I Made Up A Camp Boyfriend 14 Years Ago and Now Everyone Thinks We Are Getting Married on Saturday

It was the summer of 2004, a rainy day at Camp Towanic which meant movie day. The day’s feature presentation was Never Been Kissed. It was like the camp gods were mocking me. “Stacy Goldstein got fingered in the boat shack last night and you’ve never even been kissed.” “Did you see Alex Greenblatt and Jen Schwartz make out while the Black Eyed Peas cover bandplayed  ‘Let’s Get It Started’? You were just sitting in the corner like a loser!” That was it, I decided. I will get kissed this summer!

And I did! While sitting on Lovers’ Rock, Mike Abramowitz and I kissed. With tongues. At least, that’s what I told everyone when I went back to middle school that fall. Mike had tragically returned home to Long Island, but we still kept up over Yahoo! Instant Messenger. Not MySpace. He doesn’t have a MySpace. Don’t look for his MySpace.

The problem is that Mike was so great, we never broke up. Not through high school, college, or even his demanding med school schedule. We couldn’t—after Facebook and Instagram became a who’s who of who is in a relationship, it’s not like anyone else was biting. (Mike, adorable Luddite that he is, has neither, although eventually I knew I needed some photographic evidence that Mike existed. I found Bosco eating a chicken bone behind the dumpsters next to my apartment building and realized that, underneath the obscene amount of facial hair and moderate layer of grime, Bosco was hot. I spent my entire paycheck on a makeover for him plus a photo shoot in front of a green screen. The pictures from our trip to the Dead Sea in Israel were some of my favorites.)

Eventually, people started to wonder why a relationship of over a decade had yet to culminate in its logical end of marital bliss, so “Mike” “proposed” to me “on top of the Eiffel Tower.” My parents are a bit upset about not being able to meet Mike prior to our wedding, and also concerned about how much he was slurring in our charmingly choreographed proposal video, but I explained that it’s very hard for him to take time off from the ER and he can’t help it if he’s an emotional person. They think I’m marrying a Jewish surgeon, so they didn’t ask too many questions.

Planning a fake wedding is harder than you might think. For one thing, I’ve had to pay for the whole thing myself, because people are unreasonably tight with their wallets when they think the groom is a doctor. I’ve also killed an unimaginable number of fake people to explain Mike’s persistent absence from cake tastings, ring fittings, and mason jar selections. Sorry about your heart, little Timmy. Mike hasn’t been able to get out of bed ever since.

The upside is that don’t actually have to have a wedding. Just before the big day, I plan to send a giant email to everyone telling them that Mike and I couldn’t wait any longer, so we’re eloping. I’ll send a photo of “Mike” and I from “Tahiti,” and after that, we’ll move to Long Island to “be with his family.” That part’s real. The Long Island part, not his family. What other choice do I have at this point? I’m going to lose a fortune on deposits, but it’s the only way to live out my fake marriage to the love of my life, my camp boyfriend, Mike Abramowitz, in peace.