I've been to two weddings this year, and I've had one-night stands at both of them. It took a long time for some of my closer friends to start getting married. I was actually concerned, a few years ago, that I was being short-changed out of some boisterous life experience because no one I knew seemed capable of pledging away the rest of their lives in a public ceremony. If the universe rewards bravery then it also rewards patience. The last two years have seen an outbreak of nuptial pageantry amongst my friends, and I have happily become the guest permanently circulating in the background sipping white wine and flirting with tipsy aunts over cake.
I went to a wedding last month in St. Louis and looking around the reception hall my friend P pointed out two women standing on the edge of the dance floor holding their purses. "Look, they're in estrus," he said. It makes sense that people should feel more susceptible to romantic dalliances with all the reverberations of lifelong vows and an open bar hanging in the air. There's also the subconscious feeling that everyone present has been vouchsafed as a worthwhile human being through association. You don't need the same defensive barriers that you might normally employ at a bar when attending a wedding. The chances the nice young man in the fitted suit trying to start a conversation is actually a creep are dramatically lower. On the off chance that he is a creep, he's probably from out of town anyway, so let the hounds of love fly.
There's also a male equivalent of being in estrus at a wedding. If the flowers, dancing, and free range children spilling flower petals everywhere go straight to some women's brains, it's safe to assume the same vaguely optimistic cues trigger a metaphysical change in men too. And there is the sense of opportunity. There's an instinctual foreknowledge that settles in as you enter a room full of drunken women wearing their best dresses and dancing to Justin Timberlake. Hooking up with someone in that atmosphere, stranger or not, seems as natural as offering a handshake to someone's long lost uncle over a tray of appetizers.
Later that night I was dancing in a middle-aged bramble, trying not to slosh wine on the three year-olds that seemed to be sprouting like mushrooms on the dance floor. I saw the same two women that P had said were in estrus. They were standing against the wall talking to each other with well-heeled posture and attentive expressions. I felt the tickle of inevitability as I looked at the brunette. "This will be the one I wind up sleeping with later," I thought while two-stepping to Nelly.
I walked over, said hello, was joined by more friends, spent an hour in idle chatter, danced some more, and soon we were peeling away in clumps to head back downtown as the busboys were shooing us out of the reception hall. We went in a group to another bar, drank more, wound up alone against a far corner of the bar and started kissing. Kissing someone for the first time, drunk, and knowing you'll never see them again, is dislocating. I wasn't listening to her body at all. I wasn't paying attention to what her mouth was saying, I pressed with mine, looking for what I wanted, licking, biting, circling, pulling.
A few hours later when we were in bed it was the same thing. I had the vague sense that I was trying to breakdance in traction. I knew exactly what I wanted, but the more animated we became the farther away it got. Three hours later she sprung out of bed, showered, packed her bag, and disappeared in a taxi to the airport. I still couldn't pronounce her name right. We had sex all night long and I didn't come once. We went through an encyclopedia of positions and bounced off the bed twice. It was fun and about as satisfying as dancing in front of the mirror in my underpants while getting dressed in the morning.
At the breakfast brunch, nursing a hangover and wondering if anyone else noticed that I smelled like drunken sex, I watched the married couple listen to each other as they spoke to their relatives, completing each others thoughts, eating from the same plate. I felt like an albino wino. The open bar was closed, the flowers had been swept from the dance floor, the dry-cleaned formalwear had become wrinkled jeans and stubby tennis shoes, strategically placed candlelight had become blaring daylight.
Previous Posts:
Love Machine: What Work Is
Sex Machine: Sleeping Naked
Love Machine: Breaking Up in a Text Message
Date Night: The F U Date
Sex Machine: Shave My Bush
Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating
Date Machine: The Celebrity You Most Resemble
Sex Machine: I Kissed A Boy
Vote Machine: No Gay People Can't
Sex Machine: Let's Have an Orgy
Sex Machine: My First STD
Sex Machine: There's a Possibility You've Been Infected With HIV
Love Machine: Let's Make Babies
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines
Sex Machine: My Kingdom for a Boner
Date Machine: Don't Make Poopy in the Office
Hooksexup Confessions: Fat and Skinny, Ugly, Pretty
Crying In Public: Some Corner in Brooklyn
Dating the Web: Don't Google Fisting and Why Women Apologize So Much
Date Machine: The Woman in the Coffee Shop and The Woman at the Bus Stop
Love Machine: Your Mom Will Do
Date Machine: Scary Movies or I Peed My Pants
Date Machine: Rate My Ethics
Love Machine: Let's Just Be Friends
Love Machine: Must Be Willing to Lie About Where We Met
Sex Machine: Why Women Are Great In Bed
Sex Machine: Why Women Suck in Bed
Date Night: All By Myself on a Saturday Night
Sex Machine: Spank My Ass