stonewall k - pt 1
Posted 2025-11-18 03:20 (edited 2025-11-18 03:20)
The wedding takes place at what is called ‘the jazz church’. Morgan and Tom arrive late. I see them tripping over each other at the door and then entering a passage that leads to an upper gallery where nobody was supposed to sit. I know because Nicole and I made the same mistake when we came in. I look over my shoulder and up. Morgan and Tom are peeking over the parapet. Tom has dark glasses on and looks more like Doctor Strangelove than usual. The organ gets to piping and the service begins. Morgan and Tom thump down the stairs, duck through the pews, and sit next to me. Morgan is drinking a Celsius, his tie is decorated with one of Renoir’s cafe scenes. Nicole glances over, amused. “Didn’t you two break up,” Morgan whispers, a stricken expression on his face. The organ music stops and a jazz version of the Bridal Chorus announces a little bowed figure in white. She makes her way to the pulpit, stands before the groom, and when the veil comes up, her eyes are wide with terror.
The rings go on the fingers and a homily follows. The text reads like the pastor wrote the first draft and went back again to replace every instance of ‘Jesus’ with ‘Ella Fitzgerald’. When the band – three little old men in berets – begins playing, a wave of happiness rolls over me and breaks unexpectedly into a stinging in my eyes. I tilt my head up to blink it away and the light from the high windows comes in rainbowed. The groom reaches down and takes the bride's hand, then brings it up above their heads, like the referee raising the glove of a winning boxer. This strikes me as unusual but who can really say how weddings are ever supposed to go.
The program says that it's Morgan’s turn to read. As he’s getting up he knocks over his Celsius and the can goes scraping across the floor. It clatters again when he tries to stand it upright before heading to the lectern. Blinking, he unfolds a piece of paper and begins, “I’m going to read a poem today.” He wobbles like he’s about to faint. His hair is cut in a way that makes him look like a medieval page.
“Rilke was a poet so tortured by beauty and the force of love that he nearly couldn’t stand being in this world. This poem is about…” he trails off, blinking owlishly, but recovers himself. He almost makes it to the end before his voice cracks. Nicole claps both hands to her mouth to stifle a laugh. Morgan sobbed nonstop through his own wedding. Eventually he makes it through.
Then the ceremony is over and we filter outside. The jazz church exits onto a sunken plaza by the entrance to the subway. Commuters and curious tourists swim in and out and between the wedding guests as we take pictures. Men in service uniforms smoke cigarettes under the potted trees and watch as Nicole catches the bouquet. She twirls around and around, hugging the flowers to her chest. Someone has given Tom a cigar and the bridesmaids wrinkle their noses and flap away the smoke.
After the ceremony, the wedding party makes its way to a restaurant in Queens. The waiters are outside in their white shirts and aprons. They have thrown open the double doors and beckon us into a room lit by golden lights and filled with sunflowers. Everyone mills around and makes their own slow rotations through bunches of nears and dears, flourishing the tiny swords that came in the martinis. I’m standing there smiling at the room generally when I realize that I’ve lost track of Nicole.
I go outside to find Tom smiling broadly, holding his suit jacket open to display an interior vest where a pocket protector holds two pens and a mechanical pencil. He is showcasing them for a blonde woman, who admires them fiercely and says, “Yes! Yes!”. When she turns to greet me, I see that both of her nostrils are ringed with crusted white powder.
A car pulls up and the newlyweds come out of it. They approach hand in hand and we all cheer and clap. The restaurant is too small for everyone to follow them in, and I stay outside with Tom, who tells me about his work at a conservative think tank. Before long, other guests come out for fresh air.
Morgan is in discussion with the groom’s father, who is a psychologist. The groom’s father is telling Morgan that he is the fourth in a line of men all named Augustus, and that he owns a collection of swords. When the conversation flags, the groom’s father looks up and sees Tom. He’s heard about Tom. Blowing a cloud, he says, “Like psychology, political theory is a hard science”, and everyone laughs until the fourth Augustus’ nonplussed expression makes it clear that he did not mean it as a joke. They stuff up their laughter and nod, except for Morgan, who keeps laughing, but the fourth Augustus doesn’t notice: he has already danced inside, where the groom is twirling the bride across the floor of the restaurant. My friends and I turn and look into the warm and twinkling little room. Passersby have stopped, people with grocery bags and the things from their work days. They watch and smile and clap. The bride spins around, her hand reaching up to meet the stabilizing finger of the groom, who watches her adoringly, she looks up at him and smiles and smiles. “Poetry is the only hard science,” Morgan says to a group of people I don’t know. They don’t think he’s serious and all chortle and rock on their heels.
After dinner, the wedding party moves to a bar a few blocks away. It being Long Island City, unfinished construction projects are everywhere. Between the restaurant and the bar, there’s some work in progress that has left a hole in the sidewalk. The hole is hidden by the long shadow of a road barrel, and people keep tripping into it. The hole is deep, but nothing jagged or hard is exposed, and nobody gets hurt when they fall. The worst that happens is a sullying of outfits, which, at this point in the night doesn’t seem to be something that anyone minds, and so many have fallen into the hole that those who haven’t are looking at the dirt-smeared dancers with some envy.
At the bar, I bump into a woman who has fallen tremendously into the hole. There’s a long streak of earth down the leg of her dress and a rip at the waist. I hadn’t spoken to her before then, but I saw her smiling in a group photo with the bride outside of the church. Her smile is huge. She looks like she’s about to say something to me when one of her friends suggests that we sit in the backyard. As we’re walking out, she lightly brushes my arm. At a table outside we have a brief and unfulfilling conversation about her work at an online platform for antique dealers. I told her that I loved the platform, she said that she was glad somebody did. I don’t have anything else to say after that. It was a warm night, everything seemed to shine and blink, the charmed smear of color and light that takes over at a certain time of the night. I wonder where Nicole is and how anyone can make it through a wedding without passing out from the intensity of feeling everywhere. Who could be bothered to dwell on dissatisfactions with jobs or bear to think about ‘platforms’ of any kind?
“You’re beautiful!” I shout suddenly.
“Thank you!” She looked happy.
I think that I probably shouldn’t have done that and I return inside. Inside, a buzz of chatter that somehow sounds like a recording. I drift to a table with some other friends. They are comparing watches. I am no longer so happy. I quickly rotate clockwise and find Morgan, Tom, and Erin talking. Morgan is speaking slowly, in a calm voice,
“I had a recurring childhood sexual fantasy that I’d play out to relax myself as I was falling asleep. I was with a girl in a hot spring but it was so cold out that we’d die if we got out so we had to stay and cuddle in the jacuzzi.”
Erin laughs and asks if she’s told us about her ‘bleaker version of this’. She looks around impishly. “I would fantasize that my crush and I were strapped to big sheets of metal that hung on hooks in an assembly line and the assembly line crushed us together so that we were mechanically forced to have sex.”
All of my friends laugh. At an adjacent table, someone is looking over and gaping in horror. I think of a fantasy that I used to have. Just after the Columbine Massacre, I used to imagine that there was a shooter in my school and he’d be about to blow away my crush, but then I’d jump in the way and then we would make out in the fleeting moments before I expired. I recount the story and everyone rolls their eyes.
“White knight, a fundamental archetype.” Says Morgan, wandering away. I’m feeling dizzy, all of the crimson and gold bleeding together around me, a hand cascades crazily over piano keys, and I’m looking down at my shoes and suddenly feeling desolate, Tom’s face has taken on a satanic hue and he is yelling at an older man, frightened, who must be someone’s uncle. Over the music, I think I hear Tom say, “When I bring my boyfriend to the Oval Office – the First Lady calls him SIR!”
For the first time in what seems like a long time, Nicole comes into my field of vision. She runs up to the table and pulls me onto the dance floor. I shuffle around a little, feeling sick, the little stars and scatterings of light in my vision are less friendly. Nicole is stomping and swaying. I look down to where my shoes are, they seem fathoms deep. When I look up again, Nicole is holding her right hand in the air and pointing at her ring finger with her other hand, mouthing, “When? When?” in time with the music.
The rings go on the fingers and a homily follows. The text reads like the pastor wrote the first draft and went back again to replace every instance of ‘Jesus’ with ‘Ella Fitzgerald’. When the band – three little old men in berets – begins playing, a wave of happiness rolls over me and breaks unexpectedly into a stinging in my eyes. I tilt my head up to blink it away and the light from the high windows comes in rainbowed. The groom reaches down and takes the bride's hand, then brings it up above their heads, like the referee raising the glove of a winning boxer. This strikes me as unusual but who can really say how weddings are ever supposed to go.
The program says that it's Morgan’s turn to read. As he’s getting up he knocks over his Celsius and the can goes scraping across the floor. It clatters again when he tries to stand it upright before heading to the lectern. Blinking, he unfolds a piece of paper and begins, “I’m going to read a poem today.” He wobbles like he’s about to faint. His hair is cut in a way that makes him look like a medieval page.
“Rilke was a poet so tortured by beauty and the force of love that he nearly couldn’t stand being in this world. This poem is about…” he trails off, blinking owlishly, but recovers himself. He almost makes it to the end before his voice cracks. Nicole claps both hands to her mouth to stifle a laugh. Morgan sobbed nonstop through his own wedding. Eventually he makes it through.
Then the ceremony is over and we filter outside. The jazz church exits onto a sunken plaza by the entrance to the subway. Commuters and curious tourists swim in and out and between the wedding guests as we take pictures. Men in service uniforms smoke cigarettes under the potted trees and watch as Nicole catches the bouquet. She twirls around and around, hugging the flowers to her chest. Someone has given Tom a cigar and the bridesmaids wrinkle their noses and flap away the smoke.
After the ceremony, the wedding party makes its way to a restaurant in Queens. The waiters are outside in their white shirts and aprons. They have thrown open the double doors and beckon us into a room lit by golden lights and filled with sunflowers. Everyone mills around and makes their own slow rotations through bunches of nears and dears, flourishing the tiny swords that came in the martinis. I’m standing there smiling at the room generally when I realize that I’ve lost track of Nicole.
I go outside to find Tom smiling broadly, holding his suit jacket open to display an interior vest where a pocket protector holds two pens and a mechanical pencil. He is showcasing them for a blonde woman, who admires them fiercely and says, “Yes! Yes!”. When she turns to greet me, I see that both of her nostrils are ringed with crusted white powder.
A car pulls up and the newlyweds come out of it. They approach hand in hand and we all cheer and clap. The restaurant is too small for everyone to follow them in, and I stay outside with Tom, who tells me about his work at a conservative think tank. Before long, other guests come out for fresh air.
Morgan is in discussion with the groom’s father, who is a psychologist. The groom’s father is telling Morgan that he is the fourth in a line of men all named Augustus, and that he owns a collection of swords. When the conversation flags, the groom’s father looks up and sees Tom. He’s heard about Tom. Blowing a cloud, he says, “Like psychology, political theory is a hard science”, and everyone laughs until the fourth Augustus’ nonplussed expression makes it clear that he did not mean it as a joke. They stuff up their laughter and nod, except for Morgan, who keeps laughing, but the fourth Augustus doesn’t notice: he has already danced inside, where the groom is twirling the bride across the floor of the restaurant. My friends and I turn and look into the warm and twinkling little room. Passersby have stopped, people with grocery bags and the things from their work days. They watch and smile and clap. The bride spins around, her hand reaching up to meet the stabilizing finger of the groom, who watches her adoringly, she looks up at him and smiles and smiles. “Poetry is the only hard science,” Morgan says to a group of people I don’t know. They don’t think he’s serious and all chortle and rock on their heels.
After dinner, the wedding party moves to a bar a few blocks away. It being Long Island City, unfinished construction projects are everywhere. Between the restaurant and the bar, there’s some work in progress that has left a hole in the sidewalk. The hole is hidden by the long shadow of a road barrel, and people keep tripping into it. The hole is deep, but nothing jagged or hard is exposed, and nobody gets hurt when they fall. The worst that happens is a sullying of outfits, which, at this point in the night doesn’t seem to be something that anyone minds, and so many have fallen into the hole that those who haven’t are looking at the dirt-smeared dancers with some envy.
At the bar, I bump into a woman who has fallen tremendously into the hole. There’s a long streak of earth down the leg of her dress and a rip at the waist. I hadn’t spoken to her before then, but I saw her smiling in a group photo with the bride outside of the church. Her smile is huge. She looks like she’s about to say something to me when one of her friends suggests that we sit in the backyard. As we’re walking out, she lightly brushes my arm. At a table outside we have a brief and unfulfilling conversation about her work at an online platform for antique dealers. I told her that I loved the platform, she said that she was glad somebody did. I don’t have anything else to say after that. It was a warm night, everything seemed to shine and blink, the charmed smear of color and light that takes over at a certain time of the night. I wonder where Nicole is and how anyone can make it through a wedding without passing out from the intensity of feeling everywhere. Who could be bothered to dwell on dissatisfactions with jobs or bear to think about ‘platforms’ of any kind?
“You’re beautiful!” I shout suddenly.
“Thank you!” She looked happy.
I think that I probably shouldn’t have done that and I return inside. Inside, a buzz of chatter that somehow sounds like a recording. I drift to a table with some other friends. They are comparing watches. I am no longer so happy. I quickly rotate clockwise and find Morgan, Tom, and Erin talking. Morgan is speaking slowly, in a calm voice,
“I had a recurring childhood sexual fantasy that I’d play out to relax myself as I was falling asleep. I was with a girl in a hot spring but it was so cold out that we’d die if we got out so we had to stay and cuddle in the jacuzzi.”
Erin laughs and asks if she’s told us about her ‘bleaker version of this’. She looks around impishly. “I would fantasize that my crush and I were strapped to big sheets of metal that hung on hooks in an assembly line and the assembly line crushed us together so that we were mechanically forced to have sex.”
All of my friends laugh. At an adjacent table, someone is looking over and gaping in horror. I think of a fantasy that I used to have. Just after the Columbine Massacre, I used to imagine that there was a shooter in my school and he’d be about to blow away my crush, but then I’d jump in the way and then we would make out in the fleeting moments before I expired. I recount the story and everyone rolls their eyes.
“White knight, a fundamental archetype.” Says Morgan, wandering away. I’m feeling dizzy, all of the crimson and gold bleeding together around me, a hand cascades crazily over piano keys, and I’m looking down at my shoes and suddenly feeling desolate, Tom’s face has taken on a satanic hue and he is yelling at an older man, frightened, who must be someone’s uncle. Over the music, I think I hear Tom say, “When I bring my boyfriend to the Oval Office – the First Lady calls him SIR!”
For the first time in what seems like a long time, Nicole comes into my field of vision. She runs up to the table and pulls me onto the dance floor. I shuffle around a little, feeling sick, the little stars and scatterings of light in my vision are less friendly. Nicole is stomping and swaying. I look down to where my shoes are, they seem fathoms deep. When I look up again, Nicole is holding her right hand in the air and pointing at her ring finger with her other hand, mouthing, “When? When?” in time with the music.