My roommate freshman year of college became an escortish-prostitute near the end of the school year.
I doubt she gives swimming lessons, ogged.
Really, a very weird (enlightening) experience. She got addicted to sex chat rooms and would spend days in the computer lab.
(She had all kinds of stories in this weird naive-insane vein: "I told the chat room that I was 18 and always wanted to have an affair with a married man! Then I gave out my school e-mail address. Gosh, but I've gotten a lot of e-mails!")
Failing out of school, broke, etc, met a pimp online. Made a video with him. He likes to sample the goods. Had a few clients. He was in the phone book under "recreational massages".
One sec, I'll post this and write some more.
One sec, I'll post this and write some more.
Heeb, we're counting on you. Pick up the phone. Call the ex-roommate. Have this somehow develop into her leaving deranged messages on SEK's machine while driving her white Ford Bronco down the highway with the police department in cool pursuit.
I was at a reunion this past weekend where a buddy brought a lingerie model that he "had known for a week."
We were certain that she was an escort. She was very nice.
I don't remember the numbers exactly, but it was something like $200? $100? for a (non-sexual) massage, which she'd actually deliver. I think she gave 75% of that over to the pimp. The prices for everything else were on top of that, and she'd keep 75% of that $.
She'd go out to dinner w/ the john and the pimp and be introduced as his daughter. There were all these thresholds where she was supposed to ask the john if he was a cop, like before they stepped into the hotel room. I think the pimp kept guy for safety purposes in the hotel room next door. The pimp was an ordinary middle aged married guy.
I had a couple of friends in college who were "escorts," but they were men so I doubt the audience for anecdote would be as wide. Interesting note: men make more than women as hookers, too.
7- My mother brought a (male) escort to my wedding, in a futile attempt to make my (re-married) father jealous. (She had met him a few weeks earlier, when he was a hired stripper at her friend's birthday party.)
I think the pimp kept guy for safety purposes in the hotel room next door.
If I'm parsing this correctly, this is what people call the "badger game" (thanks, novels of Andrew Vachss!).
Heeb, we're counting on you.
This is one of those "black people can say nigger" things, isn't it?
The pimp was an ordinary middle aged married guy.
At face value, this sentence strains the definition of "ordinary."
(thanks, novels of Andrew Vachss!)
Now that's a phrase that could be said at a lot of horrifying moments.
10: Did he make it into any/all of the "bride and groom with the groom's family" pictures?
My mother brought a (male) escort to my wedding
Wow. My sympathies, Brock.
Did you have sex with him?
15- yes. He was also at our rehearsal dinner. Very awkward. He was 35 years junior to my mother.
17: Holy shit, Brock. Yeah, sympathies, but that's the funniest fucking thing I've ever heard. Forgive me for my endless laughter.
Were you older than the escort, Brock?
21- Her escort and I were roughtly the same age.
I should mention that my mother and father had bene divorced for abuot 18 years at the time. And also that my mother is insane.
Is this something we should offer sympathies for? Were you bummed out or amused? I'm not sure how I'd react in that situation. I might have avoided mortification by laughing constantly and hysterically.
Showing the wedding pictures must be fun. "And this is my mother, and this is my mother's hooker!"
I always embarrasses me when I'm at a formal event getting a handjob when suddenly my escort says something which makes it obvious that they're a highschool dropout.
And also that my mother is insane.
I think we all had guessed this part.
I always embarrasses me
How true.
24: it was of course mortifying and hilarious and incredibly akward and completely fantastic.
Now I feel sincerely bad for laughing but neither can I stop. Thanks.
I had a great time at the wedding and enjoyed meeting the extended family.
Oh, thank the gods for 29 so that I can laugh without guilt.
A part of this is strange to me because in the South wedding scandals are never about who does show up, they're about who refuses to show up.
I one-hundredth the "Wow." Sort of fantastic, though. I feel a little bad for your mother.
26 gets it exactly right. Anyway, snobby Ogged, there are plenty of non-college educated people who are plenty smart enough for official elite type small talk. The college educated thing is just pure snob appeal--it's surely about helping the men think that they're paying for "quality" and that somehow they're not anything like those guys who hire women off the street corner because *they* value a woman's education.
Brock, I love that your mom did that, as it's great support for my theory that something is going to go pretty disastrously wrong at any wedding, and when it does you can relax because now it's happened and the rest of the event should go okay. Plus it makes me feel better than my mom merely contents herself with the normal refusing to go to events my dad's at and/or doing so only after bitching and moaning about what a horrible person I am for asking her to do that.
My mom killed a hobo at my wedding.
I knew you'd say that, B. But you're wrong.
Comity!
One of my best friends from college worked as a (male) stripper. He was the kind of guy who enjoyed the work too much, and would smile gleefully during his routines. Turns out, watching a stripper grin like a loon is kind of a turn-off. But all of my girlfriends and I swore that if we were single during our high school reunions, we'd bring him, as he's pretty status-y attractive, and say he's a hooker we picked up on the way. I don't know why we thought this would make us look badass, but my 10-year is coming up!
36: Oh, please. Have you ever been to an official Washington-type function? The women's conversation is so incredibly dull that it's hard to remain civil.
Can we PLEASE postpone an exhaustive discussion of wedding horror stories until next week?
Getting married? Have I told the story about how being harangued about the pictures after the wedding left me actually shouting profanity at my mother? We still haven't had prints made -- the scars are too deep. Maybe for our tenth anniversary.
"Can we PLEASE postpone an exhaustive discussion of wedding horror stories until next week?"
Are divorce stories off limits too?
LB, you don't want your children to grow up illegitimate. Suppose something happened to you? Get the prints made for their sake.
("Suppose, God forbid, that something happened to you", I meant to say).
You know, John, I want to thank you for single-handedly upholding Unfogged's reputation for wit these days.
I actually kind of like the idea of their coming across the Locked Briefcase Of Negatives as adults.
It's not that we don't have photographic proof we got married -- some casual snapshots turned out nicely (although I look absolutely plastered drunk in all of them, rather than merely tipsy). But the negatives of the posed pictures are locked up in a briefcase and haven't been opened since.
Mom restarted smoking after that argument. I figure that if she ever gets cancer, it's all my fault.
42: Now if you had an album for *that*, it would be really cool. Seriously, there should be registries, and showers and cake for the divorce, too.
45: I am dreading something similar on Saturday involving my mother and the posed shots. Sigh.
How could wedding photos cause that much drama (he asks naively)?
Wow, that must have been some argument, LB.
Our little oops was that we made a couple of cases of homemade hooch for the reception -- and then forgot them at home. Fortunately, someone ducked out and went to the local Alko and stocked up for us. I think we raided the gift checks to cover it.
LB you are making me feel old, I am coming up on 12 years of wedded bliss. I always figured you for someone about 5 years ahead of me in that process. (although come to think of it my kids are older than I guessed yours to be.)
48: Say, hypothetically, the groom's parents are divorced and his dad remarried. Then, the photographer innocently setting up the posed shots asks for a shot of the happy couple with the groom's parents and both mom's adamantly believe the other has no place in that photo. Now that's family fun for you!
Naive question, but NCP, can't you just take shot(s) in the configuration your mom wants, and then some in the configuration you want, and let her buy the ones she prefers?
I'm assuming this is some kind of "I don't want your father in the pictures" thing, like my mom tried to pull
Have I told the story about how being harangued about the pictures after the wedding left me actually shouting profanity at my mother? We still haven't had prints made -- the scars are too deep.
Yikes! What was the problem, you included the escort she brought in the pictures?
45: According to my mother, you are not married. You see, the photographs are important. If you don't have the photographs, the Virgin Mary doesn't let you get married.
Or at least that the only reason I can imagine I've been harangued about photographs so much.
48: Surprisingly easily.
49: Sure was.
54: That would at least have been entertaining.
52: Yes, and we'll do those at the very beginning. The problem is that my fiance's parents have never met my mother and only know my stepmom, so they want pictures with my dad and stepmom. My solution is to get the shots with my mom and then shoo her and my grandmothers off to the reception, and then take the remainder of the pictures with my stepmom.
The key here is getting a very specific list of posed shots to the photographer in which the order is explicit and mandatory and in which the participants are listed by NAME. And making sure that everyone knows that, as soon as the pictures involving them are taken, they need to leave the church and go to the reception. I don't think my mom will linger after hers are done, but my grandmothers might. And that's when my mom could see the posed shots I'd rather she not be there for.
Of course, she'll ultimately see them on the print-ordering website, but I'm trying to protect this one day here. I'll burn the next bridge when I get to it.
I was at a wedding when the birth father left before the ceremony because he didn't want to meet the stepfather. (The step-father had been ex-employer of the birth father and stole his wife and fired him, IIRC).
55: We've got one good picture of my mother, my big sister, and me in the Big Bird outfit I got married in. I think that covers us in the eyes of the Madonna, even without the posed pictures.
If your mother cares about the pictures, I can't recommend delegating hiring and interacting with the photographer to her too highly. I wish I had.
Can't you do a single posed shot with the inlaws and your mom, just to keep her from the whole hurt feelings thing?
58: Wow. I gotta say, I'm on the birth father's side there.
58, 61: Likewise. I suppose you can't tell what goes on in anyone else's family, but I'm ignorantly thinking ill of the kid for letting it come to that.
58: That's why a unionized workplace is so important!
If B's theory is true, and I think it is, you might want to actually plan for something to go disastrously wrong and hope you have your bases covered that way. Slip the celebrant a hash brownie, hide the ring from your best man, something like that.
At ours, the French pastry chef lost the address for the reception venue. Let them not eat cake!
60: And where does it end? What about the posed shot with my bride, her mother, her sister-in-law, her aunt, and my stepmom? Will we be required to take double sets of all the pictures, swapping my mother and stepmother in and out as if the photographer is switching back and forth between alternate realities?
That way lies madness, methinks. I'll take my chances with my current plan.
Were you the one with the late arriving croquembouche (sp?)? That sounded so good -- I really want one.
62: It probably depends on how long ago it all happened. If it was 20 years before the wedding and the kid had since established a meaningful relationship with the stepdad, it may have been incumbent on dad to suck it up for one day for his kid's sake. If not so long before, mom should have had the decency to leave the stepdad at home.
I can't imagine what my ex could possibly do that would keep me from my kid's wedding -- even if it means getting a referral from Brock's mom for the escort service.
Most importantly, does the dad still have a viable claim for wrongful discharge? The emotional damages award would do much to mend his broken heart.
"plan for something to go disastrously wrong" s/b "elope"
64: No, you can't fool the fates that way.
My disaster was the pianist I hadn't hired showing up drunk and making a scene. Mom had to slip him a $50 and I had to tell him that if he'd mail me a copy of a signed contract, I'd pay him in full as I walked him to the elevator. For the second time.
65: Ah. The problem there is you're taking too many pictures. One with the bride's family, one with the groom's, one with both. That's it, man.
This is the kind of thread that makes me think everyone else in the world has a more interesting life than me. Or maybe, is just more willing to detail it on a blog.
Good conversation does make the sex better, as well as allowing one to potentially attend weddings. I knew an escort who described the selection process for her rather elite service. It included dinner with the madam at the finest restaurant in town. This was a test of one's ability to make civil conversation, etc. She certainly was an exceptionally intelligent woman, as well as beautiful.
Surprisingly easily.
Aw, but we want to know what the argument was about!
59: And the Big Bird outfit? Floofy dress with feathers?
66: Yeah, that's the one. I finally followed through on my plan to make one, all decorated with flowers as intended, for our anniversary. It was actually pretty simple, and if I recall correctly, you have some mad pastry skillz. If you're curious, I can email a photo to your unfogged address.
65: I think it ends with the one posed shot of mom with the couple and the inlaws. Look, when you do a posed shot with step mom and the inlaws, but not mom, you send mom the message intentionally or not that she is the less valid/significant/official mother in your life. Seriously, just take the one picture.
72: Whether the entire wedding day had been carefully structured as a studied insult to her. Mom's great in many ways, but has a whole lot of not-terribly-well-buried crazy going on.
73: Yep. Off-the-rack white evening dress with a whole lot (no, more than you were picturing) of maribou around the neckline. If I ever lose twenty pounds and get invited to a Snow Princess themed formal, I have a dress.
63: true, ionized workplaces allow all sorts of attractions to come into play.
74: I'd like that. I'm actually now toying with the idea of taking a stab at one for our tenth anniversary in October -- I like cream puffs, I like caramel... what could go wrong?
As a wedding guest, I've always hated the interruption of getting up and being ordered around by a photographer.
and 75: I can't agree with this too strongly. While Mom's nuts, and our pictures did in fact incorporate her all through them, and neither she nor Dad is remarried (heck, they aren't even legally separated -- they're just living in different counties and not talking to each other), the argument got started with a sense that she'd been slighted in comparison with Dad. You really don't want to do anything to let that sort of feeling get started.
A picture with the couple and their bio-parents is pretty much a minimum.
Ellen's friend Eric did photography as our wedding present, and he did it really well. He did not order people around at all, just took pictures of the way people were arranged on their own accord. Very unobtrusive and the pictures are lovely. No posed shots. I recommend this as the best solution: it is cheaper, and more pleasant. We did not had any conflict in this regard with any of our parents.
80 - Suddenly, I have a sciencefictional idea of a wedding involving the Ideal Genetic Man (or Woman, or heck both, or maybe two Ideal Genetic Men for that matter) whose DNA involves patches from dozens of donors, each of whom has some claim to being a "bioparent".
Oh god, I hadn't thought about that. shivbunny's mom and dad are divorced, and his mother has remarried twice since then, so that her current husband isn't even a stepbunny to shivbunny.
Fortunately, they're pretty cool about everything, so we'll probably do a picture with biological parents, and then they can have their own picture.
But 75 sounds like a good solution.
(There are plenty of instances during a wedding ceremony and reception where you can get shots of people or groups of people posing even though they are not specifically "posing for a picture".)
80: So are you saying that we need a shot with me & fiance, her parents, my father and my mother? Or should stepmom be in that shot, too?
Just thinking about that makes me want to throw up.
84: A problem with that is that a fair number of people will perceive placement in posed pictures as evidence of family status or closeness to the couple, and will be insulted if not photographed with proper respect.
We also did no posed pictures, and I am infinitely glad.
Maybe I should just be glad that my date told me I do the Senator's wife thing really well.
87: Yeah, I wanted zero posed shots, but that idea got vetoed.
I can imagine being pretty bitter towards an ex (though I am not towards any of mine), but seriously, it's the kid's wedding. Suck it up for an afternoon. I can't fathom that being so much to ask.
90: I think--and look, I don't have kids, so this is super ex recto--that there are specific moments when parents expect formal repayment for all of the very real burdens they bore in raising the kid. The kid's marriage is one of them.
80: With the added disclaimer that you may not actually be able to prevent that sort of feeling from arising.
81: Our professional photographer actually got a ton of this sort of spontaneous shot. We probably wound up with around 700 proofs for a fairly small wedding and I think much of that was because he was just plain having a good time.
Why is it that people do weddings again?
I figure that if we ever get married, any Mom freakouts can be kept in check with a reminder that actually having a wedding would be a compromise and that anything she gets from there is a bonus. A couple of wistful comments about how lovely Vegas is this time of year, or about how it's actually fairly easy to book the Rotunda, especially if you go on a weekday and leave your pesky guests at home, will bring that shit right back in line.
This thread is confirming the wisdom of my current wife's and my decision to get married by a Justice of the Peace in Carson City (although we did have a dinner for family and friends a few weeks later).
with a whole lot (no, more than you were picturing) of maribou around the neckline
I've seen the picture. A really really whole lot of feathery stuff (not that LizardBreath was not a beautiful bride in the picture or anything, but lots of feathery stuff).
My parents have only about six wedding pictures, and the married couple are only in three of them. People go seriously overboard with wedding pictures.
A good wedding photographer is worth their money bc they can get excellent shots of your family and friends when they might never be in the same place again. Until, the divorce depositions, that is.
89: What you want doesn't matter, mister.
Disclosure: my cube at work is just outside NCP's fiancé's and soon-to-be m-i-l's offices. I probably know more about his wedding than he does.
93, 94: Every time this stuff comes up I'm happy all over again that we had two weddings with far less pain, expense, or drama (aside from the divorce, which blew over fairly quickly) than most people have one. The second time, I asked a friend who'd recently gone on the bench to officiate, he asked when the wedding was to occur, and I responded by asking when was good for him. He met us and a handful of friends under a banyan tree in the park, did the ceremony, and we went out for a nice dinner with our friends. It was perfect.
A bad wedding photographer is extremely cheesy and a royal pain in the ass.
You did the Liz Taylor/Richard Burton marriage, divorce, remarriage to the same partner thing? Or am I misunderstanding?
I've very sorry I somehow steered this conversation from escorts to weddings. I assure you that was not my intention.
: my cube at work is just outside NCP's fiancé's and soon-to-be m-i-l's offices. I probably know more about his wedding than he does.
They work together?!?!?! Dude, you are so fucked.
Ah, m-i-l, not just m. Less but still fucked.
They work together?
Family-owned business.
100: Yes, pretty much. I prefer to think of it as the divorce not working out.
I prefer to think of it as the divorce not working out.
How refreshing.
95 - We got married in a museum with a photo booth downstairs, which seemed about right.
"Disclosure: my cube at work is just outside NCP's fiancé's and soon-to-be m-i-l's offices. I probably know more about his wedding than he does."
And Brock's mom is a client?
86 -- you have some weird friends. I never experienced that reaction to the photos, at all. I mean there's a lot of photos, so people are arranged differently in all of them, some close to the bride, others to the groom, others off by themselves, but in a different shot the locations are otherwise.
DaveL:
That is very cool.
I often tell clients who want to get separated to be careful what they ask for. They might realize that they don't want a divorce while their spouse might decide that they like the idea of not being married.
108: snarkout's wedding pictures?
How come nobody has yet made the "but gay marriage isn't legal in N. Carolina" joke about 97?
110: Oh, not friends, just family. (Mostly just Mom, but there were rumblings in that direction from others.) If your families reliably don't give a damn, you're okay, but there's potential for hurt feelings if you've got people with any emotional investment in the symbolic significance of all the wedding rituals, and they think they haven't gotten their ritualistic props.
Just in case anybody's compiling statistics, we have two albums of wonderful pictures from a wedding in which everybody behaved themselves and all glitches were promptly fixed in a spirit of goodwill.
It simply amazes me that this is not the normal experience on this blog, but that's not the sense I'm getting.
115: Wife's parents still married when you got married; fairly traditional (whatever tradition) wedding? If you have the option of following a script pretty closely, it's easier not to piss people off. Otherwise, you just end up hoping for non-touchy friends and family.
115: I'm going to speculate that this is one of the reasons why you are still happily married. Parents who are able to understand that their child's wedding is not all about them (i.e. the parents) are probably more likely to have raised a child who will understand that his marriage is not all about him. Children whose parents do not get this, but who nevertheless figure it out for themselves, deserve an extra pat on the back.
117:
I was going to speculate alcohol, but I am slightly jaded and don't know I Don't Pay.
soon-to-be m-i-l
You left out the "-f".
Okay. So I'm going to assume that conventional wisdom here is that I should just bite the bullet and do one picture with my in-laws and my mother (and the happy couple, of course). Correct?
119: Please don't go there. For the sake of my sanity.
119: Not going there. She signs my paychecks.
"Okay. So I'm going to assume that conventional wisdom here is that I should just bite the bullet and do one picture with my in-laws and my mother (and the happy couple, of course). Correct?"
No. You should do as many pictures as they ask you to do. With a smile.
116/117 are the main reasons. Neither of my wife's parents were living, her uncle was the family leader on that side. Reception at his house.
118 is not it, I say somewhat wistfully. I remember a sneering reference in a Joan Didion novel to "the kind of people who don't drink at weddings." That would be us. I remember once commenting to ac that her expectation to the contrary, with fun family stories, seemed downright exotic to me.
"the kind of people who don't drink at weddings."
That would be my dad's side of the family. I take after mom's side in this respect. OPEN BAR!? HOORAY!
IDP and me, I guess.
We had two sets of parent+stepparent on my wife's side, plus a fair number of wedding party people, and still things went remarkably smoothly with the pictures. We made a list, handed it to my bossiest aunt, and told her to marshal everyone in and out of the pictures for the photographer.
The worst thing that went wrong at our wedding was when the wireless mic stopped working (we were outside, so the people at the back probably couldn't hear the whole ceremony) and when my wife's cousin got so drunk at the reception that she started groping random men (including the groom) on the dance floor, and her parents had the bartender cut her off.
Oh, and when my wife's maid of honor threw her a surprise bridal shower the day before the wedding.
126: Then you'll have a great time Saturday afternoon.
We're going to the Biophysicist's niece's wedding next year, where all three wives of the father of the bride will be present, two ex and one current. [Tho' who knows; it could be three ex and one current by then.]
At my first [formal] wedding, the photographer was either incompetent or incapacitated; it took eighteen months to get the photos and the bride and groom were, well, notable by their absence. There was one shot of me and my father coming down the aisle that cut off my left side and a really good one of the best man with the groom's arm in the picture. [That about said it for the mercifully short marriage, come to think of it.]
On an unrelated note, I have to make a wedding cake for my mother's 30th wedding anniversary - any of you have any experience with making fondant at 3900 feet?
I've only made fondant once, but I wouldn't think altitude would affect it much... no cooking, no rising. What are you thinking would happen to it?
What are you thinking would happen to it?
Zombification.
131: Globs of icing staggering about mumbling, "Brains..."
"Is it illegal to possess a cock in the state of Texas?"
134:
"No, sir," Molina replied.
But it is illegal to fight them.
Is that some sort of anti-gay legislation?
135: This guy has never been guilty of it, that's for sure.
Good googly christ-dolls y'all. I came in here for prostitutes and handjobs, not wedding memorabilia. Way to disappoint a girl.
At least Apo came through with some hermaphroditic penis fencing.
Good googly christ-dolls y'all.
The South is truly, if nothing else, the land of superior exclamations.
139, see 101. I feel terrible about the situation.
130: That it might dry out too quickly? And then become zombified?
From the link in 138: The "winner" is the organism that inseminates the other.
The game of life, in a nutshell.
143: Oh, true, but it's more fat-moistened than water-moistened. I'd think it would be fine.
The worst thing that went wrong at our wedding was when my wife's cousin got so drunk at the reception that she started groping random men (including the groom) on the dance floor, and her parents had the bartender cut her off.
"Worst" s/b "best".
Indeed. To this day, "drunk as the cousins" is used as a measure of intoxication in our family.
Two weddings, one marriage. The pictures show that it was something of a hoot, both times, although none are especially noteworthy. Only bad thing was a horse nearly trampling the guests, but I've already told that story, I think . . .
139 -- The guests were literally rolling in the hay, which is kind of what the horse was upset about. Actual details as to who's hands where were aren't available to me, I'm sorry to say.
We made absolutely no plans for photographs; assuming people would bring cameras and we might get copies. By sheer chance a friend turned up with his rarely used SLR and shot a total of about 20 shots. That's the sum record of our wedding. All are great, although I don't (unfortunately) have the negs.
All this wedding stress makes me glad I organized and paid for our wedding. Any family member who didn't like the way it was organized would have been told to fuck the fuck off. Luckily, everyone seemed to have a good day.
The South is truly, if nothing else, the land of superior exclamations.
Also, the land of "y'all," the second most flexible and useful word in the English language.
(#1, of course, is "dude.")
I am at my in-laws right now, and there is a hard core session of reception seating chart bingo going on right now. This is the best.
And also that my mother is insane.
I know that you think so, but my Mom's got yours beat, Brock.
153: yuor mom brought an escort to her own wedding? Or what?
My Mom's brain is so addled and disorganized that she wouldn't be able to procure an escort.
Oh. Well, I don't think I ever actually said my mom had yours beat, just that I understood and sympathized about crazy mothers.
what is the doc update?
I think will just accidently posted this here, and at the same time sent an email to a co-worker saying "wow, escorts and weddings... do I have some juicy stories I could tell!"
158:
That is a normal day for me in the world of divorce and custody battles.