The music started before dawn.

I knew this only because the holes in the corrugated tin roof revealed swaths of night. The room rattled each time the music boomed, buzzed metallic with each twinge of distortion.

I could feel it in my teeth.

Dim lights snapped on, and bare feet padded over the floor, the narrow gaps between sleeping bodies. I stared up, blinking vacantly through the mosquito net. There were holes in that too.

One by one, the sleeping bodies rose; I listened as they rolled up straw mats, folded extra blankets, plugged in flat irons, whispered and giggled.

I rolled over. There was a bunched up blanket where Raquel had been.

When I finally peeled back the mosquito net, it was 4:30am.

I was the last one up.

***

To attend the Khmer wedding, I first needed outfits.

I needed two—one, a traditional skirt with a modest top, any color but black or white; the other, a party dress, and the more electric the color, sparkly the sequins and layered the lace, the better.

It sounded like a lot, but if I were the bride, I would have needed at least twelve different outfits to change into, over the course of ceremonies that lasted three days. I’d also need an inch of Barbie make-up and a pound of fake hair. But if I were the bride, I reasoned, I’d also be Khmer, and short and thin, without hips that busted zippers or tits that burst buttons. That is to say, I could buy clothes in Cambodia.

My friend Raquel had invited me to attend the wedding of one of her employees—a quiet girl named Sophy, with drilling eyes and a slight underbite who I’d met only once. It’d struck me as odd that Raquel could invite me so easily—I’d watched friends in the States agonize over wedding guest lists, making cuts that ruined friendships.

“Cambodian weddings are different,” Raquel told me. “Especially ones like these, out in the provinces. There’s like 600 people invited and, well,” a grin, “you’ll see.”

Raquel had ...