"That doesn't look like Lou Ferrigno...."

Several years ago, over cocktails and dinner on one of our nights out, Lauren and I were talking about her wedding. This was prior to my having any firsthand experience with marriage and before I even met Ex, so I was bewildered when she told me that she knew as she was walking down that aisle that she would end up getting divorced. I wondered what on God's green Earth would possess someone to go through with a marriage when they were reasonably certain that it wouldn't end up working out. Obligation? Embarrassment at canceling? The Wicked Witch of Weddings Soon-to-be-Past? Looking back on that conversation, I now realize that she probably had some inkling that not everything with her groom was as it seemed on the surface.

She said, "I drank so much champagne before getting married that I barely made it down the aisle."

To which I replied, "Why did you get tanked before your wedding? Didn't you look wasted in your pictures?"

She shrugged and said, "I didn't care. I knew that if I didn't get drunk, I'd be running in the other direction faster than you can say, 'Hell, no, I don't take this man!'" (This brings up my own thoughts of Valium mixed with champagne - not a combination I recommend - but more about that in the future.)

Lauren got married, probably entirely thanks to the urgings of Mr. Dom Perignon, had a honeymoon that was less than ideal, and wound up living on the third floor of her in-laws' three-flat. Living with your in-laws may sound like being in Dante's Inferno to most of us, but I'm pretty sure that the only reason Lauren's marriage lasted as long as it did is because she and her mother-in-law were instant BFFs. She told me that the only loss she mourned in her divorce was that of her mother-in-law, with whom she would pass evenings smoking Marlboro Lights, drinking coffee, and gossiping. Lucky bitch.

Anyway, for months after the wedding, Lauren's husband, Mike, had been begging her to see a Lou Ferrigno movie that he'd rented, about which he was practically obsessing. Not being the biggest Lou Ferrigno fan on the planet, she kept blowing him off. One morning, Mike went out the door to work and Lauren happened to have the day off. She said to herself, "Oh well, I suppose I'll watch that movie Mike's been bugging me about."

She went over to the TV, found a video entitled "Hilton Head," and, thinking that this was the movie Mike had been asking her to watch for months, popped it into to the VCR.

Mike had forgotten something that he needed for work, and walked back into their apartment just as the movie began to play. He said, "What are you doing?"

Lauren replied, "Watching that Lou Ferrigno movie you've been bugging me about."

She told me that the look of panic on his face matched the look of shock on hers as she spun back to the TV and saw two naked, heavily-muscled men (neither of whom were Lou Ferrigno) engaging in the most intimate act possible for us humans.

In her usual fashion, she turned around to him and said, "Um, that doesn't really look like Lou Ferrigno."

A few months back and after years of no contact with him, Lauren spotted Mike in the grocery store. She exercised her best Charlie's Angels moves, bobbing and weaving through the aisles to hide behind the Starbuck's display, but he had already seen her and tracked her down. After some small talk, she asked him, "So, have you seen any good Lou Ferrigno movies lately?"