Sometimes when you look for other people...

Marriage Bureau

NYC City Hall

New York City. It’s a hotpot of everything. Food. People. Culture. But it’s rare you can go to one place and see it all. A multi-borough mix of drama, politics, family, style, boredom, passion, bureaucracy, true love, blind optimism and the one democratizing way to save money in this city. Weddings have seen their price tag get inflated almost as much as avocados on toast, and they can take months or years to plan, produce, cater and recover from. A City Hall wedding is simple. Like all weddings, you have to get a marriage license, to which you then have 60 days to perform a ceremony. They make you wait 24 hours before you can have your wedding, for the obvious reasons of not finding yourself suddenly married after a few too many drinks, a company dare, a fleeting fantasy. When you arrive at the City Clerk, you go through metal detectors, sign up, get a number, wait to be called, do a little paperwork, wait some more and then have your ceremony. It’s like the Social Security office but as if everyone just had coffee and had more fun with their outfits. All you need is one witness and $25. You can buy flowers inside or out, you can hire a photographer on the steps as you go in, or even a witness, if you forget and happen to arrive with only your potential spouse.

Caits Meissner applied to the 360 residency late last year with an illustrated comix digest project, called New York Strange. Immediately we thought of the City Hall Marriage bureau. We had spent the last third of 2019 trying to place many of our 360 applicants, but found it hard to find matches. That’s the thing when you try to place artists in unlikely spaces. It doesn’t always pan out. But for this one, instead of waiting to get permission from the City Hall, we decided, in a public place where everyone is welcome to wed and witness, we could have a resident be a fly on the couch for 6 hours without making much of a hullabaloo. Caits jumped in and flew with it. Here is her amazing illustrated narration of the experience:

Anticipation is nipping at my ears along with the January wind when I meet Dhira and Julia of Holes in the Wall Collective in front of the City Clerk office, 10am on a random Tuesday. I’ve been invited into the adventure of an unsanctioned single day artist residency at the New York City Marriage Bureau.

A chill of minor rebellion races my spine—what if someone approaches me to draw their private ceremony? (I hope so!) What if someone tries to kick me out after sitting all day? (I hope not!) Though I know better, city hall weddings still feel slightly anti-establishment. Who is gaming the system today? Who is avoiding a world of wedding industry debt?

Not to say city hall doesn’t have its own stake in the capitalist enterprise…

But even with price stickers affixed to the images, their merch advertisement wins:

I am on a quest to find a new column of material for my new vignette comix series, New York Strange, (which publishes monthly through 2020, and I could use some juicy New York material), but today the waiting area of the City Clerk feels more like the DMV than a space of celebration.

As I steal glances, my hand racing over the page, I worry that in my story-seeking I might project onto couples, knowing how easily my brain can spin out into invention. But it is impossible to tell the motivations for nuptials. I suspect some are here for love, some for love+ (healthcare, green card, inheritance), some for just +, which, honestly, is a form of love, too.

The atmosphere sounds like the drone of coffee shop chatter. Aside from a few photographic juxtapositions of culture, no real stories leap out from the scene. Instead, as I draw, dipping into the meditation of the line, my hand leads to memory. 

Here is why I anticipated joy: 8 years ago my husband and I took to this very room, a little bit giddy, sure, but mostly dismissive. How special could a city hall marriage be?

What we found was a surprisingly moving experience: an officiant who trumpeted out my love’s name with a strong Brooklyn accent (my cousins still love to mimic his effusiveness at family gatherings), a bottle of champagne popped that mom smuggled in, genuine tears between us. Dad signing as our witness. Funny that I can’t remember the process we’d engaged before those brief scenes of union. The rose colored glasses of memory have erased all bureaucracy from the tableau.

And of course, today is not actually a random Tuesday. It is January 28, 2020, which makes it, to the letter, the fresh anniversary of my mom’s death. Nearly to the minute, the residency began at the 10am time slot that marks the terrible call from dad five months ago.

This Tuesday takes on a different color. I am noticing and drawing and listening to the vague cheers erupting occasionally from some hidden room behind some door and the low level chatter of many languages co-mingling and I am also memorializing my mother. Her head thrown back laughing in a wedding photo eight years ago in a room behind a door. Her arm looped in mine, smiling.

As often happens when I’m drawing, the day flew. I took no breaks and when the time came, I wasn’t quite ready to pack up and leave. The project I applied to work on still untouched, my sketch book bursting with the texture of New York, but also of my heart.

Beyond personal excitement to spend a day drawing, there is another buzzy anticipation of what the space may offer up, emotionally speaking, and Julia and Dhira are a little wild with possibility, too. Will the love-joy rub off? We take a cheesy moment to beckon good vibes by snapping a photo in front of the giant photo backdrop.

When the duo departs, I settle into my slot on the long green couch that runs the length of the gigantic hall, and scan for the joy we’ve been hungering for. I begin to draw.

A soothing robot of a woman calls numbers—one for each couple—over the loudspeaker, and— 

As the loud speaker calls out digits in place of names, I’m a little astonished by how many people marry daily in New York City! There are a lot of people.

I’ve been vocal, to the point of others discomfort I’m sure, about how grief permeates everything, and today is no exception. I momentarily feel a sinking feeling, disassociated, as if floating backwards through a dark hole. But then I hear the woman next to me snap, though joking, to her toddler, “don’t make me beat your ass today.”

Suddenly I am punted again back to childhood, in the grocery store, where a mother is belligerent, smacking her child’s hands. I remember saying to mom, I must have only been eight or so, “why don’t you talk to her and tell her you’re a social worker?” I remember mom’s response clear as day. “That’s just not how it works, sweetie,” she said.

I see couples from all over the world and remember her reaching towards my partner to learn more. I think about the times my husband and mother failed to connect—quietly, routinely, almost classically—and sadness drapes me. 

But then I think about how they kept trying. How they did love each other. I see patch-worked families reaching across culture, banding together to walk the halls. In the subdued space, it is hard to tell who is happy and who is bearing through it and who is still learning to just show up. 

That’s how I’ve taken to describing it. How do I feel? I feel... textured. Like a wall painted many times over. Like the skin of the orange I brought for lunch, or the carpet in front of the gaudy cityscape, a backdrop fit for New York City newlyweds, full of grit and DNA, covered in gum stains, as authentic as the sidewalk itself.

During my 360 minute residency, I learned a lesson I seem to remeet over and over and over.
One I am grateful for.

Check out Caits’ newest release Pep Talks For Broke(n) People, a new comix poetry zine at caitsmeissner.com,
or follow her on instagram at @caitsmeissner.

Afterthoughts:
People get married for all sorts of reasons and it should be noted that some of them are because of social, cultural and legal norms that come from old laws that protected patriarchy, nationalism, religious intolerance, racism... People have fought long and hard to be able to marry who they love, but there are others who feel marriage itself is an antiquated power of the state that we should evolve beyond. And still beyond those that can choose not to wed, there are those that must– to have legal access and custody of their children, to remain in this country, to get healthcare. But no matter where you stand on the issue, there is something that happens in the moment of I do, that makes even strangers and skeptics choke up, even with a city clerk officiating for $25. Of course across the street is the City Family court, where you go to get divorced. Not quite as easy or as cheap. That’s for another day.