Good times.

I just went to my cousin's wedding. Yes, I've woken up at 5:30 in the morning, as my sleep is fucked up from drinking half a bottle of Jack Daniels my other cousin snuck into the reception. One of the great things about going to a wedding that involves those of Yellow descent, and more specifically, relatives of Yellow descent, is that people feel the need, the overpowering urge, to approach you--if you so happened to be a single, unattached, 28-year-old--and ask you or tell you some combination of the following:

"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"You need to get married!"
"When are you going to get married?"
"It's so important to get married and have a family."

and best of all

"You're next!"

Interspersed between the twenty or so times various relatives felt the need to remind me that I am indeed without a boyfriend, that I am indeed single, and that I do indeed need to get married, was my mother, who looked at my face and told me how I've aged and there were a number of skin care professionals who could fix that. After she told me this five or six times, I remarked on the patch of hair growing out of her mole on her face and asked her if she was growing a mustache. Then I asked her if she was, in fact, a woman, if perhaps she were not really a man. She laughed at me and said, "Ooh, did I upset you?"

"No," I said.

"You're talking so fast. I can tell I upset you," she said to me, smiling.

I felt the tears rush to my eyes. My mom taking obvious pleasure in the fact that she got under my skin was the last straw.

"Well when you tell me five or six times how butt ass ugly I look, it gets to me."

"So if I've upset you, why did you say 'no' before?" she asked, amused.

"Okay so I am." At that point, I took my purse and walked out "to the ladies room." In reality, I walked around the hotel. I had no car. I couldn't escape. I called a couple friends who obviously would not be free to chat on a Saturday night and thus did not pick up their phone. The one friend who did pick up the phone ended up getting cut off because my cell phone battery died. So now I was stranded with no phone. I kept walking around the hotel until I ventured upon an arcade.

Oooh, pinball. I'll play pinball, I thought to myself. I put a dollar into the change machine whereupon it produced four quarters. I dropped two quarters into the machine and pressed start.

Nothing. I pressed "start" again. And again. Nothing.

I then body slammed into the pinball machine. Nothing. And then I laughed. "This is actually pretty funny," I remarked to myself. I tell the Front Desk that they have a defective pinball machine.

"Ooh, sorry, we don't give refunds," a woman simpered to me.

"Fine, but maybe you should put a note on there that it's broken," I said.

"Ooh, okay, [insert patronizing remark]."

"K bye."

I needed a drink and my cousin still hadn't brought me my bottle of Jack at this point so I decided to go to the small hotel bar. As I walked towards it, I saw to my dismay that a middle-aged, 600-pound man was waving me to me enthusiastically. Maybe not, I thought to myself.

So I walked around a bit more, stopped by the real ladies' room where I powdered my face a bit. Then in one of the stalls I could hear that distinct honking noise of my mom blowing her nose. I kept powdering my nose and she came out, saw me, washed her hands and held the door open for me, whereupon we exited the ladies' room together. She was totally oblivious.

I ignored her for the next twenty minutes, just watching the kids get crazy on the dance floor. My cousin finally proffered the Jack Daniels which I gladly poured into a styrofoam cup and drank straight. Nothing like whiskey to numb a gal from her pain.