Dear Newly Engaged Cousin,

Obviously, the first thing I'd like to say is: "Congratulations". I'm glad you've found your soulmate. It's the girl you brought to the baby's Christening, right? Just checking!

The next thing I'd like to say is: "Thanks for fucking this up for me". I only have two first cousins, you and your brother. You, your brother and my brother were all born three years apart, which is a gross example of Protestant family planning: 1976, 1979, 1982, 1985. Your brother got married three years ago, had a baby, bought a mini-van. You and I both know this is gross. Yeah, ok, the baby is fucking cute as hell, I know. No, he is...you can't hate a baby anyway...

Anyway...back to my tirade: Now you're going to get married?! Don't you know how time-tables work?! After you get married, the pressure is going to be on me. I've got three years from your wedding to get engaged now...and the last guy I dated stopped calling me after we made-out. If my younger brother gets married before me I will die. Shrivel up and die like the spinster I will become.

Listen, this doesn't mean I'm not happy for you...I AM. I just thought that we were cut from the same cloth; I felt that we were the kind of mainstreamed blackish sheep of the family...the middle two that hung out because the youngest of us was an infant and the oldest wanted to hang out with the grown-ups. We were the quirky ones, the kind of kids that would pick their noses for a Christmas photograph or scheme during an Easter egg hunt.

I guess this is also hard for me because we're making the transition from being cousins to making cousins. This is difficult. It's not that I don't want to grow up or have kids, or pretend to be an adult or anything, it's just really weird. Maybe it's really weird for you, too, I don't know, I haven't talked to you about this.

I've got to get on finding a date, dammit. Just don't get married in any freak heat wave shit in August like your brother. If I had to promise everyone I'd never get married in a month where temperatures could top 80 degrees, then you can't either.

Love,

me