A Celebration of love
It’s a Saturday night in East LA and a model and photographer are getting married. Not the start of a bad joke – it’s the setting of my cousin’s wedding. The celebration of a girl who exclusively wears vintage Ralph Lauren, and is the only member of her friend group not born a Schwarzanegger or a Rothschild. As a single 24 year old, nearing a quarter life crisis, this was not an event I’d been especially looking forward to. It had been at the forefront of too many conversations with my therapist. Frankly, I couldn’t afford to speak to her any longer about how this night would not be a celebration of love, but a celebration of my self-pity. I arrived at the scene pushing my Bubbe into the restaurant first, as one always should.
To the eye, it was as expected: faces, outfits and tablescapes ripped out of a Vogue Wedding issue. But when the whole production began, what I assumed would be a grand blow to my self worth … was not. It was something else entirely.
We stood around as Friend #1 got up for her speech. She gives a monologue about how her life was never the same after going to Columbia because for too long she fell into the guise of pseudo intellectualism… oh yes! and of course how much she loves the bride! A famous DJ interrupts the cake cutting to make an announcement about this playlist. He’s been curating it for weeks and it’s a riff off his newly released work and blah blah blah. A shamed actor walks to the bathroom during the father daughter dance and draws away the eyes of too many. How ironic that while I was so busy fearing how bad these people would make me feel about myself, I almost failed to notice I was sitting in the middle of a Narcissists Anonymous meeting! Not a person in the crowd had much to say other than how fabulous they were. Perhaps I should’ve been even more jealous of these one dimensional beings who were gorgeous and accomplished AND didn’t have a care in the world about external perception. But all of a sudden Oh how boring that seemed! No interesting questions asked, or much to say on any topic (other than the subject of themselves, of course). No affection towards the bride, or anyone else for that matter. It was like taking a swig of champagne and finding it went completely flat. What my life may have lacked in allure, it made up for in substance. And just as I was starting to enjoy myself, my Bubbe put her hand on my wrist and groaned, “You may not be a model, but at least your friends know when to sit down and shut the fuck up.” It wasn’t a therapy breakthrough, but I felt pretty fucking awesome.
