So, I went to this wedding over the weekend up in Santa Fe, and I have a question for y'all:
Say you and your significant other arrive about 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning. And say your significant other is staying in a different hotel with his relatives, and say he's on his way up to his room when he runs into the groom.
And say the groom has a bleeding cut on his forehead and generally looks a little rough around the edges.
Now just suppose the groom and your significant other exchange awkward pleasantries, and suppose that then the groom lays out this story about having gone out to Denny's, in the middle of the night in Santa Fe, the night before his wedding, and about having been jumped on the way back by three vatos, all of whom the groom, manly man that he is, thrashed soundly.
Suppose your significant other is . . . skeptical. But then suppose he relays the story to his father that night, and then suppose your significant other's father, who happens to be the father of the bride, is kind of a talker, and suppose your significant other's dad winds up relaying this story to the bride as she's on her way out the next morning to her 7:00 a.m. bridal hair appointment.
Then suppose that the groom tries to deny any of this ever happened.
And now say people come back to your significant other and want to know what gives? Say your significant other stands by his story, forcing the groom to relent and grant that, okay, he really did fend off an attempted mugging and he really did beat up three guys.
Now say you're me: Do you buy any of this? Hell, no, you don't. You ask me, weren't no Denny's, weren't no three Hispanic men. You ask me, I think the groom ran afoul of a pimp. No man runs out to Denny's, in the middle of the night, in 35-degree temperatures, the night before his wedding. No one does this. It doesn't happen. And even if it does, dudes in their late 40s, I don't care how fit, don't beat up three younger dudes, either.
You know what I think? I think my boyfriend's sister just married herself a real schmuck, and a racist schmuck at that.
Well, better her than me.
*
So we're on the way back home and I ask my boyfriend, "You think there's any chance your parents will stop by?"
"What?!"
"Do you think they'll swing through Las Cruces on their way home?"
"Fuck, no. It's not even on their way."
My boyfriend's getting agitated because he's never even considered this possibility, that his parents might drop by for a visit.
My boyfriend is a born fool.
"Calm down," I tell him. "I just want to know, is this a possibility? Because that sounds like just the sort of thing they'd do."
"They didn't say anything to me about it while we were there."
"But does that rule it out?"
"Of course! They didn't even say anything about it."
"And you think they definitely would?"
Now I can see my boyfriend is really getting wound up. He says, "No, listen, they can't do that. They--it's not even on the WAY. They didn't even say anything to me. They couldn't--they're just not going to do that."
He sounds more as though he's trying to convince himself of this than he is trying to convince me.
"So far," I remind my boyfriend, "Every time I have predicted what your parents will do in a given situation, I have been right, and you have been wrong. Every time."
"Well not this time. They're not doing this. They can't do this. They didn't even say anything--"
"Yeah yeah yeah they didn't say anything to you about it. Of course they're not gonna say anything to you about it! Your family doesn't communicate--unless it's your dad dumping bad news on your sister four hours before her wedding. Now that kind of communication--"
"Can we please quit talking about my family for awhile? It's giving me a headache," he pleads.
So we talk about something else.
*
Today at 12:30 p.m., when I received a cell phone call from his mother, en route to Las Cruces from Santa Fe, I was this surprised. Yessir, you bet.
On the plus side, my house is now very, very clean. His family can say what they like of me--and they do--but "she lives like a pig!" isn't going to be one of the things they say.
On the minus side, they aren't leaving until Thursday morning.
Have I mentioned that my boyfriend's parents are extremely Catholic? Extremely conservatively Catholic? I'm-not-certain-Vatican-II-was-a-good-idea Catholic? Probably-fans-of-Bill-Donohue's-Catholic-League Catholic?
Pseudonyms: I can't recommend blogging under one enough.
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12 comments:
I'm also a big fan of the pseudonym, and my SO is an only child whose parents are both deceased.
Poor boyfriend's sister.
That name-link above is weird, as Blogger automatically logged me in under my gmail addy, which I don't have a blogger account for, and it won't let me log in to create a profile. Silly Blogger.
Wait, did your boyfriend's sister marry Charles Stuart?
Furthermore, I love how you know more about your bf's parents than he does. Would you mind telling me what the hell Molly and Gary are going to pull next (while you're at it?).
I have a really cool cousin who lives in Las Cruces. I wonder if you know her.
This is a screenplay dying to be made.
I am most drawn to utopian (and, even, disutopian) stories that involve the elimination of families. It would just be so much simpler. And, maybe instead of trying to give everyone the right to get married, we should eliminate marriage altogether.
Bitter? Me?
I am ever the better predictor of my husband's family than is my husband, in large part because the bulk of the emotional relationship with them has been carried by me for most of the ten years we've been married. I know far more about his family's inner workings than does he. It leads to many long phone calls after which I am left grumbling, "I have my own damn mother, you know..."
I'm intrigued by The Groom Who Got Rolled The Night Before His Wedding. Is there any chance he got drunk and fell and hit his head, but was embarrassed? Any chance he did go out to Denny's talked some smack to the bus boy, got his ass kicked in the parking lot in about 6.4 seconds, and made up the story? Does anyone know what his bachelor party dealio was? Why is there speculation that he would be fooling around with working girls and pimps twelve hours before he gets hitched? What's up with daughter of super-conservative Catholic Family married Sleazor? Could this string of flip queries couched in pseudo-hipster slang be any more annoying?
Once I played a show and was so elated with my band's performance that, needing to burn off some more energy, I walked home afterwards (a very long way) instead of hanging around like the slobs we generally were.
I was drunk, it was cold, I had my hands in my pockets, and I tripped on the curb and landed on my chest, breaking a rib.
I noticed my rib was broken that morning when I couldn't breathe without agonizing pain. I felt around my chest and found a bone poking out in a kind of funny way, and with a burst of further agony I snapped it back where I thought it should go. I told nobody.
Pseudonyms - I'm with you on this one, sister!
And I often predict my guy's mom's next move way ahead of him. I think it's because he's too close to them to really see them, and therefore be able to predict their behaviour. It's also a necessary survival instinct for me.
Bwah ha ha! Pseudonyms are da bomb. Of course, so are closed blogs (as long as you leave the keys for the cool people).
Okay. Closed blogs suck. But I had to. If this doesn't work, I'm gone from the Internets.
Sounds like fun fun fun. Going out for drinks Thursday evening?
whee!
my first thought was that groom-to-be ran afoul of a man he was trying to not see about a horse, that lost.
whatever it is, i'm sure he's just -lovely-
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