The Ice Cream Truck

Where to begin describing the best wedding ever? With the ice cream truck? A boy falling into a pond? My high date? A stalker? Lawn games? Those would be good spots, since we missed the actual ceremony.

When I picked up N. at his place he was dressed elegantly in a lavender button down, perfectly punctual, plus he brought a card. As we sat in the car and I wrote my part, he gazed into my eyes.

"Are you high?"

Giggles. N. can pull this off well but his eyes were red, as in bright red. Plus, he was falling for a guy he'd recently met. falling hard and it all sounded good. Nonetheless he made a smashing date. We had a lovely, wonderful conversation in the car, but I missed a turn and had to route us back to the 405. Not fun, and this meant we'd not make the ceremony.

I don't know why this happens. I remain perplexed. Am I an idiot? If I have something, like a date, or a good friend's wedding, hypothetically, I will leave each thing to the last minute. I mean, why didn't I bring a card? Why didn't I leave earlier??? Still, I managed to put my dress on the right way. I don't believe my bra was showing. And I wasn't on any drugs. What more do you people want?

We get to Sauvie Island where a school bus picks us up from a lot and drives us a mile to the ceremony. Sauvie Island is green, green, green and lovely and we are going to a herbery where there is lavender sprouting like grass. I feel like I'm in the French countryside or Tuscany and maybe I am. Immediately, I love our driver who says, "What's the name of that guy who brings everyone in a limo?'

"A chauffeur?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says. "I'm that."

N. asks if we can blame it on the driver that we are so late and he refuses and laughs, making eye contact in the rearview mirror. Amazing. Riding s school bus as a kid? Sucky as all get out. Riding a school bus as an adult? The best fucking thing ever. We run into an old friend from grad school and it's all very fun. Plus, we are not the only assholes arriving late. We have company. Which means we can be late together and that's better.

Once we are on the bus I test N., "What did I say about the Deet?"

N. replies quickly and with proper calmness, "You have some in your purse but if anyone asks, you ran out. It's just for us."

"Good boy."

I had been to Strawberry Island (as my dad re-named it) and almost had my face eaten off by misquitoes a few weeks ago. It wasn't happening again. Not on my watch.

At the wedding I cry - real, fat tears - when i hear the bride's father's toast and some others. I don't know why. N. is just about the best date ever, how will I live without him? We mill, chat with old grad school friends of mine, a lot of people I like but haven't seen in years. Really, L.'s friends, and she has a lot of friends and it is all very sweet.

However! Sometimes friends have spawn and you never know what they will be like...

N. and I sit at a table with a lovely couple and their son. Just then we hear the ice cream truck and see it approaching in the distance. There's nothing left to do except flip off our shoes and run at full speed. This is as instinctual as flight or fright or freeze. Ice cream truck = run. I get a rocket pop, which tastes like ice with food coloring, and N. gets something. We sit with the same family. Then we get our food cart food, our dinner, and then we decide, it is time for another sweet course. We return to the table, and this time I mean business. I have a chocolate magic shell type thing on a stick - and that is when sthe boy remarks:

"You already had dessert."

N. and I are silent, but I swear I have chocolate on my face and am still holding my ice cream.

"That's your second dessert."

I put a finger to my lips and tell him, "Shhh."

He tells us, "You can have one sweet a day."

I don't have the heart to tell him that just that morning I had a chocolate croissant so technically this is my third sweet on this day. I want to explain that hey, as an adult, you can totally pig out. I fear this might push him over the edge.

xxx

At the end of the night, after I whup N.'s tush at a game of throwing hackeysack like items into a weird board with cut-out holes (this is the best humans can do? And yet, it is fun.) We decide to head home.

Somehow i find myself running, in heels, for a school bus. N. has gone ahead and asked the driver to wait for "My lady." And so, when I finally make it, it's packed and the driver is so amused by us..."Had to wait for My lady." And we take silly pictures with my antiquated phone that somehow seem to get my eyes and eyebrows but all of N.'s face but you can still tell we look so happy and silly and this is so not like the school bus of our childhoods.

And we get to the car, and people want to go out with us. Suddenly we are popular. But N. and I like to go to sleep early and so much has happened for one day. And between his lurv and my friend, T. visiting from Seattle (she has brought a Brazilian jewish man she met dancing 2 weeks ago), I feel like love is possible. It may not be urban legend. N.'s broken his streak and T. found someone to like, and somewhere there might be a non-gay man who has a lovely personality and who is dancing at some wedding some place some where in some country on some planet.

xxx

That night I dream that I'm a school bus driver but the bus is double in height and it's scary crazy, I'm really scared, it's treacherous, but I'm doing it and turning corner, I'm figuring it out and I just keep going.