Neapolitan

It’s 7:23 on 8/23
Today is to be an important day. Maybe not for me, but it will be for someone.
It’s my friend Kristin’s Birthday, her first as a married woman. She is the first friend of mine that’s gotten hitched and the last time I talked to her (the day after the wedding) she was gloriously happy so I guess that’s a start. I really dislike weddings. I find them boring and quite depressing.
There are really only two types:
First, the kind where two people meet, fall in love and get married within six months or a year or something. Then after a few months, one gets tired of the other (Since there are really only two types of relationships. 1. The one where you like the other person more than they like you and 2. the one where the other person likes you more than you like them. Some people think that’s bullshit, but really stop and think about it. Even though the shifts might occur several times a day (or even several times in the course of a conversation), and be so minute it seems 50/50, but it never actually is. And soon it’s 51/49, then 54/46 and so on and so on until it’s clear who’s who in the dynamic.) and they either learn stuff about each other that drives them slowly (or quickly) apart, or there’s some huge cataclysmic event that explodes the flimsy-in-today’s-cynical-society bond of marriage. One cheats on the other or turns to drinking or drugs, or the pre-existing problems are intensified and magnified by the sudden insular closeness of the marriage and the drift begins.
The second type of marriage (says the man who has been married five times to three women, written two book on the subject and been lecturing about it for four years) is the kind that happens after years of the people getting to know one another, dating, living together, making surethe other person isn’t a nympho, a crackhead/dealer, boozer etc. They get married and discovered that they know everything about each other. No surprises (or one enormous terrible surprise, like finding a fair collection of semen-stained Polaroids of children crying). Then the cute quirks of the one person become teeny tiny little nuisances and, over time, grow into huge, glaring, atrocious anomalies. Then everything falls apart.
And sitting in that church during that long and meaningless-to-too-many-people ceremony I think, while mouthing some response to an invocation made by the priest (standsitstandsitstandsit), “I wonder who likes who more”, “I wonder how long they knew each other before they got married”, “I wonder if the bride has the groom’s kid inside her right now”, “I wonder if I actually just saw the maid of honor/best man wink/smirk at the bride/groom”.
The wedding I went to about a week or so ago, I found out, cost my uncle (father of the bride) $45,000. By the by, he is the proud father of eight children, four married, four to go (one next June). $45,000. That’s about 2,250 DVD’s. 3,000 plus CD’s. That’s 75 months of rent at my place…and it was spent in three days.
But back to the ceremony…It’s true that the bride and groom often look dazzling/dashing (unless they are an ugly/fat couple who will inevitable spawn ugly/fat offspring), but, while sitting in the we’re-doing-this-more-for-our-parents-than-for-us ceremony, it isn’t too hard to picture the groom getting a boozy blowjob from the stripper that was hired for the bachelor party, nor is it hard to picture the nervous-as-hell bride who had a few to drown the butterflies in her stomach collapsed on the elegant bathroom floor, her $7,000 snow-white dress covered in champagne, bile and partially digested hors d'oeuvres, nor is it hard to picture the bride and groom looking dismayed in bed when they find that marriage doesn’t make the orgasm any better. Then again, I’m sure that it’s super special for all the virgins out there…all five of them.
Seriously, by the time the everybody-is-zoned-out-until-they-hear-the-words-“I do” ceremony I am crying. Why? Because I’ve seen this relationship wither and die in my mind before they’ve even put the a-year-of-my-salary rings on and the fucking wedding becomes more depressing than a funeral! In many ways, a wedding is a lot like a funeral. An emotional funeral, if you will. Or a Funeral for the Future for two special people. Every cloud has a silver lining, except the one that stretches from here to the horizon, on which sits a graveyard with two headstones…in the shapes of hearts.
From somewhere else in my head:
At about 6:34 this morning I was dressing for work. Got everything on but my shoes. I put them on, tied them…then stopped. Untied one, tied it again. Untied it once more, retied it. Then I did the same with the other. I recommend all those who read this (that’s FOUR! Count ‘em FOUR people!!) to do this the next time you are putting on shoes and have a moment to appreciate it. You’re fingers seem to have tiny brains in each tip, that’s great. You’re feet and therefore your whole self feels more secure, that’s great too. And finally, you can look down at your tied shoes and KNOW that you have accomplished something. No mater how the day turns out from this point on, you have accomplished SOMETHING. Sweet, sweet sassisfakshun!
And from yet elsewhere:
The “party” on Saturday. So Kaitlyn, Lisa, Becca, Jen, Natalia, Jade, myself, Todd and his friends showed up over the course of the evening. In all honesty, the high point of the evening was going up to the roof. I was gung ho about the shindig then I wasn’t, then I thought no one would come because the weather was shitty, then a few hours before the event, I was stoked, but which each guest arrived a creeping numbness when had consumed me wholly by the end of the evening. I went to bed feeling dismantled and reassembled improperly.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow, the final season of Futurama comes out on DVD. Then, next Tuesday, the final season of Invader Zim comes out on DVD. Then, eh, I’m sure I’ll find some square peg.
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I made the last entry in the second book of my journal last night or the day before. I’ve been writing in it since seventh grade and I haven’t really written anything worth reading over all that time. I mean, yes I have this on-line journal, but seriously, like I’d ever put the real true feelings about people, places and things here. People who do that are looking for attention or trying to say or do something in a roundabout way. It’s not hard to buy a spiral notebook and confide in that.