Re: She Was Practiced at the Art of Deception, Well I Could Tell by Her Blood-Stained Hands.

I have, on several occasions, attended friends' wedding solo style. I have found in the past that I prefer it that way than dragging a male friend along who knows even fewer people than I do. If I'm being tortured as it is, why should I selfishly inflict such pain on another?

Two years ago, at my friend Thal's wedding, I was completely content in being alone and spent the majority of the evening doing shots with the married Wall Street fellas in attendance who were there with their boring wives. I learned two things that night: boring, simple, uncomplicated women are the ones who receive marriage proposals; and wives do not care for the token single gal who will drink until dawn with their husbands. At brunch the following morning, I was shunned. My sister explained that married people see single people as a threat... I'm not sure why. I was drinking with them, not fucking them. I don't fuck rich boys in oxford shirts and Hush Puppies...

This past weekend I attended another wedding. I was given the option of a +1 and decided against it. I knew my friend was trying to keep the price of the wedding down and since I've yet to procure something permanent and everlasting, I didn't see why she should have to pay for me to bring along a buddy. However, I really could have used a buddy this time around...

I was 15 minutes late. When I got to the door, I noticed this fella with whom I had the sex and who had written poems about me (we were in poetry class together), was there. He was not friends with the bride or groom, but instead was engaged to a friend of the groom's--a fact I would later find out.

This person, whom we'll call Sebastian for this affinity for the band Belle and Sebastian, immediately shot daggers out of his eyes at me, and before the night was over, he got his wife involved in the intimidation attempt. I was not intimidated, but annoyed... it's not my fault his penis is shaped funny and I may have told one or two or five people within our group of friends. I was 22... 22-year-olds do that.

Next was the best friend of my former sometimes fuck buddy, mostly stalker, fella whom we'll call Coke, for his affinity for cocaine--(I also wrote about him here). Coke, who is now married with a baby, still calls occasionally. Although I never pick up, I know it's him as the last 3 digits of his number are: 666... obviously Verizon knew what they were doing when they chose that number for him years ago. So Coke's best friend was at the wedding because he's been dating the bride's friend for like 5 years now. This best friend makes sure to keep Coke good and drunk whenever he visits Brooklyn so Coke won't find himself outside my apartment declaring love and shit as he's done, oh, 30 times before. Coke's friends have always regarded me as a home-wrecker despite my lack of interest in Coke and taking him up on his offers to "please runaway with me so I don't have to get married this weekend." These pleas continued well after the day he got married. So of course, I was told by the best friend, at the wedding where I was already drowning, that I needed to stay away from Coke for good... I can't mess up his life anymore. What I'm gathering is to this day Coke is trying to convince his friends that I'm the one in pursuit of him, although I never was in the first place. I mostly just found his need to be dramatic and stand outside my window making declarations as both entertaining and ego-boosting... but I was set straight on Saturday in case I should, you know, have the urge to track Coke down.

Then we had Bad Hair, who since I first met him in college where we were all DJs (hence the reason for all these ridiculous connections), has had the worst hair I've ever seen this side of the Mississippi. Bad Hair went and married his college sweetheart with whom I was once friends, but then she slept with a guy who worked at Tiger Style records that I was hooking up with and in that moment our friendship came tumbling down. Although Bad Hair is unaware of the reasons--as she was dating him at the time this happened--he only knows that I'm a bitch and a backstabber, which is probably true, but not in this case. No, in this case, she's the backstabber.

So when Bad Hair, who was there sans wife as she loathes the bride as well, spotted me it was more of death stares in my direction... and I'm pretty sure the middle finger too, unless he always scratches his face with his middle finger(?!?). You know, because it wasn't bad enough to be alone, standing against the wall, drinking bad beer, having been lectured about how I'm home-wrecker, and confronted with a past that involves too much vodka and bad poetry...

When it came to dinner, I found that I was seated across from Bad Hair and next to Sebastian and his twitty looking whore-bimbo thing... that would not do. I looked at the two of them and walked away, squishing myself at the end of a table with a friend of the bride's whom I had met once... where I had a fifth beer and cursed my tolerance for being so high and for being relatively sober when I could have used a lil' kick of relaxation.

Needless to say, I was the first to leave the wedding.

I'm going to say that I have never been so uncomfortable in my whole life. I'm also going to say that I feel bad for these people who are hanging on to things that are a decade old at this point. The sad thing was, my dress was so damn pretty... and all it did was stand alone against the wall making small talk with the bartender... I hate small talk.

xo.