Drunk Marriage
Several people approached me after I finished reading to offer their congratulations. One praised my deadpan tone. That was a masterclass in delivery, he exclaimed, you read as if you hated the audience. I appreciated his praise but wondered if it was true—whether I hated the audience or if my discomfort being onstage, unable to see the audience’s faces through the stage lights, translated as loathing. I had read in front of an audience a few times before, but the experience retained a degree of novelty. It was possible, I thought, that the audience represented some adolescent fear of judgment or alienation that I hoped to escape in my adult life and writing allowed me to claim intellectual or artistic superiority. I doubted my superiority though since he complimented my delivery and not the substance of my writing. Perhaps I read the wrong story.
I touched his shoulder and complimented his reading, too. Although I had been unable to follow the plot of his second piece, a prose poem that relied on regular comedic callbacks to a pop culture reference I was unfamiliar with. As he was performing I watched the faces of the half dozen bachelorettes who sat directly in front of the stage instead. They were all dressed like angels in white dresses, costume angel wings, and halo headbands and flanked two men dressed like devils. The husbands-to-be, I presumed. I watched one of the bachelorettes reach for the drink underneath her chair. Her hand was like an arcade claw machine, the prize repeatedly slipped through her fingers. She knocked over the plastic cup but continued to grasp for it. Her apparent intoxication cemented my decision. I would read a different essay. A story about my breast explant surgery was too macabre. The audience wanted sex, or humor, or both.
When I mounted the stage, I adjusted the mic, introduced myself, and addressed the crowd. Thank you all for being here, especially this, uh, bachelor party. I gestured to the two men and their gaggle of women. Gay marriage. I love that, I said blithely. And then I started my reading. I paused after reading a line that revealed I had been assaulted on a date that had otherwise, up to that point, been awkward and comical. One of the bachelorettes groaned. I regretted declaring my genitalia so bluntly. The descriptions that felt provocative to write in the privacy of my bedroom and share through email felt exhibitionistic and vulgar as I stood onstage in a minidress and considered whether I enjoyed a room of strangers trying to picture my naked body. No one laughed. I wanted to engage the crowd again and reestablish goodwill. I remembered advice that a drag queen offered to me years ago and surveyed the room, feigning eye contact even though the stage lights effectively blinded me.
Avery was standing against the wall at the back of the room beside the bar. Her expression was indistinct. Earlier that morning I found butterfly wings while hiking through the dunes and gently folded them between the pages of my notebook so that I could gift them to her later. The disembodied wings were iridescent and powdery. I remembered her smile when I told her about this discovery. I began reading again with renewed fervor, hoping that my stories would elicit the same buoyant expression. Her presence was reassuring. She asked earlier if I would be upset if she skipped the reading, and I pretended I would be ambivalent. But seeing her at the back of the room, knowing that she would witness my performance, eased my anxiety. My relief was short-lived. I was simultaneously sobered by a second thought. Her presence was statistically improbable: I would be the sole transsexual in almost all rooms that I entered during my life.
Weeks later I attended my cousin’s wedding in Detroit. I wore a backless lime green dress. I labored over my hair until it looked like whipped cream. The amount of time it looked delicate and beautiful was equivalent to the amount it took to blow dry, curl, and tease my fingers through it; It survived three hours before collapsing. I sat in the backseat while my mother drove and my father sat in the passenger seat. They fought ferociously for several minutes about whether to get gas in Leonard or Rochester. You know, we haven’t fought like that in months, my mother confessed when they both calmed down. Are you suggesting it’s because I’m here? I joked, although, idly curious if they needed a witness for their argument, someone who could decide a winner and loser. I was nauseous and couldn’t distinguish if my nausea was from carsickness or from drinking too much coffee. I hadn’t been car sick since I was a child. My mother used to keep Dramamine in the glove box and plastic grocery bags in the pocket behind the driver’s seat to prevent puke or at least contain it. My parents asked me about work. I answered curtly; I don’t like thinking about work. These days I am interested solely in discussing books, men, and womanhood.
My cousin’s wedding was at an event space along the Detroit riverfront that was owned by the Port of Detroit. I sat between my parents and younger sister. The seats were small and uncomfortable. The futile stalemate with my brother continued. Neither of us acknowledged each other, but I made repeated and direct eye contact with his pregnant wife. Bored, I observed the young woman sitting in front of me. She had hairy forearms and bad posture. The visible strands of black hair made me feel triumphant as I touched my forearms which gleamed, freshly shaved and moisturized. I watched over her shoulder as she showed her friend pictures of the men she was texting and asked for her opinion. They passed judgment on at least a dozen men before the ceremony began—receding hairline, dirty fingernails, no sense of style, ugly smile. They were ruthless, much more particular than Avery or I when we similarly appraised men.
The wedding ceremony itself was brief and secular. The officiant spoke quickly and without cadence, missing opportunities where he might have paused and allowed for laughter. He instructed my cousin and her husband to repeat their vows. As they recited his words without enthusiasm, like school children reading the pledge of allegiance, I fantasized about my own wedding and then felt naive and embarrassed. You will never be married, I thought, squashing this fantasy. I felt, for the first time, that I was clinging to some fatalistic belief that I would be an exception, that I would one day connive my way into this bourgeois way of life—monogamous marriage. I allowed myself five minutes to silently cry in the bathroom before the reception began.
I found my cousin on the dance floor to say goodbye afterward. She was drunk. I tapped her on the shoulder and expressed my congratulations. She looked at me and her eyes narrowed before widening once she recognized me. Wow, you are so captivating, she exclaimed twice. I thanked her even though this declaration was obviously demeaning and said goodnight. Except I saw her again outside the bathroom as I waited for the stall to open. Two of her bridesmaids accompanied her. My cousin stared at the wall as her mouth hung slightly open. She was obviously about to puke. She momentarily regained composure when she noticed me waiting. This is my cousin, she explained to her friends, who awkwardly smiled . Do you want to help me puke? My cousin asked. Oh, maybe not, I said and offered encouragement: Just stick three fingers down your throat and twist them until you throw up. I made the gesture with my hand. You’ll feel much better. Good luck, I said as the door shut behind them. Outside the bathroom, listening to her puke, I wondered if it was possible that wanting to be a woman and being a woman weren’t entirely that different, like the difference between saying “I love you” and being in love.
The morning after the wedding I listened to an NPR podcast on the Amtrak train back to Chicago. The host and guest discussed the history of marriage, arguing that the concept of the nuclear marriage, the housewife and her breadwinning husband and their white picket fence, was a historic anomaly of the 1950s. Veterans returning from World War II benefited from rising wages and the G.I. Bill, which offered low-cost mortgages and covered tuition expenses, and could sustain these domestic arrangements. I stopped listening when the guest referenced “Leave It to Beaver,” a TV show I know nothing about and have no inclination to watch, to describe her ideal marriage.
The train conductor announced that we would arrive in Battle Creek within half an hour. I looked at the landscape through the window until the empty farmland bored me. I returned to my book, a novel about a woman who wakes one morning while vacationing in the Austrian mountains and discovers that a transparent wall has closed her off from the rest of the world leaving her with a small menagerie of animal companions—a dog, a cow, and a cat. It was an account of her isolation.
Image: Louise Bourgeois, The Couple, 2007-2009.