Free Autobiography of a Fat Bride by Laurie Notaro

from a gum wrapper, several Canadian pennies, and what looked suspiciously like a rewrapped cough drop.
    The lady I assumed was Ellen stood up and began delivering her sermon. Short and squat with eyes that said she had done some hard living, she began talking in a soft voice about how people should accept other people for who they were, just like Jesus did, and, as a matter of fact, if He were to come back to Earth right now, He’d feel much more comfortable at this church with the drug addicts and over-the-limit offenders than he would in Scottsdale with the hoity-toity people eating raw fish at a sushi bar.
    “A-
men,
Sister Ellen, the Lord is
every
man!
Every
man!” one particularly invigorated churchie stood up and proclaimed. “
Every
man fights his own demons, like my own enemy, cocaine!”
    “And the temptation of drink!” another man yelled.
    “And the crack pipe!” The Whistler barely rattled.
    It was then that I understood. We weren’t in a compound, and we weren’t about to be brainwashed. No one was going to give me a gun and start calling me Tonya. I wasn’t going to drink my own pee. We were simply at a rehabilitation center. A nonvoluntary, court-appointed rehab center. For these folks, it was singing and dancing and praising the Lord or wrestling the last scrap of shit wipe from their cellmates in the Big House while using their metal feeding tray as a shield. It turns out that we didn’t need to wear clean underwear, after all. We were sitting in a meeting of Junkies for Jesus.
    We met Ellen afterward, and I decided that I liked her just as long as she didn’t bring her commonwealth to our wedding for a free meal, despite the entertainment value of an honest-to-God freak show, and the fact that if Jesus chose to return to Earth, He might show up at my wedding, looking for His “every man” peeps. Then she gave me her card, which I have never, to this day, shown my mother.
    It read, neatly in black and white: “Reverend Ellen, A Spiritual Solution To Addictions.”

Dead Bride Walking

    I was getting married in eleven days.
    I had spent the last year planning, scouting, gluing, and stressing for our wedding. Yesterday I had five months to finish getting my shit together, but this morning it transformed into a matter of hours.
    I thought that I might even need to speak to a chaplain.
    When it comes time to do it, I wanted to ask him, will it be painless? Will I feel anything? Will it be peaceful or will I suffer?
    Will I still be worrying that the ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend, respectively at tables six and fifteen, will end up slugging it out? Will anyone take a piss in public at the reception? Will anyone have sex at my wedding? Will my mother throw anyone out for having a potty mouth? Will my missing-in-action bridesmaid actually show up? How many guests are going to bring people who weren’t invited and where do I seat them? How big is the chance that I will burst into a molten lava menstrual flow as I walk down the aisle?
    Is he actually going to marry me?
    What happens if he dies within the next eleven days—do I have to send back all the gifts? Will any one of the waiters be somebody I’ve slept with in a past life? Will I remember to wear underwear that day? Will my mother and I be speaking by then? Have I gained too much weight to fit into my dress? Is it going to rain?
    Will I have a big pimple on my neck, or a whitehead on the side of my nose that no one will tell me about? If I end up crying like a ninny, can I do it in a way that people will think I’m choking on a chunk of cheese or some chocolate? Will our three-year-old ring bearer pick his nose and then put the treasure back, a favorite habit of his, when he’s standing at the altar?
    Will the known kleptomaniac of the family try to steal the gifts, particularly the money bag? Will people I hate try to crash the reception, just to piss me off? Will the suspected retarded family member eat with his hands or use utensils?