Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Hitching: Groom Team Style, pt. 1

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Not only do I have to finish telling the story of how Elise and I got engaged last year, but aside from mentioning our invites a few weeks ago I haven’t really spoken at all about our planning process.

A unique element of our wedding that I’ve previously touched upon is the composition of our parties – my side consists of three women and two men, and Elise’s is four women and her brother.

The mixed-gender makeup has style implications for both sides, since early-on we decided my women would not wear tuxes. That meant twice the bridesmaid dress shopping of a normal wedding, with the added challenge of making sure my ladies looked distinctly groomsly in comparison to Elise’s maids.

This morning Gina and I headed out for the final leg of our wardrobe journey – a trip to look at tuxedos for me. It has taken us many months to get to this point. Our first wardrobe excursion was in January on the morning after our engagement party, which meant we were all a touch hung over.

Hangover or no, I don’t think there was any way I could have been adequately prepared to enter into the mouth of hell that is David’s Bridal.

(For the record, this is not a story about me looking down on people who buy dresses at David’s. It’s about my vast incredulousness at the entire wedding industry and the attitudes that come with it, which – if I keep writing these recaps – you will see play out repeatedly. But, I digress.)

We entered David’s as a quintet – Elise, her sister, and Amanda, and Lindsay and I. Elise’s trio was checked in and sent to romp in the many rows of chiffon and taffeta while Lindsay and I negotiated with the gatekeeper. It went something like this:

LindsayGK: Oh, are you in this wedding as well?

Lindsay: Yes, this is the groom, and I’m in his party.

Gatekeeper: So, you’re a friend of his that’s in the bridal party?

L: No.

GK: Ahh, you’re a friend of the bride’s that she placed in the groom’s party?

LW: No.

(Between the hangover and the dumbfoundedness, here Lindsay was starting to look unpredictably dangerous, like a captured squirrel. I decided to intervene.)

Me: Actually, she’s my co-best-lady.

GK: I see. (Clearly not seeing at all). Well, we’ll just put her under Elise.

The gatekeeper took Lindsay’s name so that her romping could begin, and I moved to follow her into the racks.

GK: Uh, you can wait at the chairs here.

PM: Hmm?

GK: We have chairs. For grooms. You don’t have to go in there.

This was very early in the wedding process, and I did not yet understand the reverse groom-discrimination phenomenon. No wedding-associated vendor is prepared to speak to a groom. All of their forms have the bride listed first. They always want contact information from the bride.

They definitely do not expect the groom to show up to poke around and ask questions, and they certainly don’t expect him to care about dress-shopping.

Having made it past the gatekeeper, Lindsay and I joined the other ladies in searching through rows upon rows of dresses. To me most of them looked more like 90s prom dresses than modern wedding gear. Lindsay and Amanda, both wedding veterans, undertook an education campaign to get me quickly up to speed on fabrics, cuts, and styles.

Laden down with silken loads, the three of us advanced on the dressing area … only to encounter a second gatekeeper.This one looked like a troll doll, and was dressed smartly in a neutral-colored sack that served to minimize her lumpiness. She was exactly the opposite of the sort of style maven you’d want to purchase a wedding dress from.

The trollish woman waited for all of the women to pass and then physically obstructed my path.

Wedding Troll: What are you doing? You can’t come back here.

Me: (Innocently) Hmm?

WT: (Sassily) What are you, a friend?

Me: I’m the groom.

WT: We have some chairs out in front…

Me: (A little testy) I have heard about the chairs. I am not sitting in the chairs. I need to pick out a dress for the women in my party. I am your customer.

(She did not seem convinced, so I embellished, slightly.)

Me: I am paying for all of the dresses

WT: Ahh, well… (clearly waging an internal battle between wanting to get rid of me and wanting to sell stuff) …you see, I can’t let you come any further. It’s, err, it’s not really up to me, you see. Some of the other women, they might be… they might… well, you know, they could be uncomfortable.

Me: How so?

WT: You know. Women. Dressing rooms.

Me: But, I can’t see into the dressing rooms from here.

WT: Coming out of the dressing rooms. They, ahh, won’t want you looking. At them. When they come out of the dressing rooms.

Me: In their dresses?

WT: Yes, exactly.

Me: I see. And, I’m too close?

WT: Mmm hmm.

Me: (Taking two steps back) What about now?

WT: Uhh, well, you can still see them, and…

Me: (Slowly walking backwards and increasing in volume). Now? Now? What about NOW? AM I FAR ENOUGH AWAY NOW?

At this point Elise had noticed my confrontation and fixed me with a pained look, to the effect of Please do not get us kicked out of the first wedding store I’ve brought you to.

The BlueI stood on the very spot where Elise interrupted my escalating confrontation, and did not move from it. As our party members came out in a variety of dresses I made a great show of leaning over from my spot for a closer look, careful not to step closer to the dressing rooms.

This went on for a while, until finally someone came out in a dress that caught our attention. We flagged down the trollish woman and handed her the dress. Did she have it in blue? Elise’s women would be wearing blue.

She disappeared with the dress for a while as our fashion show continued, and after several minutes came huffing up to Elise and I with the dress clutched in one hand.

Elise, in the Elusive StyleWedding Troll: Discontinued.

Elise: Hmm?

WT: This dress is discontinued. We don’t carry it.

Me: Actually, you’re carrying it right now. In your cloven hoo… um, in your hand.

WT: Just this one. That’s the only one we carry.

Elise: What do you mean, exactly?

WT: I can’t order this in your color. You’d just have to find another David’s that has them in the right colors and sizes for your party.

Me: (Muttering) Oh, because that’s probable.

Elise: So, why was it on the rack?

WT: (Puzzled) So people can try it on.

Elise: But, you just have the one bridesmaid dress.

WT: Yes.

Elise: And you can’t get any more.

WT: Exactly.

Elise: …

Peter: Goddamnit. YOU FIND ONE NICE THING IN THE WHOLE FUCKING WALMART…

At this point Elise was snapping her head back and forth looking for swat teams that would emerge to tranquilize me, and I got the message to quickly wrap it up with the wedding troll before I was forcibly ejected from the store.

And that was the end of my association with David’s Bridal.

Not In The Face

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Elise and I recently discussed that her choice to marry me was evolutionarily wise, as I am clearly bred for survival.

I am quick-witted and have a fast metabolism. I have perfect vision and a keen sense for danger, as exemplified by the fact that I have yet to experience a mugging on the streets of Philadelphia. I am relatively agile and have good manual dexterity, traits that serve equally well in the wild as onstage as an indie rock star. And, I have no major physical ailments other than allergies, which I probably wouldn’t have if I had spent my youth hunting and gathering.

Essentially, I am the perfect man. Yes, if not for nearly a half-decade wearing braces I would not be as strikingly handsome as I am currently. But, evolutionarily, buck teeth aren’t a deal-breaker. Otherwise, really, I’m a catch.

Or, at least, that’s my “I know I don’t do dishes all-that-frequently, but really we should still get married” platform.

However, perhaps connected to the above lack of youthful days spent out in the sun hunting and gathering, in my post-quarter-life dotage I am increasingly less a person and more just a walking collection of leper-ish skin conditions. Due to a handsome pre-existing combination of dandruff, eczema, and psoriasis, a few years ago I was moved to see a dermatologist. She combated the terrible trio handily with a series of prescriptions, but she was more interested with helping me with a problem I wasn’t even there to complain about: I had an irritated red patch next to my nose that didn’t seem to want to be moisturized away.

I had suspected it was the result of mainlining Biore pore strips every other night. My dermatologist, in her professional opinion, did not concur. Instead, she diagnosed me with the charmingly titled seborrhoeic dermatitis – “sebderm” for short – which in my opinion sounds like a sexual dysfunction that involves seepage more than a skin condition.

She put me on a fantastic little creme called Elidel, the red patch went away, and that was that. I discovered that I had been self-conscious about the patch, and was happy to see it gone.

After over a year of relative remission, in recent months I developed a new, even more charming issue on my face – scaly red blotches floating above the edges of my mouth, like some misbegotten fruit-punch smile.

They started out subtle, and I convinced myself it was the combination of my rakishly deep laugh lines and my current proclivity for facial scruff. (I also secretly feared it was herpes, mostly because now that I only make out with Elise I have precious few reasons to invoke my irrational fear of herpes.) Yet, I put off visiting the dermatologist, thinking I could make the patches disappear with Elidel, more frequent shaving, and the power of positive thought.

That plan did not work. In fact, in my procrastination the patches got angrier and… well, woundier, if we’re being frank. They edged a little bit too close to herpes territory for my liking. I also developed worse dandruff than ever before, possibly because I was constantly stressing out about my face, and I tend to massage my temples incessantly when I am stressed out. The flakes were as big as granola. It was deadly stuff.

This is my face, people. I might not launch ships with it, but I’m about to launch a fucking multi-thousand-dollar photography package with it on my wedding day, and I am really hoping I am not going to have to buy some sort of Michael Jackson-approved pancake makeup kit to cover up my various flaws.

(Also, do you trust someone to tell you about how awesome your new marketing campaign is going to be when his winning perfect smile is adorned with two possibly herpes-based open sores, and who creates a tiny blizzard of flakes every time he turns his head or rearranges his hair? And, that’s to say nothing about how incredibly compelling it is to watch a songwriter who looks like he wandered offstage in his biblical leper costume from a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar.)

Back to the dermatologist I went, secretly crossing fingers and toes that I had not caught airborne herpes from the skeevy lady who used to make my morning smoothies.

Happily, that was not the diagnosis. No, it was a newer, deadlier version of my sebderm, and it meant business. My face and scalp were put on hard-core, expensive, non-formulary drugs – steroids that warned that I might experience visual hallucinations, a shampoo that could strip chrome off a bumper, and a foam that explicitly reminded me not to use it on my genitals, lest I be tempted.

Well, folks, I am here two weeks later to report that my dermatologist was right again, and her newer, more aggressive treatment knocked the reddened and/or precipitous fight out of my head. My laugh-lines are back to their rakish selves, even with scruff, and today I pawed at my hair at-length like I was in a 90s-era Herbal Essence commercial and produced nary a flake.

Yet, with progress I have paid a price: due to my temporary run of steroids I am now proudly bearing the complexion of a high school wrestler.

Seriously. And, not just little pimples that you can contain with face-washing and salicylic acid. No. Serious acne, which I have never in my life previously experienced.

While I am happy to be rid of my red patches, my prior issue was hell of a lot less conspicuous than the current alternative – which lead one of my coworkers to ask me if someone had punched me, because the area around my right eye is so puffy and red.

Yes, that is totally progress towards the photography package.

Elise, bless her heart, has been incredibly supportive, and through this process has endured all manner of facial applications, including ones I must wear only in the dark, and others that bleached an entire set of our sheets. She also believes that doctors should be trusted implicitly, which I know to be false. Though she has gamely pretended that my outbreak is no big deal, ultimately she agreed with my diagnosis that I ought to stop the steroids a day or two before I started regaining other high-school traits like having crushes on red-heads or writing songs about how I am not actually gay.

Why? Because she loves me? Perhaps, perhaps. However, I choose to believe that it’s because – despite recent appearances to the contrary – she has a biological imperative to stick with her evolutionarily fit man.

Finding My Footing (or, a belated welcome to NaBloPoMo)

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Lately I’ve been feeling like an actual singer-songwriter, instead of just a pretend internet one.

Of course, I’ve had a lot chances to feel like a legitimate musical artist in the past year through my performances with Gina as Arcati Crisis. But, there’s a certain strength in numbers – a power of two – that makes us a minimum amount of compelling and keeps us lurching forward even from our unlikeliest (and unlikeable) moments.

I don’t have those abilities on my own, which can sometimes make playing by myself a lonely prospect. For a while at any solo appearance I spent more time noticing Gina’s absence than being present on my own. At an open mic this summer I joked to an inattentive bar crowd, “if any of you could come up here and stand just to my left I’d feel much more comfortable.”

They didn’t get it.

My few solo outings earlier this year were the first times I was playing alone to unfriendly crowds in a long time, and I was daunted on each occasion. I played the same songs over and over, heavily relying on the crutches of “Icy Cold” and my cover of “Like a Virgin.” Any other song would leave me wide open for rookie mistakes like forgotten lyrics.

I started to wonder … can I hold space and attention on my own? Are my singing and playing interesting without someone else to dress them up? And, if there isn’t any point to me playing solo, than how can I write compelling material for my band by myself?

I don’t know that I’ve answered any of those imperative questions, but as summer ripened into fall and I kept stubbornly playing on my own I started getting into a certain rhythm where I was less fearful and more adventurous. If no one is going to pay attention anyway, why play “Like a Virgin” for the fifteenth time? New originals and covers and forgotten oldies started sneaking into my sets, and I surprisingly loved some of them. And, when I played the newer songs I was reminded that I devote an uncommon amount of detail to each song that I write. That fact alone doesn’t make me better than the competition, but it definitely makes a difference.

By the time I debut a “new” song (typically a dreaded introduction to hear at any open mic) it has been through months of development. In the case of a newer song like “Not Tonight (from Monday’s Trio), I start with a core of words or melody that have been stuck in my head. I sketch the basics of them out on piano or guitar, and then I typically switch instruments for a while to flesh out the chord structure and melody before returning to the original instrument to complete my lyrics. Next I transcribe a definitive version of the lyrics into my MYSQL database, and begin chipping away at them daily – revising order and polishing lines whenever I think of it.

Afterward I tend to go through an incubation stage that mostly consists of singing the song wherever I go – sometimes deliberately missing a bus so I can sing while I walk. At that point I’m mostly making decisions about dynamics, so that by the next time I sit down with the text I’m ready to mark my vowels and breaths.

Then I actually start rehearsing.

I don’t explain all of that to brag, because it’s not anything I’m especially proud or ashamed of. It just happens to be my process at the moment, and when I enthuse about my database or (attempt to) commiserate over the difficulty of choosing the right vowels I realize that I’m different than a lot of the people I meet at open mics. A song that’s “new” to me is well-experienced to them, and my repertoire of 80 originals (out of a total of 228) is boggling.

The fact that I have a specific process – my own database and binder, an untold history for each song – makes me feel like a valid artist again. I haven’t felt that for a long time, and the last time I did it mostly came from playing fictional concerts to no one in my bedroom rather than making regular appearances at open mics. My current insanity of organization has kept me limber and nimble, to the point that I’ve completed over a dozen new songs so far this year – the most I’ve completed in one calendar year since I started dating Elise in 2002.

That’s why you’re seeing a late-stage resurgence in the stalled Trio season I began last November – I have a lot more songs to share than I did at this time last year.

That, and it’s once again National Blog Posting Month, which I have resolved to make more of a go at this year. This is one of the most interesting times in my life, both personally and publicly, and I’m sure that many years from now I’ll appreciate a running commentary about it.

(Last year, as you might recall, it intersected with being newly engaged, and I quickly found out that it was a time I wanted to spend outside of the house instead of at the computer.)

(Seventy-odd days out from the wedding and I much prefer the confines of my house, especially when I don’t have any credit cards in arm’s reach.)

(Good night.)

President Obama

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When I was small I used to watch the news every night. At seven I was probably more educated about congress and presidential politics than I am now.

In the first election I was old enough to chat about – likely Bush Sr. in ’88 – I remember my mother telling me about Ferraro. “In 1984,” she said, “there was a woman on the ticket for the first time ever – Ferraro.” (My mother never uttered her first name that I can recall.) “She would have been Vice President for the Democrats, but they lost to Regan.”

I don’t remember her sounding too upset; I guess everyone liked Regan at least a little bit. But, I do remember the message that followed, whether it was said out loud, maybe in a voting booth, or just implied during our next re-watch of Free To Be You and Me.

It’s important that a woman can be considered for our second highest office. You’re going to grow up to be a white man, and in a way you’re lucky because you can aspire to do anything – even be president. At some point in your life you’re going to have the chance to vote for a woman, or for someone who is black or Asian, or for some other kind of person who usually isn’t given the same opportunities you might have. And, if you vote for them you might have to vote against someone who is more like you, but it’s important for you to support them. Not only because you agree with them, but because of what their election could mean for America.

In a way her message, however she actually conveyed it, changed my whole life. It was the birth of my feminism and the kernel that would become my fierce dedication to civil rights for everyone, no matter how different from me they are. And, it made me become aware that America means something very special and very specific – it means freedom to be and freedom to choose.

For that reason, even in the moments I have been the most critical of America, her message has always inspired me to fight for my country instead of against my country. That distinction has nothing to do with party lines and colored states on a map – it’s about freedom and choice. It’s about the quality of compassion.

Yesterday we elected the first black president of the United States of America. Not just black, but multi-racial. Just like America. Just like the family I have created for myself with Elise.

Tonight I’m already looking forward to America’s future elections. I’m looking forward to presidents who are female, Muslim, gay, Asian, or atheist.

Yesterday we could have elected the first woman vice president. And, though she lost, she may inspire stories told to another generation of little girls and boys who will grow up to love their country not for what it is, but for what it can be.

Tonight I spent some time with my two best friends – a woman who has made her way in a white man’s industry despite discrimination against her and everyone else, and another woman who saw four states tell her she doesn’t share the same rights as her peers because of who she is and who she has chosen to spend the rest of her life with.

Yesterday I cried from when I made that last post until about thirty minutes after the acceptance speech ended. I cried, and it felt good, because I was witnessing the birth of the America my mother promised me I would have a chance to live in. It has arrived blessedly early in my charmed existence.

Tonight I am weary and drained, but still ready to fight for my country, in my way. To fight to make people understand the rights we have and the process we are due. To fight for our freedom to be and to choose.

Today my mother sent me an email that shared its subject with this post’s title. It read:

Peter,

We just made history!!!!!!!

xo
mom

!

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I think it’s officially projectable: we’re at a tie on my projection, and even if Obama drops all of the rest of the states (unlikely) he’d win a tie-break Obama has crossed the 270 threshold.

Currently Projected: DE, VT, DC, ME, NH, RI, CT, MD, MN, WI, MA, NJ, MI, IL, NY, PA

Safely Assumed: HI, NM, IA, OR, WA, CA, NC

(9:23 – MSNBC just called OH, which wasn’t on either of my lists, so now it’s really over.)

(9:25 – Every time I start talking I start crying.)