4 Weddings and a...

I read somewhere that when you look at a person, the only living thing you're looking at is their eyes. Every other square centimeter on the surface of a human body is dead tissue. Used cells that will eventually flake off and form the dust on your furniture is all that you're looking at in the bathroom mirror every morning. I believe this to be so true on so many levels that I make a point of staring directly into peoples' eyes when they talk to me. They're the only thing you can trust. If looking intently at someone makes them nervous, if gazing into the only part of their exterior that truly is the living person makes them jittery, you just have to wonder why.

A person's body is said to be a reflection of the person inside. I think this is a terribly dangerous way to think if you take it too far. The human body is an unreliable expression. You can tell more about a person from the clothes with they choose to cover their body than you can from the body itself. Sometimes facial features offer a clue. A person scowls enough, or smiles enough, or crinkles their brow in thought enough, it can only serve to alter the musculature of their face, give them a specific set of expressions almost entirely unique to them. We glean mroe from expressions than we do from words.

Last night there was a wedding reception at the Tysons Corner Marriott. There's one or two every weekend. There would be more, but we're a small hotel. I wonder all the time why Tysons Corner is such a wedding destination. Sure, it's right at DC, but their are a plethora of places in the district. Lovelier, more elegant locales seemingly more suitable for the day you're supposed to remember for the rest of your life. Lonely Planet describes Tysons Corner as a mall that metasticized into a metropolitan area. Pretty accurate, actually.

I have a pretty good (however imperfect) knack for remembering the brides and bridegrooms that come through our hotel. But even if some of these weddings have a tendancy to run together during busy periods, this is one I'm not likely going to forget.

I was passing through the ballroom, eyeing the tables and watching the servers deliver dessert, checking with the team leads, chatting with the captain. I glanced over at the corner of the room, where a photographer had set up shop with a nice backdrop (though I thought the ballroom would have been fine - why bring a backdrop to a wedding to take photographs? I don't know, that's just me) - anyway - the bride and grrom were posing in front of the gray canvas. Two mothers were adjusting her trail, some guy in a tux (I think he was the best man) was adjusting his newlywed buddy's ascot. Everyone was smiling, laughing, drinking, milling around the manicured couple like ants around a queen. And the queen was perfectly still. So was her mate. They weren't smiling. As I left the room, I glanced at their gift table. It was mountainous. Carefully wrapped gifts were stacked three feet off the table and all over the floor surrounding it. The card box was flowing over. And there they were, looking like they were at a funeral.

The groom was young, barely 21. I couldn't tell how old the bride was. There was an occasional soft, graceful smile from one of them or the other, never at the same time. Usually the smile was directed at one of the attendants. At first I thought they had just had a fight, or were nervous, something. But later that night I came by their table to see how they were doing. There was little more than a nod and thank you. Barely a smile. Let me tell you, both of them looked fantastic. They (or somone) had chosen what they were to wear very carefully, deliberately matching colors with the themes for the day. Someone had spent hours on the bride's makeup. Someone had taken care to place every strand of the groom's hair. Simultaneously they looked awful. If eyes can convey anything through all the pomp and cosmetics, these two did not want to be there.

I had heard earlier in the evening from the event mannager that the mother of the bride was paying for the whole thing herself. all $20,000 of it. She was having a ball. And then, of course, it was clear. Just as funerals are not really for the dead, weddings are not always for the bride.

Each wedding has its own feel, its own flavor. That's part of the reason they're so easy to remember. I'll never forget the Ethiopian wedding with the homemade liquor placed at each table and the gleeful noise the guests made to each other in greeting. I don't think I can mimick it, much less spell it. I won't forget the wedding attended by a Marriott bigwig - was supposed to end at 11, the bars stayed open to one. The bride was doing shots with the groomsmen, the groom was already in the hotel bar. Their friends were getting stoned outside by the ballroom entrance. I actually didn't see them together much. Then there was the one a week ago - the bride rarely spoke, and when she did it was a soft, shaky self-conscious monotone that conveyed uncertainty in anything she said, as if her sister (who was in charge it certainly seemed) would veto anything she said. In most weddings one person, and one person only is in charge, and only a little under half the time it's the actual bride.

I really am taking this somewhere, be patient with me.

Let me seguay one more time.

My housemate is in the hospital as we speak, dying of AIDS. I've only known him for four months, and I can count on one hand how many conversations we've had. He was always guarded to a degree. For about a month before he went in hospital he was in front of the television when I left for work, and in the same place, same position when I came home, usually ten to fifteen hours later. I chalked it to depression, and always assumed he was off doing things during the day.

One night I saw flashing lights outside my window. Turns out two of my other housemates had called paramedics. It was a few minutes later that I had gotten the first good look at him that month. He already was a skinny man. He was emaciated at this point. Emily, (housemate) turned on a lamp and I saw his eyes. It was like two blue lights dimly trying to flash through a weak set of protruding ribs and a sad, unmoving expression. He refused treatment that night, and in retrospect I know why.

A few days later his best friends dragged him to the emergency room. Turns out he had severe pneumonia in both lungs. A few days later I found out, (we all found out), he had AIDS. His condition has worsened since then. About two months now since he left, and all his things are still in place. He's on a ventilator now, and his best friend is in town (from New Orleans, where she recently lost her business). She's brought some life back into his area of the house, given his friends who live upstairs lots of needed comfort. She told me today what he had said without words a couple months ago: "I know I have AIDS. I know I'm dying. Leave me alone and let it happen in the house I've lived in for ten years." When he could still speak, that was what he was essentially telling everyone. In sometimes violent ways. Last week he was taking out his ventilator tube whenever he was left alone. He's in restraints now. His best friend is in the next room crying right now. I think she's going to go back to the hospital later. She and the couple upstairs are already talking about the memorial service. Today they were sharing a bottle of wine and looking through some old pictures of him. They're going to need that funeral. All that's left of him in this house is dust. Soon that'll be all his friends have left of him. They're really going to need the closure. Right now it's being kept away from them. And him.

Death and marriage, like so many other defining points in our lives, are not meant to be planned, mulled over and executed like a broadway production. To do that is to make a mockery of the thing itself. Discussing technical details of a shattering or reviving expreience does nothing but trivialize that experiece. These things are meant to happen. Let them. There are so many wonderful, mysterious, sad, miraculous moments in our lives. Let them happen. And marriage itself? Nothing happens the way you plan it. The more you plan, the less like the desired result it's going to be. All you can do in life is what the woman in the next room is doing right now. Make preparations. And even then, there will always be the thing you didn't expect, the thing from which no preparedness can shelter you. It's in that thing, whatever it may be in whatever given situation, that gives life its definition. That's about all I've managed to figure out about "it all" so far.

Until then, I'm giong to try to keep looking at people's eyes, and hope to find the unexpected. I usually do. People are full of wonderful, mysterious, sad, miraculous surprises. It's too bad I never knew what my housemate's were. I wonder if the bride and groom last night even knew each other's.