The Secrets We're Always Living

“We don’t have to stay long,” I told them, red-faced and breathless, “I just want to see the crowds.”

It was sunset in Manhattan on one of the hottest days on record in over a decade. After walking across the Brooklyn Bridge on the first day of July, I convinced John and Luke—all three of us drowning in sweat and willing to pay 200 million dollars for a cold bottle of water—to go with me to Madison Square Garden one day ahead of the Taylor+Travis nuptials.

The heat dome was heat dome-ing so they didn’t have the strength to resist me when I offered to avoid the train and pay for an Uber to take us from the Financial District to Midtown. As it turns out, the bottled water was only two dollars and we downed several before ordering a car and heading up town.1

When we got out at Penn Station, we had our first glimpse of MSG. I don’t know what I expected, exactly. A small crowd of fans? A line of camera people? More interest? The venue was still lit up in Knicks colors and though there were pedestrian barriers blocking the back entrance to the venue, they were hardly needed. Approximately three people were paying attention, and I was one of them.

We watched as a long, slow line of trucks unloaded mysterious props and equipment, covered in black. With the details of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding under mostly wraps (literally), all we knew at the time was that she had rented out the venue. As it turns out, the Internet was much more interested in what was happening than anyone on the street, I can promise you that.

We were in New York for three days to move our very first born baby child to Brooklyn. How were we to know it would be the some of the HOTTEST DAYS IN THE LITERAL HISTORY OF HOT DAYS but enough about the weather.

While we waited to board our flight on our way out of town, I read on Threads the back and forth criticism about Taylor Swift: Why is she renting out the biggest venue in the biggest city if she wants her wedding to be a secret!? And the discourse continued about the difference between a secret wedding vs. a private wedding. Of course it seems she never needed it to be a secret, she only wanted to control the narrative.

As it turns out we flew home right around the time the guests began to arrive and as the plane circled the city and aimed itself south, there was a moment when, through my clouded up window, I could see the Hudson River and Manhattan in the foreground, the East River and Brooklyn in the background.

As the plane climbed, I thought about Taylor and fame and New York and parenting and grief and joy.

I thought about privacy and secrecy. And I thought about God.

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