Wedding Review.3

Mercury was in retrograde, that was the word on the street, and so I almost didn’t make it to this one. Having neglected to line up a ride with a coworker, I took a train and two buses, then walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, then several miles through the country to arrive a half hour late. Getting off the second bus, tourists almost trampled me, as anxious as they were to leave their landmark viewing. Once across the bridge, I was confronted with a tunnel, a Pedestrians Prohibited sign, and a parked patrol car. I walked through the tunnel anyways, relieved to never feel the cop roll up behind me. The rest of the way, I held my thumb out; the one person who picked me up took me several hundred yards.

The ceremony had already started by the time I finally arrived—I saw them gathered far out in a mucky field. I stood at the front door with a platter of cocktails and watched them slowly trudge their way in. A little old man was being pushed in an off-road wheelchair with large, pontoonish, seafoam-colored wheels. The women’s stilettos plunged far into the soft earth. Something about it all made me think of Guns N’ Roses’ "November Rain," only artier, less drenched.

These were the kind of people who put out a tray of wheatgrass on the welcome table, then proceeded to drink seven handles of gin. Thank Goddess, they said, over cake that could make you shit glitter. By the end of the night, the women, their ankles so long unsupported in so many unforeseen ways, were melting against either their boyfriends or the walls.

I went home in a coworker’s car, the flat of wheatgrass in my lap.