Lydia Millet - Mermaids in Paradise - A Novel

It was a bittersweet situation, I guess, because I looked at her and even as I knew exactly what she was thinking, I also knew she wouldn’t be released — no, she would hover painfully for at least another ninety minutes before she was set free. Everyone has to stick around, at these office parties, until Chip’s boss, drunk as a lord, blearily notices their presence and marks it on his list of reasons not to arbitrarily fire them. She would hover there politely, her eyes as dark and wide as a deer’s, trying to fathom the vulgar customs of her adopted country.

If Chip could, I’ve thought sometimes, he’d carry Tariq around with him for showing off when the talk turns to terrorists, since Tariq’s a guy who’s attractive and very warm. He smiles a lot; with Tariq you almost wish he’d hang out more, he seems like such a sweetheart. But Tariq has other fish to fry and by the time Chip’s bragging about him, he’s off being his usual homebody.

Then for Chip’s college friends, you’ve mainly got Rocket, Eight-ball and BB3 (short for Beer Bong Three, as I recall). In their day those guys liked to tie one on and get into a hazing mentality, which could work well in a bachelor party setting. But Rocket tweaked his back on a mechanical bronco in a bar and doesn’t do much physical these days, Eight-ball is in recovery and avoiding old patterns, and BB3’s afraid of velocity. He doesn’t travel much. That’s a phobia of its own, I guess, the fear of velocity; BB3 doesn’t get into anything that goes faster than walking. If he gets into a car and it speeds up past about 5 mph, he starts to squeal like a four-year-old on helium. Chip says he pictures an impact, can’t help it. Even a bike ride is too much for him, if BB3 gets on a bicycle he immediately pictures his face pulpy. No skin on it at all.

Nothing specific happened to BB3 to cause this, Chip tells me, he just woke up one morning frightened of velocity.

So in the end Chip couldn’t get a group organized. Instead he signed up for an extreme half-marathon in the mud with obstacles — barbed-wire fences, tunnels you slither through on your belly, flaming bales of hay and 10,000-volt electric shocks.

But for the honeymoon, we decided, we’d go in a simpler, more tropical direction.

I’M GETTING AHEAD of myself, though, skipping ahead to honeymoons when Chip and I weren’t even married yet. Chip’s training for his race took up a few hours every day, at first just mornings and then evenings too; at times he’d come home bleeding from the earholes, with dirt leaking from his nose. He had one elbow in a sling, then fractured toes; his kneecaps were scab pancakes. He called it “necessary toughness” and told me men who finished the race often got the name of it tattooed on their biceps.

We had the bachelor party issue decided, so the next thing was my side of the schedule. I’d never been a fan of bridal showers, or baby showers either, really. A shower of any kind seems like a place for brain deficiency — women squeal during those showers, squeal at the sight of trivial objects. A bridal shower features frilly underwear to make the new wife look more like a prostitute; a baby shower peddles frilly bonnets you drape around a newborn’s face to make it look less like a garden gnome. I skipped right over the shower option to its faux-raunchier counterpart the bachelorette party, whose most revolting facet is the name bachelorette . I’m as fun as the next California gal, or try to be at least, but what I don’t appreciate is the infantile aesthetic. Lacy frills, voluntary brain deficiency and words like bachelorette , what they add up to, let’s face it, is basically an infantile or possibly pedophile aspect.

I’ve got no problem with the male-stripper custom. It’s a conundrum though, or maybe a complicated joke — sometimes I’ve thought the whole thing is 100 percent gay, style-wise, with all those middle-aged women smiling and clapping as though the gay male spectacle was just exactly what they came out for. Because let’s face it, in most cases the stripper dance moves are cruel and unusual punishment, for your typical straight woman. Other times I’ve thought maybe the moves aren’t gay at all, maybe they’re designed to be embarrassing. Maybe no one likes them. Maybe the point of them is male abasement, female pity/superiority. Could that be it?

Thankfully, none of my friends insisted on the stripper theme. They were OK without strippers, also without a gigolo.

Once I knew I was safely clear of the acrylic talons of the sex industry I handed the planning over to my maid of honor, Gina D. She wasn’t a maid of honor in the traditional sense, after all she’s a grown woman, as many of us are, nowadays, who choose to get married. There isn’t a maid around. The only one who called her a maid of honor was Chip’s mother, who I could write a book about. Chip’s mother also called me “the bride,” just every chance she got. As in “Well here’s the blushing bride !” when I walked in the front door in gym sweats with dark armpit stains, lugging five heavy bags of groceries and a case of beer. Or “Is the bride a little bit under the weather ?” when she heard me in our bathroom during a bout of Thai-restaurant food poisoning. She said that through the bathroom door, where she hovered while I was in there making noises like a chimpanzee screaming.

But she was my second in command, Gina D. — my best friend from way back and my wedding lieutenant. I call her Gina D. because when we met, in seventh grade, there was another kid named Gina, Gina B., and so we used their last initials. But they were oh so different, those two Ginas. Gina B. later became a successful quilter. Her quilts are everywhere, at least, if you’re the type that visits community centers, women’s art cooperatives and crafts conventions. If you’re a person who notices quilts, you’d certainly notice hers. Hard to miss them. The quilts have quotes, such as, for instance, I dream of giving birth to a child who will say to me: “Mommy, what was war?”

Gina D., though, is starkly opposed to quilts — really to most things that are handmade. She openly despises pottery. I saw her laugh in a potter’s face. I was relieved she didn’t spit; to Gina D. the stink of earnestness is worse than rancid milk. Gina D. wants household items to be mass-produced, ideally of a polymer, and if they’re not she tries to throw them out. One time she walked through my kitchen and trashed three items in five minutes flat: a potholder decorated by another friend of mine’s kid, a floral apron sewn by a long-gone great-aunt and a glazed ceramic planter I really kind of liked.

She’s funny, Gina D., with a carrying personality that makes you half forget she’s harshly obliterating your possessions. Everything’s performance art with her, she lives in a world of irony. If a gesture’s not ironic, why make it at all, is her philosophy. Gina’s a failed academic — at least, that’s what she calls it. Last time I checked she made a decent salary and had tenure in American Studies.

Gina claims the term failed academic is redundant. That’s why she uses it.

She promised me no male strippers, ironic or otherwise. Gina’s the type who, left to her own devices, would have to raise the stakes on male stripping — regular male strippers would never be enough for her, she’d shake her head in boredom at that idea, instantly dismissing it. Gina would have to get some paraplegic ones or maybe amputees. And she’d probably end up making out with at least one of them in a broom closet. Gina’s got game.

She and I brainstormed awhile, with her arguing at first for a pilgrimage to the theme park Dolly Parton owns. She said the infantile or pedophile aspect of weddings made Dollywood the perfect place to go — a whole family amusement park, with millions of visitors a year, based on the image of a woman known for abnormally huge breasts. The whole thing doesn’t fit together unless you factor in its standard deviation, what Gina calls SD. SD is the perversity of everyone, Gina says, which everyone totally ignores. “We’ll fly on the wings of an eagle,” she quoted (Gina loves to quote). “Dollywood, sweet promised land of giant breasts,” she rhapsodized, “the land of friendly, singing breasts. Land where the large breasts sing.”