I’d hate all that now. These days, I would insist on a TV, and a drink, andfucksitting on the floor. I can barely get off my bed.
The actual ceremony was choreographed within an inch of its life.
The bride was not late. In fact, she was ten minutesearly. Yes, folks, I was the bride who was ten fucking minutes early. I was also the bride who was pissed off at everybody else for being late. I was standing there with Dr. Michael Beckwith and a Catholic priest, who were co-officiating. As people showed up late, I hissed, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I’mready!”
No bride ever has said “I’m ready” in sober frustration.
We had written our own vows—mine were comical andlighthearted, whereas his were mushy-gushy, lovey-dovey, and no one ever accused me of liking that. I smiled gamely.
We had organized the whole thing using fake names, thereby avoiding the paparazzi, but still two people attended whom we didn’t know. They were all dressed up and they even signed the guest book. Later, when I looked through it, I found a Polaroid picture they’d taken of themselves.
“Who the fuck are these two?” I said.
After the ceremony, I threw a huge cocktail reception. The dinner was created by Neal Fraser, a very talented chef who’s worked with Wolfgang Puck and Thomas Keller, and who just so happened to have attended the Wonderland school with me. He served healthy miso soup and a blackened cod with a miso glaze and a seaweed salad. I thought it was delicious.
I’m so sorry, everyone.
(Never fear—I’d added directions to the nearest McDonald’s at the bottom of the menu. I’m not a savage.)
Once dinner was over, a fantastic and hilarious disco cover band called the Boogie Knights played, replete with fake Afros and real bell-bottoms. At one point, Stephen Stills got up and performed, but he played a little bit too long. I could sense that after the floor-hummus-rehearsal-dinner-no-drinking/TVs/curtains-miso-soup-seaweed-salad of it all, everyone just wanted to dance, so I hopped up onto the stage.
“You want me off, don’t you?” one-third of Crosby, Stills, and Nash said.
I didn’t need to say anything. But yes, I threw Stephen Stillsoffstage at my wedding. Don’t hate me—people had been really digging him, and he’d been on fire playing, but I had a band ready to go, and I couldn’t keep them waiting forever. You can’t really dance to Stephen.
When people did finally leave, our parting gift to them was a double CD of every single song we’d played during the entire night. I had sat for days with my assistant going through what I wanted to play, from the second the guests walked in to the second they left.
I can’t believe myself.
One of the reasons I’d insisted on a dry pre-ceremony is because I knew my friends all too well. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I just didn’t want it to happen before my ceremony. Sure enough, on my wedding night, a bunch of people let loose, doing mushrooms and weird drugs and sleeping with other people’s spouses. At six o’clock the morning after, I was lying in my marital bed, listening to the couple in the next room fighting because there was a woman in their bathtub with whom they’d had an intoxicated threesome.
The whole wedding was a master class in anal perfectionism. But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was the moment I walked around the corner and into the ceremony. One of my favorite songs was playing, and when I looked hard at the face of my husband-to-be, I thought,Oh fuck. Fuck, oh fuck.
I have advice for women. If you go on a first date with a guy and you don’t like his shoes, run—shoes are a telltale sign of whether or not a relationship will last. For our first date, he had shown up in boots, but not even cowboy boots. I think they were supposed to looklike a cowboy boot, but they missed the mark by a wide margin. No one should wear such things, but especially not if you live in Los Angeles, California. The whole time, during that dinner, I remember thinking,Those shoes are so bad. Bad shoes, bad shoes, bad shoes, bad shoes.
But another voice said,You’re doing it again. This is the right person for you. He’s got his shit together. He’s attractive. He has a career.We were just very different. I’m scrappy. I tell fucked-up jokes. I can be offensive and rough around the edges. He was none of those things.
I never considered stopping the wedding—for a start, I was halfway down the aisle. I kept thinking,Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy. You’re sabotaging. You’re sabotaging. You’re sabotaging.
Because there I was in my custom gown, the center of this beautiful fucking wedding filled with all the perfect that you could possibly imagine.
And I knew right then that this man was not it for me.
About a year after I first met him, and a couple of years before we married, we’d gone on a trip up the coast to the Ventana hotel in Big Sur. We were together in a place where I was happy, but I also found myself alone a lot, as he often attended classes at nearby Esalen Institute, just like Don Draper at the end ofMad Men.I stayed back by myself at the Ventana, on my hammock, writing in a new journal, with blank pages I’d hoped to fill with our happiness together.
August 19, 1998, 11 a.m., Big Sur
It’s wonderful to begin a new book. The other was so weighted down with pain and confusion. I needed to let it go. 5 years; I wrote there [in that previous journal] 5 years. No need to look back again. I understand it all.It molded me to who I am now in this moment, and I am grateful for that. So the unknown seems bright, exciting. I feel strong, I feel pretty good… How exciting. I can’t wait to see how it will unfold. God is good, life is a gift. And so it is. Amen.
I was looking out on the Pacific Ocean, swinging in a hammock, under perfect skies, and I was overcome with a feeling that I’d never had before. Not quite twenty-seven years old, and this was the first time I could actually think,This is what happiness feels like?
I’m staggered still that it took me nearly three decades to experience a moment of actual freedom, bliss, happiness. I know that the tyranny of “happiness,” and the search for it, has warped our culture and made so many of us unhappy. Even so, to have spent all those years alienated from such a basic human need fills me now with sadness, a kind of root regret that is very hard to shake. Superficially, I was a success, but as the Pacific breeze gently moved that hammock, this elusive “happiness” appeared on the air for one of the first times in my life.
I wish I could have stayed in that place forever.
August 24, 1998
Why do [we] have so many issues? I was so pissed. But all the truth finally came out… It still hurts. I still don’t trust him altogether. What in me can trust? Why is it so fucking hard? He pulled something so shitty yesterday. It freaked me out. But he was rigid. I was looking for an out. A way out. A way out so I could feel free again, so I don’t have to fucking worry about getting hurt again. I do want it to work. He certainly is a prize. But because he is so handsome it scares me. I feel sometimes that I don’t think he’s sincere. That he’s full of shit. That he really doesn’t feel for me the way he says he does. But what is that? Is it me not thinking I’m enough or is it truly a lack of sincerity? I guess I’ll know for sure when he makes the real commitment.
