Always a Bridesmaid (for Hire) Read online

  I backpedaled my way offstage, the bright light enhancing my every move, and wonder if this day will come back to haunt me.

  But for now, I’m tugging down on the hem of my sweat-soaked T-shirt, letting my heart squeeze out some final shakes, like the aftershocks of an earthquake. I am alive. I am alive. I am still very much alive.

  chapter eighteen

  Ghosts of a Bridesmaid’s Past

  In every group of friends, there’s always that one person you can count on, no matter how bone-chillingly cold it is outside, how late at night you’re dialing her number for a pick-me-up, or how many candles are starting to fill your birthday cake, to tell you an outrageously good story.

  She’s the one who seems to always show up a little late to a happy hour, a bridal shower, or a baby’s bris with an excuse that sounds as if it belongs in an episode of Sex and the City. Some cockamamie story about how she just got pulled over by a cop who had a face like Matt Damon, a body like The Rock, and a voice like George Clooney, which led to some flirty banter and him giving her his phone number on a coffee-stained Dunkin’ Donuts napkin instead of a ticket.

  I’m talking about the kind of friend who somehow always finds herself as the protagonist in an ill-advised and unimaginable situation that never happens to anybody else you know. She’s the one who had to have her parents drive her to an urgent care clinic because she sliced her tongue open during her first kiss. The friend who went on a backpacking trip to a tiny city in Southwest Asia and bumped into her long-term, long-distance, ex-boyfriend whom she hadn’t seen in three years. The one who would bite into a hot-pressed tomato mozzarella sandwich during her lunch break and find a piece of pirate’s gold inside.

  And you know her stories are true because you’ve been there, in the background, watching it all happen. You’ve stepped away for one second for one raspberry martini refill, one quick trip to the ladies’ room, and come back to discover her doing the limbo with a group of fanny-pack-wearing tourists from Vietnam.

  She’s the person you find yourself hoping will show up for the quarterly girls-night-out dinner because, when the conversation begins to wind down, after the salad forks have been tossed aside and the first glasses of two-for-one pinot noir have been clinked and drunk, after the stories about refinancing mortgages, choosing the right doula, and bacterial infections from Spanx have been thoroughly discussed, she’ll be waiting on deck with a story that starts off with, “You are never going to believe what happened to me.”

  She’s the wild card, the comic relief, the shockingly put-together mess who will have you choking with laughter and brimming with tears within a three-minute span. She’s the friend who never seemed to fully grow up, yet her life seems to demand the attention of all the other basic adults at the table who seem to take a weird kind of comfort in their friend’s rampant chaos.

  I don’t know how, but I do know when I became that person for my group of friends. It started in my early twenties when I found myself pulling up a chair to a table full of diamond-ring-wearing, baby-ready gal pals. All of a sudden I didn’t fit into the conversations anymore. Every group text message thread, conversation over scrambled eggs and chilled mimosas, and shopping excursion to the J. Crew outlet store went from discussions about rent, promotions at work, and dating to debates about hiring a band versus a DJ for their weddings, buying diapers in bulk, and furniture sales. That kind of stuff became the new normal, and my stories made me feel that I was an alien from Pluto touching down for brunch: “Greetings, Earthlings. Today I am going to tell you about something we have on our planet. It is called Tinder, and it helps us space cadets find someone to rock our intergalactic galaxy.”

  They couldn’t wait to grab my cell phone, tap open a dating app, flip through the carefully chosen photos I uploaded, and read over my bio. It was as if they still wanted me at the round table as a warning of what it feels like to sit on the couch alone on a Friday night, beside a bag of unwrapped, ready-to-eat Hershey Kisses and a stuffed inbox full of unread messages from potential suitors. As if hearing about my online dating stories and offline dating meet-ups made changing dirty diapers feel like a breeze.

  They wanted to brush up against a life they were no longer able to live, one that, from far away, seemed more like an impressionist painting than a clear photograph in the gallery of their memories.

  “So what about you, Jen?” they ask after everyone at the table has given a routine update on how Baby Boo just said his first words or how Baby-to-Be gave a little high kick and now everyone thinks she’ll be born a Rockette.

  At this point in the conversation, the engaged ones will be done talking about how many salad spinners they put on their registry, or announcing their formal decision to move their wedding indoors because of the potential forecast of rain six months from now.

  The single ones, aka me, will find themselves looking for an excuse to go home early, to leave this adult dinner party before someone has the chance to ask us why we’re still single, or if freezing our eggs is part of our (nonexistent) five-year plans. We’ll squeeze our eyes shut, trying to send telepathic signals to our roommates, hoping they’ll receive them and call from home with some previously agreed-on excuse.

  “Oh yeah, Jen! Tell us about the last date you went on.”

  If I’m too busy getting jiggy with my penne alla vodka and can’t clear my throat quickly enough to answer, a follow-up question always finds a way to beat me to the finish line.

  “Wait, are you seeing anyone?”

  Do daily twenty-minute conversations with my doorman, Jimmy, who calls me Kimmy, count as being in a serious and stable relationship? There’s no romantic interest there, but he did offer me a slice of his Domino’s pizza once. So I guess you can say I am seeing someone, and I’m very happy.

  After over seven years of passing the salt and pepper with these girls, they know that no matter what the happy hour specials are, the day of the week we’re breaking bread, or the amount of time that has been X’d off the calendar since our last gathering, I’m good for a story about how I said “I love you” too soon or went out with a guy from Match.com who, three dates in, revealed he had a secret (Kendra) and that Kendra had a nickname (wife).

  “You really want to hear one?” I’d double-check in case my tales of defeated love and aborted first dates were getting too stale to be served as the last course before dessert. But they would scoot their chairs closer, plant their elbows on the table, and shove their crumb-filled plates aside, giving me their undivided attention.

  “Yes, tell us. Who is it?”

  The last time we all powwowed over tapas, they bahahaha’d about the guy who never showed up for our date, the guy who ordered half the menu and then told me he forgot his money at home, and the guy I saw scrolling through Tinder while I was deliberating over what to order as my entrée.

  My friends like to say that I attract bizarre situations, as one would attract creepy guys on the subway with their stern eye contact or colds in the winter with their lack of hand sanitizing. I have the type of luck that lands me in the seat across from the kind of guy who snorts when he laughs and picks the pumpernickel seeds out of his teeth when he listens. But I don’t think I cling to odd situations purposely, like lint on a little black dress. I just think, maybe, when you constantly do something over and over again (in this case, online dating) and expect something different to happen, you’re a bit insane. For me, dating is a déjà vu disaster.

  “I went on a date with Lance Bass.”

  Their mouths gape open.

  “Well, I was on a date with someone else, but Lance Bass sat down next to us and we started talking. I offered him some of my roasted hummus and carrot dip.”

  When I’ve had enough of the self-deprecating spotlight, I interrupt my own stories halfway through and ask if I can try on all of their engagement rings at once, transforming my bony ring finger into a shiny disco ball. This, to me, is a necessary intermission from recalling my real-life nightmares.r />
  As the years flip over and over like a spinning bingo cage and we entertain each other over catch-up dinners, my role in the group hasn’t changed—just the genre of the stories I tell.

  In my late twenties, my “you’re never going to believe this” anecdotes shift from stories about rock-bottom dates to tales of shuffling down the aisle, often for someone I’d never met before. I now have a book’s worth of wedding stories, and I dazzle them with Sports Center–like commentary about how, this week, I had to act as a bodyguard for a bride who fired her maid of honor whom she feared would crash her wedding, and how, last week, I was tasked with finding jumbo tampons for a bride in a tiny town that sold only miniature cardboard ones.

  “Tell us the worst bridesmaid story since the last time we saw you,” one of them asks.

  “You go to, like, a million weddings a year,” one of them interrupts, as if she thinks my stories are by now generic, stale, and repetitive. “Aren’t they all the same at this point?”

  But spending every Saturday at a wedding as a bridesmaid is a lot like spending every Saturday with your baby: it’s never the same. One weekend, you go to the playground, another the beach, and another on a road trip to Sesame Street World. One weekend, you have to resuscitate a bride back to life after she has too many prewedding tequila shots, another you have to embark on a top-secret mission to find a missing groom who hasn’t been seen in over two hours, and another you find yourself dancing the cha-cha slide while the bride’s great uncle Samuel’s arm is slung around your neck.

  No matter how many pairs of diapers you bring, jars of baby food you pack, and binkies you hand-wash and clip to the edge of your bag, you’re never prepared for the out-of-the-blue baby tantrum. Just like, no matter how many packets of Advil, prewedding pep talks, or stain removers you carry with you, you’ll never be ready for a wedding disaster.

  “Last week, I touched poison ivy,” I said, showing off the dried and crusty bumps all over my hands, as if I’m proudly presenting a new tattoo. “The bride wanted to take a picture in a field of flowers outside her hotel room.”

  Their eyes start to bulge, and I think about what story I should come to the table with next.

  “The week before that, I had to give the mother of the bride my bra because she forgot to bring one.”

  “What did you do about your water balloons?” one of them asks while the others feast their eyes on my B cups.

  “I used duct tape,” I say, thinking back to how I handed off my double-D-sized strapless bra to someone who could get more practical use out of it than I could. “I just wrapped it around and around and around my chest.”

  They grab their own chests, imagining the pain of having to rip off the sticky tape when the night came to an end. My body, once smooth and unblemished, has become a living, scar-covered record of professional bridesmaid jobs gone by.

  “Okay, but tell us the worst thing you ever had to do.”

  I stick my fork into a slice of chocolate lava cake, lifting a piece the size of my forehead into my mouth.

  “Wha abou a goo stowy?” I ask through my mouthful of ooey gooey heaven.

  They purse their lips together and raise their eyebrows high, as if to say they don’t have time for such nonsense. Nobody ever wants to hear about a bridesmaid story gone right, or a wedding that was as calm as the streets of Manhattan on a Sunday morning.

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t make for good dinner conversation.”

  “Oh, come on, Jen.”

  “I’m telling you, this story is kind of disgusting.”

  They lean in closer, like little kids around a campfire at an outdoor slumber party, waiting for me to tell them ghost stories about a perpetually single professional bridesmaid.

  “I worked a wedding for a couple in Vegas.”

  Their eyes light up like slot machines, anticipating some The Hangover–style debauchery.

  “But not Vegas Vegas. Right outside the Strip, on an open pasture.”

  They lean back slightly, confused by this early plot twist in the story.

  “As I went to walk down the aisle, I noticed it was lined with animal droppings from the wild donkeys that lived there. So I had two options . . .”

  “You could keep walking, or . . . ?”

  “I could pick it up.”

  I thought back to the story my babysitter told me years ago about the bridesmaid who passed out at the altar and was tossed aside. How all of the other bridesmaids stood there, paralyzed, holding their peonies in shock. That story never sat well with me, and it became my own personal recurring nightmare. So when I was in a situation where the choice was between doing nothing and letting a bride get poop on her $5,000 Italian silk dress, I reached down and got my hands dirty. Really dirty.

  “But the best part was that after the bride walked down the poop-free aisle, the donkeys came back and stood behind them for the rest of the ceremony, waiting to go to the bathroom until after they said ‘I do.’ ”

  “That’s epic,” one of them says. “I knew we could count on you for a good story.”

  I have a feeling I’ll never grow out of being the wild card friend. Even if, one day, we all end up in the same nursing home, I have a feeling I’ll have a whole repertoire of brand-new stories. Maybe—well, I hope—they won’t be about catastrophic dates or working a wedding as a hired bridesmaid. Perhaps they’ll be about how I convinced the nurse to let me order Domino’s pizza even though my dentures couldn’t handle the cardboard-textured crust. I have a feeling that even if I settle down with a patient husband and we have a minivan full of kids, I’ll still be invited to dinner tables across America to tell a story about a wedding or a bad date that will make half the audience cringe and the other half flutter their eyes in utter disbelief.

  I think our stories become invisible tattoos that we wear privately until someone, somewhere, shines a light on us and asks us to reveal what we’ve kept hidden, if only for just a little while.

  “Give me another,” I say, plunking my cup down on the table and asking the waiter for a refill on my ginger ale. “We have a long night ahead of us, girls.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ask a Professional Bridesmaid

  (Real Questions from Real Girls)

  Dear Jen,

  All of my friends are married. The ones who haven’t tied the knot yet are engaged and will be married between now and the end of 2017. Sounds like oodles and oodles of fun, right? Well, it would be, maybe, if I had a plus-one. But I don’t. I’m the perpetually single one in our group of college pals. Because of that age-old rule that you only get a plus-one if you’re in a serious relationship (and a ring is on its way) or you’re married, I’m excluded from someone tagging along by my side. You want to know what else I’m excluded from? The table my friends get to sit at with their Hunny Bunny Husbands. I’m an odd number, and tables at weddings are for an even ten. So that means I’m left snagging a seat beside the bride’s distant cousin, friend from work who doesn’t know anybody else at the wedding, or fourth-grade teacher with the shaggy toupee. My best friend from college is getting married in three months and I’m scared to ask her if I can bring someone. I’m over going to weddings as the single girl. Can I ask her for a plus-one?

  Sincerely,

  Can I Get a Plus One?

  Dear Can I Get a Plus One?

  Can I get an amen? Amen. I always cringe a little bit when I’m invited to a friend’s wedding and the invitation isn’t addressed to Ms. Jen Glantz and Guest. By now, I’m also the only single girl at these things too, and while that comes with some perks (catching the bouquet without competition, dibs on which weird uncle to dance with, and not having to worry about having to babysit a drunk date) it also kind of stinks.

  You know what I say to those age-old etiquette rules? Go bother someone in your own time period. It’s 2016, darling, and we don’t just sit around silently when something tickles us ever so slightly in the gut. We open our mouths, er, laptops, and say it in 14
0 words or less.

  So go ahead, say something. If the bride is one of your closest friends and you really will be one of the only single gals there, ask if you can bring someone to the wedding with you so that you’re not spending the night rolling your eyes at hand-holding married couples, or slow dancing to a Peter Gabriel song all by your lonesome self.

  Ask her, if it’s possible, when the wedding gets closer and she has a better sense of how many people are coming, if there’s room for you to bring somebody. The bride may be inviting more people than she has space and money for, so the thought of one more person sitting down at table number 15, eating a $250 plate of filet mignon with zinfandel reduction, truffled potatoes, and California vegetables, may make the bridezilla side of her come out to play.

  But she kind of owes you a plus-one. Because one glorious day soon, you’ll be getting married, and she and her hubby—and, perhaps, by then, three kids—will have an automatic invite to your wedding. Another reason why she should just give you a plus-one now so you can call it even.

  Worst case is that she gives you a big fat N-O and you’re stuck doing the “Gangnam Style” dance with a bunch of married couples and their diaper-wearing toddlers. That doesn’t sound so awful, does it? Okay, yes it kind of does.

  Dear Jen,

  A friend of mine who I’m not very close with anymore asked me if I would be her bridesmaid. I’m torn. Part of me wants to say yes because it could be fun and I’m close with some of the other girls she asked. But the other part of me thinks that I should say no because when (I should say if) I ever get married, I don’t think I would make her one of my bridesmaids. I want to have a smaller, low-key wedding, with very few bridesmaids. I just don’t want to say yes to her now and feel obligated to make her one of mine in the future. Is that a strong enough reason to say no? Or should I just say yes now and worry about whether I will return the bridesmaid favor later? Help!