Chapter 10 Red Wedding
TEN
RED WEDDING
During the movie, we take a road trip, and it was during these car scenes that we really bonded.
When filming a car scene, the vehicle you’re in is attached to what’s called an insert car—essentially a truck filled with cameras and sound guys that’s towing your vehicle on a process trailer to give the illusion that you’re driving.
Everyone in the insert car can hear everything the actors say, even in between takes, because there’s no efficient way to cut the sound off while cameras are reset and positions retaken.
Cameron and I had learned all the words to a song called “Tales of Taboo,” which we referred to as “Belgian Waffles” because of a particularly foul lyric.
The song was by a performance artist named Karen Finley.
We were filming up in Sausalito along a road that’s used a lot for movies set in San Francisco, and we’d have to go all the way down the road, turn around, and come back.
The whole process took forever, so in between takes our favorite thing to do was play “Tales of Taboo” on the car stereo and sing along to it as loudly as possible, causing the crew to cringe half to death because it’s the dirtiest song you’ve ever heard in your life.
I urge all readers to listen to it immediately and do as Cameron and I did: learn every word, and sing it at high volume whenever possible.
The wonderful Parker Posey was also in that movie, and when she heard us singing “Tales of Taboo,” she offered a song of her own: “Fuck the Pain Away” by Peaches.
“Sorry, Parker,” I said, “but compared to ‘Belgian Waffles,’ ‘Fuck the Pain Away’ sounds like something from Blue’s Clues.”
Again, there was this split personality between me on set and me at home.
At work, I was having fun, screaming lyrics like “Make me a tit sandwich” with my new friend, playing one of two carefree party girls.
At home, I was playing the role of a perfect bride-to-be, eating obsessively clean and not drinking, planning the “perfect” wedding for the “perfect” polished life. No tit sandwich for me.
Who wants to go to a wedding where no one is allowed to drink alcohol?
I can’t imagine there’s a single person in the world who would choose to watch two people get hitched while stone-cold sober.
But in October 2001, if you attended my (first) wedding, I was determined that you were going to be crystal clear mentally and physically for my vows.
It had to be perfect because he was everything my family wanted for me.
My future husband had more than $3.50 in his bank account and didn’t rely on me monetarily.
Handsome fella. He liked sports, so Dad was on board.
It felt like the right next step after years of disappointment.
He disappointed no one, except maybe me.
If I went to a wedding now and they didn’t serve alcohol, I’d leave, thank you very much.
I don’t mind if you’re no good at drinking and want to abstain while you make your vows, but it’s also not my fault you are bad at it.
I had become such a health freak, and I was dead set on everyone being spiritual and clear, so I banned drinking before the ceremony.
I’m sure all my friends hated me. Or they had hip flasks hidden in their pockets. I hope they did. I think my poor bridesmaids snuck a drink or two when they were getting ready.
I picked a pretty house with a pool in Palm Springs as the venue outside the city.
Jeffrey Best, the eminent event planner, helped create an experience that began well before the day.
I made beautiful invitations, and when people accepted, they received a slim, leather-bound journal with a string wrapped around it that had all the available accommodations, the schedule of events, everything that you would need…
and a notice that the wedding would be dry, of course.
Leading up to the big event I had been running every day, dancing every day. I’d quit drinking, was barely smoking cigarettes, nothing. (I would end up smoking a lot on the actual day.)
For the guests, I rented a truly beautiful hotel called the Korakia, a Tangier-inspired resort built originally in the 1920s by some random Scottish painter who wanted to be reminded of his time in Morocco, hence the archways, courtyard, fountain, and whitewashed walls.
There were firepits and pools, every room was different, and oh: there were no TVs.
Also, no curtains. My soon-to-be father-in-law sought me out one morning and said, “Christina, I really need curtains…”
When he walked away, I felt my entire body starting to convulse. I was a stressed-out, sober, cigaretteless bride.
“Tell everyone to go fuck themselves,” I said to my assistant at the time. “I can’t get him curtains. I am the bride. Have him go talk to someone else about his fucking curtains.”
Suffice to say, I was a bit overwhelmed. All the man wanted was a dark room where he could get some rest.
At the rehearsal dinner, we served vegan Mediterranean food, and we all sat on pillows on the floor.
All the waiters were wearing sarongs. To repeat, the food was vegan—so basically there was just a lot of hummus.
Thankfully, the rehearsal dinner was not a dry event like the actual day, though drinking on a stomach of hummus doesn’t seem amazing either. (Farts.)
I kept thinking, This is my wedding. This is not your wedding. This is my wedding, my perfect wedding. This is what I would want a wedding to be like.
I’d hate all that now. These days, I would insist on a TV, and a drink, and fuck sitting on the floor. I can barely get off my bed.
The actual ceremony was choreographed within an inch of its life.
The bride was not late. In fact, she was ten minutes early.
Yes, folks, I was the bride who was ten fucking minutes early.
I was also the bride who was pissed off at everybody else for being late.
I was standing there with Dr. Michael Beckwith and a Catholic priest, who were co-officiating.
As people showed up late, I hissed, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I’m ready!”
No bride ever has said “I’m ready” in sober frustration.
We had written our own vows—mine were comical and lighthearted, whereas his were mushy-gushy, lovey-dovey, and no one ever accused me of liking that. I smiled gamely.
We had organized the whole thing using fake names, thereby avoiding the paparazzi, but still two people attended whom we didn’t know. They were all dressed up and they even signed the guest book. Later, when I looked through it, I found a Polaroid picture they’d taken of themselves.
“Who the fuck are these two?” I said.
After the ceremony, I threw a huge cocktail reception.
The dinner was created by Neal Fraser, a very talented chef who’s worked with Wolfgang Puck and Thomas Keller, and who just so happened to have attended the Wonderland school with me.
He served healthy miso soup and a blackened cod with a miso glaze and a seaweed salad. I thought it was delicious.
I’m so sorry, everyone.
(Never fear—I’d added directions to the nearest McDonald’s at the bottom of the menu. I’m not a savage.)
Once dinner was over, a fantastic and hilarious disco cover band called the Boogie Knights played, replete with fake Afros and real bell-bottoms. At one point, Stephen Stills got up and performed, but he played a little bit too long.
I could sense that after the floor-hummus-rehearsal-dinner-no-drinking/TVs/curtains-miso-soup-seaweed-salad of it all, everyone just wanted to dance, so I hopped up onto the stage.
“You want me off, don’t you?” one-third of Crosby, Stills, and Nash said.
I didn’t need to say anything. But yes, I threw Stephen Stills offstage at my wedding. Don’t hate me—people had been really digging him, and he’d been on fire playing, but I had a band ready to go, and I couldn’t keep them waiting forever. You can’t really dance to Stephen.
When people did finally leave, our parting gift to them was a double CD of every single song we’d played during the entire night. I had sat for days with my assistant going through what I wanted to play, from the second the guests walked in to the second they left.
I can’t believe myself.
One of the reasons I’d insisted on a dry pre-ceremony is because I knew my friends all too well.
I knew exactly what was going to happen.
I just didn’t want it to happen before my ceremony.
Sure enough, on my wedding night, a bunch of people let loose, doing mushrooms and weird drugs and sleeping with other people’s spouses.
At six o’clock the morning after, I was lying in my marital bed, listening to the couple in the next room fighting because there was a woman in their bathtub with whom they’d had an intoxicated threesome.
The whole wedding was a master class in anal perfectionism.
But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was the moment I walked around the corner and into the ceremony.
One of my favorite songs was playing, and when I looked hard at the face of my husband-to-be, I thought, Oh fuck. Fuck, oh fuck.
I have advice for women. If you go on a first date with a guy and you don’t like his shoes, run—shoes are a telltale sign of whether or not a relationship will last. For our first date, he had shown up in boots, but not even cowboy boots.
I think they were supposed to look like a cowboy boot, but they missed the mark by a wide margin.
No one should wear such things, but especially not if you live in Los Angeles, California.
The whole time, during that dinner, I remember thinking, Those shoes are so bad.
Bad shoes, bad shoes, bad shoes, bad shoes.
But another voice said, You’re doing it again. This is the right person for you. He’s got his shit together. He’s attractive. He has a career. We were just very different. I’m scrappy. I tell fucked-up jokes. I can be offensive and rough around the edges. He was none of those things.
I never considered stopping the wedding—for a start, I was halfway down the aisle. I kept thinking, Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy. You’re sabotaging. You’re sabotaging. You’re sabotaging.
Because there I was in my custom gown, the center of this beautiful fucking wedding filled with all the perfect that you could possibly imagine.
And I knew right then that this man was not it for me.
About a year after I first met him, and a couple of years before we married, we’d gone on a trip up the coast to the Ventana hotel in Big Sur.
We were together in a place where I was happy, but I also found myself alone a lot, as he often attended classes at nearby Esalen Institute, just like Don Draper at the end of Mad Men.
I stayed back by myself at the Ventana, on my hammock, writing in a new journal, with blank pages I’d hoped to fill with our happiness together.
August 19, 1998, 11 a.m., Big Sur
It’s wonderful to begin a new book. The other was so weighted down with pain and confusion.
I needed to let it go. 5 years; I wrote there [in that previous journal] 5 years.
No need to look back again. I understand it all.
It molded me to who I am now in this moment, and I am grateful for that.
So the unknown seems bright, exciting. I feel strong, I feel pretty good…
How exciting. I can’t wait to see how it will unfold.
God is good, life is a gift. And so it is. Amen.
I was looking out on the Pacific Ocean, swinging in a hammock, under perfect skies, and I was overcome with a feeling that I’d never had before. Not quite twenty-seven years old, and this was the first time I could actually think, This is what happiness feels like?
I’m staggered still that it took me nearly three decades to experience a moment of actual freedom, bliss, happiness.
I know that the tyranny of “happiness,” and the search for it, has warped our culture and made so many of us unhappy.
Even so, to have spent all those years alienated from such a basic human need fills me now with sadness, a kind of root regret that is very hard to shake.
Superficially, I was a success, but as the Pacific breeze gently moved that hammock, this elusive “happiness” appeared on the air for one of the first times in my life.
I wish I could have stayed in that place forever.
August 24, 1998
Why do [we] have so many issues? I was so pissed.
But all the truth finally came out… It still hurts.
I still don’t trust him altogether. What in me can trust?
Why is it so fucking hard? He pulled something so shitty yesterday.
It freaked me out. But he was rigid. I was looking for an out.
A way out. A way out so I could feel free again, so I don’t have to fucking worry about getting hurt again.
I do want it to work. He certainly is a prize.
But because he is so handsome it scares me.
I feel sometimes that I don’t think he’s sincere.
That he’s full of shit. That he really doesn’t feel for me the way he says he does.
But what is that? Is it me not thinking I’m enough or is it truly a lack of sincerity?
I guess I’ll know for sure when he makes the real commitment.
There I was, designer gown, sober, filled with hummus and sorrow, realizing I was making a mistake, and by 2006 we were divorced, and happiness eluded me once more, that fleeting butterfly, the hint at the edge of my vision that, once I turned my sad eyes to see, vanished.