Autobiography of a Fat Bride (8 page)

The videographer kept his distance until the dance was over, when he proceeded to torment me about taking the frigging garter off. He was sure to catch a wonderful shot of the drunkest, sweatiest man at the wedding as he unabashedly tackled the three-year-old ring bearer in a shameful yet successful effort to catch the damn thing. This was the same man who had marched around the reception, telling various people, including my parents, what “hot lovers” Italian women were and how the groom, whose name he did not know, was going to have to let the bride, whose name he also did not know, lead in bed, since she looked like she was more than familiar with the trail.

When we discovered that one of my husband’s aunts was now parading around the reception with the garter stretched around her neck, we were also able to figure out that the horrible, drunk, sweaty man was her date.

He was vile, he was vulgar. He was so sweaty that he looked like he had just walked straight out of an adult bookstore, and as he shook his head to the music, droplets scattered as if he were a dog shaking out its coat after an especially wet bath. His head was like a sprinkler. As the sweaty guy contorted his body to make every letter corresponding to “YMCA” that was pumping out over the speakers, he sang along, pointed, and put on the same kind of show I was sure he did every Friday night at karaoke. He was at our wedding, feeding off of it like a virus, and all I could think was “I hope the check you wrote to us as a wedding gift clears my bank account before you die from the heart attack you’re about to have on my dance floor.”

The videographer, however, adored him, and found him such a great form of nonstop entertainment that he’s in our wedding video more than either the bride or groom,
combined.
It’s all documented as he dances, sings, and tells assorted guests, particularly my Nana, how that poor groom was probably not going to get a wink of sleep for the next week because of his hot and horny ball and chain.

Finally, after the videographer suggested that we stage a fake good-bye shot, I had my chance.

“Did you have a nice time?” I asked him. “Because you ate at my wedding, you drank at my wedding, you made an
M
with your arms with the human water fountain over there, so I’m thinking that you enjoyed yourself at my wedding, am I right?”

“Oh, sure,” he said as he picked up the camera and started filming me. “I had a great time. Now, when you’re waving good-bye to your crowd, look happy, but a little sad, like a clown. It would be great footage if you could get a couple of tears going.”

“That’s good, I’m glad you had fun,” I continued. “But now it’s my turn to have fun. See, to you, I’m just another chick in a white dress that you get to order around, but this is my wedding. I had to overcome A LOT to get here, including, but not limited to, singing with junkies, getting naked with strangers in dressing rooms, seven days straight of brushing dreads out of my hair, and a scare with VD. I would like to enjoy what is left of my wedding, but in order for that to happen, you must leave.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” he said as he put the camera down. “I was paid to shoot this wedding.”

“No, no, no, no,” I said slyly as I wagged my finger in front of him. “You were only paid a
deposit.
That’s only
half.
Since, however, you are a bastard and I hate you, I would suggest you leave the premises right now if you want to see the other half of your fee. And if you don’t believe me, I wouldn’t mind one bit if you called the district attorney’s office or my gynecologist to see exactly how good I am at writing bad checks. It’s just a shame that you won’t be here to film yourself getting thrown out of my wedding, because so far, I think that’s going to be the best part of the whole day. Unless, naturally, a plane lands on you in the parking lot.”

He just looked at me, and I walked away.

“Where’s the videographer going?” my mother said as she watched him pack his stuff into his car and drive off.

“He got eighty-sixed,” I said. “See, this is the time when it pays off to have bar friends, including bouncers who donated their services in lieu of a present.”

“Oh, good,” my mother commented. “A drunk bride. How pretty. You’re acting like Liza Minelli at your wedding! Where is that bartender? I’m going to sue that moron, I paid him extra to pour you weak drinks!”

If my mother wanted to see a good example of inebriation, all she had to do was look at Jamie. She shot out on the dance floor like a bullet, wineglass in her hand, as soon as the DJ played “Walk This Way.”

“I love this song so much,” she shouted as she ran, “that it makes me want to quit my job and become a stripper!”

While my mother’s friends looked on, dancing in their step-together-step Protestant Accountant dance, Jamie planted her legs firmly apart and whipped her head around like she was putting out a fire with it.

“Just give me a keeeeeessssss,” she sang to herself, her eyes closed. “Like this!”

“What is it that she does for a living?” a woman from my father’s office asked me from behind a cupped hand.

“She’s a microbiologist,” I said flatly, not taking my eyes off my best friend’s Aerosmith-induced fit. “Cancer research. She’ll probably save your life one day.”

As soon as the song was over, the DJ announced that it was time for all of the “old maids” to gather on the dance floor, a phrase that did not sit very well with one particularly pickled microbiologist, since she is exactly, to the day, a week older than I am.

She looked at him, pointed her finger with her free hand, staggered several feet, and then shrieked, “Whaddaya mean
old maids,
ha? The term is
unclaimed treasure,
buddy,
unclaimed treasure
!”

Ten minutes later, my mother informed me that the wedding was over. She said that the caterer was tired and wanted to break down the tables and go home.

“And you know, if you get divorced within a year, you owe your father for all the liquor your friends drank,” she told me. “Because these people can outdrink the navy! Like the guy that threw up in the fondue pot and that guy over there sleeping under that table. He was the one smoking those horrible-smelling cigarettes! I bet they were French.
Young man, where are your friends?
”

I told the DJ to play one last song. I took my shoes off and sat down at an empty table.

It was over. Done with. Finished.

In a way, I was happy and relieved, but in another way, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell had happened.

The groom and I got our things together and, still wearing our wedding clothes, piled into his Honda, where my dress proceeded to become garnished with grease and car dirt.

We drove to Circle K and got ThirstBusters, and then went home.

We were married.

It Takes Guts

I
t was gray, steaming, piled high, and smelled like a sewer when the plate was placed in front of my husband.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

Despite the reflex that urged me to vomit, I smiled. “Looks good,” I said from behind my teeth. “Dig in!”

He hesitated for a moment, then picked up his fork and pushed around the contents of his plate.

I was trying very hard to concentrate on my own food, chicken-fried steak, which arrived a second after my husband’s. Chicken-fried steak. Tested and true, I live for this stuff. But the smell—or rather stench, shall I call it—wafting over from the other side of the table hit me with the same speed my mother’s open-handed slap did a split second after the first time I called my little sister a “bucktoothed retard.”

Honestly, I couldn’t raise my eyes, I just could not bring myself to do it. I stared at my own meal, cut a piece of steak, and then took the first bite.

I had already sensed trouble long before our lunch reached the table. My husband, friend to all men, embracer of all cultures, had done a stupid, stupid thing. As the waiter at my favorite soul food restaurant was about to take our order, he mentioned that the special that day was chitlins. I passed over that information with a stern grimace, and delivered my choice of chicken-fried steak. My husband then told the waiter that he would like pork chops, and then paused.

“On second thought,” he said as he looked off into the distance, “I think I’ll have the special.”

Now, if my life was a comic strip instead of the senseless repeatings of tragedy and disappointment that it is, the next frame of this scene would illustrate my husband and me sitting at our table, the waiter smiling slightly, and a lighted sign above my husband’s head—all in red letters—that read “ONE DUMB HONKY.”

Instead, the waiter took on the sly smile and went back to the kitchen.

“Are you crazy?” I shot at my husband. “Chitlins? You ordered
chitlins
? Do you have any idea what that is?”

“No,” my husband admitted. “But I think it might be part of a neck bone.”

“I don’t,” I replied. “I think it’s skin. Little chunks of pig skin all fried up and fatty.”

“Well, I’m adventurous,” my husband continued. “You know I like to experiment with food.”

Oh yes, I knew that part quite well. I’ve seen his examples of food research on numerous occasions, like the time he dumped an entire sleeve of saltine crackers into a glass of milk and produced glue strong enough to hold up drywall; gobbling up Dinty Moore beef stew or chili cold and right out of the can; the regular habit he had during his bachelor days of preparing a box of “economy” mac and cheese by forsaking the milk and butter and simply using water to mix the sauce instead; and another favorite meal of his that consisted of boiling some macaroni until limp, squirting a packet of Taco Bell hot sauce on it, and proclaiming it “mighty good eatin’.” All of those occasions, however, were rather innocuous compared with this one. At least during those times, we knew what part of the animal the food came from, and how many months a normal person would have to go without sustenance before he actually considered eating it.

“I bet that you’re going to get a plate full of nothing but boiled lips and assholes,” I predicted in a whisper, adding, “Cracker!”

I think it’s safe to say that the aroma of the chitlins arrived at our table before the vision of it did.

I shot my husband another look, as if to say, “I told you, no more farts in public places,” but I was wrong.

Boiled, gray, and piled up real high on that plate was a heaping helping of intestines.

That’s what I said.

Guts.

Now, I really don’t want to criticize the delicacies of a heritage that isn’t my own, but my mother used to make something similar called tripe, and I can say confidently that it looked equally obscene and smelled just as bad as my relatives gobbled it up. As a child, I just stood by, imagined a peaceful place and the wish list of toys I hoped to get on my next birthday in my head, and did the best I could to suppress the impulse to gag.

I put those childhood tools back to work.

“Want a bite?” my husband said as he chewed his first mouthful.

“Honestly,” I said without a pause, “I’d rather harvest my own eggs and make an omelette with my toenail clippings than sample your lunch.”

After the second bite, my husband said he was full, so we paid the bill and headed home.

Three hours later, as the memory of the chitlin smell was beginning to pass, my husband burped.

“Oh, that was bad,” he related as he fanned the stink my way.

I felt my stomach flip.

“Oh,” he continued, “God. That’s just reminding me how rough it was on one side and kind of slimy on the other.”

My stomach did a back flip and nearly dismounted.

“Please,” I said as I headed toward the bathroom. Resist, I told my stomach, lie back down. Flowers and grass, I smell flowers and grass and the smell of Bubblegum Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers—

“Jesus! Wooo!” my husband exclaimed. “It was really slimy—”

“I said please stop,” I pleaded.

“—and it felt a little chunky as I chewed it . . .”

Even though I was picturing flowers and grass and a Barbie town house fully furnished, it was too late. Way too late. I don’t even believe if a Barbie town house had materialized right before my eyes I could have stopped it. It was out of my hands, and I leaned forward and barfed straight into the toilet.

“Looks like that chicken-fried steak didn’t agree with you,” my husband said as he handed me a damp cloth. “Maybe you should have ordered what I did.”

Grin and Bare It

I
already know I’m not
Playboy
material. I’m a mess.

Aside from an episode of Forced Nudity while trying on wedding dresses, I haven’t been completely and voluntarily naked since I was four, and besides, God didn’t intend for me to be a Playmate when he made me. I don’t run, I gallop. I don’t walk, I trudge. I’ll eat lunch and talk to five people afterward before I realize I have refried beans on my cheek. I once flossed my teeth with a strand of my own hair. Each of my hips has more shelf space than my refrigerator and freezer combined.

But there I was, sitting in a villa at the Biltmore Hotel, wrapped in a thick, thirsty white bathrobe with a bunny embroidered on the lapel, filling out an application for the Playboy Playmate contest.

It wasn’t really my idea, honest. I was sent to cover the contest for a feature story, and was interviewing the photo editor, Kevin, when I decided to put him on the spot and ask him what he thought my chances were of becoming the centerfold of the new millennium.

“You should try out,” he flattered me. “You never know when we’ll want to do a spread with reporters and writers!”

“Well, If you pick me, you’ll have to pay for my liposuction,” I mentioned. “I’ve got enough lard in just one of these cheeks to make tamales for every man, woman, child, and wild dog in the state of Oaxaca!”

“You should do it,” he urged. “How else can you write about what the tryouts are like?”

He’s kind of right, I thought, and hell, I’m always up for a humiliating experience that leaves me feeling entirely inadequate and rather hopeless, kind of like coming home from a great date only to discover that on the side of your nose, there’s a whitehead the size of a marble.

Surrounding me was a room full of mutants, genetically blessed creatures that had no business calling themselves human, clad in bikinis, high heels, and robes swinging wide open. One of them didn’t have a single freckle on her entire body, and another one had what I can only assume were the bones of her pelvis poking out so far they nearly broke her skin. I looked down at my own arm, sprinkled with enough spots and dots to make their own constellation, and thought, Man, the next time someone sees the bones of my pelvis, it will be at my autopsy!

There were so many boobs in that room—I mean, they were everywhere—that the only thing that popped in my head was “Got Milk?” There was one endowed lady who was so . . . bountiful that I couldn’t figure out how she even managed to brush her teeth, and that’s when I realized I was staring at THEM. At her. I felt like a guy, but I couldn’t help it. They were circus big, and defied gravity so devoutly I was positive the implants were reinforced by magnets.

“How many payments do you have left?” I wanted to ask her, but was afraid that she’d hit me with one of them and knock me out cold. So what if my “best feature” touches my lap when I sit down, so what? I reminded myself. At least they don’t accrue an annual percentage rate on my Visa.

I took a deep breath and settled down to fill out the application form.

Height,
the application requested.

“5′6″,” I fudged.

Weight.
“N/A,” I wrote.

Hair.
I thought a moment. “Clean,” I jotted. “AND strong enough to dislodge a particularly stubborn piece of corn!”

Special Achievement.
“In 1994, I quit smoking,” I scribbled, “gained forty pounds, and got a guy to marry me anyway.”

I signed the model release just in time for David, the photographer, to tell me that he was ready for me.

“Okay,” he said as I entered the bedroom they had set up as a studio, “you can disrobe now.”

I untied the robe and stood there.

“Um,” he said, looking at me, still covered in my gray jumper, black shirt, and tights. “Didn’t you want to . . . change?”

“If I take any of this off,” I said kindly, “waves of horror will burn your corneas to a crisp, and you’ll probably grab the nearest utensil to claw them out yourself. Really, I’m acting in your best interest.”

David nodded. “Okay, well, then, lean on the bed over here and kind of shake your hair with your hands,” he instructed me. “Now smile!”

I leaned on the bed, I lifted my arms up to tousle my hair, I smiled. Then I smelled bagels. Onion bagels. “You have snacks in here?” I asked, looking around.

“No,” he said as he clicked the first photo. “Turn your head more to the right.”

I complied, thinking him stingy not to share until I caught a really strong whiff of a Jewish deli and realized it was coming from my right armpit.

“Well, that’s enough of that pose!” I said, shooting my arms straight down to their sides.

David came over and positioned me for the next photo, turning me completely around. “Hold still,” he said as he backed away. “Hey, I think lunch is here. I smell onion bagels!”

I stood staring at the wall, and then it hit me. “You’re taking a heinie shot!” I cried. “You’re shooting my heinie?”

“It’s a big lens,” he commented. Click. “Okay, we’re done. You did VERY WELL.”

“You know my mother is going to make me go to confession for this,” I said as I handed him back the bathrobe and gathered up my stuff. “But if you choose me for a pictorial of reporters, the only way I’ll do it is if you put my nudie shots in between Barbara Walters’s and Helen Thomas’s.”

On my way out, I passed by the girl I had gawked at earlier. I smiled. She smiled slightly, sweeping her eyes over my jumper, and then sneered.

I stopped. “David said I did VERY WELL,” I mentioned. “But I think I’ll actually score a lot higher on the essay part of the contest.”

Her face dropped. “There’s an essay?” she said, shocked.

“Oh yeah.” I nodded. “With footnotes and everything.”

Visibly, her panic grew. “I can’t write with my feet!” she cried.

“Better start practicing!” I said with a tiny giggle before I headed out the door.