This isn't supposed to be agony, you know. They didn't invite you as a form of torture. Still, he can't help but take the new couple's abundant joy a little personally, like they're just doing all this to rub his nose in it. The paper wedding bell, really, was that called for? I watch him sign and shuffle off to look for a seat at the edge of things (our kind can't get enough of edges), never mind that he's been given a slip of paper to indicate he's supposed to sit at table seven. (I'm at fifteen.)

My own kind. I'm not sure there's a name for us. I suspect we're born this way: our hearts screwed in tight, already a little broken. We hate sentimentality and yet we're deeply sentimental. Low-grade Romantics. Tough but susceptible. Afflicted by parking lots, empty courtyards, nostalgic pop music. When we cried for no reason as babies, just hauled off and wailed, our parents seemed to know, instinctively, that it wasn't diaper rash or colic. It was something deeper that they couldn't find a comfort for, though the good ones tried mightily, shaking rattles like maniacs and singing "Happy Birthday" a little louder than called for.

A wedding is the worst scenario. We're usually single -- surprising, I know -- and least comfortable when socially required to say Awww, about kittens, sure, or greeting cards, and, in the present case, horrible toasts where weepy accountants say things like: To the happy couple. Reach for the stars! Weddings are riddled with socially enforced awwing. And so I'm pretty sure that I'll meet up with this guy at the bar, where we'll amuse the bartender, and we'll wander the golf course, talk pop culture, play the good game of cynicism. I'm fairly certain that we'll have sex awkwardly, like in his car or in the coat check once it's abandoned midway through "YMCA" and "Shout!" (though I might regret missing the opportunity of seeing middle-age men rip their pants seams singing A little bit softer now, a little bit softer now), and later one of us will call the other one or not or we'll both think about it and we won't. It's a little exhausting.

I reach the registry and I wonder who I should sign in as: Ms. Pac-Man, Miss Jackson-if-you're nasty, Miss Led, Miss Taken, Miss Understood. I choose Miss Chubby Petunia because there's something awful about the hug of this dress.

I slide my finger up a few names and there he is: Ted Nugent.

It's a wedding. I refuse to describe it in detail. I don't know why I'm here. I'm suddenly blurry on particulars. Am I related? Is this a work thing? It doesn't matter. The groom hovers around shaking hands. When there's a lull, a hand shortage, he goes out and finds more and pumps away. The bride's face is deep red, almost purple. She's gasping for breath because her gown is too tight. It makes her look like a giant fish belly.

They've long since wilted under the strain of all this honeyed adoration, but the photographer keeps shooting them and they keep smiling and the guests keep saying Awww. The band (Fast Train) radiates an indentured pitifulness. Their sound quality stinks, but they make up for it with jacked amps, and a lead singer who wants to be Carole King or Queen Latifah. She can't decide.

I avoid the guy in the crumpled boutonniere during the dancing and the cake cutting and the throwing of stuff. I also avoid the cousin of the groom who seems to think he's the Marquis de Sade of his junior college. When I go out the back door to walk around the grounds, I'm not thinking about my own kind at all. I'm touring my love life, the Madame Tussaud version that exists in my head. It's plain that there was a dogleg turn I missed, the one that would have landed me in the wedding dress. It doesn't matter how much I hate the dress, of course, or this grand affair. It's only that love -- something pure and less groping for glamour -- still holds a certain promise, and I've done bad by it.

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