Wedding: Late August, 1995
I have never seen JP in a suit before. Just the very fact of it is an amazement, even though it’s not a suit-and-tie suit and even though he looks flat-out miserable and out of his element.
We drive out to some far suburb for the wedding of one of my college friends. Adele had been a bridesmaid at my wedding to David, but we’d fallen out of touch til I got the invitation, sent to my mother’s house. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, but Adele and Cara and Maria and I had been inseparable for a time, and so I asked JP if he was willing to go along. It’ll be easy, I tell him. Adele’s mom and dad are interracial too. I am not sure whether this fact adds to his willingness or detracts from it, but either way he agrees, and a few days before the wedding he turns up from a visit to his grandmother’s carrying this new suit.
And he looks good. Different, but good, and wearing an expression of stoic sacrifice. You realize I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, he warns me, tugging at his collar.
We show up at the reception and nibble at the food and mingle not at all; our closed circle is a little too tight to admit the presence of strangers. The bride, of course, and her parents and her sister whom I’d met several times before; the groom, who I’d met once or twice. But all this table full of people we didn’t know, in an unfamiliar place and with the last shots wearing off a little too fast for comfort…
Twice, once before and once after dinner, I sneak off to a pay phone and call Lou.
“Well?” I ask him in the first call. He knows what I’m calling for.
“I went out there once already and the spot was just WAY too hot,” he tells me. “I’ll go back later.”
“Go now,” I tell him. “I’ll call you in an hour.”
The second call goes better. “We’re straight,” he says.
“We’ll be there in an hour.”
We make our excuses, JP and I, and drive back to the city just as fast as we can. We are both starting to crumble just a little bit, just a few shards from around our edges, but we have learned that once this avalanche begins, there is nothing in the world short of heroin that can stop it.
We find Lou sitting in the kitchen chair, his works at the ready, with five little foil packets arrayed before him.
“We left you sixty,” I remind him.
“I had to break one of the tens for bus fare and a pack of smokes,” he says. It may be the truth or it may be a lie; god knows we’ve each been running our own scams on the others since Lou moved in. Holding back a little on his shot, or telling him we have four bags to split when we really have five; little deceptions we’ve formulated, JP and I, comfortable and solid in our illusion of control. We have agreed, JP and I; we may cheat Lou from time to time, but never each other.
JP hangs up the suit, and our life goes back to normal. I will see him in this suit only one more time.
We drive out to some far suburb for the wedding of one of my college friends. Adele had been a bridesmaid at my wedding to David, but we’d fallen out of touch til I got the invitation, sent to my mother’s house. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, but Adele and Cara and Maria and I had been inseparable for a time, and so I asked JP if he was willing to go along. It’ll be easy, I tell him. Adele’s mom and dad are interracial too. I am not sure whether this fact adds to his willingness or detracts from it, but either way he agrees, and a few days before the wedding he turns up from a visit to his grandmother’s carrying this new suit.
And he looks good. Different, but good, and wearing an expression of stoic sacrifice. You realize I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, he warns me, tugging at his collar.
We show up at the reception and nibble at the food and mingle not at all; our closed circle is a little too tight to admit the presence of strangers. The bride, of course, and her parents and her sister whom I’d met several times before; the groom, who I’d met once or twice. But all this table full of people we didn’t know, in an unfamiliar place and with the last shots wearing off a little too fast for comfort…
Twice, once before and once after dinner, I sneak off to a pay phone and call Lou.
“Well?” I ask him in the first call. He knows what I’m calling for.
“I went out there once already and the spot was just WAY too hot,” he tells me. “I’ll go back later.”
“Go now,” I tell him. “I’ll call you in an hour.”
The second call goes better. “We’re straight,” he says.
“We’ll be there in an hour.”
We make our excuses, JP and I, and drive back to the city just as fast as we can. We are both starting to crumble just a little bit, just a few shards from around our edges, but we have learned that once this avalanche begins, there is nothing in the world short of heroin that can stop it.
We find Lou sitting in the kitchen chair, his works at the ready, with five little foil packets arrayed before him.
“We left you sixty,” I remind him.
“I had to break one of the tens for bus fare and a pack of smokes,” he says. It may be the truth or it may be a lie; god knows we’ve each been running our own scams on the others since Lou moved in. Holding back a little on his shot, or telling him we have four bags to split when we really have five; little deceptions we’ve formulated, JP and I, comfortable and solid in our illusion of control. We have agreed, JP and I; we may cheat Lou from time to time, but never each other.
JP hangs up the suit, and our life goes back to normal. I will see him in this suit only one more time.
posted by GJC at 10:01 PM
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