The Poptart Manifesto

by Rick Gualtieri

  The restaurant was OK and the food was pretty good. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that most of what we were eating was covered in saliva since, of course, Sarah couldn’t help but piss off most of the wait staff. You’d think it would be a simple rule to follow: don’t treat the people who are touching your food like shit. Yet some people just can’t seem to get a handle on it. But hey, what’s a little extra DNA amongst strangers?

  From there it was off to the local Marriott. Sure the Amboys are only about a half hour from where I live, but, as I think I mentioned before, I don’t have a car. Not to mention, we were supposed to all be up and dressed at six AM the next day. Ben and his wife gave me a lift since they were crashing there for the night too.

  We walked in expecting everything to be ready for us, but of course it wasn’t. Jake was supposed to have hooked us up with reservations, but the desk manager had no idea who the hell we were. That was fine, though. Hotels in that area usually aren’t exactly packed on a day to day basis. I waited my turn while Ben checked in. While getting my own room was pushing my budget a bit, I figured it would be kinder for all of us then trying to share one. Ben and Betty are still newlyweds and I’m not big on pretending to be asleep while people screw each other brains out three feet away. I’ve been there. It’s not fun.

  So I’m standing there waiting. Just then I turn my head and see Belle come walking through the door. She was apparently staying there as well. She was also smart enough to not put her fate in the hands of others and had called ahead to reserve a room. That being the case, the manager let her cut ahead of me in line. This, come to think of it, wasn’t much of a problem. Let’s just say the view from the back wasn’t any worse then the one from the front.

  Suddenly she stopped what she was doing and motioned all of us over. She asked if the three of us were sharing a room or going separate. I told her separate. As Ben and Betty took their key and headed off, Belle then turned to me and said, “You know; it would be cheaper if we shared a room.”

  I paused for a second, letting this sink in. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I pretty much just mumbled a quick, “Yeah, I guess so,” as a reply.

  “OK, let's do it,” she answered back and, before I could debate whether or not there was a double meaning there, just like that she turned back to the manager to make the change to her reservation.

  In the time it took her to do this, I experienced a sort of oneness of being that I have never felt before. It seems my right and left brain hemispheres are always arguing with each other, like two bickering old ladies. This time, however, all the personalities in my head just nodded in agreement. The practical part of my mind was screaming, “Hey we just saved about 50 bucks!” while my reptilian brain was agreeing, “Hey, we just saved 50 bucks AND have a cute girl inviting us to share a hotel room with her.”

  Let’s just say I made it a point to check my lottery tickets the next day as the gods of luck seemed to finally be smiling on me big time. Thus, with those thoughts ringing in my head, I followed Belle to our room.

  Now before you start on me, I’m a good guy at heart. Despite the trash I’ve been talking, I’ve always been cursed with being that nice guy who the ladies love just like a brother and by that I mean they don’t sleep with their brothers. I just figured I’d mention that, in case you’re thinking that I had any plans to slip Belle some roofies and then bury her body by the turnpike the next day. I figured worst case scenario, I’d get to spend a few hours with some eye-candy. Kinda like being in a museum, but a bit more fun. Best case scenario? Well I didn’t know yet. But truth be told, I was very fond of my girlfriend.

  Yes, I said, “was.” I’ll get to that later.

  Anyway, I was very close to my girlfriend. As such, I had no real intentions of making any moves on this girl. Although, my reptilian brain kept insisting that if she made the moves on me, well that was a different story. I’d have to put up a brave but ultimately doomed defense, if you know what I mean.

  We got to our room and of course there were two beds. That was fine. As I mentioned before, saving money and getting a great view were more then worth it to me. It was getting late and there was an early wake-up call planned. So I suggested we turn in, as that also seemed like the safest option. Yes, I am a fucking weenie.

  However, going to sleep brought up a minor problem for Belle. She told me, “You know, I didn't count on sharing a room with anyone, so I didn't bother bringing anything to wear to bed.”

  I was pretty sure an hour or so passed while this statement bounced around in my head, but it was probably just a second or two. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I should have replied, “Me neither. On a cold night such as this we might need to swap body heat to keep each other warm.” I didn’t, though. Instead I offered her the gym shorts and t-shirt I had brought with me, all the while the lizard in my brain was opining on how questionable my chosen sexual orientation was. Sadly, she accepted my offer and went to go get changed.

  We both got into our respective beds and turned off the lights. Rather then going straight to sleep, though, I figured I’d at least chat with her a bit. Jokingly (and also to satisfy some base curiosity), I asked her, considering she had just met me a few hours ago, how she could be sure I wasn’t some crazed psychopath. She told me that I didn’t seem like the type. I seemed like a real nice guy and someone who was probably safe (Motherfucker). Besides which, how could I be sure *she* wasn’t the crazed psychopath (damn, now I gotta sleep with one eye open)?

  Continuing on, she wanted to know if I had been completely shocked when she asked me to share a room. Playing it cool, I lied and said I wasn’t.

  “Oh. Well then what would have been your reaction if I had asked for only one bed?”

  I tried to answer, but for some reason my mouth and brain were suffering a momentary disconnect. Sensing this, she giggled and then turned over to go to sleep; leaving me to lie there staring at the ceiling with an open mouth and a raging hard-on that I knew wasn’t going away anytime soon. Sorry, I know. Too much information again, I know. Can’t help it. Sometimes I get lost in the story.

  So that was it. In other words nothing happened and, outside of my somewhat fertile imagination, I never really expected it to. We got up the next morning, showered (separately), and got dressed for the wedding. I finished up first and headed downstairs. There I found Ben waiting in the lobby with a big smirk on his face. Apparently he and Betty had overheard Belle’s offer in the lobby the night before.

  “Nice one!” he said to me as I approached.

  Ignoring my normal male urge to boast of how I nailed her so hard she wouldn’t walk straight for a week, I instead (for some ungodly reason) fessed up. “Nothing happened.”

  “Whatever, you say, man,” he replied, still wearing that shit-eating grin. Before anything clever came to mind as a retort, Betty joined us and we headed out to the reception hall for some last minute prep.

  Nothing much to talk about there. The groomsmen went with the groom and the bridesmaids went with the bride. We all took care of our respective parts and then it was time for both groups to join up for a bit of breakfast before splitting up again to let the bride and her party get ready. As we were heading out to eat, Jake came over to me and asked me how I was doing.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Not too tired?”

  “No,” I replied, a little bewildered.

  “I’m surprised, since apparently you got to know one of the bridesmaids reaaaalll well last night.” Fucking Ben! There really is no honor amongst thieves.

  The rest of the morning went by fairly quickly. Everyone was too busy with their stuff to get bored, or to give me any more shit about the night before. Finally it was time to head to church. The limo popped by to pick up the guys. Stupidly, nobody bothered to take into account traffic and we just barely made it there on time. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said about the bride and her party. They left later then us and took longer to get there.

&n
bsp; We were all standing there waiting and it wasn’t hard to see that the delay was seriously pissing off the priest. I guess he was imaging all the twelve-point bucks the other hunters were bagging while he had to inconvenience himself with doing little things like God’s work.

  While we were waiting, he started going over the instructions with us groomsmen again, except he was too pissed off to notice he completely reversed what he told us the day before. I pointed this out to him and the asshole condescendingly told me to pipe down before I confused everyone else. And here I thought that papal infallibility had gone out of style with the middle ages. OK fine, it wasn’t my wedding. If he wanted to fuck it up, who was I to argue?

  Fortunately, the bride finally showed up. Almost a pity, as we were just starting to discuss the bright side of being stood up at the altar with Jake. Her and her party tried to go into the backroom for some quick touchups, but our friendly Father wasn’t about to have any of that. There’s only a month left of hunting season and, by God, he was aiming not to miss another second of it.

  He actually walked out before the congregation and shouted, “Let's get this thing going, we're late enough as it is! Hey you, organ player! Start playing that organ!”

  There was a momentary stunned silence from all, and then we were off. The music started and the guys were all walking down the aisle in the order we were told to, which of course meant we all felt like a bunch of idiots since there was no way we were going to be lined up correctly thanks to our last minute instructions.

  We got where we were going and then the ladies made their entrance. Belle looked smoking hot in her gown. I couldn’t believe I didn’t put more effort into that the night before. As for the bride...well let’s just say she looked:

  Fabulous

  And

  Terrific

  and leave it at that.

  The mass got underway and, while the rest of the building was on their knees praying, we groomsmen huddled up to figure out how to fix things. One of the other guys suggested that we fix our lineup during communion.

  “Are any of us even Catholic?” I asked. “We don’t even get communion.”

  “We do now.” Ben said. Oh well, what are a few heresies amongst friends?

  Speaking of communion, do you go to church? Yeah, well I have a question. During Catholic mass the priest always pulls out this one big wafer, breaks it, and then eats one of the halves. What the hell do they do with the other half? I mean is there a big pile of discarded communion halves in the back? Once a week, do they have the choir boys glue them together into one to save money? I always wondered that. Huh? No, this doesn’t actually have anything to do with my story. No, I’m not finished yet. It just popped into my head. OK OK. I’ll get back to the point.

  Anyway, we fixed what the priest had screwed up and managed to get things all nice and lined up again. The father ended all the fire and brimstone stuff then finally finished the actual ceremony. You may kiss the sow! Thank god that was over with.

  But I spoke too soon. It’s wasn’t even three PM at that point and the reception started at six. Hey, I could deal with a three hour cocktail hour. But no, seems it was picture taking time instead. We drove an hour through traffic to some park in the middle of freaking Newark. All the while, Sarah, having discovered some new bug up her ass, was giving Jake all kinds of shit. Goddamn! Not even married an hour and already she was pissing all over him, marking her domain. During the ride, I was half hoping the last remaining shred of his balls would kick in and he’d open the door and dive into traffic. It’d be kinder then a lifetime of dealing with that crap. All I can say is that if he ever has enough and just kills the bitch, well I’ll be very understanding. Fuck that, actually. I’ll give him an alibi.

  So we finally got to the park and made our way past the drug dealers to a nice spot. There, it became apparent that we actually had just died and were sent to a Hell where they just take endless pictures of you in stupid pose after stupid pose. The funny thing is; we didn’t even get to finish up. After about an hour of this shit, one of our party members pointed out that we’d attracted a crowd. No not the drug dealers. I might have preferred them.

  We were surrounded by literally dozens of squirrels. Worse yet, they were starting to close in on us. Now I don’t want you to think I’m a complete pussy, but let’s just say we all beat a quick retreat before we somehow wound up in the plot of a bad horror movie. Hey, don’t laugh. These weren’t your cute fuzzy backyard squirrels. These were those nasty, attitude-ridden black squirrels they have up in North Jersey. I’ve heard of those things attacking and eating birds. Shit, I wouldn’t be surprised if they occasionally carried away a kid or two. At this point the reception was looking a hell of a lot better then being treated for rabies.

  It worked out well anyway. Thanks to rush hour, we wound up getting back to the reception hall just in time to sequester ourselves away for the cocktail hour. I grabbed myself a plate from the buffet and started digging in. After a few moments, Ben came over and sat down next to me.

  “Not eating?” I asked between mouthfuls.

  “Nah. Saw a roach in the salad,” he replied. Goddamn it! He couldn’t have told me that before I started eating? The day just kept getting better and better.

  After I rinsed out my mouth with a few glasses of champagne, I noticed Belle wandering over to me. She pulled me aside. I was thinking maybe she was regretting that two beds thing. Instead she told me that should anyone ask, she shared a room with Betty and I roomed with Ben. I started to tell her that didn’t make any sense considering they were just married, but she interrupted me to explain that she has a boyfriend and he’s going to be at the reception. Oh.

  “Yeah but we didn’t do anything.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she countered. “He’s a bit older then us and I don’t think he would be really understanding of me shacking up with a younger guy.” OK, I guess I’m not *that* safe. But still. Last thing I need is to be punched out. With my luck this guy was probably a gorilla too. After she left, I moved back over to Ben to tell him to keep his goddamn mouth shut when we finally rejoined the general crowd.

  That time finally came. They introduced the wedding party. We entered and did our dance, me making sure to hold Belle at a discreet distance during the slow parts. It sucked, but the thrill of her pressing her cleavage up against me was outweighed by my desire to not have my face rearranged, even if just barely. The song ended and I gave her my best look of indifference as I walked away to mingle.

  As I was walking through the crowd trying to introduce myself to various people, I couldn’t help but notice that I was one of the few people in the room speaking English. I hadn’t noticed this before. Just when I was about to question that perhaps I had wandered into the wrong reception, I saw Jake in the crowd. I walked up to him and asked what’s what. He did a quick check of the surrounding area, probably to make sure Sarah wasn’t within earshot, and then rolled his eyes.

  “It’s Sarah’s family,” he told me. Turns out that Sarah’s related to half the people who live in the little Portugal section of Newark and they’re all here. “If you know any Portuguese jokes, you might want to keep them to yourself,” he continued.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but he cut me off. “Wait! It gets even better,” Jake said. “Listen.” I strained my ears and then I noticed it. The tune the band was playing wasn’t normal wedding music. I can’t stand the fucking Electric Slide, but at least I know what it sounds like. What was coming from the band sounded like some bad funeral dirge.

  “Portuguese folk music,” Jake added. “Get used to it, because they’re going to play it all fucking night.”

  “Sarah is aware that there are people here who have no idea what the hell this is, right?” I asked.

  Jake gave me a sad smile, one that told me he was well aware he had just signed his life away, and said to me, “Yep, but she doesn’t care. This is HER wedding.” With that, he gave me one last sarcastic, “Have fun!�
� and then disappeared back into the crowd.

  The problem with crap music is that once you notice it, you can’t un-notice it. Gritting my teeth, I began making my way over to the bar. If it was going to be a long evening, it might as well not be a sober one. That being said, I didn’t plan to get too shit-faced, mind you. The last thing I wanted to do was lose sense of myself, make some ethnic crack, and wind up being pummeled by over a hundred people. But still, a nice buzz would do much to keep myself sane.

  What do you mean you know exactly how I feel!? Hey, if you don’t want to listen I can cut you off right now. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

  I got myself a drink and tried to look at the humorous side of things. Here you had over half the guests gyrating oddly on the dance floor to some un-danceable crap while the rest sat in their seats looking confused and uncomfortable. I was thinking that within the hour there would probably be a bunch of poor excuses followed by a mass exodus.

  While I had my head in the clouds with that thought, one partygoer rambled up to the bar and began speaking to me in what I can only guess is Portuguese. I gave him a look back that conveyed that I had no freaking idea what he was saying and he switched back to his perfect New-Jersey accented English.

  “Not dancing?” he asked.

  “To this?” I replied.

  He then hit me with, “Oh. I guess you're one of the Americans here.” Americans? What the fuck was this guy talking about? Since he’s didn’t exactly seem like an immigrant right off the boat himself, I chatted with him a bit more and found out he was born and raised in Newark. Just as I guessed, ancestors aside, he was about as Portuguese as I am. I suspected the same with most of them. Great! I was stuck with folk music *and* a room full of delusional posers.