Ours was a green card wedding. That was the bit. I wore white but not a dress. He wore black, but he only ever wears black. And it was less a wedding than an early dinner at an Uzbek restaurant in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, with 20-odd friends. We were in our mid-30s, wildly in love but staunchly pragmatic when it came to joining our lives. He was in the US from Switzerland on an O-1, the visa for aliens of extraordinary ability; until a few months earlier, I had been on a green card myself. We were both artists, a writer and a composer. Neither of us came from money, yet we longed to buy an apartment in one of the most expensive cities in the world. We thought we were so clever. Forget the first dance and tiered cake, this was the dream that would sustain us.
By the time we were married, we’d been together three years—exactly the length of an O-1 visa. We’d had to renew his visa a year into our relationship to the tune of $8,000 in lawyer’s fees; when a second renewal drew near, we applied for a green card instead. The math was simple, they cost roughly the same, and a green card would last 10 years. That we’d have to get married was all part of the equation. We were already living together, planning our future.
The venue where we held the celebration was sprawling, raucous, ideal for banquets and large parties. Next to us was a family event that spanned generations. It was peak summer and our eclectic group might have more closely resembled a team building off-site than a wedding. By the bathrooms hung a framed article describing how the restaurant was featured in an episode of The Americans, that show about Cold War spies masquerading as a happily married American couple. Our parents hadn’t even met.
I was involved with someone else and living in Los Angeles when we first met on vacation in Jamaica. He had just ended a 17-year relationship with his teen-hood sweetheart, a woman he’d followed from Bern to Brooklyn. We’d been dragged to the boutique hotel by mutual friends. I’d been talked into a girls trip, and he’d been coaxed to buoy his morale. Seated beside each other at dinner, I could feel the heat of his body, even as I went to great lengths not to touch him. I knew he worked in music and steeled myself against fatuous small talk. Instead he asked about the book I’d brought to dinner, remarking that it was different from the one I’d been reading that morning. I was startled by his curiosity, unused to being observed. He asked about the vagaries of my work. I admitted I wanted to be an author, despite having told none of my friends. I drank one tequila and then another as the racing sensation in my chest traveled to my hands and registered as tingling on my cheeks.
We flirted by way of speaking unflinchingly about the guilt of living apart from our families. My parents and I had moved from South Korea to Hong Kong when I was a baby, and then to Texas when I was 14, and when I left the South after college I’d never looked back. He’d previously only ever lived in Switzerland and was struck by how much he missed his friends and nephew. He was lethally funny and attentive, widely read but face-blind when it came to celebrities. We’d closed ranks from the main group within minutes, forming our own inside jokes as we laughed. I had lots of questions about his ex and never once mentioned my boyfriend.
