I have always wanted to get married. There seems to be some strange correlation with Disney movie childhoods and an extreme desire to get married. I know what my dress will look like, what my daddy daughter dance song will be, who will be involved in the planning and who won't, etc, etc. I never seemed to contemplate the man much which resulted in supreme terror. And this flash fiction piece: Velcro.
For the linkaphobic:
Our father is clutching her, his wrinkled claw of a hand clasped about her forearm declaring this young woman as his own offspring. He's about to hand her off to a man he has deemed acceptable and she has deemed marriage material. If it were a real material rather than a metaphor it would be made out of Velcro. Once the husband-to-be is brushed up against, removing him is a noisy, gruesome affair--what was once a whole is ripped in two and so on. He says he loves her and isn't any of the things on her list of men who cannot be saved, dated or married. And that is all the matters according to our mother, our father, our cousins and all those rather irritating bridesmaid friends who overdid everyone's makeup including my own.
Her dress doesn't look quite right. I haven't been able to pinpoint what it is and while she claims it is the perfect dress we both know it is not. The one she really wanted was $2000 over her budget so I guess she is pretending this dress is really that dress. I know my sister.
Her husband-to-be, my brother-in-law-to-be, is perfectly bland in conversation, occupation and, so I imagine, in bed. I picture their honeymoon and his perfectly bland abs in numerous pictures at the beach. I picture his perfectly dull smile situated right next to hers. I picture them fighting and laughing. I picture her pregnant and him working eighty hours a week to afford the child. My sister does not picture these things.
She is walking down the aisle with a withering man, one foot in front of the other. Her neck is sweating because she let those bimbos convince her to wear her hair down in July instead of up. We all know she has beautiful hair, but one would think pragmatism would override a fifteen minute aesthetic that will be ruined by sweat. I'll put it up for her later. I will resist the urge to shave her head or yank out all the hairs one by one.
My sister does not love the man she is walking toward. I can see it in the white knuckles around the bouquet. She is going to be white knuckles for the rest of her life if she does not flee. She needs to drop the flowers, drop the pretense and run for the hills before I kill her with my eyes. Our father is lifting her veil. Our mother is crying. I and her ditsy bridesmaid friends are surrounding her. The priest is talking.
They are kissing. There are some rings. There is a limo.
We arrive to the reception and the rest of her life with a man she does not love but has wed because he is made of marriage material and our father likes him. He is bland enough for our family's conservative overtones. I hate that conservative overtone, but he meshes just fine. He seems to enjoy it but I can never tell. He is so boring his face is a mask of tranquility. And 5 o'clock shadow.
Our father is dancing with her now. They are swaying to some song she picked out that has no real meaning to her because she does not love the man she married nor anyone else--she wed because it is expected of her, not for any real want on her part. Her husband, my now brother-in-law, is behind me, waiting for his turn to dance with her. I can smell his unexceptional cologne. I can sense his heat waving off of him onto my bare shoulders as he passes me, stalking toward my sister.
I can see the Velcro waving like conquering heroes from his fingertips.
I have since given more contemplation to the kind of man I would like to marry and as such am highly relieved I am no longer dating the man I was dating for many, many years. It was hard and terrifying and I cried far more than I should have. Now? I am absurdly happy that I will not be strangled by velco but perhaps will have a chance at the "Once upon a time" and the "Happily ever after" that I grew up believing.
Or maybe I'll have a few cats and half empty bottles of cheap wine. Perhaps even the kind you buy in a box. We shall just have to wait and see ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment