The First Wedding #5
J doesn’t know why this statement is making him feel so euphoric. He understands this definitely means the role-playing is over. But...someone inside is singing “Dancing Queen,” which makes him wonder...
“What does the beat of a tambourine really feel like?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry. Be my Dancing Queen.”
Because that’s what she is. Even in her straitjacket. The thought bubble forms over his head in its puffy, puffy cloud: She is my dancing queen .
“I have a better idea,” V says.
Six minutes later, they are making out furiously in the back of a cab. It is understandable, even admirable, to feel bad for the cab driver in this situation—but let’s focus on the back seat, where it’s getting hot in more ways than one.
“This feels so good,” J moans. “Your skin, it’s so...soft. Soft and...welcoming.”
“Yours too,” V says, although what she’s caressing is really a collapsed balloon, not his skin.
“So welcoming,” J coos. “Your skin is like...ABBA.”
V kisses him hard, grabbing the back of his neck with the one arm she has available. After a little back and forth in this respect, she pulls away.
“Your mouth is dry,” she observes. “And you’re sweating a lot.”
“I’d stop the world and sweat for you.”
“No, like even more than normal. Are you okay?”
“I’m great. Really, really great.” J nods, agreeing with himself. Then he sings, “Having the time of my liiiiiii-ife.”
“Right here,” V tells the cab driver.
“I’ve got it!” J says, reaching for his wallet. Then he pays the driver all the cash he has.
Once in J’s apartment, he and V tumble into the bedroom. J thinks: The game isn’t over! This is still the game! And it’s a fun game!
V stops kissing him and says, “Hang on—you’re really warm. Like, super warm.”
“The clothes—the clothes are the problem!” J says, pulling at his shirt without recognizing it would be wiser to remove the tie first. Then he looks at V. “Or shall I free you from your constraints?”
“Did you take something at the wedding?”
“Haha, yes. It tasted like hairspray.”
V seems amused. Although to J, the bed also seems amused. And the window. And his shoes.
“I really love my shoes,” he says. “And I suspect they love me back.”
“Was it ecstasy? MDMA? Did you even know what you were doing? You don’t take drugs. You’ve never taken drugs.”
“I know. But I wanted to do something you would do. I wanted to impress you. I’m really sorry you’re not on it, too.
I think Olivia would have given you some.
But you were talking to Drake. And then you were pulling me away.
And the next thing I know we’re in a taxi and my heart is racing and I want to touch you so badly and. ..whoa.”
V undoes her straitjacket and lets it drop to the floor. She takes her glasses off and levels J with a look.
“Oh, honey,” she says. “How does it feel?”
“So far, sooooooo good. Why haven’t I done this before?”
“I’m so happy for you.”
“I want us to become one, V. Let’s become one.”
V laughs. “I’m not sure your balloon’s going to inflate tonight. That’s a common side effect of MDMA.”
“Shit. Olivia didn’t tell me that.”
“Probably would’ve ruined the mood.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” V sits down next to him on the bed. “Did you have a good time?”
“Yeah, I did. Jun and Arthur have it, you know. They got there.”
“It was very sweet to see. And your song was nice.”
J would normally wince at the adjective nice . But he decides to let it wrap him as a compliment right now.
Then he remembers Hotline Bling and says, “I did get jealous, though.”
“Yeah, me too. Obviously.”
“I liked this little experiment. I guess even though it was painful to see you flirting with someone else it also made me want you more.”
V leans back on the bed. J follows suit.
“We were strangers again!” V says to the ceiling.
J turns on his side to face her. “We don’t have to do this too often, though, right?”
V reaches over and takes off his beret. Then she softly runs her fingers behind his ear.
“No,” she says, “but I’m glad we tried.”
J reaches around to the small of V’s back and lingers there, forgetting where he got this motion from.
“I love you,” he says. Then he repeats it as a pronouncement. “I love you so much .”
“Yes, I know,” V says, gently stroking his arm, then moving her hand away. “That’s a side effect, too.”
“I want us to be together,” J says sleepily. “But I also want us to be separate. Is that wrong?”
“No. That’s not wrong at all. After two years, that’s the hard part, isn’t it? Figuring out how to do that?”
“I love you.”
“I bet you love the world right now.”
“Yes. Them too. But mostly you.”
Later, Jun and Arthur will laugh uproariously as they stumble their way out of their tuxedo and into each other’s arms. Smalltown Boy will go home with Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) and will stay far longer into the next day than either of them is expecting.
Back in their hotel room, Smells Like Teen Spirit’s boyfriend, the one who refused to be Lithium, will get back into her good graces when, after turning the lights out, he whispers to her, “It’s less dangerous.
” Olivia will be the last person in the dance-hall, smiling because even though it’s empty, the music will still be playing in her ears, the sound of joy made human.
And throughout the night, J will lie awake and whisper his love to V, but never so loud that it wakes her.
You might say that, at this moment, he is crazy in love.
Or, in other words: Ninety-nine years of wars suddenly seem to have opened up a single spot for a winner.
It is either daybreak or J’s snoring that pulls V from her dreaming. This is a novel occurrence; J is many things, but a snorer is not one of them. Usually.
V gets up quietly and heads to the bathroom.
It had been her idea to role-play, after J had told her about the wedding’s costume conceit.
Why not take it a little further? He would dress in his apartment and she would dress in hers—their alter egos would have the thrill of meeting for the first time, and maybe, just maybe, that thrill would carry over.
On the toilet long after she’s done using it, V ponders whether the night was a success.
It was fun to see J’s response to her other suitor.
It was even more fun to talk so directly with J at the bar, even if every single thing she said about herself was a lie, while he characteristically opted to tell the truth.
She wonders if this is a warning sign: She used disguise to explore the person she wasn’t, while he used it to bring up the person he was.
What tempted her the most was the opportunity of it all.
She knew she wasn’t going to go home with anyone but J, but at the same time, she liked having options—especially options who brought her drinks and found her attractive.
Weddings often depressed her, to a degree that she’s never really shared with J.
Some people see a balloon and see color, lightness.
Others only see the coming of the pop. Weddings make V confront the fact that she feels the pop is inevitable.
For this reason, V isn’t too surprised by J’s costume choice.
He wouldn’t have seen the pops coming. She is jealous of this.
More jealous, in fact, than she was when she saw J dancing with the woman who gave him the drugs.
Because while V craves opportunity, she and opportunity have a very complicated relationship, probably even more complicated than her relationship with J.
She hasn’t often gotten the things that she’s wanted, although she’s frequently been the thing that someone else has wanted and gotten.
The wonderful thing about being with J is that his desires are not demanding; he wants good company, good sex, and a sincere sounding board.
She enjoys being all those things. But she’s not so sure they add up to her in the same way they add up to J.
She flushes the toilet a second time, just in case he’s awake now and wondering why she’s been in the bathroom for so long.
But when she returns to the bedroom, she finds him snoring away.
It’s not a buzzsaw snore or a choking snore, but more like his body has chosen to put a little more emphasis on breathing.
Her phone buzzes; no doubt a work text coming in from some American, even though it’s six in the morning on a Sunday. She doesn’t check it.
Instead she waits for the screen to unlight itself, then takes the phone from its charger and pulls up the microphone.
She holds it by J’s snoring face for a minute, to record the sounds he is making.
At the very least, it will come in handy the next time he accuses her of waking him with her own snores.
She puts the phone back down, not even bothering to plug it back in.
She didn’t meet J at a wedding, but if she had to pinpoint the moment she fell in love with him, it would be a wedding over a year ago.
Ordinarily she wouldn’t have been at a wedding where he was playing, but in this case she was the reason he was there in the first place, because it was an old family friend who had a serious wedding budget and an appreciation of her newish boyfriend’s music.
The theme was Swing Time, and J had been given a big band to back him with horns and strings.
He gamely tackled a number of jazzier standards, but it wasn’t until he slowed everything down for a rendition of “Blue Moon” that V’s heart truly took note.
He wasn’t afraid to share the longing of the song, and instead of throwing everything off, it brought everything together.
V looked around at all the couples leaning into one another, swaying under a moon that was only present in the song, and when she looked up at J, he was holding his hand out to her.
She had felt so lonely out in the crowd, but once she stepped onto the bandstand and into his arms, she felt profoundly unlonely—if only because he had seen her loneliness and had joined it to his own to create the antidote.
He continued to sing as they danced, and nobody in the wedding hall thought it was unusual, not even V.
So what now ? V thinks. The enormity of such a short question nearly paralyzes her, as such questions often do. That was another benefit of being Straitjacket Heart: to have her story only exist in the present tense. In the bed, J turns, moans, and subsides into sleep, the snoring now gone.
V slips back in and sees that J—consciously or not—has arranged his body in a position that makes it very easy for her to pull close.
Whether it’s an invitation or serendipity, V takes her place.
She puts off any other thoughts of opportunity, of what’s next.
She surrenders to being one half of this comfortable drowsing. For now, it’s enough.