Grey's Journal

I flew into Buffalo International airport in the middle of the summer to my first wedding.  Well, thankfully not my first wedding, but the first wedding I was ever to attend, that of my friend from college, Eric.  I received the invitation in the mail several months earlier -- a tiny envelope filled with a large number of papers: the invitation, a prayer, a (for no reason I could discern) piece of tissue paper, a hotel recommendation, directions to the church (that would prove worthless), an RSVP card, and a website address where all this information was replicated.  I looked at the RSVP card with its little check boxes and fired up my email client instead.


To: Eric
From: Grey
Subject: RSVP

Got your invitation today.  Didn't I already tell you I was coming?  Well... I'm coming.  See you in August



From: Eric
To: Grey
Subject: Re:RSVP

You have to use the RSVP card.



From: Grey
To: Eric
Subject: Re:Re:RSVP

Why?  Didn't I just tell you I'm coming?  Oh, I may bring `Darby' as well.



From: Eric
To: Grey
Subject: Re:Re:Re:RSVP

I don't know why you have to use the card either, I'm just following the rules.  I'll see you then and be prepared to have a great time.


I rustled up an international stamp and sent the little card across the sea, even though I'm sure after Eric received my email, he turned to his bride-to-be and told her, ``Grey's coming.'' and she said, ``Okay, I'll check him off the list.''

So, months later, I stood in the Buffalo International airport.  Though `international' in this case implies vastly more than a city like Buffalo can aspire to.  Outside flew five flags: the US flag, the Canadian flag, the New York State flag, the POW MIA flag, and a flag to let people know there was an ATM inside.

Five flags.  One foreign country.

Beneath these flags I met with the other two members of my quartet of male friends from college, Troy and `Vinny'.

Troy, who lived in Upstate New York, picked Vinny and I up from the airport.  Troy and I had nowhere to be until the wedding tomorrow, but Vinny needed to be at the wedding rehearsal in the church.  Vinny had a part were he had to read from the bible, a duty Troy had also been asked to perform, but declined on the grounds that he `didn't like to read fairy tales'.

It was now as we tried to get to the church that we discovered the instructions were useless.  For those not familiar with driving across America, directions are only composed of two things: numbers and compass points.  For example, every time I drove from college in upstate New York to my parents' house on the tip of Long Island, my father sent me all the information necessary to get home safely.  This consisted of several maps carefully taped together on which he highlighted the route covering the three States I needed to travel.  The maps for the eight to ten hour drive could easily cover a large dining room table, but the actual written directions fit on an index card:

There were no numbers nor compass points on the directions to Eric's church.  I, as the navigator, informed Troy of this.

``Oh, really?''  He asked in an overly calm way, as though someone just informed him that the car had no tires.

``Yes,'' I continued.  ``There is, however, a little map of a half square kilometer around the church.''

``We use miles here in, what I will remind you, is the greatest nation on Earth,'' interrupted Vinny from the back.

``Suck by bullocks.''

``Anything else on that map?'' Asked Troy.

``Someone highlighted the 300 meter drive from the edge of the map to the church.''

``Oh, very helpful.''

We promptly got lost in Buffalo.  Not that there is a whole lot to got lost in, the vast bulk of the city is a semi-urban purgatory with pylon placement so ugly it must be deliberate.  The city center has six tall buildings -- all of which feel empty -- hollow props erected by the tourism board to convince visitors the city is more important than it is.  (`Second largest city in New York State with nearly one million people!'  I could hear Darby interrupt in my head.  She is a constant cheerleader for the city of her birth.)

We passed what looked like a small Trafalgar Square: a central column surrounded by four lions.  Expect this was in the middle of a traffic roundabout, there were no tourists with children and the lions had their heads in their paws.

``Those are the saddest statue lions I've even seen,'' I said.

Troy glanced over from his driving.  ``They look like lions at the zoo: depressed and defeated.''

A few blocks later, we passed a wall painting of the same statues.

``Buffalo should really change its motto from the retarded and grammatically incorrect `an all America city!' to `city of the sad lions''', said Troy.

We ended up in what can only be described as Arkham Island -- an isolated, decaying industrial site apparently used by General Mills.  Located on an island separated by a rusting Gothic bridge, large buildings decayed next to still-used factories pumping out mountains of cereal.  The place was sharp lines, broken windows, hooks and gears, all smelling of Marshmallow Lucky Charms.  It is the only part of the city worth seeing.

Eventually we gave up trying to find our way out and called Troy's younger brother who googled the directions for us so would could finally drop Vinny off at the church.

``I bet you don't have this back in your stuffy Olde England,'' said Troy as he flipped on his country music for the final leg of the drive.  He treated me to the genre's mainstay of unfaithful women and faithful dogs before getting to the good stuff in his collection: a song about an argument with a car mechanic and a love song to alcohol before the Man in Black came on with I've Been Everywhere a song with the same idea of `international' as Buffalo's airport: The US and Canada only.

We pulled into the parking lot an hour late for what should have been a ten minute drive.  ``Did the directions help?'' asked Eric when he came out of the church to greet us.  ``I highlighted the route myself," he said, beaming.








That night Troy and I went to the only entertainment available in the rural town where he lives: Foxies, a little strip club not a mile from his house.  Along the way we picked up two more passengers, Troy's younger brother, Scott, and Troy's fiancee, Courtney.

I had heard rumors of Troy's engagement through Darby but refused to believe them until he told me for himself and I saw the girl.  Far, far too many of my friends are getting engaged.  I should be happy for these couples, but I must confess that I think only about these engagements in terms of the terror they inspire in me.

The first friend to tell me was Rob.  Rob was in my year in physics and the closest person to a genius I have yet known.

He called me into one of the labs our senior year to tell me that he had proposed to his girlfriend.  Later Rob told me that my reaction was unique.  All his other friends said `congratulations' and gave him a hug or handshake.

``You just stood there and went white,'' he said.  ``I could see the horror in your eyes.''

To this day, I'm not sure I've ever properly congratulated him.  I just made him tell me over and over how this had come to pass.

Later, I consoled myself with the knowledge that Rob is a genius, and men whose minds work on a higher level may be excused for their strange behavior.  And, for a long time, Rob was just an anomalous data point, something to be erased off an otherwise perfect straight-line graph.

But, in the past year, no less than five friends of mine presented me with evidence that their lives had left the land of no responsibility making me, not them, look more and more like the anomalous data point.

Troy was the most recent addition and the one that struck me the hardest.

I've never really gotten along with, nor felt like I understood, my own gender.  Much of maleness seems alien and stupid to me.  But Troy is an example of All Things Right with the y chromosome.  He's blue collar, but also one of the smartest guys I know, he's direct, strong, doesn't shy away from fights in bars with patrons or bouncers.  He wins these fights, not from skill but through the ability to take a beating until the other guy is too tired to fight, then Troy kicks his ass like a white-trash Mohammed Ali.

When I pictured Troy in the future, he would be the same as I knew him in college -- getting drunk and running away from the cops for minor acts of violence or vandalism.  Of the physics quartet, I always assumed that Troy would be the last married (though the first with an illegitimate child) and now, here he was.  Engaged.

But, it took a special type of woman for Troy, and Courtney was her.  It was her birthday, and where was she, but in the strip club with Troy.  By her choice.

Troy's little brother looked at me strangely after we had settled into the strip club.  Apparently, men who wear glasses while taking notes as girls dance naked mere feet away are an unusual site in rural America.

``What're you doing?'' He asked.

When I explained my journal he immediately told me: ``Well, you've gotta include me!''

``I'll see what I can do,'' I said, as though the matter was out of my hands.

Later that night as Troy, Courtney and I sat by the stage, Scott remained behind at the bar to talk to one of the strippers.

``Well isn't he cute,'' said Courtney.  ``Look at him, with his little backwards cap and the words `I'm 21, please take my money' written on his forehead.''

We watched the girls dance to their songs before leaving the stage to work the crowd or give private dances in the back.

I'd been to Foxies a few times before with Troy.  While I was interested to go, it was never what I would call a fun night.  There is something profoundly sad about Foxies.  The building is a small concrete box on a country road with nothing else for miles around in the blackness of empty fields.  The clientele is mostly roughneck workers with hard lives.  As for the girls, though the sign outside declares them to be `exotic' I can only assume they are the daughters of other townsmen.

Near the end of the night, the music switched from the usual fair of rock to something lonely and mournful.  A pretty brunette came on stage, looking for a moment out of place.  She was the kind of girl I would imagine seeing in a library with her hair held up with a yellow pencil.

But this was not a library and she was not that girl.  She moved on the stage slowly pulling herself up the pole and into her positions with a skill that betrayed many nights of practice.

She feigned arousal for the crowed and looked at me with empty eyes as Tom Petty sang `You don't know how it feels to be me' over the speakers.  It was a melancholy so suffocating and complete that one could only surrender to its intensity.

I thought about the girls on stage, the men in the club, my friends getting engaged, and my own life.  Not for the first time, nor the last, I felt like a stranger in this world.








We pulled into the church the next morning Troy, Courtney and I all queasy from residual intoxication and lack of sleep -- a feeling greatly amplified by our poor choice of breakfast that morning, McDonald's.

The church is a stark, modern building with a swooping concrete roof in one solid piece.  ``It looks like it was drying when God tried to pluck it up from the middle,'' said Troy.

We parked and stepped inside.  It turned out that the ceiling, while unspeakable ugly on the outside, gave the church the feeling of a tent revival on the inside.  It sloped upward and vanished at a point above an altar with the most frightening Jesus I've ever seen.  I was raised Protestant with the idea that Jesus is your buddy.  But that was not the Catholic Jesus before me.  Carved out of a twisted branch, his eyes were crazed and his body tortured.  This was not my buddy Jesus, but Auschwitz Jesus.

I'm always slightly uncomfortable crossing the boundary of a church.  Years ago when I first decided that religion was not for me, I feared that God would strike me with a bolt of lightning.  I've outgrown the fear of God -- though I still shy away from the holy water lest it burn me -- but now I fear the people.  I worry that the churchgoers will find me out as a nonbeliever and burn me alive on a pyre of science books.

Still, I wasn't the only one.  I sat in what we dubbed the `heathen row', with three other nonbelievers and a Jew.  We sat together giving off palpable waves of discomfort when Amen's or the answering half of prayers were expected.  Since we were in our own pew, not holding hands with our neighbors was not a problem and when asked to bow our heads and close our eyes -- anyone who would have been offended shouldn't have been looking awayway.

The service started and people began to walk down the aisle.  One thing I didn't expect was the cameras.  I had felt awkward with an index card in my lap for taking notes, but the huge number of flashes and digital camera beeps put that to the side.  So many photographs to walk such a short distance.  One of the tiny flower girls seeing all the attention being paid took a huge amount of convincing to go on.  It all lent the scene an air of unreality.

Then came the bride.

To be fair, I have never really known Julie.  Many times she was around in my college life, but it was always one person away.  She was Jill's friend or Eric's girlfriend.  I can't remember if we ever spoke just on our own.

And now she walked down the aisle.

I've never seen anyone I didn't know intimately so openly emotional.  There she stood in her dress looking beautiful, with her eyes red and tears down her cheeks and I choked up.  Even as I wrote this, several weeks and thousands of miles away, I still got choked up.

I had walked into that church expecting to be uncomfortable and make cynical remarks but I also had a powerful and unexpected bout of empathy for a fellow human.

But that didn't stop the cynical comments.  After the bride reached the front, she and Eric turned to face the altar and away from the audience.  Without seeing her emotion raw and exposed, I felt my usual self slip back.

About five minutes into the ceremony when all was quiet and the priest was saying something solemn and important an urge to laugh gripped me for no other reason than that now would be a bad time which, of course, made everything funnier.  I tried to hold it in, but it became clear that I was going to lose this battle, and soon.  I did the only thing I could think to do.  I tapped Courtney on the shoulder and when she leaned in I whispered in her ear ``I really have to laugh.''

For a second, I thought the shear unexpectedness of this statement would make her lose it right there.  But she caught herself and turned a laughing snort into convulsions, as though suppressing a violent case of hiccups.  Having passed on the problem, I was now fine.

The time came for the vows and this was the part of the wedding that I was familiar with from television and movies.  I knew that as the bride and groom exchanged their vows -- in a slow and dramatic fashion -- there would be one or more former lovers rushing to the church to interrupt the ceremony.

Eric and Julie turned to face each other and began to recite their vows.  Now I could see both Eric and Julie and their emotions -- and I was lost again.  I wanted them to be happy forever, but something my mother said about weddings haunted me:

``People cry at weddings because they know of the troubles ahead of the couple.''

It struck me hard that if Eric and Julie did stay together, they had potentially sixty years of life to navigate.  Today, they were young, healthy and happy -- but that would not always be the case.  I'm only 24 and have no real idea of hardships, but was overwhelmed with a sense of the inevitable problems that they would face.

Near the end we, the congregation, were supposed to bless the couple.  This was a moment when I wanted to be religious -- to fool myself that if I concentrated hard enough or prayed long enough I could shelter them from difficulty.  But instead I was left feeling useless, with a hand raised in an empty gesture.

They said `I do' and were married.








``Let's get married!''

I was at the reception party with Darby as my date.  Darby and I were on the dance floor, my slow dance skills still rested at the hand-on-hips-and-slowly-rotate level I learned in the 8th grade.  Darby never made it to that Indian Reservation in New Mexico to carve kachina dolls but now works in Florida as a secretary, bartender and band member.

``I mean it,'' she continued.  ``Let's get married.''

We, the undersigned, Wellington Grey and Darby agree that from this date on, within three months following the wedding of a friend, shall not propose marriage or accept said proposed marriage as we may be under the evil mind control that is the wedding.  Signed,

Wellington Grey

Darby








One week later in London, my computer beeped at me:

From: Darby
To: Grey
Subject: Wedding

Fuck the contract.  Let's get married.

 

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Copyright © 2006 Wellington Grey


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