To make your August

A man who sits in the middle of a bar either thinks he’s the life of the party or needs to get something off his chest. Bellied up, three whiskeys deep, I did precisely that when the bartender popped me the question of the evening.

“You do’in all right, partner? You look pretty glum,” he asks, planting his forearms on the countertop and a towel draped over his shoulder.

It’s a sweltering Saturday night in August. I’m at mi amiga’s wedding reception wilting on a Manhattan rooftop nursing a grudge against the fool who booked a weekend getaway to Dante’s Inferno—that’s me, by the way. Tatiana and Tristan were supposed to make their grand entrance three whiskeys ago. Instead, the lovebirds spend cocktail hour trapped in an elevator six stories below.

“Just spied the ‘one that got away, señor.’ Hit me like a punch to the gut,” I say, banging a fist against my abdomen a bit harder than I meant to.

“That’s rough,” the bartender muses, stroking his Walrus mustache. “What’s she look like? I’ll keep an eye out and give you a heads up if she heads this way.”

¡Vaya! Where do I start? Tatiana is like the girl next door who’s a Hollywood star. Her radiant emerald eyes. Her crown of copper hair shines like the stars over Yum-Balam. She looked more like a princesa today in her flowing diamond gown than Kate Middleton.

“She’s the one in white,” I tell him. I’m wearing a tie and moto jacket I threw on this morning and sporting a five o’clock shadow screams hobo more than biker chic. My mismatched Oxfords have turned my poor feet into swollen lumps. I might never get them back on.

I read an article in Men’s Health once in the 9th grade that said being a photographer was the sexiest job on Earth. Now I am one—the best in New York by mi abuela. I worked in the fashion scene making people look beautiful for a living before turning to wedding photography full-time. Tonight, it’s the hardest job in the world.

“Whiskey. Mexican, por favor,” I say. My surrogate therapist makes my single a double without another word.

I dated Tatiana in college for three months after spending a semester burning the midnight oil with her at our college paper and crushing on her from across the newsroom. We stayed friends. Good friends. Now she's married to a tech bro and not me. Rumor has it her dad left his mom, married a stripper, and sold all his Enron stock in the divorce right before it collapsed. It paid for this bummer of a luau on the Hudson.

What did we have in common, anyway? Tatiana graduated with a bachelor’s in public health education from NYU. I’m a freelance photographer drumming in a rock band. She’ll be starting her master’s at Penn State this fall after honeymooning in Portugal. I’ll still be couch-surfing in Queens. I might get a plant.

The neon skyline is just coming to life as the lights adorning the pavilion’s pergola blink on. It’s still 95 degrees. The party’s been flirting with disaster all night. One of Tatiana’s tías fainted. That was before the refrigerator died. The food was spoiled, save for what was left at the buffet—salad, spaghetti, rolls—not enough to feed half the guests. We’re all eating Domino’s.

People are getting hot and bothered. Two plastered men came to blows and some muchacho was thrown out for getting handsy with a bridesmaid on the dance floor.

The band still plays on the Good Ship Bridegroom. It’s impartial to early 2000s indie rock—The Raconteurs, The Black Keys, Dead Weather. Es bueno. Justin Bieber, Adam Lavine, Katy Perry—I’ve lost track of the Top 40 shit I’ve heard at weddings.

I love the classics. Pink Floyd. Led Zeppelin. Aerosmith. The ‘70s got away from the bubbly pop sounds and psychedelic of the ‘60s. It gave us Rush, Queen, and the Talking Heads. The Greatest American Rock Band had the best decade of their 30 years on the road. The Beatles barely snuck in one last album before they were history.

I begin tapping my toe when I feel the mother of the bride tapping my shoulder.

“Gregorio! Having a good time?” Gabriela exclaims in a sing-song voice she puts on when she’s dying inside. “I’m so glad you could come on such short notice. Muchas gracias. Did you eat already? Have something to eat!”

“Oh, yes I am—have. No problema.” The biggest little white lie I’ve told tonight.

I like to think Gabriela inspired the abuelas you see on the sides of sauce jars—she may be one yet. She’s all smiles but I can tell she’s about to have a heart attack. Gabriela is coming undone—her messy updo looks even messier than when I last saw it.

She pulls me closer and whispers something in my ear. “You know, I wished it was you up there today.”

I can’t get her to elaborate before someone calls her off on mother-of-the-bride business. She leaves me to my thoughts. I don’t get anything at all.

                    *   *   *

I’m sipping soda water at the bar with lime. It looks like a gin and tonic to the naked eye. It also wards off the usual, “You don’t drink?” conversations I always get from guys at a bar. Usually.

I hate gin and tonic. They’re not too sweet and they’re not too heavy—it’s like it can’t make up their minds about what kind of flavor it wants to be. Funny. I’m agnostic.

For years, I thought it was because I always tried it with crappy gins and bargain tonic. Good tonic water can make up for a mediocre gin, people tell me. It just tastes like bathwater (Believe me, I know the taste).

The toupee across the bar in a plaid suit that could land a plane is nursing a tall glass of the genuine article. All men look like serial killers—because a serial killer could be anyone, of course—but this guy screams serial killer…one dressed like a couch. His beady eyes wander in my direction as he lets out a loud belch. Charming.

I’m a bridesmaid short one bride and about to burst into flame. My mascara is about to run a half-minute mile to Queens and I’m rocking a stunning canary-yellow number Constance Wu wore slightly better. Constance is my kind of hot—ninety-five degrees on a concrete roof isn’t.

This Copacabana looks expensive—like Long Island mortgage expensive. Tatiana’s dad is rich, I guess. Like, he got subpoenaed by Congress once rich.

I keep my eyes glued to the group chat blowing up my phone. It must be getting to that time of night. The girls must be getting tipsy. Tiff thinks she might be bi. Stephanie realized she doesn’t want kids. She has two.

Tatiana texts me: “Tegan! New York’s finest are finaly here giving my marriage the jaws of life! So, soooo sory for the wait. we’re going to be free!”

Plaid Brad makes his move. “Kon’nichiwa!” he says with a pie-faced grin as plops himself next to me. I’m Chinese. Thoroughly Chinese, my nǎinai says.

He examines my drink like he’s a CSI. “Oh, not drinking?”

“No, I don’t drink,” I say in the deadpan tone I usually reserve for my all-time rudest ER patients.

He keeps digging. “But I saw you drinking champagne, like, a couple of hours ago.”

“Champagne at weddings is the exception. I never drink outside of that,” trying to maintain my faltering bedside manner.

“That’s a bit weird…Don’t you like the taste?” he says, batting his baby blues at me. I spot something on his hand. Ew. He’s married.

This is long past the point when anyone else would get up. I’m different. “Weird? If you think so.”

“But it is!” Plaid Brad insists. He raises his half-full glass to me.

“How about gin and tonic?” he opines. “Fresh, piney, hints of citrus and spice. Bittersweet. Balanced. It all comes down to the tonic water. Fever Tree is good. I like Polar Premium.”

Thank you for your TedTalk. Aren’t you late for a Dateline special?

“I didn’t like G and T, but I’ve come around to it lately,” he wags a fat finger at me. “You just have to respect the tonic. And it’ll respect you.”

“I’ve liked some wines before.”

“And you don’t want to drink them again?”

“I don’t have a crazy desire to, no.”

My bar stool wobbles. I have no idea how an adult person is expected to sit on a leather-bound tree stump and wedge their feet on some thin metal bar all night.

“Why?” he prods, flicking his American flag tie over his shoulder like he’s about to drop to the floor and give me 20.

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

He starts probing for my buttons. “Oh, is it a trigger or some shit like that?”

“Does it need to be?”

“It usually is with Japs and all.”

I imagine the look on his face if I poured my drink all over the bleach-blonde rug on his head.

“So, someone has to have a traumatic experience with alcohol to not want to drink it? I can’t just not want to drink it because I just don’t want to?”

“It’s just…weird.”

“That’s your opinion.”

“So… like, you’re not tempted to drink?” Plaid Brad bats his baby blue eyes as he sips his drink.

I look at him pointedly, the way people do in the movies. “Usually, no, but it’s becoming more and more appealing with each passing second.”

He doesn’t give up. “Tell you what: drink’s on me. What are you having?”

“Rum and Dumber,” I say with a raised eyebrow that’s not ringing any bells for him.

Plaid Brad calls the bartender over to reopen his tab and pats his pockets, searching for his wallet. He pulls out a phone, some keys, a condom, and a tin flask he smacks down on the bar.

The bartender had to have seen it. He did. “Hey, no outside alcohol, partner,” he says, pointing to the sign six feet from us.

“No, it’s empty!” “See?” He shakes the flask only for it to make a distinct sloshing sound.

A bouncer about twice the size of the Incredible Hulk hauls my protesting seatmate away by the ear. Hmm. I really should give gin and tonic another try.

                    *   *   *

It’s so hot the wine bottles along the bar are popping their tops—¡Ay, caramba!—and I’m killing time taking random guest photos on the dance floor.

The Big Apple is teeming with yuppies looking to get hitched and they’ll throw the house out the window for their big day—the first time around, anyway. They have no idea what to pay for it either. It nets me a handsome check and keeps me in glamorous company.

I shoot on 35mm film. It has a cool, vintage quality. Tonight, I’m carrying a Hasselblad 500C with a Planar f/2.8, 80mm lens; how Walter Schirra shot the moon landing. My go-to film is Portra 400. It agrees with more skin tones. It’s a part of my brand: “Take your marriage to the moon.”

“¡Hola! Can I get some shots of you?” I say to a señora in a champagne dress rollicking to The White Stripes with the grace of someone on their third mojito.

“Sure! Oh, I just looove your accent!” she coos, twirling her finger around a drooping blonde bang.

“Thanks!” I exclaim, nervously flashing my best telenovela smile as my Hasselblad shutters.

She looked like a beauty queen. Her chestnut eyes smolder over a roaring fire—enough to drive a hombre loco.

“Hey, where is your accent from?” la señora inquires.

“Uh, my mother?” I stammer in confusion as the whiskey shifts gear for another lap.

“Cool! I got my big ass from my mom!”

Our conversation takes a turn as she lifts her rump high in the air to prove it, throwing her hips back like she’s Cardi B. She casually backs into me and starts grinding me like in those Step-Up movies, swaying back and forth as I let her move my hands on her waist. Ay-ay-ay.

That’s when I heard a deafening scream so loud it reminded me of when mi abuelo caught me smoking weed. A beefy man clad in a loud plaid suit and star-spangled neckwear points a meaty ringed finger at us—no, me—from across the dance floor.

“GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY WIFE!!!”

His Neanderthal proportions resemble a G.I. Joe’s, complete with a jaw so sharp it could cut a porterhouse steak and a thick brow that formed a permanent scowl. He must be twice her age. His face is red as a beet.

“I work too hard to let some chimichanga paw my wife in front of God and everyone!” he growls, crazy as a goat, steam practically pouring from his nostrils.

“DAMN IT, BRAD! Sit your ass down!” she shrieks with clenched fists, the skin taught over her knuckles.

“I paid FIVE GRAND for that dress, JANICE! I’m not letting this taco platter get his mitts all over it!”

He charges like a bull let loose from its pen as I sprint barefoot across the dance floor, throwing my camera to a señorita in a yellow canary gown, crossing my heart. El Toro runs up behind me, ripping away my jacket. He takes a swing at me. Then another.

I sail around his fists and retreat behind a table. We run around it and run around it some more when I snatch a tablecloth, unfurling it like a matador would a cape, circling him like I am in the arena. He lunges at me, disappearing in a sea of scarlet.

El Toro throws it off, huffing and puffing, when Janice starts flogging him with a rhinestone purse as she screams something about a divorce.

Then he grasps his chest. His eyes bulge from his head as he falls, hitting his head against a table, hand over his heart.

A hush falls over the dance floor. Guests stand with their mouths agape as his wife stoops over him in tears. Some hold their smartphones aloft. The woman in the canary yellow gown rushes toward him, shouting that she’s a doctor. The band has stopped playing.

                   *   *   *

Everything happens in slow motion. I drop to my knees and put Brad’s bear-sized hand in mine. I’m an ER doctor now. This asshole sprawled across the dance floor on my best friend’s wedding night is my asshole now.

I tell him what I tell all my patients. My name is Tegan. I’m here to help. He’s out like a light. I check his vitals. No pulse. He’s not breathing. Breath, damn it.

It takes four people including me to straighten his body, each grabbing a leg or an arm to move him. Without thinking, I rip away his too-tight dress shirt. I pump my hands against his chest to a rhythm—precisely 110 beats per minute—one this rocker knows by heart. Someone besides me recites the lyrics. OMG. 

“Another one bites the dust,” the photographer murmurs out loud. “And another one gone, and another one gone. Another one bites…”

Everyone glares knives at him but no one says a word. Poor guy looks about ready to die. I say nothing. I’m no stranger to a pinch of gallows humor—not in the ER. I flash him a knowing look as I keep up the rhythm.

Ten minutes pass. An ambulance pulls in as the New York Fire Department pries the bridegroom out of the elevator. He has a nasty gash to the head and will need bed rest. Otherwise, paramedics say, he’ll live.

Tatiana is inconsolable. She walks with Tristan and her mom to the limo sobbing as throngs of hungry paparazzi swarm the scene. The night’s dance floor brawl has spawned at least three memes and sparked the civil debate you find on Twitter at 3 a.m.

I hand the photographer—his name is Gregorio, I learn—his camera back. It’s cool, vintage even. People online are calling him a hero, a chauvinist, or an actor in an elaborate PSYOP. He’s cute.

                    *   *   *

Tegan talks about first aid as I hobble along Fifth Avenue with her—the spitting image of a sweaty, penniless hobo (I am until tonight’s check clears). I’ve lost one Oxford. She offers me a ride. I can’t say no.

We banter for a long while we wait for the Uber: music, medicine, footwear. ¡Cielos! She looks like a million bucks. It takes all my nerves to keep from staring at her all the way home, squeezed into the back of a BMW that smells like a mule.

It’s quiet. Tegan smiles a billion stars at me. I search for something to say. Nothing comes. Then I pop a question I should have known the answer to.

“Siri, could you play us some music?”

“There’s nothing in your music library. Just…silence.”