I was invited to a lesbian wedding. It was held in a cathedral: its flying butresses extended like the glimmering joints of a large architectural spider. Feeling uncomfortable being the only guy invited, I had invited an ex-girlfriend to come to the wedding with me as my date, and she’d flown in from Poland just for the service.
As we sat in the pews on the 'groom' side, I realized that I had no idea which of the lesbians was in fact the groom, and I couldn’t remember who’d invited me. It didn't matter. I was happy; after all, I was surrounded on all sides by lithe dollsome things, glowing in diaphanous, sun-soaked silks; their blushes like drops of blood diffusing through cream. Pixy-cut bobs of hair in front of me picked up the stained light. I totally felt the spirit of a lesbian wedding. The service was beautiful.
Afterwards, as the girlie and I hobnobbed with the lesbians, I asked one of our fellow attendees where the reception was being held. She laughed and pointed up. Looking in the direction of her finger, I could see that, hanging upside down from the ceiling and arranged around the supporting marble pillars of the cathedral, a lavish reception had been arranged. An all-girl jazz band cabaret was already setting up - I noticed approvingly that I could see right down their glittery halter tops.
I screwed up my face in confusion and looked imploringly at both the girlie and the lesbian I’d asked, but they misunderstood my unspoken question ("Huh?"): "The couple just figured instead of having to rent two places, they could just rent the church," a lesbian patiently explained to me. Then, with a wave good-bye, she and the rest of her lesbian compatriots skipped up the walls of the cathedral, swung onto the ceiling and coalesced on the upside-down dance floor into a big blob of girldom of which I desperately wanted to be part.
I tried following everyone, putting one foot on the wall and then trying to place my other foot alongside it, but immediately fell on my ass. I was no counter-gravitational Fred Astaire. Wistfully, I looked up at the gleaming opals of fiery hair, the dollops of exposed clavicles, whirling and twirling above me. A thrashing sax solo drifted down among spangles of laughter. I tried climbing up the wall again, this time like a ninja, but I slid impotently back down six feet up. It was hopeless. I sat down on a pew and put my head between my hands. The girly sat down next to me.
"Man, I wish I was gay." I complained.
"This you could be!" the girlie said encouragingly, stroking her fingers through my hair. "But, my beauty, a lesbian… never!"
And then, in pink velvet slippers that wrapped in ribbons halfway up her calves, my date lightly traipsed up the wall, swung herself carelessly onto the ceiling, and threw herself into the fray with a pirouette and a giggle. When I awoke, my heart was, for some reason, filled with a pining sadness.
