thurs evening:  the wedding rehersal. 
at the church i realize the Olympus camera alone will NOT suffice.  the lighting in there was that of a cave and my fancy camera was freaking out too much to take decent head-to-toe shots.  portraits and large scale were great, but i couldn’t nail the other shots no matter how much i fucked with settings of all sorts.  i then almost cry over my dead canon while parents later that night give NO sympathy, tell me the hindus (family of the bride, my contacts/family of my friend) are taking advantage of me. i end up getting a new BETTER canon on my credit card.  fuck it, ill figure that mess ($) out later.  i come to realize my parents do not know me at all and don’t really care about what new creative projects i have in my life.  maybe they are saying/doing what they think is best and is protective for me, but its actually a giant failure at parenting and makes me slightly ashamed to be related to such selfish people who go to church weekly and preach “the gift of giving” yet care only about their own satisfaction. 

friday: catholic wedding. 
i get picked up in BEER PONG VAN, which has half naked girls plastered on the outer walls.  mind you im in tihs van with a small crew of indian guys around my age or older dressed in tuxes.  we park this in the church lot.  hilarious on its own.  wedding happens, very predictable, no major fuck-ups, photos taken, a little nerve wracking/nervousness, but all in all GREAT shots taken, all’s well. 

then we go to the bride’s parents house (the kapoor home - rohit’s house) and i upload  a shit ton onto flickr.  go here to check out whats on there now, but more will be up as the week goes on.  

saturday: indian wedding 
i wake up in a rush with a bit of a hangover/holy shit i need to upload/move photos/clear cards for photos today madness.  im multi-tasking like a mother fucker and my dad asks me to do random stuff and i tell him without raising my voice that im just too busy and can’t, that this hindu ceremony is all day and night and i have will probably be stranded there because i have no car and everyone will be drunk.  ride comes.  regular car (no beer pong van) 

then the wedding.  oh my oh my.  lets make a list of things that happened: 

party at resturaunt ends, party at hotel begins. 
its 2ammind you and the indians are going strong.  handsome groomsmen/chef locks my things in his trunk.  im digging him until i notice he has been chain smoking and droppin “nigs” into conversation.  really?  yeesh.  *vom*  i almost asked him if he even knows any black peoples. prolly doesnt.  still, a big let down.  and smoking is so gross.  *double vom*.  

the hotel staff ask us to take the party out of the rooms and into the lobby.  what?  awesome!  they say that way if they get any complaints there’s nothing they can do because the lobby is a public space.  haha!  so, beer pong gets moved to the lobby.  

6am 
this guy who is easily the HOTTEST guy of anyone at the wedding (we are talking like 300 people) who i ASSUME is gay because he is incredibly well put together and well spoken and who my sources tell me is gay (but no one really knows) explores the lobby with me and we find a back room with 2 couches.  great. i assume he will take one of the couches out of his non-love for vagina.  haha.  i guess WRONG.  post-wedding makeout party ftw.  and hold yer horses, get yer mind outta the gutter, i maintained a surprising amount of self-control.  

8am 
the continental breakfast people make enough noise IN THE ROOM NEXT DOOR that i wake up to find myself on a hotel couch in a back lobby room with some super hot guy all the way out in the middle of nowhere rich suburbia (east amherst) and my STUFF is in the trunk of this chain smoker chef who is MIA & there are hotel guests chillin right outside.  oh man.  im still convinced super hot guy must be gay and afraid to come out (as he IS part of a very posh community) but why would he do all that with me in a room where no one knew where we were, if he WAS gay?  maybe to convince himself he isnt?  or im paranoid and can’t believe a man can really be so well designed.  weird.  we exchange numbers and i find rohit’s room and crash there for an hour.

10am  
we all get up, hungover as fuck.  somehow i dont puke.  it takes me an hour but i find the chef with my stuff, who btw did not even offer to help carry any of it (3 bags)… nice.  i call my old punk rock pal Dan and he heads out from niagara falls to get me. 

11am 
im off with Dan.  we get food and catch up.  he’s really had a shitty series of events and one of my three friends in buffalo who has been married three years and is now getting a divorce.  im hoping Dan moves to NYC because he’s always wanted to.  maybe this is his break, his chance at it.  but, he will be a single dad now.  god, at this point i can’t even imagine the piles of stuff he must have weighing on him.  he gives me a photo of me with my date from prom junior year.  (he went with my friend). and yes, i have bangs and long long blonde hair. haha. ill try to scan that at some point and put it up.

12.30 pm
i am finally get home. im TIRED and feel gross with only a shower & nap on my  mind, but instead what happens is that i get REEMED out by my mom for not letting them know where i was at 7am.  WHAT?  i told them maybe three times that i would be stranded in east amherst after the wedding.  they could’ve offered to let me borrow a car or pick me up but didn’t.  and now, for some reason, it was believed that i would have not only been awake at 7am but that i would’ve been able to find an awake/not dying from a hangover driver take me home then?  um, them’s sleepy hours, bub.  so, you can imagine my surprise and headache involved in this screaming that is making my ears bleed.  i ask why she didn’t just call me if she wanted to get ahold of me.  her face went blank and her response was that i should’ve called, that she shouldn’t have had to.  i tell her that’s kind of ridiculous and that at 7am i didn’t feel a need to be awake and calling the house for apparently no reason.  voices escalate.  we’re both shouting.  im still polite in my vocab somehow, but i am yelling, and this is something i do not want to be doing.  i’ve had too many bad memories under this roof.  i’ve heard too many nasty words from “the nurturer” of this house.  ive been beat up enough here and it’s been hard to attempt to forget it all.  i suspect she just wanted to get me fighting with her.  meanwhile my dad is watching tv.  wimbleton has been on all day.  he starts shouting that we are ruining wimbleton.  then he turns it off in a huff and starts shouting at me that im a horrible, rotten, selfish girl and i am totally inconsiderate of anyone else, especially them, how i don’t thank them enough, and then says that i was really nasty to him when he wanted something the morning before (when i was trying to upload all that stuff in the 15 min i had before getting picked up), that i am really just a rude and awful person.  my mom eggs him on and they both just yell nasty words at me.  im hungover and tired and probably stinky and now my memory is flooded of all the times this happened, of how much i hated myself here, how much i used to actually believe the stuff they’d say, how it took me years to believe i was a good person, that i was worth something.  i tell them i won’t argue, that i’ve already raised my voice and don’t want to do that, that they are ridiculous and i take my dogs and leave.  i fall asleep in a soccor field, still in my wedding clothes, dog leashes tied to my leg.

(originally written 8 July 2009)