Cake Selection (cgw - Chapter 3)

A sudden splash of motion inside a shaking car as the camera is pointed at a YOUNG MAN with wavy brown hair concentrating on his driving.

YOUNG MAN: “Put that down, please.”

CAMERAMAN: “Say where we're going.”

YOUNG MAN: “To try cake. Put that down please. You’ll poke your eye out.”

CAMERAMAN: “Okay, good.”

Video cuts to the inside of a bakery with warm lighting and beige shiplap-style décor.

CAMERAMAN: “Which flavor is best?”

YOUNG MAN: “Eddie, please stop.”

CAMERAMAN: “Which one are we choosing and why? Which one are we choosing and why?”

YOUNG MAN, to bakery owner: “Don’t worry, he has only five, ten minutes of battery life max on that thing.”

BAKER: “If you have the cord, you can plug it in here.”

CAMERAMAN: “No, that ruins the magic of the challenge. Will you explain in thirty seconds or less which cake we’re choosing and why? Please look directly into the camera.”

The BAKER selects a small white cake with a yellowish tinge, holding it up to the camera and clearly game. The YOUNG MAN opens his mouth and turns to the camera as if about to speak severely to the man wielding it before the video cuts to static.]

***

My mom and dad really like Eddie. He’s a family guy. I didn’t know that when I met him, obviously, but he’s taken to them well.

We’ve met my parents now… oh, what has it been—three times? Maybe this is the fourth time. All have been wedding-related in some fashion, so it’s been good to see him getting to know my mom, even if it feels weird that we’re already committed and they didn’t know him before the ring went on my finger. They don’t know that I didn’t know him either, but for them to just… go along with it. Eh, it seems weird. 

My mom has been especially delighted by my engagement, and her excitement has worn off on me. Every time I see her, she’s practically glowing. Maybe she just wanted all her children to be married. Or settled. Or happy.

The inevitable breakup is going to hit her more than me.

I find it hard to believe she was this overbearing when my sister was getting married, but I’ve been assured that she was, in fact, worse. My mom has always been one to love planning. She gets really obnoxiously focused and cranky about it, but she loves doing it. Like, I think it gives her life.

She basically decided where we were going to get our cakes from. When we told her the flavors we were going for, it narrowed it down to two cake shops, and we went with the one that was closest and with a personal connection. Eddie likes that kind of thing—local, and with people we had some kind of connection too. One of the workers was married to one of my cousins.

My vote was for the cake that tasted the best, but since mom wanted to pay for it, we ended up at this shop.

I can’t remember the exact connection, but it’s enough for her, and it was enough for Eddie, so that’s why we’re here.

I feel like I’m getting dragged around to these things. Is this what it feels like for everyone when they get married, or only if you do it in this whirlwind fashion?

The cakes were good, I guess. It was beautifully decorated—the building, I mean, not the cake. The cake was actually kind of plain. I thought wedding cakes were supposed to be fancy. I guess not.

I also thought wedding cakes were out of fashion. The last wedding I went to had donuts.

I guess not about that, too.

I kind of wanted donuts. Or something individual-sized.

Whatever. My mom wanted a wedding cake; we’re having a wedding cake. It has a little hint of lemon, but overall vanilla. It’s a light and airy cake. Unobjectionable. If we had personal-sized cakes, I could have had some with lemon (real lemon) and blueberries. And some with mint marshmallow chocolate. And some with strawberries and cream. Or cookies and cream.

This dessert table in my head is getting wildly expensive, isn’t it.

There, it’s done for me. Lemon-lite. But no, no. We’ve got to try three other things. Oh, there was a delicious blueberry and lemon cake. Because I asked if they had it. That’s not a wedding cake though. There’s another one with a citrusy something on the outside coating, maybe it was orange. Now that’s not a wedding cake, either. Too bad; that’s the one I would have chosen. They don’t do a mint cake every day. Mint day is once every two weeks.

Shame.

“Where did you get the camera from?” my dad asked. He was a pot-bellied dude—pretty conservative but generally well-liked and didn’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers. He had a tough time at first with me coming out as gay, but there was never any worry that I would be removed from the family or anything crazy like that. He just had a tough time adjusting and said some things that I can’t exactly forget, but if you wanted to compare my situation to Eddie’s, there was none. And my dad eventually came around. Some things you just gotta forget were ever said. It seems like my dad has.

“Your son picked it up from your mother,” Eddie explained.

“No,” I said. “That was my mom’s mom. My dad’s parents don’t have this kind of thing to give away. The family is too big. I don’t think they can get away with giving anything away.”

“Right,” Eddie agreed good-naturedly. “From the grandfather who passed away. The camera guy.”

“He sure was a camera guy,” my father said. “He did my sister’s wedding.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. I really didn’t know that. It shocked me.

“Yeah, he did a lot of that stuff back in the day. Before you guys were around.”

“Before he retired?”

“I think he quit the camera stuff even before that. Had to be a lot of work. Plus, so many people were able to get disposable cameras in the ’90s. Now there’s all these smartphones.”

“This was the smartphone of the ’80s,” Eddie said, holding up the camera. It was too heavy to hold with an arm extended. He had to use both hands during filming.

I sighed; it must have been overly expressive because Eddie gave me a look.

“Can we not do this today? We’re just here to pick out cake.”

“Someone’s cranky,” Eddie suggested.

“I’m just... not into cake. I guess I’m more of an ice cream person.” Or maybe I wanted the perfect amount of the perfectly flavored cakes for each guest.

“You liked the blueberry one. Do you want a blueberry cake?”

“No.” Okay, I would have totally taken a blueberry cake.

“What are you so worried about?” my mom asked.

“You mean other than my wedding?”

“You should put it off. Three months is not enough time. I told you that from the start.”

“It’s not that,” I said. They didn’t know the real reason for our deadline, which was before the potential ruling from the Supreme Court. Maybe that global-sized stress could be adding to my personal stress. Hmm, do ya think, Kurt? Do ya think? “I just… we have a cake. We picked them out. I’m ready to go. This didn’t have to become a whole thing.”

“It is a whole thing,” my mom said. “It’s part of the wedding planning. You have to try your own cake.”

I didn’t. I really didn’t. All I wanted was the ring on my finger and to do it in front of my family. Everything else was just kind of window-dressing to me. Eddie seemed to be enjoying it, though, so it’s not like all these plans were a waste.

“We’re paying for the cake,” my mom said, as if I’d forgotten. “And the venue. I have enough money saved. I saved for your sister and I saved for you as well.”

“Mom.” I didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t know you were doing that.” What was expected of a mother of a gay son?

“We’ve saved enough that we can splurge a little, but not on everything. The cake is nothing. A small thing. But we still haven’t picked out a venue or what kind of music you want. You have enough money to splurge there. Maybe upgrade the venue or upgrade the band.”

“Venue,” I said instantly.

“Band,” Eddie said at the same time.

We looked at each other in surprise, then he laughed.

“It’s better to have a beautiful venue,” I said.

“That’s true. But you only get the experience once, and people will remember the better atmosphere and music…”

He wasn’t wrong. But I didn’t want to have my pictures being some tacky building with an ugly parking lot. I mean, I’ve been to a lot of tacky weddings. Look at where I’m from, folks.

“I still think venue. I don’t want it to be, I don’t know, to feel second-rate. I think money on a better venue—even if we have to go to an off time of the week or something—I would take that.”

“It’s got to be on a Saturday,” Eddie said, “so everyone can be there, your whole family.”

My parents didn’t bring up Eddie’s family. I’d told them the situation a couple weeks after letting them know we were getting married when my mom was eager to meet his parents, but I had to explain why that wasn’t going to happen. I guess there was always a chance. Never say never, right?

His parents were just… too busy. All the time. Too… I don’t know. Like nothing Eddie could do was good enough for them. Or if they did show up, it would just be something… I don’t know. Something that happened. Like love didn’t factor into their equation at all.

That’s how he’d grown up. He wasn’t hated or belittled or… anything, really. He had everything he ever wanted, friends in school, sports, you name it. His parents didn’t know or care about any of it.

He didn’t make a big production of coming out to them, just corrected his mother once about the pronouns of his boyfriend. “Oh,” she’d said. She never asked about any of his other dates after that.

I suspected… well, this is going to sound bad. But I suspected he stayed with his first boyfriend as a way to prove to himself that his parents were wrong, or to show his parents that he was responsible and respectable. I think that’s why he’s a doctor. He’s not exactly in love with the work he does.

Even though my family is emotionally dependent on each other… I wouldn’t trade it for the world. They’re the best part of what I have to offer. I’m not sure when I decided Eddie could have them, too, if he wanted. For as long as he wanted.

I definitely knew by that cake tasting, though.

Eddie was wonderful. Someone that successful and nice and… with that much to give, shouldn’t be so lonely. That about sums it up for me. Like he’d grown to expect to have his friends, but not a family.

While I was daydreaming, my mom and Eddie were trading ideas for venues with a good space for live music. Dad was standing beside me with his arms crossed and we're just waiting in silence… together.

The cake afternoon basically settled all the remaining questions about the wedding. It’ll be on a Saturday before the 22nd of May. It’ll be in a moderately priced venue that looks more expensive than it is. We’ll have a moderately priced DJ or maybe some live music. Or… something, something, Eddie will take care of it.

We said our goodbyes and headed home. The argument continued playfully about whether or not to go for a venue or the band. He was overjoyed.

Eddie likes it when we disagree. Well, maybe “liking it” isn’t the right word, but he’s interested in finding out why we have our differences. To me, all that matters is that one of us gets our way and then we move on.

“Your mom can pay for the venue, and you can pick it out. I'll pay for the music and a good life experience—then you don't have to worry about any of the costs.”

I drove on in silence. That's how our marriage was going to be, wasn’t it. We would have split finances and enter with a pre-prenuptial agreement so that it’ll be easy to separate when the time comes, and we also won't have to comment on each other's spending patterns.

Eddie liked spending a little more than me and possibly getting ripped off just so that he'll feel better about himself. He liked supporting local people, even if it's more expensive. He also had more money to spend.

His home was large and empty. Well-decorated, but without a lived-in feel. It was on a barren cul-de-sac, one of those they slop up on an old farm field twenty minutes from town. Massive. Every neighbor isolated in their castles. He had a massive two car garage with a third bay where he kept his yard stuff. His dream home. A respectable four bedrooms, and no family.

It was kind of sad, actually.

When I got home, I'd make a list of all the venues in a strict pro-con list so that I could rank them all on a cost-benefit analysis. I'd probably end up doing it for Eddie's live music as well.

“I'd like to see what options you have for the music,” I said.

“Sure, but don't worry about the money. I said I've got it—and I got it.” He grinned. “This is where I'd like to splurge a little.”

It didn't bother me. The way he spent his money had no effect on me. How could it? Our marriage would only last—what, a year? Couple years at most. Maybe not even that. Let him spend whatever he wanted.

I kept going back and forth: our marriage would last as long as he wanted it, our marriage couldn’t last much longer than a year. If he wants to be with me and my family, I’m his. How long can he possibly want this?

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