Wedding Ruminations/ Continuation of Friendship

My brain was very busy while I watched Spiff and his lady tie the knot this weekend. The talk of forever and faithful and love is sometimes just a lot, and emotions can creep up the ol' windpipe. But sometimes you're just kind of biding your time until you can get a big glass of pineapple juice.

Seeing two people in this vulnerable romance cloud made me love them. I know that's not the point of weddings, but it is what happened. And then there was a moment of grief. Like, there they go, off into the sunset, leaving all of us here who have loved them with the scorpions I guess.

Then I had coffee with Cobra who takes everything too far with "love." She can't seem to talk to a male without wondering if they will somehow become lovers. If he lusts after her. She has fantasies and stays too long in the professors office or questions her motives around coupled friends. It's exciting, but it's also highly distracting. She told me about how last year a friend's boyfriend started making moves in a hot tub. She said, "Well, what would you have done?!" I said, "My goodness, I would have said, 'Oops, you accidentally grazed my knee.'" It would not occur to me that someone was trying to cheat.

"What I could do if I were you!" she exclaimed, curly hair like a lioness mane. Leaned back, gulping for air. "I could have written so many novels in the time I've been wasting thinking about men." All of my relationships are professional. I always get to the point. I like males classmates and Bisque's friends and students and the guy ringing me up at Jewel because I don't have an interest in any of them. Really the only danger is what it can look like. Maybe it's leftover from my dinko college days when sitting alone at a booth with a new pal looked fishy and word spread like jelly.

In that sense, I have a newfound adoration for the institution of marriage. You are safe in there. You the married person and you the person who wants to love everyone. You are an innocent soul with a big heart and desire for friendship. That's all it has to be because the rings proves it to be true.

People don't die at the alter. They're under new conditions. Less vague, cut and pasted with someone, out of business in one sense and opening in another.

After I gave my speech at the college graduation a girl who had always been just on the outskirts of my friends and activities found me in the crowd. "I really liked what you said," she told me, "and I look forward to becoming friends one day." But this is over, I thought! You dodo, that was a graduation speech. Curtains! Moreover, that girl lives in Germany! Like, in what parallel land was there any chance or time for us? Still, nice thought.

That winter she went to a theatre festival with me. We were both going through strange break-ups and bonded instantly. We sang, advised, analyzed with each other for five days. She had said it could happen, and it was so.

Wet 'n' Waffled

All week the head Speech coach has been harping to the kiddos on the Nationals team, "You want to know once you get to the tournament that you did everything you possibly could during these practices." I drove my roommates car home blasting "All Night," sort of enjoying the skin graft feel of being inside a a black car that's 110 degrees. As a coach, I feel like I did everything I could to serve those kids, and that feels good, that feels light and right.

There's a waterpark visible from the freeway I've wanted to experience since I moved here. Last night I finally went! Wave pool, lazy river, slides and singing in lines for tube slides. Six little friendos from all walks of life: bartender, soon-to-be married man, social worker, goober, boyfriend, that chicklet with the neck-back laugh, a girl who is about to move away to Chicago to pursue something undefined for who knows how long. We kept seeing people carrying these mega four-person tubes for a fat bowl slide. They were squares and looked like huge yellow waffles. The more we said "waffles" the more we wanted them, so when the night was done, we went, wet and cold to IHOP for a midnight meal.

Waterparks are gross. Not just the snot and astroturf, assumed urine water. Mainly the teenage groping. So many teenagers, set loose in bikinis and holding each other in still lines. "Ugh," we comment. "Ugh."But this is huge for them. This is the night to write about in diaries. "The night me and X had the universe to ourselves and held hands in an inner-tube." 20somethings are ancient in the land of Dippin' Dots and locker rentals.

But it feels like another day, another year. Things change, but a waterpark can be fun for a long time. A group of educated rent-paying humans can discuss the best pancake option for half an hour.

We always dreamed about a better life, this better life.

We always felt it coming all along, yeah, all along.

We got the keys to open paradise, yeah, paradise.

Now let's go walking hand in hand.

If You Close Your Eyes

The windows were open in the cab. We closed our eyes and leaned toward the sun, like we were sunflowers, positioning ourselves to the rays.

"Lookit those palm trees," Bisque pointed from the plane window. Three swayed in the sky.

It was strange to leave Cambridge. Maybe I will never be there again. I was so ready to get back to the hotel and out of my boots I turned around in the T too late to see the snowy El Dorado of college one last time. Only a pile of slushy stairs.

Before 10 PM room checks, Spiff, Bisque, and I cuddled into bed and watched Poltergeist. I hadn't seen it in fifteen years, and it made me feel little. It was nine degrees outside. And then half a day later we're in 80s. Like dogs against car doors.

It is truly hard to be an optimist about this one.

And the walls kept tumbling down
in the city that we love.