Stories of love, loss and redemption
關於愛，失去和救贖的故事
2004 年，《紐約時報》開設了一個名為 Modern Love 的情感專欄，讓讀者圍繞 love 這個主題來講述自己與情感有關的經歷。15 年，無數來自不同背景，有著不同經歷的讀者們，懷著巨大的熱情和坦誠，傾訴著自己精彩人生中的閃光片段，講述他們愛的經歷和體驗。
在每日閱讀中，我們挑選了其中的一些故事，這些故事簡短豐富，文筆流暢，難度適中，對英文學習來說，是極好的閱讀素材。
Men Don't Care About Weddings Groomzilla Is Hurt（上）
I AM not the type of guy who would want to plan a wedding. I would rather play Xbox than watch "Queer Eye."（《粉雄救兵》：美國的一檔真人秀節目）I don't know if I'm a "fall" or a "summer." I decorated our bathroom with a framed Batman comic book.
But I found myself engaged to a wonderful woman who is so overbooked and so chronically late that she has her own time zone (we call it Tara Time). I knew I had to step up if I wanted to make it down the aisle. And when I did, something unrecognizable began to stir inside me.
Everyone knows about Bridezilla （A bride whose behavior is seen as demanding or unreasonable. The word uses the -zilla suffix derived from the Japanese movie monster Godzilla.）— the toothy creature in a wedding dress whose apocalyptic meltdowns send bystanders running for cover. But I'm here to tell you there is a far more terrible beast lurking in the matrimonial jungle. Fear him, for he is among us. His name is Groomzilla, and at my wedding, he was me.
圖片來源：電影《新娘大作戰》
It all started with the tie dilemma; I can see that now. I wonder if Groomzilla could have been stopped then, if I could have killed him in the shell, as Brutus（馬可斯·布魯圖斯：晚期羅馬共和國的元老院議員，聯合部分元老刺殺凱撒） proposed to do to Caesar, had I only known.
Listen, I do not wear ties unless I need one for an audition. I'm an actor. And a writer. What I'm trying to say is, I'm a bartender（調酒師）. So I have never thought much about ties. I have never noticed them in stores, or on necks.
But not long after my fiancée and I finally settled on a date, ties began to haunt me. I started to see them in my sleep. When I slept — which I didn't, because I was always lying awake, thinking about ties. As it turns out, New York is a city teeming with ties — and none of them looked right for my wedding.
Tara, logging 12-hour days teaching and studying Pilates, had no time for my sartorial crisis. I had nothing but a skinny swatch from her champagne-colored sash and my own waffling sense of fashion to guide me. So I did the only sensible thing: I bought every champagne tie I liked, everywhere, and took them all home.
I bought ties from Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Barneys, Banana Republic, Charles Tyrwhitt, Jos. A. Bank and one from Paul Stuart that cost almost as much as my wedding band. At home, I held them up to my throat, fanned them out on the table like a silken royal flush, and wondered just what was happening to me.
"A lot of grooms these days are vain," Kathleen Murphy told me recently. She is the deputy editor of the wedding magazine The Knot, so she ought to know. I had contacted her for some insight into my metamorphosis. "They're not renting a tux, they're getting Paul Smith suits or Gucci suits," she said. "You know, they want to look just as good as the bride."
圖片來源：電影《新娘大作戰》
Well, I'm not like those twerps. I don't even know who Paul Smith is. I bought a suit only because it fit me so much better than those boxy rental tuxes. That's not vanity; it's merely fashion-forward.
But my obsession went beyond suits and ties. When it came to writing the invitations, the wedding programs and those little "Save the Date" cards, vanity didn't get me into trouble. Ego did. Tara played my ego like a well-tuned kazoo. "Baby, you're such a good writer," she would tell me via cellphone, on a breathless break between clients and class. "You're so good with words."
And suddenly I would be back at the computer, birthing tumescent phrases like: "Under the Setting Sun, Tara and Craig Will at Last Be Wed." I spent days choosing the right tone for the program (I settled on "lovingly irreverent") and the right adjective for "special" in the invitation (I went with "singular").
I agonized over whether to quote "A Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Romeo and Juliet" on the response card — and then I agonized over whether to use a semicolon or a comma in said quote, because frankly, many Shakespeare authorities disagree on that. I hadn't asked for the job, but now that it was mine, I was determined to write pure wedding poetry.
Tara and I settled into a pattern. I would tease out a brilliant idea and she would come home and veto it, which would only feed my blooming hysteria.
TRUE, she often had a point. For instance, maybe it was tacky to format the invitation like a movie poster and write that our wedding was produced by God Almighty.
But still, she didn't have to tell me that. The creative process is a delicate thing. And when she would critique my genius, I would immediately grow resentful. Why was I stuck writing ooey-gooey wedding treacle? I'm a dude; it insulted my dignity, like training a cat to wear a mouse on his head.
And I never received credit for my labors anyway. After I created an e-mail account for our wedding and sent out a custom-made (and fabulous) Save the Date e-card, I was flooded with replies praising Tara — who was in England with her mother — for the delightful message.
Right up to the wedding, some guests continued to respond to my e-mail messages by writing to Tara, even though I signed them all "Craig." People just couldn't fathom that the groom, not the bride, might be leading our frantic march to "I do."
When we were first engaged, I was advised by friends to nod and stay out of Tara's way. And despite the fact that more and more grooms are now very involved in wedding planning (more than 80 percent of them, according to Bridal Guide Magazine), that's what most people expect from husbands-to-be. The traditional wisdom remains that a groom (like a child) should be seen and not heard. Real men, the logic goes, don't care about weddings. And that hurts Groomzilla — that makes him cry. But only on the inside. He doesn't want to streak his self-tanning lotion.
- TO BE CONTINUED -
圖片來源：美劇《摩登情愛》
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