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

22 - Divine Intervention

November, 1994

On the morning of my wedding I woke up at six a.m. feeling fantastic. During the night, the combined forces of my immune system and medical science had completely vanquished what remained of their bacteriological foe. I celebrated my pulmonary victory with deep, expansive, luxurious breaths and vowed never to take my lungs for granted again.

Which was actually pretty stupid. Because when you think about it, the whole point of lungs is that they work automatically so you can take them for granted. Lord knows, your schedule is hectic enough without having to carve out time to sit around singing songs of praise to your fucking lungs.

Anyway...

A surprising number of otherwise rational people actually attributed my timely recuperation to Divine intervention. It's a sign from God, they'd say, that you and Samantha belong together! Which was so theologically absurd it was hard to know where to start. An interventionist God who — instead of alleviating the untold suffering and misery that plagues our world — decided to micromanage the severity and duration of my illness for the express purpose of letting me know that I should be marrying the woman I was already planning to marry? Is that really what they thought?

Indeed it was. Although if I'm going to be completely honest, deep down, I was secretly thinking the exact same thing.

Divine intervention or not, it was as close to a perfect day as I could have hoped for. First of all, Samantha agreed to marry me. Once that happened, the entire San Gabriel Valley could have been sucked into a rogue black hole and I still would have considered the wedding to be, on balance, a success. More than that, though, there was a mood that permeated the entire affair; a joy that seemed exceptional, even by wedding standards. Everyone was so happy to be there, like someone had slipped them Ecstasy on the way in. (Which maybe someone had. At least two members of Samantha's family were former drug dealers.) Or maybe I was just projecting my own felicitous mood on our two hundred guests. Ninety percent Italian Catholics, ten percent Ashkenazic Jews and one very nervous Hindu.

Everything went off like clockwork, thanks in no small part to my almost complete lack of involvement in the planning process. Samantha, suspecting I'd be uninterested in most of the details — the flowers, the table settings, the guests — had given me the option to confine my involvement to the things I really cared about. I helped select the band and the photographer, and also insisted that she include in the gift registry a meat mallet. Because meat mallet is a funny word. (Say it out loud: Meat mallet! Fun, right?) Mostly though, it was just benign neglect, which would also, in a few years, serve as my parenting style as well.

My parents flew in their rabbi, Saul Coopersmith to perform the ceremony, which he was willing to do even though Samantha hadn't converted because he and my parents were friends and, also, he would go pretty much anywhere there was free alcohol. When he showed up, it was clear that he had already started drinking on the plane, but despite his mild inebriation — or, arguably, because of it — he was in fine form. Witty and poignant and personal, his flushed skin giving him a seraphic glow. And he kept the whole thing reasonably short. Maybe thirty minutes from processional to recessional, after which he laid down on a couch in the manager's office and went to sleep.

Samantha's family, who were accustomed to somber, long-winded masses, loved the lightness of it. And they were particularly excited about the part where I stomped on the glass — a Jewish tradition that symbolizes our peoples' long history of arguing about what our Jewish traditions mean — which they seemed to regard as some kind of magic trick.

"You didn't really break a glass, did you?" a number of them asked me — that number being five — even after having seen me do it with their own eyes.