If you enjoyed reading the story When Superman turns into Groomzilla, you will be eager to know what happened with this gay couple later. So let’s get to know.
I am sure my eyes glazed over. I must have been standing there for only a few seconds but it felt like hours.
Then, Luca spoke again. “Don’t you get it? The Wizard of Oz! Somewhere over the rainbow! The rainbow flag? …for a gay wedding! It’s genius, right?”
“Oh I love me some Wizard of Oz,” said Melinda, one of our trans friends who was dipping her biscotti in a double espresso at the counter, hoping the caffeine would jolt her out of her hangover. Then, she started singing in her raspy, two-packs a day, Judy-Garland-towards-the-end voice: “Where trouble melts like lemon drops – High above the chimney top – That’s where you’ll find meeeeeee!”
Luca turned to Melinda with his sad eyes filling with tears and said, solemnly, “exactly.”
I had to put my foot down. “No.”
“What do you mean, “No”?”
“I mean no. There will be no “Wizard of Oz” theme at our engagement party.” I paused, expecting Luca to jump down my throat but he remained silent. “As a matter of fact, there will be no theme at all, there will be no gold-engraved invitations, there will be no more than fifty guests. It’s an ENGAGEMENT PARTY, for crying out loud! Isn’t the WEDDING supposed to be the main event? If we have this crazy-huge over-the-top engagement party, what are we supposed to do for an encore?”
Luca stood there without saying a word for what seemed like forever. I felt that all the patrons of the caffè had stopped breathing and were waiting to see what was going to happen, as if we had been some weird spin-off of Keeping Up with the Kardashians!
Then, my husband-to-be – whom I thought, at that point, might be my ex-fiancé, actually – whispered the dreaded three words I had only heard once before: “You are useless.” Before I could open my mouth, he turned around and stormed out of the caffè like Antonio Banderas in an Almodóvar movie.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk…You’re such a party-pooper,” said Melinda, perched on the counter stool, in her grungy night coat with curlers in her hair, like she was in her own kitchen.
I rolled my eyes and sighed, hoping I hadn’t lost Luca forever.
For a whole week, he sulked. He walked around the house like I wasn’t there, ignoring me at every turn. I became a little paranoid, honestly, thinking he was passing me in the hallways so he could purposely turn his head the other way.
After a week, one morning, while he was making cannoli in the kitchen of the caffè and I was setting up the cash register before opening the doors to our customers, I heard a faint: “You’re right.”
I just smiled and decided not to push my luck. A few seconds later, a little louder, I heard: “Did you hear me?”
I just said: “I heard you”. And a few seconds later, I added: “I love you, too.”
We ended up having a great engagement party, right here, at the caffè and even invited Mr. Berluti who came with “The Missus” – as he calls Mrs. Berluti – and their three sons, Marco, Johnny and Lorenzo whom the boss calls affectionately “the fruity one”.
Our wedding is now only six months away and I am having a hard time keeping Luca from going over the deep end but… so far so good. Ask me how it went when we get back from our honeymoon in Sicily!
