Hooking Up, As Seen By Those on the Bench…

It’s Saturday night.

Down in San Antonio, T and M are celebrating their wedding. Eight hundred friends, family members and parents’ friends gather at M’s parents’ home to congratulate them on their nuptials. There is the usual Texas fair of beer, Bar-B-Que, the grand march, and more beer.

Late that night, T and M will retire to the Havana Hotel on the Riverwalk. They will drink a bottle of Champaign and toast to a life filled with endless promises. Afterwards, they will lay in the dark under blankets whispering plans of children, careers, and old age.

As T and M consummate their marriage, other attendees of the wedding will be engaged in the same act. Some of the participants will be married couples caught up in memories of their own wedding day, while others will have only met that night and be friends of the bride or groom.

In Austin, C and V experience sticky pre-teen petting. In bedrooms and backyards ducking parent’s watchful eyes, C and V will engage hormones that had lay dormant for twelve years.

In Los Angeles, N and B put their best foot forward and parent’s credit card on the line as they enter another swanky bar filled with actor and actresses. Like the others, N and B talk about scripts yet to be written, movies yet to be directed and the break that could change their whole lives. They do this with hands intertwined and smiles of satisfaction.

The majority of these couplings would never meet one another. In fact, they could go their entire lives and never once see each other. Except for me, I keep bringing them together. I am the one degree of separation that binds these groups to one another. T is a life long friend. C is a cousin. N is a college roommate.

What am I doing this Saturday night? I am not at the wedding, with family, on vacation in LA or even being the third wheel back home. Instead, I am staying at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Oddly enough, I am not too disappointed that I am not at the wedding of the year or anything else. I am somewhat content: content in the fact that whatever is causing my most recent heart problems are not serious. At least that is what this round of doctors is telling me; there is always a new group of specialist their fellows and the lower bootlicking residents tomorrow.

Being a congenital heart patient, I’ve grown to expect to miss some things in life, and by twenty-seven, it should be that way. So from athletics in grade school to now, I have grown to know how to sit on the bench of life.

As multiple friends enjoy relationships, F hears a friend’s band, D checks out the newest bar in the Lou, K travels through Europe and S visits her father, and I eat my hospital Jell-O. This is my life.