Tis the Season
Cass had to go to a wedding, and she fretted a little about the arrangements. Really, on a hobo budget, getting out of the city is hard. You spend days figuring out the cheapest things to do, which may involve taking the subway, transferring crosstown, then taking the green line on the other side up, to which there is a bus that will take you into the heart of Queens and to the airport ... and the bus stop is in an area that makes you vow never to go to the east side again, even though it's hardly representative of the entire east side, but believe me, I don't need much convincing.
As with the internal workings of weddings for the immediate party, there are questions that guests have to consider. What do you wear? How do you get there? Do you need a date? Can you slink in without one? Do you need to memorize a stock list of answers for the elderly? Heels? Easy Spirit or bejeweled Birkenstocks? What is hobo etiquette for gift-giving? Wrap it in the prettiest paper you can afford and hope that it doesn't leak or stink? So I ventured forth some options. In this recounting of a wedding long past, I hoped to alleviate whatever worries Cass had concerning her own impending wedding trip. Here's mine:
Did I tell you about the time I was supposed to be a bridesmaid for my college friend, then I freaked (it was my last year/semester as a grad student and I had just lost teaching/funding and I hated living in tooth-crack/ass-crack Indiana and I hated everything) and I declined but said I'd show up (in spite of all the above and having NO money) and the day before I was supposed to drive out the guys changing the oil broke something in my car, got me a rental car (that I paid for), which was an extended cab Ford F-150, which I drove across what felt like half the country ... then to find that I arrived so late for the wedding that when I roared up in my TRUCK, the wedding party that I was sort of supposed to be a part of was outside taking photos?
I think I gave the wedding couple like these freaking insane ginzu knives (I forgot what they're called but they're these super-chic Japanese things that could kill you with a nudge). And of course, half delirious and drunk on half a glass of red, I announced to the bride at the reception: I'm the only chink here.
We're still friends, believe it or not.
***
Well, I, Tiresias, can no longer afford chef’s knives. I watched people slosh wine all over each other while dancing to the full jazz band. I ate my dinner, but regrettably, this was not the kind of wedding where I could ask for seconds and then pad my old-lady Gucci bag with biscuits and gravy and chicken wings and whole ears of corn and an entire plate of kung pao chicken (which is what my mother and her old-lady friends do at Korean weddings). I stayed just long enough to drink down a hot coffee and then took the cigarettes I bought (with an old college friend, who snuck out with me shortly after I entered the hall to the gas station down the road) and grabbed the little box of Godiva chocolates at my table and stuffed three all at once in my mouth and drove from rural Connecticut to Philadelphia that night, arriving at my friend's apartment at 3:45, with chocolate drool and bits of tobacco around my mouth. On the way, I hallucinated twice and nearly drove in to the median.
So if you find that you're feeling gob-smacked and tired from the usual six weddings in one summer and that your vacation time and money has been spent listening to little Asian girl string quartets playing the Palchelbel Canon and Ave Maria when you could be farting on your couch listening to Led Zeppelin and Prince, take heart. Think of the memories you will help create. Think how steadily and freely the wine will flow. Think upon my own tale of woe. Think of the cost of this wedding. I was there for three hours, tops, and it cost around $1500, plus four days from school, two course incompletes, four days constipation, and long drives back and forth through Ohio, easily the most boring state this side of Oklahoma.
It was the last time I was asked to be a bridesmaid, ever.
As with the internal workings of weddings for the immediate party, there are questions that guests have to consider. What do you wear? How do you get there? Do you need a date? Can you slink in without one? Do you need to memorize a stock list of answers for the elderly? Heels? Easy Spirit or bejeweled Birkenstocks? What is hobo etiquette for gift-giving? Wrap it in the prettiest paper you can afford and hope that it doesn't leak or stink? So I ventured forth some options. In this recounting of a wedding long past, I hoped to alleviate whatever worries Cass had concerning her own impending wedding trip. Here's mine:
Did I tell you about the time I was supposed to be a bridesmaid for my college friend, then I freaked (it was my last year/semester as a grad student and I had just lost teaching/funding and I hated living in tooth-crack/ass-crack Indiana and I hated everything) and I declined but said I'd show up (in spite of all the above and having NO money) and the day before I was supposed to drive out the guys changing the oil broke something in my car, got me a rental car (that I paid for), which was an extended cab Ford F-150, which I drove across what felt like half the country ... then to find that I arrived so late for the wedding that when I roared up in my TRUCK, the wedding party that I was sort of supposed to be a part of was outside taking photos?
I think I gave the wedding couple like these freaking insane ginzu knives (I forgot what they're called but they're these super-chic Japanese things that could kill you with a nudge). And of course, half delirious and drunk on half a glass of red, I announced to the bride at the reception: I'm the only chink here.
We're still friends, believe it or not.
***
Well, I, Tiresias, can no longer afford chef’s knives. I watched people slosh wine all over each other while dancing to the full jazz band. I ate my dinner, but regrettably, this was not the kind of wedding where I could ask for seconds and then pad my old-lady Gucci bag with biscuits and gravy and chicken wings and whole ears of corn and an entire plate of kung pao chicken (which is what my mother and her old-lady friends do at Korean weddings). I stayed just long enough to drink down a hot coffee and then took the cigarettes I bought (with an old college friend, who snuck out with me shortly after I entered the hall to the gas station down the road) and grabbed the little box of Godiva chocolates at my table and stuffed three all at once in my mouth and drove from rural Connecticut to Philadelphia that night, arriving at my friend's apartment at 3:45, with chocolate drool and bits of tobacco around my mouth. On the way, I hallucinated twice and nearly drove in to the median.
So if you find that you're feeling gob-smacked and tired from the usual six weddings in one summer and that your vacation time and money has been spent listening to little Asian girl string quartets playing the Palchelbel Canon and Ave Maria when you could be farting on your couch listening to Led Zeppelin and Prince, take heart. Think of the memories you will help create. Think how steadily and freely the wine will flow. Think upon my own tale of woe. Think of the cost of this wedding. I was there for three hours, tops, and it cost around $1500, plus four days from school, two course incompletes, four days constipation, and long drives back and forth through Ohio, easily the most boring state this side of Oklahoma.
It was the last time I was asked to be a bridesmaid, ever.
posted by hobos in space @ 12:15 PM
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