Being away from the city is terrifying to me. I am not comfortable being around people who homeschool their children and sew their own clothing, and I am never doing that ever again. I was for real afraid for my life. I also really don’t understand this fascination some people have with going back in time. Why in the world would I want to sit around in nine layers of dark wool on an eighty-degree day, sweating into my beard as I pretend to be Robert E. Lee at Antietam, when in the present there are iPhones and air-conditioning? (Well, I guess sometimes you just want to call a woman a nigger in the middle of Main Street, but that’s just you.) You’ll never catch me spending a week in the wilderness trying to “get back to nature” or whatever, especially not when I have an apartment and a bed and a refrigerator. (AND MY FREEDOM.) There’s nothing glamorous to me about sleeping outside or drinking from a different water fountain, particularly when circumstances don’t require it. Seriously, do you Starbucks-drinking people know a single person who cures his own meats?! No, you don’t. Because in this day and age that shit is not necessary. What is this thing people have with pretending they want to go back to when doctors did surgery with two sticks and a roll of jute? I like technology! I love medical advancements! I would rather be dead than dress up like Little Bo Peep on a Saturday afternoon to chase diaper-clad babies named Malachai and cook food over a trash barrel that has been fashioned into some sort of old-timey grill by putting a Bunsen burner inside.
We walked up and down this stretch of sidewalk for half an hour, gawking through the chain-link fence at your grandfather and the rest of the infantry getting their musketoons and artillery swords ready for the next battle, all while trying to inconspicuously take their photographs. They caught me looking every single time, and I had to pin my freedom papers to my shirt just to keep them from tackling me at the waist and forcing me to braid their children’s hair. Amy and I were making fun of a life-size rendering of Abraham Lincoln made out of mayonnaise (pretty sure) when someone straight out of an episode of Little House on the Prairie appeared from out of nowhere and stood there scrutinizing us. She was wearing a long-sleeved plaid dress with a pinafore, a petticoat, a bonnet, leather, and held a woven basket with both arms. I waited for her to appraise the width of my hips and ask if she could get a look at my teeth, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Your necklace is pretty intense.” I was wearing this necklace I got on Etsy, a coyote mandible hanging from a chain that I only wear when I need to feel edgy and cool. And while she might have had a point, this broad was dressed like fucking Florence Nightingale. I was like, “Honey, you are wearing a hoop skirt in 2013.” She stormed off, probably to soak a pig carcass in saltpeter or make coffee out of okra seeds.
Amy and I drove through the rest of downtown, which pretty much looks like downtown everywhere else: a Gap and a Talbots and lots of little adorable places for your mother to put antique sugar bowls on her house charge and eat overpriced crab salads. From there we drove out through a bunch of subdivisions and new developments, and it was so insanely Children of the Corn–y that I was almost afraid to ride with the windows down for fear someone would reach in with a scythe and slice me to death. So many churches. So many blank blue eyes drinking in our close-cropped city hair and head-to-toe black outfits in disbelief. I was exhausted by the time we got to the reception, which was at this beautiful restaurant that had been dressed up like the ballroom in Cinderella. And even though we’d fought the Battle of Vicksburg and survived, we somehow were still too early and had to stand in the parking lot waiting for the only people of color other than me and Stinkeye to open the doors. (We didn’t really have to stand outside, I guess, but I hate to be the first big bitch in a room full of food, so hovering awkwardly near Amy’s truck was what it was gonna be. I am not going to be the asshole who has a bib tucked into her shirt and is pulling a chair up to the hors d’oeuvres while people are wandering in looking for the gift table with their starter glasses of champagne.)
Whenever I walk into a room like that I think, “I’m going to ruin this tablecloth or break this chair” before I even get a chance to set my purse down. It took us approximately an hour and a half to find the little placard with my name stenciled on it, and I said a silent prayer to Horus that this dude hadn’t messed up and sat me with his parents’ ancient golf buddies or something. (I already almost got called a nigger once that day, no need to tempt fate). Since we were among the first people in, we were the absolute first people in line at the bar, and the cocktail-hour sangria was flowing. The bartender handed me a plastic cup full of green apple chunks and I paused, paralyzed by the memory of my sister’s wedding with its “either buy drink tickets or suck down tap water all night” theme, then Amy elbowed me in the ribs to get me moving. “It’s free!” she whispered, balancing three cups in one hand and pulling my shirt with the other. Everywhere we turned, someone was shoving a tray loaded with crostini and olive tapenade or bacon-wrapped dates in our faces. I hate olives but I love fancy wedding food, so between the two of us we probably consumed an entire pig and wiped out every olive in the Mediterranean. Seriously, I had toothpicks sticking out of all my pockets. I had to hide them under my chair before anyone noticed the amount of food we’d eaten was greater than what I’d spent on the gift I’d purchased from the low end of their registry.
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I had bet Amy at the church (is “thou shalt not make pointless wagers” one of the Commandments?) that we’d be at the same table as the other black people at the party, but they were seated at the table across from ours, just close enough that I could barely make out the bulging vein in Brenda’s forehead as she glared at me in the romantic candlelight. I wanted to shout, “Look, I just survived typhoid pneumonia and the Battle of Gettysburg to be here and eat these tapas, lay the fuck off,” but my mouth was way too full of manchego cheese. Amy and I got put at the “fun table,” the one full of hip single people who did not speak to us save for this trio of drunk bachelors who were hilarious and asking questions, all except “Are you guys a couple?” because, duh, they are polite and have manners, but you know that’s the only question they really wanted to ask.
Dinner was equally delicious: a bunch of really good hot and cold dishes that they served family style, which caused me a great deal of agita, but what can you do? People waiting for me to serve myself from a communal food dish stresses me out. I took a quarter of what I’d normally eat, then watched wistfully as the platters circled the table. You could tell how much the bride’s parents loved her by the quality of the food. Seriously, as we passed all of the gleaming fresh seafood trays and steaming bowls of chicken with artichokes I couldn’t help but think, “I bet she got really good grades in high school.” Plus, we were sitting so close to the top-shelf open bar that I could pretty much serve myself.