The four of us stopped going out. We’d taken to ordering Thai food on the weekends and drinking huge, inexpensive bottles of red wine, until our lips were purple. It felt wrong to go out, disrespectful almost, and so we sat in pajamas and watched movies, eating crabmeat wontons and drinking wine until we could fall asleep.
But that Saturday, I suggested we go to Dorrian’s. Maybe it was because our apartment was starting to smell like pad thai noodles all the time, or it was the thought of waking up with a pounding headache and purple-crusted lips. Whatever it was, I begged my roommates to put on clothes, telling them we wouldn’t have to go far, that fresh air would do us good. And somehow, they all agreed.
It was loud in the bar, and the four of us stayed close so that we could hear ourselves talk. Colleen and I were sitting on stools and Julie and Courtney were standing behind us. None of us were particularly energetic or cheerful, but I still considered the night a success for getting out of the apartment. I was taking a sip of my beer when Colleen leaned toward me and said, “Dogpants is totally checking you out.”
“Who?” I asked. I looked over my shoulder.
“Dogpants. To your right.” She sounded hopeful, like this situation might make the night more interesting. “He’s not awful,” she continued. “I mean, besides those pants.”
I looked blatantly at Matt then, who was holding a beer and listening to one of his friends. He was smiling in a way that made me think he knew we were talking about him. He was tall, with wavy brown hair and a handsome face, and he was wearing dark green corduroy pants with small yellow Labs embroidered all over them.
“Jesus,” I said. “They might as well be whales.” (I still don’t know what I meant by this, but Colleen quoted me in the toast she gave at our wedding and everyone laughed.)
Matt finally came up to talk to me, a couple of beers later, and Colleen looked right at him and said, “Hey Dogpants, it took you long enough.” She slid off her stool and gestured to it with her hands. “Would you like a seat?”
He blushed a little bit then, and I noticed how friendly his eyes were, how they crinkled at the edges when he smiled, and said, “Thanks, I’d love to sit. These dogs are barking.”
—
Matt was three years older than we were, a lawyer, and he lived alone, all of which made him seem like an adult. He took me out on real dates, to dinners and museums and shows. And also, he was just so nice. He was generous to all of my friends — buying them rounds of drinks, helping to prop up Courtney after she drank too much, buying us late night pizza and bringing it up to our apartment. We were used to college boys who thought it was the height of romance to offer you a can of beer from their refrigerators. If Matt had known what he was being compared to, he might have realized he didn’t have to try so hard to impress us.
The night I met him, he was out with his friends from college. “We were all at Harvard together,” he told me as he introduced us. “You went to Harvard?” I asked, hoping I’d misheard. All I thought was, I am talking to a guy with dogs on his pants who went to Harvard and there is no way I’m ever going to see him again. But I was wrong.
From the beginning, my friends were invested in my relationship with Matt — overly invested, actually. They weighed in on it just as much as I did. When I got ready to go out with him, they all crowded in my room, suggesting I change my shirt or put on lip gloss.
“I’m in love with your boyfriend,” Colleen used to say, and everyone would agree. Before Matt, I’d dated a string of guys who always prompted my friends to say, “He doesn’t deserve you.” I was the sweet and thoughtful one in relationships, and now it was all turned around. “I think you’re going to marry Dogpants,” Colleen said one day. “I mean, you will if you’re smart.” Her words stuck with me, like a warning not to mess this up.
—
Matt proposed in Central Park a year and a half after we met. We’d just decided to move in together, which felt like the most adult decision I’d ever made, and I’d spent hours talking about it with the girls, squealing at the idea of having to go to the bathroom with Matt in the apartment and wondering what it would be like to share a bed every single night. When he pulled out a ring, I can honestly say that I was surprised — and not in the way that my friends would later be surprised when their boyfriends proposed as the years went on, but all-out shocked because I had no idea that it was coming. We’d never discussed it, not in any serious way, and I was mostly just confused when he knelt on the grass and said, “Beth, will you marry me?”
His hands were shaking a little bit, and I could feel the people around us staring, elbowing each other and whispering that there was a proposal happening. “What?” I asked. I looked at him and he laughed. He seemed more confident then, and he took the ring out of the box and started to put it on my finger. “Will you marry me?” he asked, and I laughed too and said, “Yes, of course.” I was twenty-three years old.
—
My wedding was the first one I’d ever been to. No one could believe this, but it was true. I had no idea what to expect and I let the wedding planner (a woman named Diana who carried around five huge binders with her wherever we went) dictate everything. Whenever I asked Matt his opinion about anything, he just said, “It’s up to you.” We got married in Madison and had the ceremony at St. Andrews, the church I’d grown up going to, and the reception at the Sheraton downtown. We did every last cheesy wedding tradition out there. We had a groom’s cake, I threw my bouquet, we smeared frosting on each other, Matt took a garter off my leg, and my whole wedding party danced into the ballroom as they were announced, as if we were all a part of some music video.
It didn’t occur to me until years later to be embarrassed about our wedding. It was only after attending the beautiful, tasteful, grown-up weddings of our friends that I began to see that ours was almost a little tacky. But by then, it was too late.
Before the wedding, Diana mailed a list of “bridesmaid dos and don’ts” to the girls. They included tips such as “Don’t drink too much! No one likes a drunk bridesmaid.” And “Don’t expect to be anywhere close to the center of attention…this isn’t your day!” And “Don’t tan before the wedding! You don’t want to risk a burn!” And “Do ask the bride how she’s feeling and offer emotional support.”
Colleen thought this list was the funniest thing she’d ever seen and kept it for years. At the wedding, Colleen got so drunk she fell and ripped her dress. And my best friend from childhood, Deborah Long, used her maid of honor speech to talk about how she was more than ready for her own boyfriend to propose. And when I walked down the stairs in my wedding dress for the first time, my single aunt Bit gasped and said, “Good God, you’re just a baby.” Then later, she whispered to me, “If you don’t want to go through with this, you don’t have to.” Diana was probably mortified, but none of these things bothered me. I thought the whole day was perfect.
On the day of the wedding, Matt and I agreed we wouldn’t see each other before the ceremony. But we met at a doorway, and stood on opposite sides with the wall between us, reaching around to hand each other our wedding presents. He gave me diamond earrings and I gave him a watch. The photographer took a picture of us, holding hands through the doorway, still hidden from each other. It is one of the most ridiculous pictures I’ve ever seen.
—
Years later, Colleen told me that my marriage to Matt was a result of terrorism. When she said this, we were at her apartment, lying on the couch and eating licorice out of a giant plastic container. I stopped mid-bite, squinted my eyes at her, and waited for her to explain.