As a gay man, I've been to very few weddings in my life--I'd probably put the number at 7. Most of them have either been the typical Italian catholic two hour service, very formal, followed by lots of eating, drinking, and dancing, or the protestant version of that. I really did love my sister's...20min ceremony, cocktail hour, reception (lots of fun), then post-partying. Short, sweet, get to the good parts. This weekend I went out to Long Island for the wedding of one of my best college friends, Nou-nou. She is first generation Indian-American, so her Hindu/Marathi culture is still very strong. In fact, at 21 her parents threatened to arrange her a marriage if she didn't do it by the time she was 22. They gave in. So yesterday (at 29 years old), she finally got married. And the best part...it wasn't even to an Indian. You can imagine her parents' shame. He was Filipino-Italian. You can see how this sets the scene for some interesting people watching.But before I get to the good stuff, just getting there was "fun" enough. I managed to take the first Metro to DCA at 7:30am. That gave me 20 min to get from the DCA Metro stop to the gate (thru security) before I missed the flight. No problem. Get to NY, find a taxi. No problem. Taxi doesn't know how to get to Long Island. Problem. Taxi wants to charge me $140 for the fare when the meter reads $75. Problem. The ConsummateAries goes ape shit on the taxi driver. Problem solved. All settled at 10:45...gives me plenty of time before the 1pm wedding. Walk into the hotel, announce I'm checking in with the wedding party. The clerk says that they just left and the wedding is at 11am. I'm standing in my shorts and t-shirt. Problem. I get dressed in 5min in the lobby bathroom, get another cab to the wedding. Problem solved.
The ceremony was formal Hindu, with the priest speaking in the ancient Sanskrit (a vestigial Indian language that no one speaks). He spoke at about 5,000 words per minute, so even if there was someone fluent in Sanskrit, they probably couldn't understand him. This meant that Nou's and her parents had no clue what to do, and Marc (the groom) was especially lost. His look of confusion and helplessness was priceless as he sat under the formal Hindu wedding pagoda. In all, the ceremony took 2 hours. That's two hours of listening to someone speak in a language you cant understand, while soothing Indian music is played over the speakers. Probably one of my top 10 coffee cravings ever.
The reception should be renamed "3 gays and their fag hags." Luckily I was in good company. Nou's good friend Jean brought her two gays as her date--I shoved my foot in my mouth when at first I assumed one was her husband (she was engaged and dumped a few years ago, I didnt know the last part). "Ohhh...you must be Jean's husband!?!" Nope. Definitely not. But all is good. We got shitty drunk and tore up the dance floor as all the Indians looked on in horror.
It was a lunch-time reception, so when 8pm rolled around I was starving. We went to the nice Italian place next to the hotel. Try to imagine a place run by hot Italian 25-30yr old guys, with thick NY accents. HOT! My #1 Girl, The Scorpio Sex Goddess, and I ordered food for the 19 people that came to the table with us. We both got sweet-talked by the hot host who was mulling over food ideas with us. I think he sold me a used car too. We weren't anticipating the amount of food that came out, neither were the guests, nor our wallets. After about 200 lbs of calamari, zucchini, clams, pasta, red snapper, eggplant, and fruit, the damage was done: $1100. Problem. So I had to get the balls to go around asking for donations. Some people had the nerve to think they were gonna eat all that, drink like fishes, and get to leave w/o chipping in a dollar. Strike that...they're not real people. Naturally the Scorpio Sex Goddess and ConsummateAries shared a hotel, and a large bottle of Pepto afterwards.
Next morning...flew home, skipping all the fun that was going on in Manhattan (NY Pride). Am I that old and lame now?
4 comments:
yes
I laughed, I cried... $1100? My god. I think I would have crawled out the bathroom window.
Did you at least get a lap dance for the $1100? I'm sure you made their day... but how long did it take to get all that food? or were you so busy with the grappa and chianti that you didn't notice?!
Think of it like if NASA says there's a asteroid that's going to hit the Earth and kill all life. You know its coming and you cant enjoy life because of it. That's what happened when we saw them bring literally 6 trays of baked clams, 5 trays of calamari, and 5 trays of fried zucchini for the APPETIZERS. We could hear the sucking sound from then on.
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