I got married once. My wedding was during a blue moon, some day before new years evening 2009. It took place on a beach in Los Cabos, Mexico. I hadn’t invited my family there, since it was a quick fix remedy for my then boyfriend’s visa problem in the UK.

I had imagined it to be just a fun event. How fun to get married on a beach during a blue moon.

On the flight over from London to New York I felt like the adventurous fool from the Tarot cards, with a little trunk of my favourite items on my way towards unforeseeable quest accompanied with just a lust for adventure. But during the flight on a small airplane from New York to Monterrey we flew right through a storm, with thunder and heavy airbumps. I got so frightened and I realised how alone I was, everyone was speaking Spanish with each other but I was just a tongue-tied stranger in foreign air.

Clutching my armrest and watching the internal scenario of the rescuers searching to find my body after we had crashed, but only my wedding dress could be found. I saw it floating through the air like a silk parachute, without a body to save attached to it, to get caught in the top branches on a tree somewhere in the desert between USA and Mexico.

That journey set off a flight freight that lasted for a few years afterwards. When I finally landed I was very shaken and met up with my boyfriend and husband to be. He was all smiles and happy, so I pretended I was too. But doubt from fear of death during that flight had settled infused by doubt for the coming bond, I had gotten in to the feeling that it was just disguised as an adventure.

First thing of the wedding morning I clogged the toilet with my nervous stomach, it was highly embarrassing since it was in my to be sister in law’s house. I only just met them. My groom to be plunged the toilet free, a promising start to a fun day.

We had attended a beauty salong the day before, where I was offered a wax. I didn’t want to be a bad sport so I chose the legs, my sister in law to be was for me to do a Brazilian wax, which I declined with a joke, since I was wearing silk bloomers under my wedding dress, so the all the long pubes would be well hidden. The joke fell flat to the ground. The older brother’s beautiful wife wheezed in my ear, that it was indeed strange that a full grown woman with two kids would wanna look like a little girl in between her legs. Since I grew up in a family with only girls I appreciated the wheeze that showed the confidence interval in this family setting.

His family had chosen a spot on the beach belonging to a private members club they where pleased to have gotten with, they had chosen the flowers, after consideration of my preference, red roses and lots of delicious food and wine. We were all gathered on the private beach, just by the sea waves. The full blue moon had taken over the sky from the warm sun soon after his lovely mother walked me to the spot of the ceremony. There I rambled some promises of love, respect and freedom. I can’t remember what I said, I hadn’t quite prepared for the seriousness. They had also hired a wedding photographer that took beautiful shots of the event. Over hundreds of photographs of an event I performed at, slightly none present.

There was a tension during the wedding meal. It was the first occasion since the divorce of his mother and father, and the first time their new spouses was introduced too. The new husband played some guitar and sang some Americana music, and I was feeling more and more lightheaded becoming dizzy. Someone smoked a cigar and I felt sick and left the dinner. In the lovely garden of the club I started throwing up and someone led me to the bathroom, there I was so violently sick I threw up until it was just blood that came up and I fainted by the toilet. Someone carried me to a car and drove to the hospital. I had an IV put in but was passed out and only remembering shaking heavily from chills and they put four blankets on top of me.

I woke up the next day, saw my vintage 40’s silk wedding dress, that probably had functioned as a nightgown back then, on the floor. On the other side of the room through the foggy sunlight I watched the dark outlines of my new husband sleeping in the wide window seal.

Suddenly I burst out laughing at the absurdity of the evening before. As I laughed out loud I accidentally farted simultaneously, and since my stomach was really out of order I just shat myself there in the bed. It was horrid. I was stuck to the IV, weak as a new born kitten and stank.

-darling.. I woke him up with a whisper

-yes? He woke up, smiled at me and looked so happy that I was awake.

-I, I pooed myself, can you help me to the bathroom?

And so he did, lifted the IV hanger and took it with us to the bathroom. Afterwards I was done there he had to come in to the horrid fumes of ill health and get me and that polished steel hanger with IV back to bed.

I had been poisoned by something, perhaps some fruit that I ate that had been washed in dirty water for example the doctor explained, but some toxins where found in my blood. After that we travelled around in Mexico for a month, but as a heavy consumer of fresh orange juice and spices that was just unavoidable I got a stomach ulcer and had to get back to another hospital in extreme agony. It was a trip of surrender and I hadn’t sorted out any insurance, my father paid some hospital bills and my father in law paid some too.

A wanderer has to rely on the kindess of strangers, and adapt to the culture of the surrounding. Since I’m from the north of Sweden, I am mostly comfortable with a wider space around me, in landscape as well as between people, we say hello from a distance, we shake hands only to show that we are civil. Here my new family was so warm and welcoming, but I was cold, ill and uneasy. I was not prepared for this marriage. It is a ceremony of seriousness and I thought I could jump straight in just to for a try, I was offering my european citizenship in return for a social experiment and experience I hadn’t given too much thought to. But I had received a ring and all, that seemed important to me. A beautiful thing from the 1940’s, yellow gold with three square diamonds. My mother in law’s new husband had won it from an antique jeweller in a golf tournament.

I kept the ring after the divorce. The divorce has a fantastic story to it as an ending, but is not fitting in this setting. It took however more time, effort and work than the actual wedding, though not the marriage itself.

2009/2010 Mexico