he’s gonna marry me
This line has haunted my small self since I saw this movie. I am confident I am not alone. I absolutely adore that she says it out loud, to herself. In the slightest tone of disbelief but with enough conviction that you know she believes it. There is such a hopeless, tragically innocent romance to her choice of words, and the way she says this.
Not, he loves me. Not, we’re going to get married.
He’s gonna marry me.
The action is on him, he is her man of action. She is a princess in the process of being rescued, she is effortlessly beautiful and forever young.
I have been waiting my whole life to say this line (out loud, to myself) and mean it. And four days ago, I said this line out loud, to myself.
He’s gonna marry me. I’m getting married. We’re getting married. There will be a wedding with a subsequent marriage.
I want to write down everything that happened while it’s fresh in my brain. My drug of choice is nostalgia and I need to keep myself in good supply or I will go into withdrawal and might be forced to live in the present moment.
Ug.
The proposal was the makings of fairytales and made up stories. From start to finish, it was one of the best days of my memory. I never doubted myself- I usually just have a steady baseline of self-doubt going at all times, it’s exhausting and distracting-, I experienced the peak and a steady trajectory of Wonderland in the literal circle of the literal best jam of my life. I had up until then, claimed that singing and jamming was slightly uncomfortable while visiting Wonderland. Not this time. I led by vocals and a box drum, and really we were all leading. Effortlessly. The guitar, the upright bass, the drums, the harmonicas, the vocals, the harmonies, the ‘we all knew what the other was doing and we never spoke about it’, the ‘ how long have we been doing this could we eve stop if we tried?’, the ‘what if we moved and sat under the canopy instead of pretending like we have to stay here, directly under the sun, to cook like meat?’
People floated in and out for hours and the core crew held it down as the medicine grounded us while simultaneously lifting us up into the sky, to the peaks of the mountains, to the tops of the trees.
We were flying.
Baby baby baby, oh. I thought you would always be mine.
We can’t stop. We won’t stop.
Say it ain’t so, I will not go. Turn the lights off. Carry me home.
We blew balloons. Maybe most epic balloon blowing ever. Amen & amen & amen. Gotta love the mid-day birthday parties.
Back to the story at hand.
It’s worth noting how important and necessary The Red Haring was.
Three days before the festival, while I’m in the throws of an unprovoked anxiety attack around thinking no one in the actually likes me (?!) , he says
What if we just do a proposal party? You know, have a party, call it a proposal party, and I propose then?
He gets my dead eyes bitch face and a, this shows me you haven’t thought about this at all. And that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.
So well done. You threw me right off. It was just enraging enough to get and hope out of my head, but not so outrageous that I dwelled or truly got upset.
Back to the day.
That morning, we woke up in our dusty tent and he essentially put the promising piece of paper in my mouth before I opened my eyes. Breakfast of champs. Okay, sure, smart, you have your set at 6, on which I am toplining, so, better get a head start.
Didn’t think on that at all. It wasn’t weird at all.
We spent our days more or less separately, unbeknownst to me he was rehearsing his lines and getting advice like, slow it down and take pauses between phrases. We connected right before the set, myself dancing naked as the sun set over the mountains and we all cheered.
What a simple, worthy celebration.
Another day done.
I felt fresh and still warm from the heat reserves in my blood. So I didn’t put my robe over top of my crochet bathing suit.
His set started, and I smirked as I recognized the opening track, Sexual Healing. I didn’t bat an eye, he loves this song, and there is always some level of sensuality if not sexuality in his sets. I fucking love that about his sets!
As I went to attempt my first track, the track I wrote lyrics for, the track that I already couldn’t do at the last festival due to don’t get me started- the wireless mic died as quickly as it looked cool for a second. Of course, I conceded defeat instantly while a friend frantically untangled XLR chords to get another mic going. He did, we did that cool rewind thing with the song and started over, screw it.
We can do whatever we want, this is our festival.
It goes well, and its about 30 minutes until the last song, the big finale. As I sing the first line, I notice (but not enough to really NOTE) the crowd has grown and essentially has stopped moving. They are watching me like a show, instead of dancing to a DJ set where I happen to be singing. The energy changes, this is a full-attention performance. Yes, people are moving their bodies, but there is a focus, an anticipation, that is not native to a dance floor. This is weird, I don’t dwell. As the song wraps up, he joins me and kinda sorta dances with me but also seems tense. It’s weird, I don’t dwell. He takes the mic from me, and I kiss him and he takes a second to notice how close i am to him- this is very weird, I kind of start to dwell.
I scurry off stage as I presume he will begin to make announcements. Reminder to clean up after your dog, whose driving the purple Rav4, we could use some help with the -
but no.
He starts showering me with rehearsed metaphors. Into the mic, and everyone is silent. Like they know what is coming. He is taking long pauses and breathing deeply. He masters the art of hiding an inside joke behind a universal sentiment. He is confessing love, admitting appreciation, he is building towards a question.
I begin to dissociate. I begin to repeat ‘its happening, this is happening, this is HAPPENING’ in my head over and over and miss the speech.
Out loud I ask no one, what is happening? The few around me hear it.
I wish I was wearing my robe.
No wonder he gently suggested it more than once…
One knee is down, the box it out, the ring is lifted with my right fingers and placed on a left one, I say yes and surrender to him completely.
I am in shock- I feel a sort of numbness almost. I want to marry this man with all of my heart but I’m not emoting. And emoting is something I am very practised in. Why am I not emoting? It’s the shock, I’m sure. It’s the intensity of attention. It’s the medicine?
Before I have time to panic about my lack of reaction, I see my brother. He is walking towards me, eyed puffed and wet.
I am unlocked.
Something like my life flashes before my eyes, there is such a grounding sensation when I see him, and when he embraces me, I began to release everything I needed to. It was a lot. I was a mess.
My relationship with my brothers have been the healthiest and most stable male relationships of my life. They have been my rocks, and there was never any risk of losing them or screwing up the relationship. No matter what happens, we were blood. I probably sized every lover up to them, and never let it measure up.
I never let myself fully, 100% trust man who was not my relative.
I feel a wave of every failed relationship pulse through my veins. I am releasing every time I got my hopes up, every adventure in self sabotage , every tear shed for the fear of this moment never happening. I am filled with gratitude for every single story I’ve created and been a part of, even all the pain and suffering. Especially all the pain and suffering. Every time I lowered my bar, even lower this time, every angry whiskey shot, every comparative narrative. Every time my life fell apart in my best friends apartment because I screwed it up again. Every time I admitted ‘we were probably better as friends’, or Googling ‘gaslighting’. All these stories and scripts that have shaped me but do not own me. Accepting my past and rewriting my future. Transcending, including. All the inconsequential moments leading up to this, every man who loved me well and then not so much. My cries deepen as I remember every moment of accepting that a love story of this magnitude just wasn’t in the cards for me. And that was okay. I would be okay. I feel it all. I feel it all. I feel it all. I feel myself trusting my decision, I viscerally experience the support and love coming at us from all directions. I am flying again. While sensing how rooted all of this is. I feel peace beyond understanding. I let it all go, and I come up for air.
As I released him, there was a sense of , thank you brother. For everything. He’s got it from here.
There was a surrender; this was a first physical step towards him becoming our family.
My brother had unlocked the waterworks that could not be turned off. I turned back to my fiance, the love of my life, loving me with love I did not know existed- and I now feel it. I embrace him again with full body appreciation and I am lost in ecstasy and we each still have a foot in Wonderland.
People I do not know come up to me with full eyes of tears and express their gratitude for us sharing this moment, and their joy for us.
People who have become new friends within the past year approach me with raw emotion, hardly able to speak for crying. I am moved to say the least. Our love is a powerful force, not to be contained to just us.
This next step with him feels bigger than a wedding. Being proposed to at our homegrown festival, with everyone who has witnessed and supported our journey from the start- the context of a community I could not have imagined to be real.
I found community. The community I was searching for, desperate for, longing it, grieving not knowing. This community found me while I was grieving that it didn’t exist. I was so wrong.
I have never been so ecstatic to be so wrong.
Church can’t hold a candle to us.
There is laughter and the music continues, a special song cued up, the champaign is flowing, the rose pedals were missing (it’s okay, babe) and the sun kept setting. My face hurts so much from singing and smiling all day.
We are gifted a 3 foot wooden spoon; you know, the traditional 3 foot wooden engagement spoon.
(what if there really is no spoon?)
We peel away from the energy and do a costume change. I tell him he will have to deal with a nerd of a fiancé tonight because there’s no fucking way I can keep contacts in all night. Glasses it is.
We almost lose the ring, of course, don’t, and put it in the truck. It sucks that we both suck at losing things.
Scratch that, we are both very very very good at losing things.
I chose my evening medications and sit with a smaller crew discussing the events of the evening.
Did you know? Did YOU know?
I mend a fence with a miscommunication. The medicine is working!
The DJ rocks my world with an incredible set. I know the medicine is working because I’m craving cigarettes, plural.
As the night turns to drum and bass, it’s his turn to get lost in it. And my turn to sit down.
3 am rolls around and we both have tired legs. We say goodnight to whoever can hear it and get cozy and call it.
Looking back, it all seems so obvious. Switching his set from 10pm to 6pm, only playing love songs, gathering an intentional crowd.
It never crossed my mind until the moment it was supposed to.
It felt like a movie. A rehearsed scene, with every element out of our control- weather, other peoples temperaments, mostly weather- in full cooperation with the end goal. Surreal. Perfect. Real.
This is the most appropriate and incredible starts to our commitments to each other. In the context of a community who knows, supports and uplifts us.
This relationship is not built on privacy. Yes, privacy is important, it is necessary, and we will want it. There will elements to our two-person team that will need to be intimate and not shared.
But overall, we are as strong as the community we have rooted in. We need you.
I feel this is my first experience with a relationship being a team. Equal team mates. I’ve never even tried this approach before. There are growing pains and old habits and I am committed more than ever to the teamwork.
Relationship with the same community, the same values. There is no, your friends or mine? There is such grounding. There is deep peace.
We want accountability. We want the village. We get so much energy, momentum and drive from sharing big parts of our hearts and passions with you. For you, for the village.
We need the village.
And this is the best village in town.
WANT TO WATCH THE PROPOSAL? of course you do.
