What Possessed Me

On finding oneself in the Bermuda Triangle

What I needed was sleep. Sleep – and a fire in the fireplace, a dinner prepared with my own hands, and family all around me. Two strapping brothers and two lovely wives arrived on Saturday night to a little apartment that sparkled with candle light. Two cats curled up on an old kilim, two logs burned on the fire. We laughed over plates of fragrant tagine bil kok with buttery couscous and drank bottomless bottles of wine. In between political discourse and stories of childhood trauma, there were brief codas of silence, each of us absorbed in reveries of impressionistic thought. We watched the fire and for a moment I thought, This is my life. And it felt good.

The next morning, Fauxhawk and I awoke at noon, and engaged in that happy, meditative process of collecting the last vestiges of a successful evening. Toppled glasses, dry rinds of cheese, limp napkins lying beside dessert plates – we gathered them all up, remembering vignettes from the night before. In our post-mortem, we put aside Operation: Good Child. We forgot about winning points and currying favor, about Bad Child and Medium Child. And it was a relief.

What I needed was beauty. Something lush and gorgeous to look at – something fresh and crisp and striking. Let’s go for a walk, I said. We bundled up and braced ourselves against the wind. It began to snow. As the wind whipped snowflakes all around us, we laughed at our improbable journey.

The light was beautiful. We walked from Brooklyn Heights to Cobble Hill and on to Carroll Gardens, where the Virgin Mary met us at every corner. She looked cold and gray among the bright plastic woodland creatures. We crossed a bridge and the neighborhood changed into something silent and industrial – an iron works, a motorcycle garage, a stone mason’s workshop. Past the walls of graffiti, was the Brooklyn enclave of Red Hook.



We saw the place on Van Brunt Street – a small, modest sign that said, Saipua. The door tinkled as we entered. Inside, it was all freshness and light – an ode to goose necked tulips, a hymn to sweet renuncula.



Propped against hand-tied bouquets were letterpressed cards and fragrant handmade soaps wrapped in lovely printed papers. On every surface was an exquisite still life worthy of a Flemish painter.



In the corner, Fauxhawk examined a globe. Long ago, someone had marked the Bermuda Triangle, where Christopher Columbus claimed he saw strange dancing lights on the horizon and flames licking the sky. We thought about the child who drew a triangle and said, This is where strange and unexplainable events transpire. This is where people disappear into the sea.

Along the waterfront, we wandered in silence among abandoned trolleys and peered into their broken windows. We thought about ships swallowed up by the sea, about being lost – and suddenly feeling found.




Top photograph from the heartbreakingly beautiful photoblog, Strandgut. Street art photo by Gammablog. Bouquet photographs from Saipua's wonderful blog. Red Hook trolley photo by f.trainer.

Do your dhoti

"Please make it stop," he says in a very small voice. "Please."

Fauxhawk holds a small, gauzy, white band of cloth in his hands. It is his wedding outfit.

"I can’t," I tell him sternly. "It’s a gift from G’s family. Her grandfather gave it to you to wear. You're just going to have to strap one on and do it."

"I know. Oh my God."

"It’s going to be okay! There will be other people dressed as Ghandi there, too."

"Oh God. I am wearing a loin cloth to the wedding."

Hee hee hee.
Ha ha ha.
Hahahhaahahahaha.

As Fauxhawk's dread of his bod-baring Indian wedding outfit heightens, giggling begins to bubble out of my body until it is completely uncontrollable.

"And I just want you to know that some people would respond to his situation with gentleness or sympathy. But you – you laugh at me for twelve hours straight."

MWAHAHAHAHAHA. "I can’t – I can’t wait – I – I can’t wait to see you in your poo-poo pants."

"This is humiliation. And you know the worst part?

“Wha – HAHAHAHAHAHAHA – what?”

“I don’t even get any Good Child points for doing this.”

* * *

Hours before the wedding begins at the time deemed auspicious by the family’s astrologer, a Hindu priest transforms the strip of cloth into a dhoti, winding it around Fauxhawk’s body and twisting it into shape. He anoints Fauxhawk’s forehead, chest and arms with saffron paste and vermillion powder, and suddenly, the transformation is complete – Fauxhawk is now a Brahmin priest.



Meanwhile, I join the ladies of the family in their pre-wedding primping. There are two girls hired to drape the many elaborate saris G will wear throughout the day, and one of them makes me her project. In jeans and a simple kurta, I’m a sad case. Within minutes, the girl folds nine yards of purple and green silk into tiny pleats and drapes the fabric artfully over my petticoat and blouse and across my shoulder. The make-up artist looks on, assessing the formidable amount of work ahead of her. The messy hair won’t do. The make-up is subtle and downright plain. There is simply not enough adornment.

She wrangles my hair into a low chignon and drapes a cascade of fragrant blossoms from a pin. A jewel is fastened to my part and drips down my forehead. Make-up is applied with great panache. The girls step aside to review their work. “You look like a proper south Indian girl now,” they say, and I beam with delight.

I am Indian Princess Barbie.



When Fauxhawk and I step out into the reception hall, G’s extended family goes berserk. As the only non-Indians at the wedding, we are anxious to make a good impression and do what is expected of us, and while the sari is well-received, Fauxhawk’s dhoti makes a big splash. G’s grandfather is delighted to see us wearing his lovely and generous gifts and G smiles from afar as her relatives shower us with love and affection. Fauxhawk is now quite pleased with himself and spends the rest of the evening swaggering around in his dhoti, fishing for compliments.

The wedding ceremonies – a mixture of traditions from the south and the west of India, begin at 7am and extend late into the evening. The priests bless the couple, the families exchange gifts, the groom rides in on a white horse as the women dance before him.




G is a vision of color and sparkle – she changes her saris and her jewelry countless times, each combination more beautiful than the next.





The crowd is a panoply of shimmering color of which we suddenly find ourselves a part.



Walking onto the street to find a taxi back to our hotel, Fauxhawk now in his slightly more demure kurta and I in my vibrant sari, we smile shyly as passersby rubberneck and giggle at the two very large, very pale Indian wannabes.

In it to win it

It was all Fauxhawk’s idea.

"Let’s invite them over to my house," he said. "We can make your parents dinner."

According to Fauxhawk, dinner was the logical next mission in Operation: Good Child. Having wallowed in the mediocrity of Medium Child status for several years, I looked to Fauxhawk to bring intensity and strategy to a plan that was once shapeless and ill-conceived. To my delight, Fauxhawk proved his chops at Fishgiving and at a series of family events. He was calculating. He was ruthless. He would stop at nothing.

We are going to trounce your brothers, he whispered, his face close to mine. They are going down. You are going to be Good Child. It was all very Jack Handy Meets Apocalypse Now. I nodded. I was ready to win it.

But on the day of the dinner, I was not ready. Suddenly, we looked at our watches and realized that we had four hours to clean Fauxhawk’s apartment, grocery shop, cook, shower and change. For some people, four hours is plenty of time. Some people open up a cookbook called TOMATO IMPERATIVE! and pick out something delightful, adapt it with ingredients in their fridge, make it their own, and serve it with rave reviews. Some people keep their apartments tidy and don’t have cats that pee in the shower. Some people don’t throw their junk mail and cigarette wrappers behind the couch. For seven years...without cleaning up. Fauxhawk and I are not some people. We are people who need to take a nap.

Ten minutes into nap time, Fauxhawk is comatose and I am wringing my hands in front of his collection of cookbooks. TOMATO IMPERATIVE! is freaking me out. TOMATO IMPERATIVE! sounds vaguely threatening and not at all soothing. I switch to a French cookbook that was a gift from Good Child and no doubt an effort to sabotage my culinary attempts. Each recipe has 27 ingredients, half of which refer to other recipes on pages 731, 864, and 967. Finally, I choose Macaroni Gratin, not realizing that this is in fact macaroni and cheese, not some elegant French dish that will impress my parents. In a moment of misguided optimism, I also decide to make profiteroles, my father’s favorite dessert. Suppressing memories of previous baking disasters (“Half-Baked Carrot Cake Surprise,” “Devil’s Food Pancake,” and “Grand Canyon Birthday Crevasse”), I hunt for ingredients, realizing we have none.

FAUXHAWK YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP WE NEED TO GO GROCERY SHOPPING OH MY GOD THEY’RE COMING IN THREE HOURS AND THIS HOUSE IS A MESS AND WE HAVE NO FOOD AND I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M MAKING AND JESUS GOD HOW IS IT ALL GOING TO GET DONE IN TIME?

It’s my usual M.O. before giving a party: cursing, being passive-aggressive with Fauxhawk, and bursting into tears while running around frantically in my underwear and hair hat. Fauxhawk dutifully goes out with the shopping list, fielding at least seven calls during which I bark, “BABY CARROTS!” and several other items I neglected to put on the shopping list.

I set about to make the profiteroles. I realize, halfway through, that I have missed a few ingredients, and add them in at the end, hoping that no one will notice. The batter is looking rather thin, and I bring Fauxhawk in for a consultation. "Did you measure everything and follow the recipe exactly?" he asked, knowing full well that I did not, because what the fuck? Major pain in the ass, right? I am confident that they will be fine, and pop them in oven, checking every fifteen seconds or so to monitor their progress. My hope fades as the dough sprawls out across the cookie sheet, forming a large, amorphous blob instead of little individual puff balls. They are, without a doubt, an abysmal failure. It’s two hours until countdown and we have no dessert and no dinner.

Meanwhile, Fauxhawk is cleaning the house, bringing order to chaos, and removing the evidence. "Is there anything I should take off the walls that your parents might object to?" he asks. We scan the room quickly and somehow miss the David Shrigley illustration that says, in bold letters,

“SORRY I PAINTED THE WORD ‘TWAT’ ON YOUR GARAGE DOOR.”

Somehow, somehow, it all comes together. Dinner is in the oven and Fauxhawk salvages dessert. We look around and the apartment looks enchanted – a fire blazes in the fireplace, candles are lit, the cats snuggle in Cute Position on the couch. It smells like cinnamon and clementines and Christmas tree. When my parents walk in, they are dazzled. "How charming," my mother gasps, and she means it. I beam.

The dinner is good. The dessert is great. We drink and eat and chat amiably in Fauxhawk’s little apartment. My father speaks to Fauxhawk directly while making eye contact for the first time ever. My mother admires Fauxhawk's taste in paint colors. The teal is ravishing, she says. It is a wonderful, easy-going evening and I feel my anxieties dissolve. I forget about Good Child/Medium Child/Bad Child. I forget about Good Boyfriend. I forget about all the tension and tumult and upheaval I’ve caused in my family for the choices I’ve made in my life. I forget about wanting to be accepted and loved without judgment. Instead, I relax. This evening, we’re the best versions of ourselves.



When my parents leave, Fauxhawk and I look at each other in disbelief. “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ARE THE CHAM-PIONS!” I sing, as I pump my arms in the air. Fauxhawk is also pleased. We high five, and recap every delicious detail, licking our chops.

Victory is sweet.


Illustrations by Julie Morstad. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I stumbled across Morstad's work...