Need to catch up? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
“Sam cheated on me!”
A few weeks before the wedding, Cathy tearfully broke the news to me that she was having second thoughts. I was confused. Cathy and Sam were proud of their open relationship and their occasional swinging, often sharing details of their exploits whether the information was wanted or not. Cathy had taken greater advantage of the arrangement, a fact she often bragged about, keeping score between the women Sam had slept with and the partners she’d had–some of them my old boyfriends, who she continued to pursue.
“Don’t worry,” she once insisted. “I would never sleep with [Mr. Jen].”
This, Mr. Jen assured me, would never be a problem. He strongly disliked Cathy, from her “just kidding” barbs to some truly disgusting personal habits he recoiled from. One of these was the way she smoked cigarettes. Her upper front teeth jutted out at a slight angle–leading one of Sam’s male friends to comment that receiving oral sex from Cathy would be “like rubbing your dick on a cheese grater.” When she smoked, she placed the tip of the filter against her teeth to inhale, then made what could only be described as the noise Anthony Hopkins made at the end of his famous “fava beans and a nice chianti” line from Silence Of The Lambs before exhaling. She had no shame when it came to seemingly any bodily function, picking her nose openly wherever she might be and flicking it to the floor, even at the dinner table or when out at a restaurant. When it came to menstruation, she was similarly inconsiderate; at a large party held at my house she came to me and said, “I couldn’t find the trash can in your bathroom, so I just left my tampon on the counter. You can clean it up later.”
I could clean it up later. I informed her that under no circumstances would I be cleaning up the unwrapped tampon sitting in a pool of blood beside my sink in the only bathroom in our house full of guests.
On another occasion, she was laying on my new couch, legs fully spread in her skirt–another of her habits, which came, she insisted, from her deep understanding of and comfort with her “womanhood”-with a very visible stain spreading across the crotch of her panties.
“Um, you’re bleeding through,” I told her.
She made a disgusted noise. “I know. My period has been really heavy lately. I don’t even care, I’m just going to let it go.”
“Uh, I care. You’re sitting on my couch,” I snapped and received a brief lecture on the internalized misogyny that made me fear my own body and its natural processes before she grudgingly went off to handle the situation.
Cathy’s reason for not wanting to entice my husband to cheat? “He’s just not very hot.” The notion that my husband might not want to sleep with her because he loved and was faithful to me never entered her mind.
But the faithfulness of husbands was of utmost concern when it was her fiance cheating on her. There was an exception to their open relationship rule that he’d broken: they were never to sleep with past romantic partners, and Sam had. This struck me as a fully reasonable stipulation. Sex for fun was one thing. Sex with emotional entanglement was altogether different. And I could understand her hurt; as Sam hadn’t just slept with an ex-girlfriend. He’d slept with the one that got away, and he’d done so more than once.
During the year or so that I hadn’t been speaking to Cathy and Sam, he’d slept with Jackie, the woman he’d been madly in love with long before he’d met Cathy. From my understanding, Jackie had been his high school sweetheart and first love, and Cathy had been incredibly threatened by her friendship with Sam. “I specifically asked him to never sleep with her,” Cathy sobbed. “And he did.” Not long after, Jackie had gotten pregnant. The timeline had been too close for Cathy to trust that the baby wasn’t Sam’s, so she had gathered a few of her pagan friends to do a spell to “break the tie” between Sam and Jackie and their possible love child.
The spell went like this: while evoking the goddess Hera–something that had to be the idea of one of the friends, as Cathy never evoked deities in ritual–, they all visualized Jackie, her unborn baby, and Sam tethered to each other by silver cords. One by one, they “cut” the cords, not just between Jackie and Sam, but between Jackie and the baby, as well.
“Not just a silver one, there was a red one, too,” Cathy said.
“What was the point of that?” I asked, hoping Cathy would give me an honest, repentant answer.
“So Sam wouldn’t love the baby,” she said, not meeting my eyes. But the meaning of the visualization was clear. Cathy had wanted Jackie to miscarry or fail to form a maternal connection to her child. Later, I learned from Jackie that the timeline wasn’t off at all; she’d never slept with Sam prior to the conception of her daughter.
Still, Sam admitted that he had broken the rule not long after their engagement, and no amount of Cathy’s horribleness justified that. I fully expected her to cancel the wedding, but when I pointed out that she would have to return the gifts, she wavered in her resolve. “If you’re going to call it off, you have to call it off now,” I warned. She said she would think about it.
About a week prior to the wedding, I and the other bridesmaids gathered at Cathy’s apartment to “rehearse” our hairstyles. A friend of Cathy’s would be styling us on the day of, but she’d never met any of us and wanted to practice. We waited for two hours for this friend to arrive. When she did, it was in a hoop skirt and crinolines. She’d been at a Civil War reenactment that had run long, and cell phones weren’t allowed on the battlefield. She didn’t apologize for keeping us waiting. To break the tension of her late arrival and sour mood, I joked, “So, who won?” With a glare, she informed me, “The Union. Unfortunately.”
That I would have my hair styled by a Michigan racist who longed for the glory days of the Confederacy was somehow not the most disturbing revelation of the afternoon. Instead, it was the fact that of all the other bridesmaids, I had known Cathy the longest, at five years. The others had known her only a year or two, with the exception of the girlfriend of a groomsman who had met her only months before. The fact that Cathy had no friends, male or female, from her hometown, high school, or even prior to the current decade was the very first time I’d seen a red flag in full color. Maybe it wasn’t just me who was annoyed by and suspicious of her behavior. Maybe there had been others who’d cut her out of their lives the way I’d tried to previously.
The night of the rehearsal dinner, I was ready to be finished with the entire wedding. I was cranky at the amount of money we’d spent–even the dinner that night, traditionally paid for by the family of the groom, came out of our own pockets–and frantic at the amount of time I’d wasted for planning my own wedding. But when we walked into the dining room, I saw that Sam and Cathy had gotten a huge birthday cake.
“I know you’re not going to have a birthday this year because of my day,” Cathy said. “So I wanted you to at least have something special.”
As we left that night, Sam “jokingly” suggested I chip in for the surprise cake.
The morning of the wedding, we arrived at the church to find it wasn’t air-conditioned. It was the hottest July fifteenth on record at that time. Between constantly fanning Cathy and trying to wrestle her into her too-small dress (she’d bought a two, planning to shrink to that size before the wedding, but had only achieved a six), we barely had time to deal with her frayed nerves. Some of her anxiety was caused by cold feet over the Jackie situation, but some was also directed icily at the bridesmaid who’d been roped into the wedding by virtue of dating the groom’s best man. Cathy had insisted on a child-free wedding–her own son had not been invited–but the bridesmaid’s babysitter had canceled and she’d been forced to bring him along. Cathy seethed and pouted about her ruined day, despite the fact that the child who had ruined it hadn’t even crossed her path. He’d spent the morning quietly reading and drawing in the church foyer and never uttered a peep throughout the rest of the day.
By the time the bridal party walked down the aisle, we were wilted, sweating profusely, and exhausted from the heat. Twice, I thought the bridesmaid next to me would pass out. My feet swelled through my strappy sandals. As we entered, I noticed a woman in full funerary attire sitting in the second row. It was one of Sam’s casual sex partners, who hadn’t been invited but who had shown up anyway, in a black dress, large sunglasses, and a huge hat complete with veil. I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself.
I don’t remember much about the ceremony or the reception, the latter of which was held in the banquet room of a bowling alley that was quite literally falling down. Half of the building had burned up the year before and had never been repaired. The banquet room’s dancefloor was a crumbling shuffleboard court with tiles that detached and skidded around if hit just right. There wasn’t air conditioning there, either, but a huge industrial fan blew mildew-and-cigarette scented air in from the bowling alley bar. We waited until they cut the cake before we left. I vomited at a gas station from the combination of stress, heat exhaustion, and possibly the food, which had been catered by the venue.
At least it was over, I reasoned. Now that she would no longer be focused on being the center of attention, Cathy would return to being the friend I remembered before she’d succumbed to her bridal ego.
Next time: “The Last Five Years”
There is something mentally off about someone who has no qualms leaving tampons out in the open at someone else’s house or bleeding through onto someone else’s furniture. Damn.
The only thing I’ll give Cathy is the kid at the wedding thing. Not only are the grommets unpredictable, so there’s no way of knowing if they WILL be well-behaved, it’s possible there’ll be backlash from people who didn’t bring their kids. That’s exactly what happened at our wedding: we specified “no kids,” emphasized it when several family members were all “You didn’t mean MY adorable baby/sweet toddler/brood of three, I know”… and then one of my aunts brought her two under-5 granddaughters anyway. Cue several other relatives complaining about our “favoritism” and “But *I* didn’t get to bring *MY* kids!”
There is something mentally off about someone who has no qualms leaving tampons out in the open at someone else’s house or bleeding through onto someone else’s furniture. Damn.
Not to mention, who just leaves it there and then goes and tells the host? Either Cathy was too embarrassed to wrap her tampon in toilet paper and drop it into the kitchen trash, or she was a complete jerk who wanted to force Jenny to clean it up for… whatever reason. Honestly, who has trouble finding a trash can in a bathroom? Cathy would have to be incredibly stupid to be telling the truth. And I don’t think it’s common to tuck a trash can into the bathroom cupboard or anything. In the kitchen, it might be in the pantry for instance, but it should be pretty obvious in the bathroom.
And bleeding through… ugh. I can’t stand that cold, wet feeling even in summer. 🙁
The only thing I’ll give Cathy is the kid at the wedding thing.
That’s a fair point. Nonetheless, given her prior reaction to someone’s well-behaved child at a different event (in one of the previous installments, I forget where and who), it sounds like Cathy really doesn’t like kids.
Not liking kids is one thing. Throwing a fit about them is another.
Yeah, my ex and I had an entire branch of his family boycott our wedding over the ‘no kids’ issue. I wasn’t all that fussed, because you can’t please everyone, and I got a really great idea about what being married into that family was going to be like…
“The only thing I’ll give Cathy is the kid at the wedding thing.”
I agree. The bridesmaid should have just bailed when she could not find a babysitter. But in all seriousness, I understand that some people don’t like children or just don’t want them at their wedding. That’s fine, but for people with kids that can make it a whole lot more difficult for them to come. They might have a hard time finding a babysitter that can spend all day with your kids (especially as someone in the bridal party, a wedding is easily an all-day commitment), or it could just be unreasonably expensive to be able to find a babysitter that can watch them that long.
Personally, I think if people want a child-free wedding but still care about people being able to actually come, then find a room at the venue they can put some movies on to entertain the kids. Otherwise, be more understanding when people say, we can’t make it because we have kids.
while evoking the goddess Hera
Pretty much the only appropriate thing and definitely an idea suggested by someone else. Cathy doesn’t strike me as being clever enough. 😛
It’s bad when I’m getting Cathy and the main character from Handbook for Mortals confused…
Well, in theory, Zartibartfast isn’t a slob and would at least be horrified at that aspect of Cathy’s behavior, but it’s possible Zarty just didn’t tell the reader how disgusting she was in her narration. In spite of it being a typical female stereotype, Not Like Other Girls™ still won’t fart in public because most of them still value manners of some sort.
What if this is Jenny’s way of telling us that “Cathy” is Lani Sarem? I would absolutely believe it. I know Lani mentioned having a fiance at one point….
Unfortunately, there are a lot of awful people in this world, as evidenced by the comments made about similar jerks. I find it much easier to believe that Cathy is some random creep. She’s not unique, in spite of her slobbish habits, and neither is Lani Sarem.
I mean, consider all of the sex offenders being outed right now. They’re nothing special either (or uncommon, sadly enough); it just took this long for some of their victims to be in a good position to speak out. You could probably take one of the harassment incidents at random, give the offender a pseudonym, and it would be hard to pinpoint who was responsible for it because they’re all sleazy. The only indicators might be specific job positions and weird choices (like jerking off into a potted plant of all things.) And this is just the tip of the iceberg, I’m sure.
There are more than enough assholes to go around. 🙁
Oh my Gods I need a do-over on my wedding! I need to fill the audience with as many of my previous sex partners as I can all in sombre suits crying dramatically!
Honestly, I am kind of in awe of Casual Sex Funeral Lady. I’m sure she was a nightmare drama person, but daaaaaang that’s a baller move.
https://data.whicdn.com/images/67143251/original.gif
OMG this is PERFECT.
If you’re going to be a petty, drama filled disaster then GO LARGE!
As horrible as the titular bride seems, that description is making me wonder how many other, possibly even worse, ‘nightmare drama people’ were at Cathy and Sam’s wedding?
No matter how many years I’ve been friends with someone, if they try to force me to clean up after their used tampon, I would throw them, and the used tampon, out into the cold.
I used to be really skinny and I could fit into size one dresses. However being that skinny also meant I had no ass, no butt, no breasts, and if I wore the wrong type of clothes, I looked like a stick. Nobody should strive to be my size because good lord, I was a stick. (How did Cathy fit into that dress?)
The second part of your comment is pretty damn body-shaming. Some people are thin. Some are thin and curvy, some are thin and not curvy, and there is nothing wrong with either. It sounds like you’re happier with how you look now, and that’s great, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is or should be the same as you.
I didn’t mean to be, and I do apologize for that.
I personally didn’t read that as body shaming. Just your own opinion on how you felt at that time. Women are subjected to a lot of negativity these days about size. I say feel free to express yourself. As far as the bridezilla, she has so many issues, her dress size doesn’t even register…lol
If you felt like a stick, you felt like a stick. That is okay to say.
That is not being matter-of-fact about your bodily functions; that is being fascinated by them, and demanding that the world share your fascination.
Quite understandable in a two-year-old.
If she wants to be fascinated by body functions, she can go study biology.
God bless you Jenny I am glad this person is out of your life. If someone left a used tampon in my bathroom I would have called the fucking police.
Yeah, totally agree. I would consider it some kind of threat, like leaving a dead rat in a box of flowers. That’s absolutely disgusting. I know that there are people out there who live like complete slobs (I once had a friend who toilet trained her kids in the lounge room because she couldn’t be bothered getting them to leave the TV long enough to go Number Twos) but lordy, the tampon thing … all I can say is, what a bush-pig. And I would have called Cathy that to her face. In front of everyone. And made her go and clean it up. And I’m not usually one for confrontation, but that would have made me gag.
Wow… just… wow.
I mean, bridezillas are a thing, I get it… but still… and I know we all need to plan weddings within our budget, but middle of summer in Michigan for a formal event is not great without AC, especially if there aren’t plans for decent fans and ventilation etc. I imagine you aren’t the only one who was sick later!
And the hygiene stuff… ew. I mean, periods are a thing and half of the population has them, and they shouldn’t be a big deal to talk about or anything… but… bleeding on other people’s furniture, leaving a rando tampon on the bathroom counter!!! are both very unacceptable things. Ruin your own clothes and furniture if you want… free bleeding is also a thing, but most of the people I know who are able to do that don’t ruin anything more than their period underwear meant for the purpose 😛 And definitely wouldn’t do it in a way that could damage other people’s property.
This story is fascinating and horrifying, and I’m sorry that it was real life!
The way I see it, poop is a natural thing too and the _entire_ population does it, but if people went on about it the way some of these wannabe earth mothers do about menstruation, we’d think they were stuck in the development stage of a toddler.
I was about to say something like this. Yeah, periods are perfectly normal and society shouldn’t be so squeamish about them that pad commercials have to use windshield wiper fluid instead of blood. How some people react to the idea of menstruation is childish and ridiculous at best. But I’d be offended and horrified if someone intentionally pissed on my couch because they were too lazy to go to the bathroom, and urination is a natural process you shouldn’t be ashamed you need to do. Why would I be less horrified they knowingly chose to bleed on my couch because they couldn’t be bothered to change their pad/tampon/whatever?! I’d be horrified if you left used toilet paper on my bathroom sink, I’m going to be horrified you left a used tampon there. It’s not about which bodily fluid it is, it’s about being considerate to the person who has to clean it up <_<
Yes, totally. If you need to change your tampon and you don’t have one on you, asking the hostess to use one of hers is a lot better manners than just bleeding on her stuff.
So, apologies if this is an ignorant question and apologies if I use the wrong words.
Why would practicing Pagans get married in a church? Is that odd?
I’m not sure about the laws in America, but a couple I know went to Ireland to get married so family there could attend, and they had to get married in a church for it to be legal. If they didn’t want to get married in an actual church, they could get the chosen venue specially classified as a church for the purposes of the wedding.
The US has no restrictions on the venue, it just has to be by someone ordained, which any tom dick or harriet could do on the internet. (A friend performed our wedding outside under a wooden arbor).
They don’t have to be ordained. Judges and clerks at various municipal/county offices and even notaries can marry people in most states (the notary thing is fewer states but still many). There is no need to have a religious component for marriage in the states.
Yup. My sister’s Wedding 1 (the legal one that happened on a lunch break so they could travel together for my brother-in-law’s job without any issues) was performed by a judge at the San Francisco courthouse. Their Wedding 2 (for family and friends who couldn’t be at the courthouse) a few months later was performed by lay clergy at the Berkeley Botanical Gardens redwood grove. Both were lovely and appropriate. 🙂
You don’t have to be ordained to perform the ceremony in the US. A Justice of the Peace or a Notary Public can perform the ceremony.
We got married in our backyard and a notary friend performed the ceremony.
Sorry. I should have read first. I see someone already mentioned the ordained thing. 🙂
You can get married wherever in the US (I went to a really nice wedding that was in the couple’s back yard), but yeah, practicing Pagans getting married in a church is rather odd. I went to a ton of Pagan/hippie weddings growing up (my childhood was… eccentric) and they’re almost always held outdoors. I’ve seen one or two in a non-denominational space, like a ballroom.
I’m not sure what Sam and Cathy’s rationale was, but I guess if you had religious relatives who were set on a church wedding, you might do that. It definitely seems weird to me, but then, many aspects of Cathy’s behavior seem pretty weird.
It fit in with her idea of what a wedding *should* be. She wanted the traditional bridal princess fantasy. The venue was a Unitarian Universalist church, so the ceremony didn’t have to be overtly Christian, but it was certainly the framework of a Christian wedding.
I guess that explains why she didn’t just go the City Hall route and then save her money to rent a nice (air-conditioned) reception hall.
That was what I was guessing 🙂
Okay, so apart from being a disgusting person and using people as work force and income… I still find it odd that she chose a half-burned bowling venue for the reception. She strikes me as somebody who would spent money she doesn’t have to be as pompuous and rich-looking as possible. Even if she seems like a cheapskate – and I’m sure she is, from what you’re telling – she strikes me as somebody who would rent a place she can’t afford THEN whine about the cost and never pay it until she gets into trouble and THEN force people to “help her out”.
It’s just weird that she didn’t use the opportunity to brag about “the totally exclusive and expensive place YOU can’t afford, muahahaha”.
Wow.
I had a similar relationship with the girl I was best friends with during Middle and Highschool,she always said I was stupid and not atractive at all when compared to her (she called this being toally honest and real with me not fake like all those other girls) meddling in all my relationships but ditching me everytime she got a new boyfriend, in highschool I got bullied at our school choir (which led me to drop out of it) because she said I was cheating my boyfriend with one of the soloists (not the case) and my boyfriend was super well liked in the choir (the rest of my friends thankfully never believed her, my boyfriend sadly did but that just proves he didn’t knew me well at all) and I was finally free of her in our last highschool year cuz I finally dropped her so I really understand Jen and I am sorry you had to deal with such an awful and toxic person.
I hang out with a handful of people who are sideshow performers, and we’ve been dealing with a Hep C scare the past month or so. I’m SO FREAKED OUT by someone being so cavalier about just leaving their blood all over someone else’s house. Jesus Christ, blood borne pathogens are a thing!
Oh goodness. Free bleeding and the “internalized misogyny” crap. Look, talk about your period all you want. It’s a thing that happens. It’s normal and any adult who can’t handle the idea needs their adult card revoked.
But … I don’t want to touch your used pads and tampons and DO NOT deliberately bleed on my furniture!
It sounds like Sam got what he deserved. He doesn’t sound like a much better person than Cathy.
A child’s presence ruined her wedding, but not the crumbling dance floor … I have never gotten to know anyone like this. I’m not sorry. (I would say “never met,” but I may have met her and just never known.)
Symbolically cutting a fetus’ umbilicus would have done it for me. I can understand ritual situations where that gesture might occur (like if that were her own pregnancy she was about to abort, and she were making peace with her decision,) but even her explanation is awful. “I want a baby to be born unloved?” That’s her idea of a face-saving claim?
Thank you ! Everyone in the comments is horrified about menstrual blood, but the miscarriage curse is the worst for me.
How could someone do that ? How can we stay friends with people like that ? I’m certainly also guilty of it, but now I’m horrified !
The menstrual blood incident involves Cathy doing something repellant, not demanding that supernatural Powers do something repellant for her. I think people are less disturbed by the miscarriage curse because nobody really expects any supernatural Powers to take Cathy seriously.
“As we entered, I noticed a woman in full funerary attire sitting in the second row. It was one of Sam’s casual sex partners, who hadn’t been invited but who had shown up anyway, in a black dress, large sunglasses, and a huge hat complete with veil. I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself.”
This woman is my hero.
Also, how the heck do you manage to squeeze someone into a dress 4 sizes too small? There’s not way, right? I mean…how?
“As we entered, I noticed a woman in full funerary attire sitting in the second row. It was one of Sam’s casual sex partners, who hadn’t been invited but who had shown up anyway, in a black dress, large sunglasses, and a huge hat complete with veil. I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself.”
This woman is my hero.
Also, how the heck do you manage to squeeze a person into a dress 4 sizes too small? There’s no way, right? I mean…how?
Sweet jeebus, that “buy a wedding dress in the size you aspire to” is SO… ugggh. And i am not the least bit surprised she did it. Reject reality and substitute your own! Have fun feeling like a sausage all wedding day.
Not sure if you saw this or not, but a REAL NYT book–The Hate U Give–is on sale today on Amazon.
https://smile.amazon.com/Hate-U-Give-Angie-Thomas-ebook/dp/B01M0614T9
This post gives me life! There is nothing like a good tear down of an inept troll, real or pretend. Bless you, Jenny.
Whoops. Left this comment on the wrong post. Sorry!
I had planned out a coherent response. I just–eugh. ugh. ewww. ughhhh. SHE WHAT?! It–guh. Whaaa.. How? No.
And:
I can’t stop laughing about the woman who dressed in all black. I know I should feel a twinge of annoyance at least, about a wedding crasher, but just typing this sentence sends me into giggles.
Okay cheating is not cool, and breaking the rules of an open relationship and thus the trust also isnt cool, but I can’t help but think Sam probably cheated to get back at Cathy for emotionally abusing him. It doesn’t make it right, EVER, but it’s a hypothesis. It really does seem like she brought out the worst in him, and they both need serious professional help.
Meanwhile, the blood thing — I had a Cathy who took the opposite approach and took my last pad without asking because “I didn’t have a choice, I was going to bleed through” and refused to reimburse me because she “couldn’t afford it”, but she could afford to go to the mall the next day. K.
#TeamFuneralGirl
Also the tampon thing, it strikes me as mean-spirited, particularly because you have OCD.