All Too Engaging An Engagement
by Josh Tyson

I took a whirlwind trip home to Colorado this past November.

Two notable things that I did on this weeklong jaunt were getting engaged to my girlfriend, Nicole, and going snowboarding for the first—and conceivably last—time.

My lady and I had thoroughly discussed getting married before this trip, but I was keen on asking her father for her hand before we made any grand announcements. He picked us up at the airport and took us back to his house. Even though I fell asleep for a while, I was nervous the whole ride home. Her father and I get along quite well, so I knew he wasn’t going to strangle me or make me sleep in his garage, but it needed to be memorable. Perhaps sensing my intentions, he asked me if I’d like to go with him to walk his dog. We strode through a nearby park and his frantic spaniel went crisscrossing our path like furry chaos theory. He told me about catching some middle school kids huffing glue under one of the covered picnic areas, and I went mustering my nerve. Turning to face him, I made my intentions known. We both smiled. Then we shook hands and hugged. We spent the rest of our walk speaking at length about how great his daughter is. We also saw some rather unsavory-looking ladies toting a white cat with no tail by the scruff of it‘s neck. When we showed the slightest bit of interest in the creature, they tried to pawn it off on us.

“Do youze want it?” they asked.

It was a cute kitten, but it’s ass was filthy. The way they handled the timid puffball was hardly shy of savage. We quietly wished the poor thing well and made our way back home. It went better than I could have ever imagined.

The same cannot be said for the snowboarding.

My bride-to-be is quite the minx in bindings. I’d never seen her in action, but multiple accounts held that she was lithe and speedy. We live in Chicago, and she’s been two years without the carve-hard, so I think she was more excited about snowboarding than anything else we had planned. I’d never even been skiing before, so I masked my terror toward the whole concept of barreling down a mountain, with some well-wrought contempt. I made fun of the dissonant, hippy ethics that guide snowboard culture, and Nicole concurred, one-upping it with a new piece of information: the gondola that travels up the mountain is known as “the ganjala.” How quaint.

Everyone kept telling me that because I’ve skateboarded for a long time this would be a piece of cake. Well fuck that. Within minutes, I’d knocked the wind out of myself. Shortly thereafter, I fell on my ass so hard that I was certain I’d passed blood though my anus. After that I lost all confidence and slithered down the mountain like a defeated nine-year-old. The ruptured-colon alert turned out false, but I did blossom a very dark menacing bruise at the crest of my crack.

The next morning, at my mother’s house, as I turned from Nicole, heading for the shower, she exclaimed, “What the hell, babe, did you not wipe your ass or something?”

“What?” I squealed, “I’ve got poop in my butt crack?”

“I don’t know, come here.”

“Hold on a second,” I said, turning to inspect my buttocks in the mirror. “Oh damn,” I noted, gingerly inspecting the area with my fingertips, “it’s a bruise.”

“Ooooh,” she cooed, lovingly caressing my blackened crevice. “Let me get a picture of that!”

I knew resistance was futile, so I bent over, as requested, and let her snap a digital photo. A photo that we were both a little disgusted by. Shadowy testicles never look inviting, and neither does a discolored set of buns, but I also discovered that my backside has the complexion of a teenaged fry cook.

“What are all of those zits doing?” I asked my befuddled love.

“You should get a butt facial.” she suggested.

It was strange to be worrying so much about my complexion again. Especially in front of the mirror in my old bedroom. How had I let my cheeks go to this extent? To be sure, some intense buffing went down in the shower.

With snowboarding and asking a father for his daughter’s hand out of the way, the only other thing I had nerves about (spare my pocked ass) was the engagement party that my mom was planning for us at the end of the week. It would be the first time that our families would meet, but we were confident everyone would get along. Both of our dads read eccentric books and love Steve Winwood‘s solo work; our mothers are both sweet and nurturing; her step-parents are on friendly terms; and my brother and his wife are the coolest people in the world.

My mom prepared an amazing spread of food for us to eat: salmon with dill, scalloped potatoes with fennel, smoked ham and turkey, two types of salad, one with grapes and broccoli; fuck, it was delicious. Everyone had seconds. We all had beer and wine, and my brother gave a charming champagne toast to our continued happiness. Everyone got along well. Truly a memorable night.

All told there were three cameras in rotation. A disposable, a Polaroid and our digital camera. Nicole loves our digital camera. Her favorite thing to do is take a couple of pictures and then look at them immediately on the little LCD screen. Late in the evening, she was scrolling though our pictures, unaware that her father was leaning in over her shoulder looking at the camera also. All of a sudden, he shuddered and jerked away from her.

“Oh god.” He said in a cryptic, hushed manner.

“Oh shit!” echoed my fiancé.

“Did he just see my rear?” I asked, while her father moved to a quiet corner of the room to collect himself.

“I didn’t know he was behind me!” Nicole protested.

I imagined it must be hard enough for a father to consent to the marriage of his only daughter, but to then have his prospective son-in-law’s bruised, blemished ass flashed in front of his face—with a back-dash of testes I might add—that had to have been unbearable.

“What was that?” he asked, still stunned.

“It’s a bruise.” Nicole said.

“Well,” he said, smiling, “that’s a relief.”

Naturally everyone wanted to see the picture that was so harsh her father actually had to walk its viewing off. Making sure she zoomed in so that my nuts weren’t in the frame, Nicole passed the camera around the room. Everyone had a hearty laugh at my expense.

After seeing the picture, my sister-in-law turned to me and said, “Well, I know what we’re getting you for a wedding present.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Another CF card for you camera. You two need a separate one for all of your bedroom photography.”

Amazingly, my face reddened even more. She was referring to a picture that my brother had stumbled upon while looking at pictures of our cat, of me holding myself with Nicole’s leg, in a sexy sock, draped over my shoulder. It had huge artistic merit, but was clearly not the type of thing a younger brother wants to see.

“That might be a good idea.” I said to her.

I think we could also use a new blender and some Proactiv Solution.