by Mamrie Hart
I froze my ass off at the ceremony, which was gorgeous and under a big oak tree and Kelly was hilarious and beautiful and I’M SO SORRY THIS IS WHAT I’M WRITING ABOUT REGARDING YOUR WEDDING. It was really lovely, though. Then, it was on to the reception. Everyone moseyed over to the barn, which was decorated in a way that can only be described as “fall as fuck.” Big communal wood tables, little mason jars of wildflowers, burlap accents everywhere. Dustin and I made our way directly to the bar, where they were ladling out hot cider. “I’ll take one of those,” I said, breathing into my hands to warm them up. “Oh! Can you put some of that apple pie moonshine in there?”
“I don’t see why not,” the bartender said, and started making my drink.
“Hey, that’s a great idea.” I looked back and saw Kelly’s oldest brother behind me in line.
“I thought so,” I said, smiling over my shoulder, essentially doing an impression of the smirk emoji.
“Great boots by the way.” Holy shit, it was working. Dustin and I took our spiked ciders and found our table—of course with him shaking his head at me. Mind you, we’d known each other twenty-four hours at this point, but it felt as though we’d been friends for ages.
The reception was thoughtful and wonderful, with little individual cobblers in tiny mason jars and a spread of NC barbecue, complete with a BBQ jackfruit option for us crazy, out-of-town vegans. By the time everyone was ready to rip it up on the dance floor, the wine and ’shine had been flowing, so we youngsters were ready to boogie.
I hit that parquet dance floor with a mission, busting out all my best moves. The brothers were busy doing their mandatory chatting with the great-aunts and friends of their parents whom they probably didn’t know by name. I occasionally glanced over while shaking my ass in my short dress and flipping my hair in the wind, a stark contrast from Ronnie and Bonnie’s tasteful navy floor-lengths and updos with baby’s breath. Let me tell you, there is a fine line between shaking your ass to get someone’s attention and going a little too sexy to Sam Cooke’s greatest hits as several grandparents watch. That said, I was feeling good that night and having a blast. I kicked up my cowboy boots, did shots, then pulled off my ultimate “chill girl” move. All the ladies huddled on the dance floor, including Ronnie and Bonnie, as Kelly turned her beautiful low-back lace dress to us to throw the bouquet. As it left her hands and everyone did their slow-mo lunge toward it, I crossed my arms and ran in the opposite direction. “No thanks!” I said playfully, winking at the youngest brother. You could practically hear Dustin rolling his eyes.
After several songs, I took a breather. Dancing while sucking in a stomach full of jackfruit BBQ is exhausting! “I just heard them talking about how hot you are,” Dustin said, nodding toward the bros. “Really?” I squealed asked nonchalantly.
Finally, the brothers went from getting their cheeks pinched by elderly ladies while side-eyeing the dance floor to getting out there themselves. Now was my time to shine, and I went in for the kill. I would dance with one brother, then see the other one make his way over and saunter over to him for a minute. Both seemed to be into it. The only problem was, it was working for Ronnie and Bonnie, too. We would eye each other from across the room, trading between bros. It was like a fucked-up square dance meets that dance scene from Mr. and Mrs. Smith, when Brad’s and Angie’s characters are half tangoing/half about to shoot each other. Just when I thought one of the brothers was into it, he’d be dipping Ronnie and I’d start being spun by the other bro.
By the end of the night, all bets were off. The older folks had made their way to their cabins, and the barn belonged to all of Kelly and her hubby’s friends. Based on the super classy photo booth pic I took pretending a gray wig was a merkin, I’d say Mama was feeling the grain alcohol. Slowly but surely, couples and groups of non-singles started to peel off as well. But we three women stood strong, convincing the bartender to give us each one last drink as we watched the brothers take the final photo booth pics with their family. “Don’t y’all have to go all the way back up the mountain?” I asked, sipping my now-straight ’shine. “I think the last shuttle is leaving in a second. Better hop in.”
“We’ll walk,” Ronnie said, as Bonnie nodded. Goddamnit. No one was backing down. You know those “Hands on a Hard Body” competitions they used to have in the nineties? People would have to keep one hand on a car, without taking it off, and the last person standing wins the car? Sometimes it would take days, but you gotta do what you gotta do for a free Dodge Neon. This was just like that. It was a Hands on a Hard Body competition except, in this case, the hard bods were crafted to Marine standards.
Finally, the wedding party was done with their props and poses and started moseying our way. It was the moment of truth. We were the final five hanging on, under the warmth of a heat lamp, as the rest of the wedding party started getting into a van. I smiled at the older brother; he smiled back. As soon as he looked away, I smiled at the younger brother, who smiled, too, and cleared his throat. He opened his mouth with a grin and just as I think he’s about to officially make a move, we hear one of those two-fingers-in-the-mouth type of whistles.
We looked over to see Kelly’s dad motioning the brothers over to their van, Kelly in all her gowned gorgeousness beside him with her hands on her hips, yelling, “[Insert brother’s name here]! [Insert other brother’s name here]! Y’all can barely keep your eyes open. Let’s roll!” And just like that, they were gone.
The three of us stood there in shock in the otherwise empty barn. There we were, just three girls who had thrown all their energy and time into claiming one of the brothers, all worked up from it, only to be left teeth-chatteringly cold and drunk in a barn. But all was not lost.
Remember when I said this was the story of the first time I had a threesome? Yep. It was that type of threesome. HAHA! GOTCHA! You thought I had slept with the brothers based on that brilliant setup. Sorry, darling reader, twist ending. You just got M. Night Shyamalan’ed! Now, I will stop gloating long enough to finish the tale.
I woke up the next morning with a hangover that could rival a Boston frat boy’s on March 18. I looked down, totally butt naked . . . except those boots, sparkling in the morning sun. I wrapped a sheet around me and walked out into the living room to find Dustin lounging on the Outback bread couch. “Well, good morning, sunshine! Sounds like someone had fun last night. Wasn’t expecting that!”
“That makes two of us,” I said as he handed me a coffee. We stared at each other, shaking our heads, and then just started laughing. What was my life? A year ago, I felt like I was the crabby wife in every CBS sitcom, complaining that she has a headache or is too tired all while putting on hand cream from my side of the bed.* But not anymore! I had just slept with two bridesmaids. What? When did I become Owen Wilson in the opening credit sequence of Wedding Crashers?!
I stood there, sex hair and a look of bewilderment like I’d just survived the Hurricane Vagina of 2016, which is ironic considering that we were staying in the House of Cock. I mean, guys!!! The only thing I was wearing besides boots, was my rare gold bangle. Pussy Posse had taken on a whole new meaning.
“Get dressed,” he said. “I still need to try Bojangles’ biscuits.” And that was that.
Three weeks later, I was sitting in a gondola in Venice, gliding through the canals with two of my closest girlfriends—and my new friend, Dustin. It was a perfect day. We took in the sights, sitting on the red velvet seats, huddled under blankets, as our driver navigated the boat through the bends.
Maybe my boots weren’t just lucky because they brought me one of the top ten weirdest nights of my life. . . . They also brought me Dustin, my favorite kind of person. The type of person who will agree to meet you and your two girlfriends in a different country after knowing you for seventy-two hours.
“Dustin, you’re Italian, right?” His head whipped to me, as he offered up an eye roll. The man grew up in rural Pennsylvania,
but I had been asking him questions throughout the trip as if he spent his whole life in Italia.
“Yes, Mamrie. I am Italian.”
“Then you’ll know the answer to this: Where are we right now? Like, if Italy is a boot, where is Venice?”
“Northeast. Right at the top,” he said, as the gondola got stuck under one of the tiny bridges. Within a few seconds, we were back in the sunshine, taking in all the heat we could get from its beams. “But while we’re on the subject of boots . . .” Dustin said with a smirk on his face.
WHAP!
I kicked Dustin in the exposed ankle of his edgy sweatpants before my friends could pick up on what he was saying. He laughed. It didn’t matter that we had just met each other a few weeks before; it felt like I’d been friends with Dustin forever. He was what they call a keeper. . . . Mainly because he could keep (my) secrets.
Weirdest Day
HAVE YOU EVER heard someone ask, “What were you doing the day Kennedy was shot?” Anyone over the age of sixty knows exactly where they were and what they were doing when they found out the news. Now, I’m not old enough to have experienced that particular day in history, but there are other moments that feel this distinct and memorable to me. Like when 9/11 happened, I was in the middle of a small college class about ancient Pompeii. Why did a lazy college freshman theater major decide to take an intensive course on a first-century city? I asked myself that every class.*
Another moment that will always stand out to me is finding out when Michael Jackson died. I was walking through Tompkins Square Park in New York, listening to music, when a text came in on my BlackBerry from Maegan.
Have you heard? Michael Jackson died. So sad. :-(
I stopped in my tracks, and I must’ve had a look of total shock on my face because I heard a man say, “She just found out.” I looked over to see two bums sitting on a bench, trash bags piled high beside them. I looked at them and nodded sadly. In retrospect, I find it kind of hilarious that two homeless men with zero access to the Internet knew before me; that’s how wrapped up I was in the debut Lady Gaga album blasting from my iPod. Yes, kids, I’m that old.
But what I’m saying is that there are these moments in life where it feels like you are connected to everyone around you because you are all grieving. Never have I felt this camaraderie in sadness more distinctly than in November 2016, when Donald Trump was elected. This sobering moment was a lot of things for a lot of people, but for me and my girlfriends on a whirlwind trip abroad, it was the five stages of grief in twenty-four hours.*
Let me back up. A few weeks prior to election day, I got an e-mail asking if I’d be interested in moderating a panel about social media at a convention called Web Summit. While I had never been a moderator before, I figured it would be a breeze. Everyone just wants you to get through your short list of generic questions so you can turn the floor over to the audience for a Q&A. I would be “interviewing” two heartthrob-ish type vloggers so, Lord knows, the audience would be chomping at the bit for me to stop talking so they could ask the vloggers how their dogs are doing or if they can get a hug.
This conference was going to be in Lisbon, Portugal. Y’all remember how painless my panel was in Cannes. I basically got a free trip to talk for five minutes and then hang out and make MIP puns! But unlike Cannes, I wasn’t part of a crew this time—this was a solo trip. As much as I like to travel alone, I wasn’t feeling an unaccompanied adventure. Plus, I had popped by Lisbon post-Amsterdam trip for a couple of days, and it wasn’t really a solo city based on the amount of discarded purses laying around. An idea started brewing. My travel buddy, Joselyn, and I had been talking the day before about how our next big trip together needed to be Italy. After that one afternoon in Pisa, specifically that one plate of pasta with cream sauce that will be my death-row last meal if my life goes really differently, fucked up all other pastas for me. And I LOVE pasta. But every time I ordered a plate of carby goodness, I knew it wasn’t going to be as good as it was in Pisa.
So, I asked the convention if, in lieu of a first-class ticket, they could instead give me three round-trip coach tickets flying into Lisbon and out of Florence. That way, Joselyn and my other friend, Nata, could come with me. One night in Lisbon, then Italia! I knew it was a big ask, but they went for it.*
A few weeks of counting down the days and being tempted to do a #TBT of my pic of that pasta,* and we were on our way to the airport. It was election day, and we would be flying from LA to NYC to Lisbon. I had mailed in my ballot weeks earlier and was happy to get in the air, away from the Internet and the endless scrolling of “I Voted” sticker pics on Instagram.
“Isn’t it crazy that when we land in Lisbon, we’ll have our first female president?” I asked my girls as we settled into our row.
“I am going to bawl my eyes out,” Joselyn said, squeezing into the window seat.
“What if Trump wins?” Nata asked. We all laughed. In what world? I brushed it off. There was no need to give any thought to the idea of Trump being elected. That was like living in LA and just sitting around waiting for an earthquake to hit. It was a waste of energy.
“Okay, when we get there, I’m going to have to haul ass to get showered and head to my panel, which is annoying because I just want to hang out with you guys,” I said, flipping my tiny seat TV to some mindless HGTV. “But it doesn’t matter, because tomorrow night, we are going to be in the streets of Lisbon, toasting to Hillary and having a delicious dinner.”
Here’s the thing about me. I am known among my friends for my love of a “delicious dinner.” I can get through any workday, any shoot, any bullshit, as long as I know that a relaxed, delicious dinner will close out my day. It is one of my sole motivations in life. Back when I did a travel show with my friend Grace, we were asked to do all sorts of insane activities: salmon fishing, spelunking, shooting guns, you name it. I could be freezing in a wet suit having white-water rafted all day, but by focusing on that “delicious dinner,” I could get through it.* Being crammed into a tiny coach seat with nothing to eat but peanuts for half a day would be worth it as long as I got a good meal with a big glass of wine after the sun went down.
We landed at JFK for our three-hour layover around ten P.M. and immediately went to the closest bar with a TV, which turned out to be a little tapas place in the JetBlue terminal. I bopped up to that bar with a little kick in my step and ordered a glass of Rioja. But that kick in my step turned into a punch in the gut when I saw the screen. Trump was in the lead. It was unthinkable. “Actually, I’ll go ahead and take a whole bottle,” I said to the waiter, who gave me an understanding nod back. The three of us sat there, anxiously stress-eating our patatas bravas, barely talking as Trump clinched Florida and North Carolina.
That last one especially hurt because there was a chance for my home state to turn blue that year. Between their discriminatory laws restricting transgender public bathroom usage and other bigotry on display, North Carolina felt like that shitty boyfriend you’re always making excuses for, claiming that their words and actions don’t actually reflect their heart. Like, “Look, I know he called you a pansy-ass bitch, but pansies are a vibrant and lush flower. It was totes a compliment!” I felt betrayed by North Carolina and was glad I’d left that tumultuous relationship in my early twenties.
By the time we had to peel ourselves away from the bar to board, Trump was only thirty-something electoral votes away from sealing the deal. Despite the odds, there was still this hope in my head that it wasn’t going to happen. This election had been so fraught with ratings and conspiracies; maybe all the news channels just needed viewers to stay tuned so they were reporting the Trump states before all the Hillary ones to keep people’s attention.
We boarded our flight, saying good-bye to Internet for the next ten hours. “It’ll be okay,” Joselyn assured us from our aisle seats. “When we wake up, Hillary will be president and Donald Trump will be so embarrassed he’ll ju
st fade away. Let’s just get some sleep.”
But sleep I did not; I was wide awake that whole ten-hour flight. Since we were flying over the ocean, we didn’t have Wi-Fi or live TVs, so I opted to watch everything they had on demand. Not even the dull delivery of astrophysics jokes on The Big Bang Theory could lull me to slumber.*
After what felt like years, the waitresses started coming down the aisles with the breakfast snack carts. One by one, people’s sleepy peepers were pried open by the smell of shitty coffee and the realization that wheels were rolling over their feet. Once we had our little snack and got our wits about us, the pilot started speaking on the microphone in Portuguese.
I pulled my seat up and put away my tray table. I don’t speak Portuguese, but I do know the “we have started our initial descent” speech by heart. I was halfway through throwing my sneakers back on before the whole plane GASPED.
Jos and Nata and I looked at one another in terror, each grasping the other’s thigh with a death grip. That kind of collective gasp could mean only one of two things:
A flock of birds have flown into the engine and the pilot is about to have to Sully this bitch to safety.
Trump had won.
We waited with bated breath for the pilot’s message to be translated into English. “Ladies and gentleman, I would just like to inform you that Donald Trump has won the presidency of the United States of America. . . .” He kept talking, but in that moment, I blacked out. Immediately, the three of us started bawling.
Questions swirled through my head. How could this happen? Why the fuck would the pilot tell us while we were still in the air? Did we actually ascend into the stratosphere? Because everything felt like it was in slow motion.
For that next hour, I tried to squelch my sobs and fight off a panic attack. I had seen the safety demonstration of when the oxygen masks fall from the overhead in case of cabin pressure change upward of eight million times, always hoping I would never have to see it in real life. Now, I was wishing those bags of oxygen would plop in our face, just so I could catch my breath.