Monday, August 04, 2008

Matrimony, familial smug.

I had a busy weekend for the first time in a while. On Saturday I arose bright and early to film a wedding with my buddy Kevin- a service for which we were forced to drive to Windsor (Windsor Water Works, you're gonna get wet!). Once there, it seemed to be an ideal and incredibly simple shoot. It was only scheduled for eight hours, and it was an early ceremony; arrive at noon, hitched by two, drunk by five, danced out by eight and we leave.

Unfortunately for me (and Kevin, as it would turn out), I had a rather nasty flare up of a long standing physical malady. When I was younger, around nine or ten, my mom enrolled me in tennis classes to get me some exercise, concerned that I spent too much time laying around. The tennis class quickly became my least favorite thing on earth as the exertion under the summer sn would feel like it was scorching my brain and turning my stomach. It was a debilitating pain that called to mind what I imagined one must feel right before spontaneous combustion. The truth of the matter was that I had anemia, the iron-deficiency kind, not the sickle cell kind, so all that I needed was a small amount of supplementation and I was good to go.

As time wore on, though, I forgot about the unpleasant feeling, as it happened so infrequently as to never be on my mind. So it came as quite a surprise to me when, not halfway through the wedding shoot, my legs began to get shaky. Kevin asked me quietly which of the waitresses I'd sleep with, and to stomp my foot when she passed. Not more than twenty seconds later, the compact, auburn haired waitress with the deceptively large breasts strolled by carrying an empty platter that was shortly before full of mini-pizza. I stomped my foot, despite it sending a slight chil up into the pit of my stomach. I told Kevin I needed to stretch out behind the house out of sight of the wedding party. He told me to go ahead. 

I did indeed stretch my back initially, as an earlier stint on the handheld had done a number on my back, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling of compression in my spine. After only a dozen seconds or so, I simply laid out on the deck and tried to sleep, my heartbeat pulsing in my head and crippling my breathing. I knew the nature of the pain, but also knew that in that heat I was powerless but to ride it out. I managed to doze off halway for a couple of minutes before a woman from the wedding arty stepped behind the house near me to talk on the phone.

"They're not talkin' to me cause Im the ex-wife," she complained. Under my breath, I found myself cursing her. "Stupid goddamn bitch," I thought, "shut the fuck up, I can't deal with this."
Her conversation continued as my mind slipped into some sort of state that has made it impossible for me to remember anything else before Kevin roused me. He told me that I had to go to the car, that it looked bad for me to be lying prone on a yard deck during a wedding I was supposed to be a videographer for. Despite my state, and my knowledge that the car would be even more arduous from the heat, I couldn't argue with Kevin's logic; at likely around $3000 for eight hours, they deserved not to have one of the shooters passed out like a drunk, village idiot.

I ended up falling asleep in the car after half an hour of obsessed, seething fidgeting. I woke up an hour and a half later when Kevin phoned me, saying he needed to call his wife and asking me to film while he did. My absence from a practical standpoint wasn't a huge tactical issue; the only B camera coverage they paid for was for the ceremony, and I accomplished that before falling apart. Generally the B operator wouldn't shoot anything else anyways, except when the lead shooter has to use the bathroom or eat a snack. I took over briefly, but I lacked the strength to hoist the camera very far, so my shots were mostly from the same angle, with the zoom level changed to create the illusion of motion. I was truly useless from a functionality standpoint.

Slowly but surely following my awakening, however, my body began to regulate itself back to normal. My headache faded into a warm numbness, my limbs stopped aching, and my stomach, which had at the worst moment felt prone to regurgitation, settled quickly. It reminded me of a similar incident that happen to me on the beach in Guernville, where I stewed in the sand trying to sleep while Annie read David Sedaris aloud. Like the scorned ex-wife at the wedding, I found myself mutters words of intense dislike towards Mr. Sedaris as I slowly wilted in the sun. But also like that day, a brief sleep somehow turned the incredible pain into little more than a warm, drowsy feeling.

I recovered so fully at such a rate (one that truthfully confounded me) that I seriously doubted whether I could objectively convince Kevin it wasn't some kind of laziness induced hoax I had pulled at his expense. I knew he would believe me by virtue of our friendship, but if we hadn't known each other, he likely would've though me terrible. I felt so good by the end of the night that I found myself rooting for overtime; if they wanted to keep us an extra hour it would've netted us around forty bucks extra apiece. It was a rather humbling experience, because despite needing to film for only a mere half hour, and really only having to stand around for the rest of the gig, I essentially flunked. It's a flunk I still get paid for, but objectively speaking, I wouldn't say I earned it. Actually, I guess it wasn't humbling. It's only humbling if I don't get the cash. But, the month is still young. Maybe I'll get taken to small claims court.

I followed yesterday's effort with a more personally taxing event today; my grandmother's birthday. Those of you who know me well know that I'm not crazy about my grandmother for certain reasons, so the celebration in and of itself wasn't very gratifying for me, but also my recent turn to veganism became an issue. My mother's family is a sprawling, boisterous (predominantly) Italian clan that prides itself in eating nothing but greasy meat, cheese, and pasta sauce every chance they get. As I knew would happen, everybody began asking why I wasn't eating, and apparently "I'm not that hungry, but thank you" is not a sufficient reply these days. Somebody finally ventured the guess that I didn't eat meat, and I admitted it, opening the floodgates to a solid twenty to thirty minutes of discussion (including the million dollar queston; so, like, what can you eat?), culminating in one cousin taking "my side" by expressively discussing how bad conditions are for animals for either livestock or productions. 

She essentially, albeit unknowingly, exuded the exact sort of attitude towards my meat guzzling family that I wanted to avoid during the stay, and it ended up costing me much more conversation that I would have liked. I don't quite understand why people seem to take it as a personal threat when I make a choice about my dietary habits; I encountered this skepticism during my semi-vegetarian spree in high school, and it's been worse with the veganism. There's an odd amount of resentment that some people have seemed to brandish upon learning of my choice.

For the record, though, I would eat meat if it meant a night of passion with that waitress. Seriously, that was some fiiiiiiiine looking woman.

No comments: