(no subject)
I’m feeling better after a cup of coffee. I can’t say that is always the case. It usually depends on what part of the day we’re talking. But at 6:15 am, it’s usually the cure. I say usually because it depends on whether or not you’re just waking up. If so, it’ll make you feel better. If you’ve still been up, it may keep you vertical, but it doesn’t make the world a brighter, sun-shinier place.
I just don’t think I have the right perspective to continue my engagement story this morning. After the weekend I’ve had, I just can’t do it. I haven’t got the power, Captain. I had agreed to work this last Saturday for the Saturday bartender, Mark 2. Perhaps I’ll tell you who he got the name Mark 2 on another occasion. Now, I was apprehensive about working that Saturday because Lesley and I had been invited to a friends birthday party out on the Delta that day. I had agreed because the party wouldn’t really begin until the evening anyway, and I would put all the money to the wedding fund. What I did not realize when I had agreed to work that day was what would occur the day before. The preceding Friday had scheduled a golf tournament to come into Giusti’s to have dinner. Only about 250 people, in addition to the usual Friday crowd. I make great money that day, one of those top ten ever days, but when you have a day like that in the bartending business, it doesn’t come free. Saturday morning, every part of my body felt like I’d been a practice dummy for the Chicago Bears defensive linebackers. I hurt. And I had to work anyway. And although I’m only 32, I’m definitely not as young as I use to be.
So I showed up to work. The plan was that Lesley was to meet me at Giusti’s where the two of us would take a borrowed boat to the party. I received a text message that she had had a bad day, and didn’t really want to go to the party. Why had she had a bad day? Because the Catholic Church has some ridiculous hesitation about allowing us to marry in a church that is not near where we live. We want to marry in Chicago, we’re she’s from and where her family resides. I’m not totally certain why it matters. I mean, I get that they wouldn’t want to refuse a date to their own parishioners for a wedding because they’d given it to an out of townie. But that wasn’t specifically the reason. It was allegedly because they’re not building a sense of community by marrying two “foreigners”. Give me a break. Excuse me if I don’t think that that is an antiquated notion. I can think of two reasons why they should welcome us with open arms.
First, people usually leave the church sometime in their twenties, or around the time they leave the nest. If they are to return, it occurs around the time that they get married, and have babies. Thus, people married with children bring more people into to church. If they think that we won’t get married because they say we can’t, they are really stupid. And we won’t forget how we were treated by the church, and I don’t mean one building, but an organization, when the time comes to give little ones spiritual guidance. And it’s not like they have this unmarred, untainted image right now anyway.
Second, what’s this “sense of community” bullshit. Are people born, raised, and dying two miles from one location anymore? Why would it matter if people in Sacramento want to get married in Chicago, or people in Philly and to get married in Miami, or if people in Seattle want to get married in Dallas, or whatever? Wouldn’t each parish be helping each other parish “build community” since the world is a much smaller place these days? And why should people that happen to live next to a beautiful cathedral get pretty wedding pictures while people who live near a converted check cashing place get crappy wedding pictures? Why does God care where on Earth we become wed, as long as we are receiving the Sacrament? And why would I go to an auto-mechanic for advice on my heart condition? Why would I go to a waitress at Denny’s for legal advice? So why does a man who sodomized alter boys get to dole out guidance on the union of two consenting adults?
This seeming obstacle had ruined her day, and was threatening to ruin mine. I wouldn’t have worked if we weren’t to go to the party. I convinced her to go, and then worked again on Sunday. All three day, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday turned out to be very busy days. Thus, I was wiped out yesterday. Totally wasted. It reminded me of how I felt after a three day weekend at the Outrigger, except now I’m a few years older, the body a bit less efficient at recovery. I only got one day off. And during that day, Lesley and I got a bit upset with each other when I said that we had more than a year to plan the wedding, and that I felt that we had to relax the pace a tad. All I meant was that there was only so much we can do at a time, and we only have so much control over the situation, and that it might be best if we weren’t so frantic so as not to burn out on the whole thing before it was here. But given my own exhaustion, it came out a little less cohesive and sensitive, and then I felt like a pile of shit. So I got her flowers, and the world was beautiful once again.
But today, today I don’t want to go to work. But I must. I don’t want to listen to people’s shit. But I must. I don’t want to lift a bottle of Gordon’s Gin, because my shoulder is killing me. But I must. All I want to do is sit on my ass and read a book. But I can’t. Such is life. But soon the day will come when I’m forced into retirement, and I’ll long for the days of feeling needed and important. Knowing that, work really isn’t all that bad.