I don’t know if you are a part of Bachelor Nation, but my partner and I are. It’s not something we are proud of, but something that we have come to accept about ourselves when others can’t. In light of last night’s big, 28th Bachelor Finale, I reflected on the importance of hometowns and how they are an often, undervalued piece of the love puzzle that can make or break even the strongest of bonds. For those of you who aren’t fans of the show, and congratulations on having more quality free time if you aren’t, hometowns are where the guy or gal has narrowed down their pick of the litter to four, and then travels to the top four’s hometowns to meet their family and see where they grew up.
Much like the contestants on this show, my former husband and I had a whirlwind romance; we met in June while I was performing in an off-off-Broadway show, he swept me off my feet to the Amalfi Coast in late August and when we returned, still reeling in romance, 9/11 happened. (The fear of death can glue a couple to each other faster than just about anything else.) Within three months he asked me to marry him and I said “yes” before he even knew where or what I actually came from. Let’s just say he had no idea what he was getting into and quite frankly, neither did I…
We had just celebrated our own little Christmas with Jason’s family and I felt like a fucking princess. It was all about me: 2.5 carat diamond solitaire, a shearling coat from Max Mara, and relocating to a sexy loft apartment overlooking the Museum of Natural History scheduled for the start of the new year. (I literally told him that I would never move in with someone unless he “put a ring on it”, so...now there was a ring on it.) Everything seemed to be going along as a good fairytale should but I had a niggly little pit in my stomach for some reason. Maybe it was because when I called my mom to tell her we got engaged, she hung up on me? No really, he asked me to marry him, I said “yes”, and whilst celebrating with a bottle of Perrier Jouet Belle Époque, we called our parents to share the good news and mine hung up on me. I called her back and asked what the fuck she did that for, and she said that she didn’t understand how I could get engaged to someone who hadn’t been introduced to her first. Fair enough, but there was a good reason for that: every guy I’d ever brought home to meet her ended up in the break-up pile shortly after. I didn’t say this to her of course, and I didn’t tell my fiancé either, but these were the facts. She couldn’t ruin this one for me because we were already engaged. So, we were on our way to meet my family for the holidays post facto. You can’t hang-up on a visit. She was going to have to suck it up buttercup.
Upon our arrival at St. Louis’ Lambert Field, we were greeted by my father which, to me, was suspect. Usually, my mom and my dad would pick me up at the airport, despite being divorced. Then we would do a Steak-n-Shake stop before heading to my mom’s house to gorge on undercooked fries and greaseball burgers, sometimes with an errant hair found under the bun. But today, it was just my dad being his usual funny self, albeit a bit uncomfortable being a man of no means meeting my new man of new means. Everything was good so far…but where the hell was my mom? “Oh, your mother wasn’t ready when you landed”, my dad said. That made sense. She was notoriously late for everything so I bought it.
Twenty minutes later, after my dad schooled Jason on highways “farty” and “farty far”, we were pulling into my mother’s driveway with our steak burgers. As we opened our car doors, the portal to my childhood home revealed something I had never seen before: a monster. This, thing, had an old lady face, grey straggly hair with giant tits and a huge ass. It was wearing a housecoat, house shoes, and scuttled its way towards us with outstretched arms and a big ole’ “Hi! I’m Brenda.” THIS is how my future husband met my mom-ster. He shot me a look that was 50% disbelief, 30% fear and 20% “you should have warned me.” But how could I? How could anyone prepare anyone for this? Even I wasn’t prepared for this. I started laughing. And my dad started laughing. The only person who wasn’t laughing was Jason.
After she hugged him, she pulled off the mask and surprised him with her “normal” face, then removed whatever fat suit she concocted and said, “Tada! Don’t I look good?” In her mind, if she presented herself as a disgusting freak, then my future husband would see how thin and beautiful she was compared to his first impression. Crazy? Yes. Normal to how I grew up? Also, yes. Once Jason realized that he wasn’t being punk’ed, he relaxed into my childhood home where he was offered one trailer trash delicacy after the next: “I made you a vanilla wafer cake. Oh, we have toasted raviolis? Do you want some Oreo ice cream? Cheetos? Funions? Pork rinds?” This was a far cry from the Michelin star fare he preferred but hey, he fell in love with a midwestern girl who grew up in North County, St. Louis eating cold pizza for breakfast.
Over the next three days he met my guncle who used to be a man but was now a woman, my cousin who went to prison for gouging someone’s eyes out, my great grandpa who may or may not have murdered his own father (the jury’s still out), my aunt who was just released from a mental institution and my Nana who still referred to people as “oriental” and “colored.” Also, during that trip my father revealed that he was swimming in debt and about to file for bankruptcy. And these were just the highlights.
Needless to say, if this were an episode of The Bachelor, and I was one of the last four ladies vying for Jason’s heart, you can bet that I wouldn’t have made it to a fantasy suite. For the non-fans, a fantasy suite is the place where you are allowed to “try” the product before you “buy” the product. In other words, the bachelor gets to sleep with the remaining three women…but not at the same time. And as entertaining as him meeting my family would have been for tv drama, life is real and marriage is supposed to be forever and this “hometown” would have been a deal-breaker for any guy vetting the woman he was planning on spending the rest of his life with. It was just a happy accident that he had already popped the question and there was no going back. To be sure, Jason wasn’t one to admit mistakes, but if he were the admitting kind, he might have run far, far away from crazy town.
The funny thing about crazy town though, is…what you see is what you get. It’s all out there and you are acutely aware of the dysfunction while it is happening. When you are witnessing it, when you are taking it and when you are dishing it, you ride the line of absurdity and are able to look back at it and laugh.
What all the Bachelors and Bachelorettes out there need to look out for is the covert dysfunction; the stuff that you can’t see on a short lil’ hometown visit. The insidious seeping of invisible razorblades that cut you slowly and by the time you realize it, the damage is done. I may have come from crazy town, but I had no idea I was marrying Sweeney Todd. I mean, I played the Beggar Woman in college but…art imitating life?
In Laughter,
LStL
I'm still getting over you guys watching the Bachelor let alone your crazy family. hahahaha.