We’re the flowers in the dustbin. . .
The Sex Pistols, “God Save The Queen”
I’m nosy. I love to snoop around. I once reported for a commodities news service, and nearly all my work was phone based, but you could say investigating market rumors and trends is a kind of snooping. On top of that, I love “finds.” I poke around flea markets and used-book stalls for something forgotten yet beautiful, worthless to others but a prize for me. My discovery of a Don’t Call Me a Crook! is an example of this, although it I spotted it a public library, not on a folding table or in a dusty shop.
A month ago, on my way to Carl Schultz Park, I spotted a huge book in a garbage can. Measuring roughly a foot in width and length and about three inches thick, it was big enough to be a family Bible. It even came with a sturdy, dark green case. But it wasn’t a Bible—it was a wedding album, and not an old, dusty, dog-eared one. It was in perfect condition and dated May 2004.
Why would anyone dump a wedding album in a public trash bin? That’s different than carefully tearing up its pictures, dropping them into a garbage bag, and fastening the pouch so the ripped photos are hidden. This is a public and stark renunciation of the album’s contents.
If someone gave you the book, one option would be it to return it. Of course, that’s got to be more than a little uncomfortable. What do you say? “Your wedding pictures are so sweet and precious, but I’m clearing stuff out, and…” But as awkward and alienating as it might giving it back, the act’s politics are different from the genuinely shocking violence and irreverence of chucking an album into a public garbage, not even bothering to bury it beneath rubbish. The act screams “I don’t care about you anymore, and I’m not going to hide my disdain. The memories these photos record are nothing to me. They’re worse than nothing. I won’t even let this book gather dust in my overpriced studio apartment: I want it out of my life. Gone!”
Why leave photos of a man and wife’s happiest day (or what they hoped would be their happiest day) with rotting banana peels and empty dog food cans? Why abandon them for some dude to bring home and use as the basis for a blog post?
Who dropped it in the can? A former friend of the couple? A disgruntled relative? Did the marriage end so quickly and badly that one of its partners was moved to exile reminders of its first day to a trash can?
Actually, whoever slipped the album into the bin might’ve been motivated by something blander than vitriol. Perhaps he was a handyman, sweeping up the detritus of past tenants. Hopefully it wasn’t the couple who left behind their own wedding album: that’s a little too absentminded! In any case, the bin-banishment was still brutal, but impersonal. Like a sexton kicking a sleeping bum out of church, he was just doing his job.
For the sake of discretion and decency, I won’t tell you the couple’s identity. Suffice to say their names, both given and cognominal, are unassuming and Anglo-Saxon. Both the groom and bride are young and attractive, in their early to mid-twenties. Both have light-brown hair: the bride has hers back in not a painful but a pleasant and comfortable bun with blond highlights. Later photos reveal the bun consists of interwoven braids, the effect like a bouquet. The groom’s haircut is short, spikey with mousse.
The album’s first photo is of the bride, in her white gown sitting on a bed. Her grin reveals large, bright teeth. She’s a lovely woman, almost beautiful, with tan skin, luminous green eyes, and full breasts. She casually holds a bedpost with one hand, and lets the other rest on the cover. I doubt she’s aware of photo’s eroticism. Was the photographer?
In the next photo the bridesmaids join their friend on the bed. (Get that smirk off your face.) They too are attractive girls, but look younger, less sophisticated than the bride. Has love and commitment matured the wife-to-be? She’s certainly the most pulchritudinous of the lot.
You can pretty much guess the course of the rest of the album: the father-of-the-bride (I assume that’s her father) walks her to the altar, the couple says their vows, friends and family pose for pictures, the assembled take lunch and dinner, man and wife cut the cake and slip morsels into each other’s mouths. However, there is one surprise: the ceremony unfolds on a beach.
The sand is pristine, and in some pictures it has a burnt-almond hue. A path, flanked left and right by white, broken shells and small stones, divides the seated guests and leads to a white lattice arch there the couple say the vows. A stout, white-haired officiant gazes placidly at them. The bride looks close to tears in one shot.
The wedding party is entirely Caucasian. The women are well-dressed for the occasion, but the young men are too casual. They have their shirts open-necked: one is shod in sneakers! The groom wears a goatee. It signifies more frat boy than hipster, although nowadays the terms aren’t mutually exclusive.
Where do these scenes unfold? Perhaps somewhere on either coast, but not necessarily. The Great Lakes have beaches. Perhaps it’s on an island.
It’s tempting, maybe even logical, to assume scenes unfold somewhere in the U.S, but there’s no reason to think it couldn’t be Canada, Great Britain, Australia, or anywhere in the English-speaking world. It could be nearly anywhere. South America, for example—why not? The couple could be scions of expatriates, with names from the old country. English could be a second language for them, an ill-fitting hand-me-down. I doubt it, but it’s amusing to imagine the bride whispering “I do” in Spanish or Portuguese.
But for all its charm and wonder, the album is very sad. Something went wrong between friends, between relatives, between parent and child, or most likely, between man and wife. As happy as the pictures are, it’s impossible to forget where the album was discarded. What happened? That’s a true-crime mystery, and I’m not sure I want to solve it.
