of logic, of order, of good taste, seemed to be lost. I sat down at my fuchsia-covered table and watched, as a bride wearing a homemade wedding gown decorated with cockroaches, took the man she loves into her arms, and started to sway as the opening bars of their First Dance started to play.
You may wonder, Topher, exactly how one dances to “Jingle Bells.” I wonder the same thing, too, even after witnessing it myself. From the opening bars of, “Dashing through the snow…” to the jarring refrain, “Jingle bells! Jingle bells! Jingle all the way!”, I witnessed as these people danced. They simply held one another and swayed back and forth, the way teenagers do when they play “Color My World” at a school dance. I have never in my life witnessed anything as absurd or as incongruous. As the song ended, and the final refrain of “in a one-horse open sleigh!” began to fade away, a stunned silence filled the room. Until one person began to clap, slowly, steadily.
The one person clapping was me.
I clapped. I clapped and laughed and cheered, because I had never seen anything so wonderful; so horribly, unbelievably wonderful in my entire life. That’s the thing about life: just when you think you’ve seen it all, heard it all, or know it all, you haven’t.
I could never have imagined that I would be witnessing what I was witnessing, and yet, there I was. You just never know what life is going to show you.
And then the DJ started playing “The Electric Slide” and it was a wedding, just like any other. We all started dancing and laughing and drinking and celebrating life and love, just like families at weddings everywhere.
The next day, as we made our way back east, back to New York, I felt as if I were slowly coming out of a dream. As we made the long drive from Oakdale to Cabot Cove, from Cabot Cove to Springfield and back on Traktor Air, and back into our comfortable First Class seats and back to New York, it felt as if the fantasy world was slowly fading away, layer by layer, kind of like a deep-sea diver slowly rising from the ocean floor, bit by bit, back to the surface.
Back in Manhattan, when we got out of the cab in front of our apartment building, the first thing I saw was a guy wearing an empty potato chip bag on his head, and a wino urinating on the sidewalk. I knew right away that I was home, back where everything was normal.
So anyway, Topher, that’s my adventure from the Heartland from the last few days. Hope you enjoyed my telling it to you; and that maybe it took you away from your situation, for a few minutes at least. Bill and I still find it hard to believe that you got so much time just for shoplifting one lousy pair of shorts from Abercrombie & Fitch, even if it was your third offense. We’re planning to come up for visiting hours next month. Let me know if there’s anything we can bring you, aside from the ol’ hacksaw baked into the bundt cake.
Stay strong, my friend, and we’ll see you soon.
Love and laughs,
Nathan
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