Pronoun Problems: A Novel About Friendship, Transgender and (eventually) Ninjas

17 - A UFO Abduction Experience

All of this radical honesty, I believed at the time, was an attempt to protect Samantha; to make sure she truly understood what she was getting into before it was too late. But it was also a way of protecting myself. I had given Samantha a candid and exhaustive appraisal of my shortcomings and had she said that she was fine with them, so what right would she have to complain in the future?

It was really, when you boil it down, an exercise in expectations management and it brings to mind one of the iconic exchanges between Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, where Harry explains why he doesn't take anyone to the airport in the beginning of a relationship:

Because eventually things move on and you don't take someone to the airport and I never wanted anyone to say to me, "How come you never take me to the airport anymore?"

This made a tremendous amount of sense to me.

Anyway.

Her tenth present was a hot air balloon ride over Simi Valley.

Her eleventh present was a glow-in-the-dark plastic squid. "I figured you didn't have one of those," I explained.

The twelfth present was a diamond engagement ring. "I figured you didn't have one of those, either."

Obviously, Tom was my Best Man. Who else could it have been? And he was genuinely thrilled for us. Tom really liked Samantha, which wasn't much of a surprise; everybody liked Samantha. Her whole demeanor was open, accepting and supportive. Pretty much the exact opposite of mine.

Sometimes, though, she found that to be a burden because complete strangers would feel compelled to share their tragic life stories with her. She was always hesitant to call a plumber or a painter or a repairman because nine times out of ten they would open up to her about their father's colon cancer, their teenage daughter's drug addiction, their house that was going into foreclosure. She would listen to them, nodding with her head tilted and her eyebrows creased with concern. But in her mind she was thinking, Gosh, that's awful. How 'bout you fix the toilet now?

More surprising was that Samantha genuinely liked Tom. None of the other women I dated could stand him; they would regard him with annoyance or simmering anger that would eventually boil over with invective. A lot of it, I believed, was pure jealously. That was certainly the case with Tori, with whom I wound up having an inexplicably stupid on-again/off-again relationship that spanned years. It was, perhaps not coincidentally, a fight about Tom that led to our fifth and final breakup — I won, three to two — in which Tori had said, "If Tom had tits, you'd totally fucking date him!"

(I can now state, categorically, that is untrue.)

But Samantha was different. And her acceptance of him was just one more piece of evidence that Samantha was the perfect woman.

Of course, I didn't just need a Best Man. I needed groomsmen and that would prove to be a challenge.

There was Ivan, a blunt Israeli — is there any other kind? — who I had met at the gym. He was ripped. I once saw him do a hundred consecutive pushups. He referred to me as boychik (kid) even though he wasn't that much older than me, and I referred to him as The World's Strongest Jew because I'm pretty sure he was.

Knowing that I was far from my family, he would invite me his home to celebrate Jewish and secular holidays with his anorexic Russian wife, Sonya — she had terrifyingly long, elaborately painted fingernails — and three children, all under five. Ivan and Sonya were gracious and warm, but there was a lot of yelling in that house. Much of it was about money. Children, they kept telling me, are expensive. Then they'd pause. And one of them would eventually add, But worth it.

Ivan was thrilled to be included in the wedding party and having spent the first fifteen years of his life in Jerusalem, he became our go-to Jew when we had questions about the ceremony.

Then, in desperation, I reached out to our erstwhile Dungeon Master Eric. About a year after the painfully awkward trip to Wisconsin to meet Caitlyn, he called me."I just wanted you to know," he said sadly, "that Caitlyn isn't my girlfriend anymore."

I was about to say, Thank God! She's horrible! but there was a falseness to his tone that made me check that impulse. Which was good, because the next words out of his mouth were, "She's my fiancee!" I acted happy. Unconvincingly, I suspect.

"Did you ever think," he bragged, "that out of the three of us, I'd be first?"

Eric had invited Tom and me to his wedding, but we didn't go because we hated Caitlyn. Or, as we told Eric, "We can't afford the flight." He didn't call us on it, but it was years before we heard from him again.

But despite our estrangement, Eric seemed eager — way too eager, in fact — to spend a few days away from his wife and kid. (Caitlyn couldn't make it because she couldn't afford the flight.) Unfortunately, that was it for the low-hanging fruit. Or even the high-hanging fruit. In short, I was fruitless.

My mother suggested I get in touch with my cousin Joe, with whom I had been very close until I turned ten and realized that he was a moron. "It would be nice to have a family member in your wedding party," she said.

I agreed — in theory, at least — but I doubted he'd be available, given that he was serving time in the Florida State Penitentiary. Apparently, after a few misdemeanor drug convictions, Joe decided to up his game, bashing a convenience store clerk in the head with a brick because he was too slow in opening the cash register. Of course, hitting him that hard knocked him out, which meant nobody was able to open the cash register.

Like I said: moron.

This caused quite a scandal in our family. After all, we were Jewish. And while we had our fair share of felonious relatives over the years, they had been convicted of things like embezzlement, insurance fraud and tax evasion. Respectable white collar crimes. Armed robbery, quite frankly, was just a little too assimilationist for our taste.

But Mom informed me that I was in luck: Joe was due to be paroled two weeks before the wedding. (My Mom and I had vastly different definitions of "luck.") It wasn't ideal, but since Samantha really didn't want an unbalanced wedding party, and I really didn't want to have that discussion again, I told my mother that Joe could be a groomsman with the proviso that he promise not to shiv anybody at the reception.

Everything was clicking into place.

Well, almost everything. I still hadn't broken into show biz, and I am ashamed to admit the degree to which this tarnished my premarital bliss. Male vanity being what it is, it simply wasn't sufficient that I had found a wonderful woman and somehow tricked her into marrying me. A man should be able to provide for his woman, and I couldn't. Intellectually, I knew I was wrong — and there was no reciprocal concern from Samantha who was working as a personal assistant to an NYPD Blue star (no, I'm not going to tell you which one) and was earning even less than I was — but on a primal level I felt that it would not just be embarrassing, but thoroughly unmasculine to take my wedding vows while I was still an office temp.

As it turned out, though, I needn't have worried. Because career salvation was just around the corner.