My Redacted Life: Chapter 34 (Cont._2)

 The days leading up to the wedding passed by like gray horses filing through a morning mist. I was apprehensive. Brenda was busy. Friends were inquisitive. I’d never attended a church wedding so I didn’t know what to expect. Ours would be a simple affair by modern standards but an affordable and accessible one. I still harbored a fear of speaking before a group, but I wouldn’t have a lot to say.

Besides, the three harpies had made me go over my lines do many times that I knew I couldn’t fail. The pressure seemed to make Brenda grow prettier every day. I don’t know exactly why. She wasn’t landing the catch of the century or anything. I was overweight from the eating binge that had accompanied my successful decision to quit smoking. I wasn’t above drinking too much. I could summon up a temper when I wished. I still felt I was four years behind my peers who had successfully avoided the draft.

But she stood by me, a trait that would continue.

My neighbor wasn’t so kind. She constantly reminded me that my bride-to-be could have “had her pick of men.” I should, therefore, consider myself lucky and do exactly as I was told. Hadn’t I been to boot camp?

“Well, yeah.”

“Just consider this another boot camp. One for wedding preparations.”

“Now one is not helpless simply because one is a man,” I said. “I have a good job, I served honorably in the military, People are starting to show a great deal of respect for my work and my opinion. I don’t have to stand for being treated like a two-year-old.”

“Shut up and listen,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. She had caught me going to my apartment and stopped me in front of her door. She fastened the top button on her blouse and pinched each side of her bra through the material with her fingers. She tugged it back and forth until she was satisfied with the fit and stuck a finger toward me.

“This is going to be one of the most important nights of her life,” she said. “It’s up to you to help make it happen.”

“I plan to.”

“What are you going to wear?”

“A suit?”

“Not a tuxedo?”

“She said I didn’t have to.”

“I’ll verify that,” she said. “You’d better not be lying.”

“She said we didn’t need any extra extravagances.”

“That sounds like her, but I’ll check anyway.”

"You do that."

“I will. Who’s going to be the best man?”

“My brother.”

“Will he be sober?”

“I suppose so.”

“You’d better know so.”

It went on like this for a while. I became confused. Weren’t weddings supposed to be about love? If so, would not wedding preparations also be about love? I was feeling more like a Marine recruit that a soon-to-be husband. She broke my reverie.

“You know I’m doing this for your own good, don’t you?”

Before I could answer, she continued. “We think an awfully lot of that girl.”

“I do too.”

“Then you’d better pay attention and carry it off like it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to you.” With that, she opened the door to her apartment, went in, and disappeared. I didn’t know what the hell to do next. I was thinking that I wasn’t going to put up with this crap from a bunch of women much longer. I was the man in the group and damned sure ought to let them know who was in charge. It surely wasn’t this neighbor with her lack of attention to dressing skills. We'd get this straightened out. Still, I didn’t move.

She had neglected to dismiss me.

This marriage thing wasn't
going to be as easy as I thought.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 32 (Cont._2)

A new era dawned about the time I planned to be married in August of 1972. Many men simply observed that, “Women are getting uppity.” Out in the rural churches, the men went further and pointed out that women were busy preparing themselves a special spot in the warmest corner of Hell.

The Apostle Paul was, they pointed out, pretty clear about it. Women, like children, were to be seen and not heard. They talked a lot about the scriptural strictures supporting male hegemony. I think they were a little shortsighted as usual. Men planned on obedience. Women planned on subterfuge and revenge. The gods planned on a rollicking good show.

The women in my life paid no attention to all that, as I’ve pointed out before. They sat me down, night after night and drilled into me my proper place in the wedding: when I was to arrive, what I was to wear how I was to act, and what I was supposed to say, and to whom. Even my Sainted Mother took their side. "A girl wants a nice wedding," she said. "So you mind them."

The were laying it on good and hard at the moment. "You okay so far?" one asked.

“Shouldn’t I,” I said rather weakly, “have some say in all this?”

They looked at me as if I had just suggested marrying them all and starting a harem.

“What would you like to say about it?” one asked, I think it was my neighbor, Vernell’s sister.

“Well, … , .”

All three burst into laughter. “She was kidding,” Brenda said. “Now shut up and listen.”

“Oh look,” Vernell said, in a wicked, mocking, tone, “he’s gonna start crying.”

They all three laughed at me.

“Now listen,” Vernell said. “You’re going to come in with your best man right off. You’ll be the first people on stage and you mustn’t foul it up. See?”

“I see,” I said, attempting some degree of defiance, “I have been to college, you know. And I’m a veteran of a foreign war.”

“You’re going to be a veteran of a hand up-side your head if you don’t shut up and listen,” My neighbor said, closing the zipper on a pair of jeans she had put on with some apparent bit of haste.

I said nothing, assuming things might go better that way.

“Mama’s already afraid you might not show if we leave you alone,” Brenda said. “She wants Daddy to bring a couple of boys to get you to the church on time.” She laughed to herself and the other two giggled.

“I’ll be there on time,” I said. “Where else would I be?”

“Oh, we don’t know,” Vernell said. “Maybe in some bar working on your nerves.”

“Dammit look,” I said, “I’m the man here, after all.” I sat back, amazed at my show of strength.”

“Yeah,” my neighbor said, “that’s why we’re taking charge.”

And so it went. They called it any number of things later: “women’s lib, the sexual revolution, feminism, women’s rights, rise of the Feminazis …” Take your pick, but maybe be a little circumspect in how and where you enunciate it.

I just called it the same set of orders from a different source. (Had I still been in uniform, I would have called it something more colorful, but civilization had overtaken me.) For now, my extended career in the military and my short career in business had taught me that, that if you had no power, it was best to follow orders from any legal source.

That lesson, I was thinking, had led me through “many dangers, toils, and snares.” Marriage would just be one more. Then I remembered the first time I had seen that vision of beauty sashay by me. I smiled and tried to remember poetry.

“Is your mind wandering again?” my neighbor said.