Like like the the the death

This weekend, I went to Boston to witness Firecracker’s wedding dress search.

You probably already know how I feel about weddings, because that’s like all I ever write about. That, and death.

Yep:

I hate weddings!

I’m afraid of/obsessed with dying!

That’s basically it. In the interest of time, you might want to stop reading now.

I may hate weddings, but I’m crazy about my sister. I’m cool with being her lady-in-waiting, so long as it doesn’t involve carrying anything. So I Fung Wahed up there on Friday afternoon.

On Saturday morning we arrived at Yolanda’s in Waltham, and walked through the Marble Foyer and up the Bridal Staircase into a windowless hell of mirrors and pedestals and wedding dresses. Yolanda was there herself: a bridal vampire from Transylvania. She was a ringer for Zsa Zsa Gabor, clicking around on stilettos, yelling at brides.

“Stop walking! You step on dress! You ruin it!”

“It depends on how much of boobs you want to show! How much of boobs you want to show?!”

I kept my head down when she was nearby, lest she discern my freakitude and cast me out.

In my regular life, I’m not usually the freaky one. Seriously, compared to Left Hook, I’m a prep! But this was a bridal emporium outside of Boston. I kept catching glimpses of myself in the mirrors and thinking, Did I have to smear eyeliner all over my fucking face? And wear the shoes nobody gets? And have such ostentatious hair? Do I have to always be this person?

Sigh. Yes.

I may hate weddings and brides and wedding dresses, but do you know how pretty my sister is? Bitch can rock a dress.

After the fourth or fifth one, she came out of the dressing room and we all gasped. It was the one. I don’t even believe in that! But I’m telling you: suddenly Firecracker was a mermaid and a fairy and the prettiest princess ever, and my shriveled charcoal briquette of a heart bloomed into a bird of paradise, and I was maybe going to cry.

Also, is it legal to look that hot in a wedding gown? Watch out, Future Mr. Cracker!

The salesgirl put a veil on her, and a tiara. I felt all funny inside, and went to sit on the leopard-print chair shaped like a high heel.

On the next pedestal down there was a bony freckly girl in a huge gown with a Scarlett O’Hara skirt. Miles of ruched pale peach satin. Firecracker’s mom turned to me. [F.C. and I are halfies: different moms.] “That dress looks exactly like the inside of a coffin.”

It did. Shiver.

I realized then that there are plenty of hateful things about weddings–like phoniness and emptiness and conformity and consumerism–but the reason I really hate them is DEATH.

Or time. Or whatever. Fuck milestones! They’re morbid.

Firecracker and I can’t be grown ups. We’re fifteen and twelve! We like R.E.M., and playing Ouija board, and taking pictures of each other in the woods! She just got her learner’s permit! Where is it now, the glory and the dream? GAH.

On the bus on the way home, I thought about the last day of sixth grade. On the way outside for recess, it hit me like a lightning bolt that this was my last recess ever. It was about to be summer, and the cutest seventh grader maybe wanted to go out with me, and I should’ve been happy and excited and ready, but what I really wanted was for time to stop. Sixth grade forever!

I ruined a few perfectly good LSD trips the same way. One minute it’s oh my God this is so awesome I hope I feel like this forever, and the next minute it’s skull-and-bugs-city.

The curse of the Meta-Monster.

I put on the Silver Jews, a balm for existential melancholia if there ever was one. American Water thrice in a row, forehead pressed to the window.

The new leaves on the trees along 95 were so green, I wanted to reach into my chest and tear my fucking heart out.

by Pistol Whip | 8 May 2007 | in earnest, boring | Comments