Me and Mister Unavailable: The Wedding Dress

See Me and Mister Unavailable Meets CITO for the background on this.

It was mid-December and the word on the street was that Filene’s Basement was going out of business. Actually, word had been on the street for a few weeks, I was just slow to pick it up. I’d only been to Filene’s Basement for the first time a couple of months before and kicked myself for not having gone before, mostly because the lingerie deals were amazing. Calvin Klein underwear, 3 for $12. It doesn’t get much better than that—unless The Basement is going out of business.

I made my way there on a fateful Saturday afternoon and went straight for the floor with the lingerie, diving into the racks of bras and panties. I emerged 45 minutes later with more than a dozen pairs of underwear, four slips, three camisoles and eight bras. Just for kicks, I decided to survey the rest of the floor, the whole of which was situated around an area of wedding dresses on sale for $99.

“It’s too bad I’m not getting married,” I thought.

I skirted its perimeter, picking up a piggy bank, a pink throw and a few more random items I probably didn't need. As I made my way toward the registers, I was passing the western edge of the wedding area when one dress caught my eye. It was hanging at the end of a rack, a plume of what I would guess was crepe on the bottom with a carefully beaded strapless bodice on top. I stopped and zipped it out of its clear plastic cover. It glowed. Originally $1,899, the Filene’s basement price was $899—and the going-out-of-business price? $99.

Thinking that maybe there was an even nicer one, I took a quick tour of the other dresses. Nope, that one was the one.

Standing in front of it so no one else could claim it, I called Eva. “OK, I have a weird question for you. I’m at Filene’s Basement and they have wedding dresses on sale for $99. I know this might sound crazy but I found one I like. It's maybe a tiny bit too big [nope, I wasn't even going to try it on], but it’s really pretty. I know I don’t even have a boyfriend or anything, but...should I get it?”

“Hey, that’s what CITO says to do. Act like what you want is already happening. So if you act like you’re getting married by buying a wedding dress, you’ll get married.”

We were maybe one-third of the way through “Calling in the One,” or CITO (chee-toh) as we liked to call it. One of the things it said to do was act as if what you wanted to happen were already happening…imagine what it would be like to be sitting next to your “one”…and create your life in such a way so that it was as if he was on his way but maybe just got stuck in traffic.

“I guess so. It seems so nuts, though. But it is only $99.”

“You could wear it on Halloween if it really came down to it.”

“Or made it into drapes.”

“Or drapes…buy it.”

I picked it off the rack and carried it to the checkout. I stood there feeling a tad crazy and considered putting it back. Maybe my wedding wouldn’t be so soon and then I’d have an out-of-style wedding dress. Maybe my next boyfriend would find out I had a wedding dress, freak out and bolt. I was looking for a sign. And then it arrived in the form of a frumpy Filene’s Basement worker who was, well, carrying signs. She slowly went around the wedding dress section taking out the $99 signs and replacing them with $79 ones.

Now I had to get it.

Three women from New Jersey in their mid 50s were in front of me. They turned.

“Oh, that’s a beautiful dress,” one of them said.

“Are you getting married?” another one said, sounding as if she knew she were asking a rhetorical question but wanted to ask anyway.

The three of them looked at me, smiling, imaging, I'm sure, that I was in the midst of planning my wedding—hiring a caterer, finding a venue, taste-testing cakes, auditioning bands—and this was just one exciting part of it that the three of them were lucky enough to witness..

I smiled back. “One day,” I said.

They laughed, not sounding disappointed at all. The third one leaned in. “Enjoy the ‘one day,’” she said. “I’m on my third and I’m happy, but it took a while to get there.”

She was right. Even though I didn’t seem to realize it half the time, I was doing a good job enjoying the ‘one day.’ I had good friends, a job I liked, a fluffy cat/alarm clock that I adored, an apartment in the East Village, all my limbs, no recent tragedies. Things were good. Great, really. My life was in Technicolor. It was as I worked on Calling in the One, though, where I realized the one last piece that would move the Technicolor movie of my life from a stadium screen to IMAX would be the ability to share the greatness with someone. Getting married might be the tangible end result, but what was really at the core of what I wanted was someone—just one man—to truly, deeply, madly love.