Marietta

I am in McLean now, after my whirlwind trip to Charlottesville. After a few visits back to my old haunts, I think I can safely say that I love that town, but not enough to live there. With that said, here is the weirdest and most memorable thing that happened:

One of the attendees of the big party last night was our fun friend Kim, who brought along a friend of hers from Marietta, Ohio, who, for the purposes of disparagement and mockery, I shall call "Marietta." It turns out she is married but her husband wasn't there. During the party she emphatically gave me a lot of unsolicited advice about how to be married. "Always communicate," she blathered. "You want to head things off at the pass. Make sure things are totally out there."

"Yeah, that's really important," I would say, nodding. I was trying to make eye contact with someone else, and pretending to be deeply interested in the label on my beer bottle. "Is your husband here tonight?"

"He lives in North Dakota." Marietta's husband lived in North Dakota, while Marietta, for those of you keeping score, lives in Ohio. They were married a few months ago, and he lives out in freaking North Dakota for some job-related reason. Awesome.

Later that night, around 1, several of us went to go out dancing for a few hours. In the taxi on the way there, Marietta was seriously trying to put some moves on me. She was drunk as a skunk. "Since we're both married, this is ok," she slurred at me. Her breath was like Cheezits and beer. "All right," I said, trying to extract myself. She was trying to intertwine her fingers with mine, so I gave her a platonic pat on the shoulder and sort of shoved her away. "No, really, it's ok," she whispered. It was not ok.

On the dance floor she was all over me, as well as my friend Greg. Grinding her butt towards us, grabbing at our hands and leading us in awkward turns and twists, trying to make deep eye contact and allure us with gawky arm movements and arrhythmic pelvic thrusts. "No, this is ok," she would say when violently tried t0 get away from her. "Don't you think this is ok?"

It was so gross. This was the worst married person I had ever seen. I spent the whole night avoiding her and ignoring her overtures. A couple points: 1) I did not want to dance with her. 2) I did not want to commit some kind of premature adultery to my beloved sober fiancee, L. 3) I did not want to aid or abet in the eventual destruction of Marietta's own marriage. It was really sad and horrifying.

On our way out of the club, at 4:30 in the morning, our group was gradually crossing the street in the hopes of getting a taxi. After watching Marietta assault the males all night, Kim told Kateri that Marietta actually had a husband. "Marietta, you're married?" she yelled across the street. The girl nodded and said she was married. Kateri looked incredulous: "To who?"