exhibit a

I went to a friend's wedding this weekend. Because I have been having some "relationship trouble" I decided against bringing a date (wasn't sure I wanted to make my friend feed an extra mouth). The fact that my friend, Lance - not gay, though his name alone might suggest otherwise - was also planning to attend alone sealed the deal. We decided to attend together as a couple of swinging bachelors. This, it turns out, was a pretty bad idea.

We shared a rental car - a cherry red mustang (not our faults, as it was a rental car but nothing screams "we have serious questions regarding our own sexuality" than a cherry red mustang) - and a hotel room. Lance even suggested giving one card and gift between us, in an effort to jokingly point to a conclusion that we were already fearing others were reaching in respect to our (alleged) relationship. I think Lance's "joke" was yet another crypto-homophobic gesture to deflect attention away from us by passionately embracing the possibility of a homosexual relationship between us. But that's just me.

And it gets worse. After severe rental car trouble, Lance and I were running desperately late to the wedding and decided to bypass the hotel in which we were staying and head directly for the wedding ceremony in our street clothes. That plan was foiled by a gross underestimation on the part of myself about the time it would take to make it to the ceremony by car. Having passed our hotel 20 minutes ago and realizing we were missing the ceremony anyway, we thought we should try to conserve as much time as possible. But how would we do that? The reception was taking place approximately 10 minutes from where our car was pulled over for a wedding-crisis summit; the hotel was approximately 25 minutes back in the opposite direction. We came up with this plan: we would check into a motel (there were plenty littered across the main drag where we were sitting, in our cherry-red Repressed Homosexual Turbo sports car) and ask the desk clerk if we could just use a room briefly, for purposes of showering, shaving and suiting up, all at a pro-rated room rental fare. This required me leaving Lance in the car while I hassled desk clerk after desk clerk, begging each one to let Lance and myself "use a room - just for about an hour" so we could "shower and get cleaned off". Needless to say, this kind of request did not bode well for us. At one motel, even as we pulled up we saw a front desk helper racing to the roadside motel sign to adhere a large "NO" sign in front of the "VACANCY" sign facing oncoming traffic. Lance and I bolted back to our normal hotel room, did what we had to do (shut up!), and raced back to wedding, arriving approximately 2 hours late and looking very out of sorts in our matching New Media Blue dress shirts. Allegations flew faster than two late wedding guests up interstate 87. I felt like I was being indicted even as a casually crossed my legs at the dinner table or took another grateful sip from my Pink Lady.

Some people are very provincial. And some people seem really, really gay.

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all these words © 1999 todd levin.