A Story

I was raised Baptist, J was raised Catholic. I’ve been non-practicing for over 10 years, but J’s family is still involved in their church, so we had a full Mass wedding, with communion and the sitting and standing and kneeling a hundred times, the whole shebang.

As I’m sure is the case with most couples, I remember very little of the actual wedding ceremony (other than our greenery-wrapped candelabras catching on fire on two separate occasions, requiring the best man and soloist to alternately blow out/douse with a water bottle the candles to keep from burning the place down). Anyway, at one point we kneeled for a while in front of the priest so he could bless us or anoint us or tell us we were going to hell for having premarital sex or something. After the ceremony, we were standing around waiting around to take pictures with the wedding party, and one of my bridesmaids asked if I’d checked out J’s shoes. Me, blissful and glowing with love and relieved that the best of the night – band, beer, and barbecue – was yet to come, looked adoringly at my new husband and said “No, and I don’t care”. My bridesmaid, annoyingly, insisted that I look at his shoes. J is acting suspicious, and the groomsmen are guiltily inching away. J sheepishly lifts up his feet and shows me the soles of his shoes: printed in bright white paint pen, on the bottoms is:

Which, while we were kneeling peacefully, during a beautiful, meaningful, much-anticipated holy ceremony in front of our friends and family in a house of God, read as

SAVE ME

My ecstasy over having just married such a wonderful, kind, sensitive, loving man quickly turned to anger over being stuck with this asshole for the rest of my life (it had been a stressful few weeks for me, so you can understand my initial overreaction). For the next few minutes, I was far from the demure, blushing bride; I’m sure St. John’s Catholic Church had not often, if ever, heard the kind of profanity spewing from my mouth. I couldn’t believe, after all the work that had gone into planning (and paying for!) this day, not to mention enduring the pressure of loving and wanting to marry a man my mother heartily disapprove of, that J would make light of something we’d looked forward to and dreamed and talked about for so long.

Thus, in the wedding pictures that I came across last night, the photos that document the “happiest day of our lives”, the shots in which our photographer directed us to “face each other and look lovingly into each others’ eyes” did not turn out as romantically as intended.
I am instead glowering and visibly fuming, uttering under my breath,“ I cannot fucking believe you did this. You fucking asshole. I could fucking kick you in the balls right now”. J is penitent and sheepish, and finding it hard to maintain eye contact with me.

Somehow, sometime before we made our way over to the reception, words of apology were said and I calmed down – in the pics of us making our first entrance as Mr. and Mrs., we are holding hands and laughing, smiling. I had a couple of drinks, I got happier, I danced, I changed out of my big foofy dress and into my reception outfit and danced some more. And we lived happily ever after.

I can tell that story now without my blood pressure spiking much, but it’s taken nearly 3 ½ years to get to that point. Looking at those pictures last night made me run the gamut of emotions again – we’re just as happily married as we would have been if he’d kept the paint pen away from his shoes – and I was able to laugh a little bit this time.

You know, I’m glad to be stuck with this asshole for the rest of my life.