The Weddings by Alexander Chee

Published digitally by Amazon on December 19, 2019

Amazon commissioned five stories for a series it calls Inheritance. The stories are unconnected to each other except by the broad theme of family secrets. In a departure from its usual format, Tzer Island will review one story in the Inheritance series each day this week.

“The Weddings” is a story of romance and changing times, focusing on a gay character who considers for the first time the possibility of marriage after the Supreme Court prohibits states from banning same-sex weddings. Jack met Scott in college and they became good friends. Jack came out and Scott had sex with him, but Scott otherwise confines himself to dating Asian women. Jack is a Korean-American.

They go their separate ways after college but Jack carries a torch for Scott. The advent of Google makes it possible for Jack to find Scott and renew their friendship, prompting Scott to declare both his love for Jack and the disclosure that Jack is still his only male sex partner. They live on different coasts and their friendship continues, but not in the way Jack would like. Still, he feels special because Scott did not experiment with any other man.

Now in his forties, Jack explains that backstory to Caleb after they attend the wedding of two gay men who have lived together for years and can finally marry. The wedding makes Jack think about Caleb as a potential husband. Jack asks Caleb to another wedding when he learns that Scott is marrying a Korean woman. The wedding gives Jack the opportunity to fret about his inability to speak Korean, about the wedding gossip he hears about Scott’s past, and about his confused mashup of feelings toward Scott and Caleb.

As I read “The Weddings,” I kept wondering whether it was going anywhere. It went to a predictable destination. That isn’t necessarily a complaint — not all stories need to surprise, and predictable endings are often the endings that readers want. The ending is nevertheless anticlimactic, given the drama that Jack builds as he frets about Scott and straight weddings.

The story is nevertheless admirably observant. Jack takes note of wedding customs that he’s never understood and comments on the changing nature of society, both in terms of gay acceptance and in the willingness of Korean-American women to pursue their own lives, rather than the lives their mothers want them to have. On occasion, the story smacks of a Harlequin romance. Sentences like “How long he had wanted to hear something like this” make me cringe. Still, the story is heartfelt and honest, two qualities that largely offset its faults.

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