 
American Wedding Confidential

Essays on Weddings from _The Inner Swine_

by Jeff Somers

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Jeff Somers

www.jeffreysomers.com

www.innerswine.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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# Table of Contents

#

American Wedding Confidential #1: My Weekend with Carla

American Wedding Confidential #2: Going Stag In the Age of Couplehood

American Wedding Confidential #3: It's a Family Affair

American Wedding Confidential #4: It's My Scene, Man, and It Freaks Me Out!

American Wedding Confidential #5: My Evening with the Lunatic

American Wedding Confidential #6: Touch Me I'm Sick

American Wedding Confidential #7: Will The Real Best Man Please Stand Up?

AMERICAN WEDDING CONFIDENTIAL #8: GABBA GABBA HEY: ONE OF US

American Wedding Confidential #9: Return of the Gigolo

American Wedding Confidential #10: So, She's a Dog

American Wedding Confidential #11: The Circle of Life

American Wedding Confidential #12: Who's Gonna Drive You Home?

American Wedding Confidential #13: A Very Special Episode

American Wedding Confidential #14: Fear & Loathing on Long Island

American Wedding Confidential #15: Smile for Boobies

Excerpt from Chum by Jeff Somers from Tyrus Books

About the Author

#  American Wedding Confidential #1: My Weekend with Carla

Editor's note: My loathing for weddings is legendary, of course, and in this new department I will strive to demonstrate why. All the stories are, sadly, true. All the names have been changed due to legal considerations. I went to four weddings as a guest last year, and already have 3 scheduled for this year. I am in hell.

I showed up at Carla's around 2:30pm, shaved, showered, and pressed into uncomfortable shoes, which I do not wear for just anybody. I also smelled good, which anyone who knows me well will attest is not such a common occurrence. I was buffed, shined, and ready to boogie. As I stepped into Carla's apartment it became obvious that she was not: the place was littered with underwear, recently purchased shoes, and trash. Carla was in the throes of typical chick-like lateness, rushing about applying last-minute makeup, brushing her lustrous hair, and vacuuming herself into rubber underwear, all, I presumed, for my benefit (hubba hubba).

I tried to make myself at home, but any time I tried to leave the living room I encountered a pile of underwear and Carla, screeching that I couldn't go in there. Eventually I found that I was only welcome to sit in an uncomfortable chair in the shadowed area of the living room, and there I stayed.

Carla finally emerged ready to go, and I witnessed the first of many transformations for My Wedding Date, this one from Crazy Girl to Normal Girl. In her nice dress and with her hair combed, she appeared almost normal. We got into her chariot and off we were to pick up her friend Dorothy in Englewood. Here I grew worried as Carla seemed to have little idea where her friend lived, and seemed content to just drive around in circles and hum to herself. Adding to my desperation was the fact that Carla kept one finger mashed on the "lock" button all this time, so I could not give in to my urge to leap from the moving vehicle. We were saved by the sight of Dorothy waving at us from her front porch.

We got out and Dorothy told us to beware of snipers; apparently some local outpatient had been shooting at her trees just moments before. Carla seemed interested in this story, and I began to think her friend would have a calming effect on her, when Carla suddenly noticed that the dress Dorothy was wearing was strikingly similar to her own, and a cat-fight broke out on the front lawn. I was able to save Dorothy only by pointing out to Carla that since the offending dress was now stained green and red with grass and blood it no longer resembled her own. I carried the unconscious Dorothy gently to the car and we were off.

At the wedding, Carla developed an unseemly fascination with the bald head of the man seated in front of us, which was actually a good thing, as it kept her relatively quiet throughout the ceremony, except when she loudly informed me that I would be blasted by lightning for my sins and the several times she asked me if I was interested in any of her girlfriends, all of whom, she asserted, had "big bazooms". With the aid of several burly ushers I was able to rush her from the church before being identified.

We arrived triumphantly at the hotel for the reception, and Carla lost little time digging into the rum supply, double-fisting it for most of the evening. Her transformation from Normal Girl to Drunk Girl was seamless, as was her almost unnoticed transformation from Drunk Girl to DANCING QUEEN. I'd had no idea I was the official nonthreatening male guest of the DANCING QUEEN, but my education was quick and brutal. She danced the Twist, which is to say she danced the Twist to every song that the band played, often by herself on the dance floor with the hot spotlight following, once with a dozen tuxedoed men clapping time and hooting.

As the hour grew late, I was pulled aside by Wedding Officials and asked to remove her from the dance floor so that the older couples could safely dance without fear of being smacked or trampled by the rampaging DANCING QUEEN. I donned my fatigues (I was "going commando" at the wedding anyway) and hustled her off to the bar, where she loudly berated the bartender for trying to give her her drinks in plastic cups instead of glasses. As he hustled off to take care of this, she leaned over and breathed into my ear.

"My rubber underwear has cut off my circulation," she said, "I think my feet are numb."

Around one in the morning we all admitted weariness and retired to the room we had rented for the evening. Here Carla instructed me to strip and lay down in the tub, but I refused, knowing better, and wrapped myself up in a bolt of fabric in order to protect myself from Carla and from the corrosive cold of the air conditioner, which the other denizens of the room had insisted on activating. We implored Carla to change out of her dress and remove her rubber underwear, fearing permanent brain damage from the lack of circulation, but Carla became irrational at this point and seemed to feel threatened by this piece of good advice, curling up defensively on the couch and growling at anyone who came near her, accusing several of her friends of attempted sodomy. In a bizarre moment, her friends made up a taunting song which included the words "finger" and "crack", and sang it over and over again until poor Carla wept. At this point I fell asleep, and so cannot detail Carla's undoubtedly agonizing transformation from Drunk Girl to Hungover Girl.

In the morning Carla announced several times that she felt like a "whore" but still refused to change clothes, planning instead to hang around the lobby of the hotel in the hopes of getting into another wedding reception, and at yet another rum supply. I enlisted several of her big-bosomed friends to help me force her into the car, wherein she grew grim and drove me home in silence, complaining that her underwear was up around her neck.

# American Wedding Confidential #2: Going Stag In the Age of Couplehood

All I can say is, never attend a wedding as a freewheeling bachelor. Never never never. Families abhor bachelors, and the rutting-fevered atmosphere of the pagan marriage ceremony brings this sentiment out in spades. It gets ugly.

My friend Madge was getting married and had scheduled her wedding very inconveniently for my rent-a-date purposes; every woman who owed me a favor or who might conceivably enjoy dressing up and drinking watery drinks with me for several hours was otherwise engaged, usually with a sudden vacation to some exotic port. If I'd been a less secure individual it might have seemed like all my friends were avoiding my wedding invite, but of course, that couldn't be. So, in a moment of whimsical affection for my friend Madge I doomed myself by deciding that what the hell, I'll go alone.

I don't know what, exactly, I imagined the wedding reception would be like. I guess I had some disco-fueled sex fantasy involving available and drunkenly wanton bridesmaids (forgetting in my fever that Madge had no friends who could accurately be described as drunkenly wanton) and me ending up the evening like Sammy Davis Jr. with the band, tie undone, microphone and cocktail in hand, calling everybody "baby" and singing Barbara Streisand's People Who Need People while the bride and groom slow danced. This was never, ever going to happen, not even for a second. If you believe in alternate universes, there was never even an alternate universe where that was a slight possibility. Frankly, I didn't take a lot of different things into consideration: a) the awesome instinct to match-make in the modern catholic female, b) the sheer horror uncoupled bachelors inspire in the hearts of catholic matrons, c) how uncomfortable suits make me (so binding).

Still, for whatever reason I somehow convinced myself that attending Madge's union ceremony as Solamente Jeff was a good idea. I even went out and bought a new suit for the occasion, because I was feeling lucky. Under the fascist-shopping guidance of the infamous and gorgeous Elizabeth [REDACTED], I picked out a dignified dark-green number that artfully accentuated my beer gut and brought out the somber color of the bags under my eyes. In a shopping mood, I also went in search of an odd and unique wedding gift. I didn't want to give in to conformist tradition and buy Madge something she actually wanted; I'm an artist, after all, and had to find something symbolic and beautiful but patently useless.

I won't tell you what I bought, though I will say that I succeeded. While Madge will protest her undying affection for my gift because it came from me (and thus will likely be worth money some day), I doubt it has ever seen light of her living room. I should also mention that my choice of gift was ungainly and large, and I packed into an even larger box, wrapped it garishly, and brought it with me to the wedding, I suppose so I could set it on the seat next to me and not feel so lonely.

The wedding itself was normal: the groom had the glassy-eyed stare of muscle relaxants, Madge was a vision in white and guarded by security professionals so no one would have opportunity to smudge her makeup. In the middle of the ceremony, she put the ring on the wrong finger, couldn't get it off to fix the mistake, and dissolved into giggles while the groom, completely numb from sedatives, stared at her in mute horror. Or something like that; my memory gets a little fuzzy these days. I lurked in the background trying not to absorb any of the holiness going on around me. The two families could sense that I was a wolf among the flock and they steered clear, leaving empty seats around me for a two pew radius.

At the reception, I lugged my absolutely huge present around with me like the Ancient Mariner with his pet albatross until a very Italian woman took pity on me and told me where I could put it down safely. She then had me sit with her family, introducing me to her beautiful daughters with a degree of pity that instantly made me bitter and resentful. I spent a great deal of the cocktail hour smoking cigarettes, muttering to myself.

When we were all seated for the ridiculously intricate introduction and bridal Awards Ceremony, I spent a few quality moments trying to figure out the demographics of my table. Wedding veterans will tell you: every table tells a story, baby. There's always the Single Friends table, the Obligatory Co-Workers table, the Never-Talked-To Childhood Friends table. I was none of those, and I slowly came to realize, to my horror, that I was seated at that nightmare scenario known as the Dateless table.

Without warning, I'd been bitten by the despised monster and been transformed into one of The Dateless.

I had also been carefully placed next to Madge's colorful cousin who had a sunny personality, a bountiful bosom, and a complete lack of attraction either to or for yours truly. I'm not saying that Madge was trying to match us up, but I am saying that she figured she'd seat us together and see what happens, because, as I was learning, nature abhors a bachelor and the wise women of our tribes will always try and find you the sort of happiness they have found, the sort of happiness which results in a 113% divorce rate in this country. The sunny and bountiful cousin, however, also had something akin to a attention deficit disorder, resulting in her dashing around the reception like a lemur spooked from the brush, which was doing nothing to attract me.

Defeated, I left the reception at the appropriate time. The bride and groom were liquored up and weary and had no energy to pity me as I exited alone, determined to never attend another wedding dateless. Or to wear that suit ever again.

# American Wedding Confidential #3: It's a Family Affair

THE hardest part about attending my cousins wedding was finding a suitable fake name for her so I could eventually write about the event. Being from your prototypical Irish-catholic family, I have several thousand cousins, not to mention hundreds other less-defined relations, plus the weird hangers-on who aren't even related to me but who are always at these family functions. Finding a name that no other member of my clan was currently using, so as to avoid the usual libel threats my family throws at me on a daily basis, was the most difficult and research-intensive task I've had to perform recently. After months of deep thought and careful searching through the bars and taverns of the tri-state area (the best source of Irish-catholic wisdom in the country) I've come up with a winner: I'll call my cousin Smilla. I do happen to have a three-month old second-cousin Smilla, but she's too young to have been the subject of this essay, so it's okay.

I asked my gorgeous friend Elizabeth to be my date at this event, which was partly due to the deep and abiding friendship we have developed over the years and partly due to the fact that Elizabeth can cause car wrecks when wearing certain dresses. Attending family weddings is like going to a high school reunion for me: it's a bunch of people I haven't seen in a while who are dying to dig into the steaming pile of gossip I represent. Naturally, you want to make a big impression in these situations, and Elizabeth also kept everyones eyes off me and my sadly neglected physique. Little did I know that the evening would be a slow, tortuous dance of humiliations.

Elizabeth drove us to the combination chapel and reception hall somewhere in the uncharted wilderness of New Jerseys strip mall hell, and we arrived in time to glad hand a few Aunts and Uncles (some of whom attempted to glad-hand Elizabeth, causing a few early shouting matches) and take our seats to watch the ceremony. Smilla was marrying a Jewish man who looked vaguely Italian and so the ceremony was a mix of catholic and Jewish. Having been to a few weddings, I can tell you now that both sides of that coin are equally boring. Elizabeth slipped a stiletto heel off of her graceful foot to jab me in the side with every time my snoring threatened to become an embarrassment.

When the wedding huddle broke up, we had some time to wander the halls during the cocktail hour while they readied the reception hall. We found ourselves trapped, along with my Mother and Brother, with the craziest of my Crazy Uncles, who relaxed in a plush chair with a scotch on the rocks telling us about Jesus, who apparently spoke to him on an almost constant basis. Every time my Crazy Uncles eyes fell on me, I was afraid he was going to denounce me as a witch. At the first break in my Crazy Uncles nearly-seamless soliloquy I grabbed Elizabeth and demanded that we go outside for a cigarette. My Brother, no fool, tagged along despite the fact that cigarettes make him turn green.

Humiliation #1: Freed from insane relatives, the three of us prowled the corridors curiously and were having such an enjoyable conversation that we were late getting to the reception hall. The Wedding Party was gathered at the doors, ready to make their big entrance, and Smilla spied the three of us waiting politely to sneak in after them. My cousin insisted we sneak in before the wedding party, and we burst into the room amidst cheers and music meant for the bride and groom. I stopped to grin and wave like a superstar, until Elizabeth manhandled me to a nearby table, which, I must admit, I kind of enjoyed. Humiliation #2: The table we'd found ourselves sitting at wasn't the table we were supposed to be sitting at, but rather one of the kids' tables. It was Elizabeth, me, and several ten-year-olds who were rather belligerent towards us. Often I had to use violence to defend myself. The fact that several of my aunts and uncles no longer speak to me can be directly traced to my actions, words, and attitudes at this table. Humiliation #3: After the pandemonium had settled down a little, I went to the bar for a much-needed stiff drink, whereupon I was promptly carded. At my own cousin's wedding. I have always been cursed with a cherubic and innocent face, which is why I get away with copping free drinks and cheap feels from my friends on a constant basis, but this was too much. I took our drinks, grabbed Elizabeth, and once again demanded we go out for a cigarette.

When we returned from prowling the halls once again, my family in general had boozed itself into a frenzy, with fights, romances, and general silliness breaking out all around us in record numbers. The groom, well-oiled with liquor through the evening, was hoisted up on a chair along with his bride and a handkerchief for what appeared to be some sort of traditional religious nonsense, and promptly fell off the chair. They hoisted him up again, and he fell off again, killing several people. One of my uncles is a cop, though, so it was all made right in the end.

Finally, Elizabeth's friendship had been strained enough and we made our way through the EMS workers, police, and wounded to say good night to the bride and groom. The bride eyed us with the traditional catholic-matron marriage eye and thanked me for coming, the groom thought my name was Steve and seemed to be still standing only because he was too drunk to fall down.

In the car, with the wind screaming past us and Elizabeth's perfume in the car, I pondered the horror of the family wedding and decided that it was definitely better to be a rent-a-date than the relation. As a rent-a-date I can get really drunk and make a pig of myself at both the buffet and the bridesmaids receiving line, and my mother never has to hear about it.

# American Wedding Confidential #4: It's My Scene, Man, and It Freaks Me Out!

THE best types of weddings to get invited to, the uninhibited bachelor soon realizes, is one where you're no longer very close with the person or persons inviting you. Obviously some remnant of affection or intimacy or whatever remains to get you invited in the first place, but if his first response to the invitation is surprise, the enterprising bachelor knows he's onto something.

When my friend Deidre (not her real name) invited me to her wedding, it was perfect. I was not close enough to be intimately involved with the plans, had met the groom once (and that in a crowded smoky place where I was pretty sure he would never remember me from) and knew only a limited number of her other close friends. The reason this was exciting was simple: weddings are filled with drunken, relaxed women in tight, revealing but uncomfortable clothes who have been whipped up into a mating frenzy by the sheer romance and primal proceative mood of the ceremony. After a few too many glasses of white wine and just the right number of love songs, any man with no perceivable limps or skin diseases starts to look attractive, as long as he seems like marriage-material.

"Marriage Material" is a tricky term which means, basically, that there is no reason the poor slob couldn't be goaded into exchanging vows should a relationship blossom and the idea of living with him and bearing his children not bring images of prescription drugs dancing into the poor gal's head. Not all men fall into this category, for a variety of reasons: the limps and skin diseases mentioned above, an existing marriage, baleful personality, halitosis, and an alarmingly long list of character defects that range from a wandering dick to an inability to stand up to her father. The exact prerequisites of "Marriage-Material" vary from girl to girl, and are difficult to pin down, but every lean and hungry bachelor knows that he has to look it to have any chance of being the real Best Man of the reception.

There are two ways to acquire this mysterious veneer.

The first is to do whatever is necessary to appear honestly distressed at your single status, to achieve a delicate balance of machismo and sensitivity, to try and project the sort of manly sadness stemming from your loneliness that will set women's hearts a-pounding and knees a-melting and make you look like the third-rate Chris O'Donnel sensitive hunk you know you could be.

The other, more attractive to the lazy amongst us bachelors, is simply to show up with a good Trophy Date and not tell anyone she's your platonic friend or your best friend's sister or your cousin Ruth. Because the one true law of "Marriage Material" is that if some other woman is willing to appear in public as your girlfriend, you must be it.

I asked my gorgeous friend and confidant Misty S. [REDACTED] to be my trophy date for this one, for a variety of reasons: she can drink like a sailor, she's a good choice of people to talk to for hours and hours, and she's good-looking enough to blind when the mood takes her to wear skintight black evening dresses. Also, since Misty regards my own libido as an amusing if unimportant detail of my existence, there was no chance of me losing sight of my real objectives and getting distracted. She was perfect for Trophy Date status.

I was ready. With the lovely Ms. [REDACTED] on my arm and my own dashing lack of any discernible deformities, I knew I had Marriage-Material stamped on my forehead.

And then, we got lost.

And I mean, lost. We got lost on the way to the ceremony, although not too badly, and managed to sneak in with only a deafening-amount of squeaking hinges and muffled giggles. Then we got lost on the way to the reception, in a big way. Well, in all honesty I should say that I got lost. Misty just sort of sat in the front seat staring out the window in a saintly display of tolerance. But then Misty's known me for years now and if she hasn't come to terms with my general incompetence by now then she never will.

Being lost in New Jersey, however, means never being too far away from a major highway, and we did make it to the last half hour of the cocktail hour after being on the road for almost four hours. We were starving, and all the food had been gnawed down to the bones by the other guests, who resembled army-ants or piranhas in their greasy-lipped frenzy. I settled for a stiff cocktail and some sushi, while Misty trembled and wept because all the good foods had been devoured. I held her gently in my arms as she cried, forlorn at the lost hors devoures.

At the actual reception, we were both so burned from the ride down that it took many glasses of liquor before we felt relaxed enough to enjoy ourselves, and by then I suppose I had lost my appetite for meaningless romantic entanglements with booze-flushed floozies in the coat room. Besides, my pickings were slim: the women at our table (the official "old friends we don't know what to do with" table) were vague little sorority moppets more interested in discussing the details of every wedding they'd ever seen, heard of, or imagined in their narrow lives, and none of the other women were drinking enough. So I settled in, talked to Misty, snuck out with her to watch Game 4 of the World Series on the Hotel Lounge TV, and eventually got shit-faced enough to dance.

And there my careful veneer of Marriage-Material vanished, like ice on a July afternoon.

Dancing is not a male activity. Men who dance well are not men (although men who avoid dancing are cowards) and so most of us flail about with an unseemly awkward motion, endangering our friends and dates and ruining our cool exteriors. In self-defense, most sensible men have adopted a sedate white-man's overbite type of dancing that is neither exciting nor embarrassing, it is simply dull. Not me. In my self-defense, I get as goofy as I can, dancing as if I were in a Bill Murray movie. I make my dancing into a big joke. This is fine if you're dancing in front of good friends who already don't respect you, but in front of strangers...sometimes it is a mistake. I am the Elaine Bennis of Male Pattern Dancing.

It didn't matter, really; we had a good time and made it up to our room after several hours of dancing had sweated all the alcohol out of my body. Luckily, I was too tired to be humiliated and hit the sheets immediately upon entering the room. Misty unfortunately changed into frumpy sweatpants and a T-shirt, and the next day I happily drank coffee, clogged the tub drain, and ate a complimentary breakfast of greasy sausages and buttery eggs...

...and promptly got lost on the way home. Misty, tired of all this bullshit finally took charge and directed me home. As I dropped her off I considered the whole night to have been a rousing success, even if I had wasted a great Trophy Date opportunity. Oh well, one thing I know in this crazy life: there is always another wedding waiting for me.

# American Wedding Confidential #5: My Evening with the Lunatic

AND THEN THE RAINS CAME: For the past four issues of _The Inner Swine_ , I've been celebrating the various benefits and joys of being a wasted bachelor at a wedding, especially if you're just the rent-a-date for the evening, bearding some lesbian or doing a favor for a between-boyfriends lady pal. Singing happy paeans to buffets, open bars, and easy chicks in tight formal wear, I may have forgotten to explore an equally important facet of the swinging gigolos wedding experience: the dark side.

Oh, it's there. I didn't think so myself until a few years ago. Behind the free booze, between the drunkenly wanton bridesmaids, hidden by the blinding light of the camera capturing the Loco-Motion forever, eternally, winks the grinning leer of The Darkness, waiting for some sucker in a bad suit like me to innocently wander in. I started my long, slow walk into the darkness when Insane Co-worker #23 invited me to her friends wedding one day, about five minutes after she'd told me she liked me a whole lot and I'd blithely given her the memorized and oft-used (believe it or not) "were better off being friends but I will always be there for you" speech. Usually when I give that speech I mean it, and I meant it at that moment; even though I am running the other way as fast as I can whenever someone wants to date me, I usually do want to be just friends.

I hadn't yet realized that Insane Co-worker #23 was, well, insane.

Perhaps the timing of her invite should have been a clue. After someone cries a little and tells you how shitty their lives are and then hints that maybe you could be a ray of light in that mess, and after you've replied with the "I'd rather eat cat feces than date you but I will always be there for you, as a platonic friend who refuses to give you his home phone number" speech, who in their right mind could then refuse an earnest invitation to a wedding? Maybe the sort of bastards I wish I were more like could manage it, but I am far too afraid of my own evil to do it. So I gave in to the manipulative bullshit and said, yes, of course I would go to the wedding with her.

And theres The Darkness, pigs: when you start showing up at weddings willy-nilly, eating and drinking and flirting with abandon, inevitably you're going to get nailed. People know you like to go to weddings. They know you encourage the practice of inviting you. So when someone like Insane Co-worker #23 slithers up and invites you, you have no excuses. You're Wedding Man. As the months went by between then and the wedding, I realized with slow dawning horror two simple facts: 1. Insane Co-worker #23 was not putting her feelings for me behind her as quickly as I would have wished her to, and 2. this wedding was already the longest night of my life and it hadn't even started yet.

The day of the wedding dawned gray and stormy: a Noreaster had floated into town and the world was a quick foxtrot from a Tropical Storm. I was driving. Driving being an optimistic term for what was really 93% floating. I set out bravely, asking my Mom to take care of my stuff and leaving behind sealed envelopes for all of my friends to open in the event of my death, or mental breakdown. I went and got #23, who wore something that probably would have been irresistible on a woman I had some vague interest in. I was already counting the hours; she had just begun the seduction.

The wedding itself was a miracle of perseverance. As the soaked and unamused guests arrived at the drafty and cavernous church, an angry-mob sort of atmosphere started to form like a cloud around us, I sat with #23 as quietly as I could, feeling the pulse of The Darkness all around us. She chattered cheerfully about how great weddings were and how beautiful her friend was. I chewed my nails and once again spent an unsatisfying few minutes trying to figure out what, exactly, was attractive about me.

Between the ceremony and the reception we had what amounted to thirty thousand years of free time, and I pondered worriedly what #23 and I would do to pass the time. She got us invited back to her friend the brides grandparents house, which sounded good until we got there and realized that we were the only people invited. I quickly accepted a stiff drink and locked myself in the bathroom with it for a few moments, contemplating either crawling out the window or drowning myself in the toilet. In the end I had the guts to do neither, so I emerged and sat down next to #23. She sat close to me, letting me smell her, which is a favorite trick of girls that I usually don't mind at all.

But this time all I could smell was: The Darkness.

The reception was fairly big and energetic and I began drinking immediately. So did #23, which I tried to subtly discourage. After two hours, however, #23 was fairly blitzed and dragged me onto the dance floor for some dirty dancing, grinding against me with what she imagined was seductive fervor. Hell, maybe it was. I couldn't tell with all that Darkness ringing in my ears. I danced my Bill Murray dances with the wide-eyed look of deer in headlights and brain surgery malpractice plaintiffs, feeling her smear The Darkness all over me with every disco beat.

At one point the band mercifully played I Will Survive and I was able to convince #23 that it wasn't appropriate for me to dance with her to that one, so she found her friend the bride and I spent a few soul-muting moments sitting at our table with the other men, smoking a cigarette and wondering how it had all come down to this. The other men didn't give a shit.

When we finally escaped the reception, we found the entire eastern seaboard submerged under water. I grimly drove into the flood. I spent a grueling two hours driving her home, balked at several moments by immense lakes of water where there had once been roads. The citizens were out looting and burning civilization down and I could see the Nazgul circling overhead waiting for the car to give out and strand me as The Darkness summoned its minions and prepared for its triumph. I would not be stopped. Against all reason, all hope, all rationality, I kept driving, often in reverse for several minutes at a time, until I sat idling outside her apartment, hands white-knuckled on the wheel, panting.

#23 still thought the night had gone well and, more disturbingly, thought the night was young. She chatted for a few minutes about a good time this and a fun night that, and then invited me up. I had looked down the hairy maw of The Darkness, however, and such simple horrors no longer held any pain for me. I still had my good-guy fetish, however, and told her sincerely that I had to get up early, I was tired – girls, you've heard it all before, albeit usually after the sex. She seemed to accept this and said good night, but as I leaned over to give her a parting peck on the cheek, I could see her positioning herself, giving me ample view of her neckline, ample opportunity to let my aim drift a bit and perhaps reconsider the soft sound of her stockings rubbing together, the rain, the perfume in my car.

Around me, I heard The Darkness laughing.

Hastily, I pecked her on the cheek no matter how difficult she made it for me, and reached around her seductively to unlatch the door and push it open, grinning madly as she stumbled out with the table centerpiece and a look of shock on her face. I waved, slammed the door, and sped off, leaving #23 and The Darkness standing there in the rain.

# American Wedding Confidential #6: Touch Me I'm Sick

Weddings are ridiculous affairs. Putting aside the obvious hilarity of two people in this day and age claiming to not only know themselves well enough to make a reasonable lifetime commitment but also to know a completely different person well enough to bet the ranch on, theres also the issue of the sheer gluttonous spectacle of it all. The Wedding business is huge, weddings are incredibly expensive...and why? So you can invite a bunch of mean-spirited relatives, greedy ravenous friends you haven't spoken to in a few years, and all of their anonymous and bottomless girlfriends, boyfriends, domestic partners, wives, husbands, and who knows what else, and then stuff them senseless? I don't mind getting filled to the brim with watered liquor, rubber chicken and stuffed mushrooms three or four times a year, but ask me if it's necessary.

And you cant blame us, the lowing stampeding herd of guests you've invited. The human race isn't very complex: put a feed in front of us and most of us are like Boggies, we eat until were swallowed by an unexpected cloud of unconsciousness and rushed to the hospital. You resent the fact that you spend $20,000 just so I can draw a face on my beer gut and dance shirtless on a table while eating clams and chugging champagne (all the while being cheered on by everyone except my sobbing, red-faced date)? Then stop inviting me.

Ahem.

Earlier this year I was once again asked to pull out the old forest green suit and cut a rug at a wedding, this time being a rent-a-date for my friend Laura, who lives in South Carolina now and whom I don't see nearly often enough, mostly due to my failure to travel south. A childhood friend of hers was getting hitched over in Staten Island and as is often the case with our lost generation, she needed a date. After exhausting her other options, she settled for me.

I'm well known in the wedding business now, and upon learning that I was to attend the reception hall hired three extra security people and restocked the bar. Such is my power.

Laura warned me that there was going to be no expense spared at this soirée, so I broke down and invested in a haircut a week before the festivities, to show my good faith in looking my best for my date. Of course, this was one of Italo the Barbers (who has been cutting my hair since I was four with a maintenance of style and skill you've got to respect) $9 specials, which is to say: invariably a disaster. So I showed up at Laura's house shined up like a new penny, except for my hair, which seemed to be prepared for a different experience altogether (possibly a rectal exam, possibly a murder attempt – who knows what my hair was thinking?).

Laura didn't notice, however, as she was recovering from a bout of stomach virus so disastrous she'd been on IV fluids just the day before, which is to say she was still too busy vomiting to notice whether I looked good or not. I suggested that perhaps she was too ill to attend, but as she delicately locked herself into the bathroom she waved me off and insisted that everything was fine. I shrugged and went outside to spread plastic drop cloths over my cars upholstery, just in case.

The wedding revived Laura somewhat, what with the brisk fresh air and the spirited drive over (I think my driving is spirited because so many people are moved to pray whilst in the car with me) and she greeted old friends enthusiastically, and finally took notice of my disastrous haircut. She politely ignored it, and me, for the rest of the ceremony, which was pretty long and dull as weddings go, and involved an odd spot wherein the bride and groom wandered off somewhere else entirely and left us all standing there in silence, wondering what the hell was going on. I imagine the couple got quite a hoot out of that, the bastards.

The reception, however, was Laura's undoing, as you might expect: it's hard to be at a well catered reception and not eat until you pass out, and Laura continued to help herself to treats despite the mounting evidence that she shouldn't. I was driving, and so only had one drink, which actually does nothing to improve my surly and combative nature. Upon our arrival we discovered that a nefarious couple had taken two seats at our table, meaning that we wouldn't be able to sit with Laura's brother and sister and their respective dates, with whom we had forged a strong bond over stiff drinks and appetizers during the cocktail hour. We wanted the couple to go sit at their own table, but nobody wanted a scene. We men stood around with our hands in our pockets, unsure of what to do, while Laura stalked off and caused a scene anyway. The offending couple were sentenced to a less prominent table and glared at me all night. They could tell I was an instigator, and blamed me. In truth, we men sort of avoided looking at the other couple and hoped to god a fight didn't break out – I didn't need the memory of Laura standing over me, defending my honor, while I bled and whined. I have enough of those sorts of memories.

I'm a lover, not a fighter.

The reception was pretty typical, and except for an hallucinogenic moment in the middle when the band played hard-rock versions of "Play That Funky Music" and "Devil Went Down to Georgia" back to back (twenty minutes of my life I'd certainly like to have back) the only thing which marked the evening was the fact that Laura's Brothers girlfriend kept disappearing for long stretches of time. She would just wander off and leave the poor guy sitting at the table alone, staring into space. In-between daring her stomach virus to attack, Laura and I noticed her talking to various men during the evening, and I wondered if tragedy was rearing its ugly head. The thought brought joy to my heart, and I prepared for drama and angst gladly. Little did I know the only drama and angst I was going to get was courtesy Laura's wayward gastrointestinal system.

At one point, Laura and I snuck out to have a cadged cigarette or two, standing by the bathrooms in the lobby and gossiping about her brother. It was nice; I don't see Laura much, and it occurred to me that maybe the ultimate purpose of Weddings in my life is simply to get together with people I don't normally see. Standing in the lobby with Laura, this seemed likely, and I wondered, privately, if I would ever figure out a way to make money off of my skills as a rent-a-date. I didn't mention this to Laura, knowing how easily I am misinterpreted these days.

By the time the Venetian room was opened up, I could smell disaster in the air but Laura couldn't resist, and an hour later we were leaving, a slightly green Laura bravely staying awake for the whole ride to make sure I didn't wander into the wrong direction entirely, which I almost managed despite her efforts. Driving for me, especially when I'm wearing tight, uncomfortable shoes, is a very Zen experience. I just sort of pick a car and follow it, and hope it knows where it's going. This works better than you might imagine. As I dropped Laura off at home and sped away, I thought that if nothing else I learned that sometimes you just have to lay off the seafood.

# American Wedding Confidential #7: Will The Real Best Man Please Stand Up?

In which I learn the explosive force of love: About year ago this Thursday my old friend Emil got married and asked me to be his best man. Emil's a good friend of _The Inner Swine_ Inner Circle (TISIC) in general, and there was some resentment, jealousy, and harsh words concerning my elevation to Best Man status. There were also isolated incidents of violence. Eventually, Emil managed to cool tempers and remind the rest of TISIC that they were, above all else, contractually obligated to me in perpetuity. After that impassioned speech the members of TISIC retreated to their various abodes to scan the fine print of their contracts, only to return in much more manageable moods.

The Best Man has a lot of duties in the modern wedding. Whereas in the good old days he was merely a responsible member of the groom's clan who vouched for the groom's sanity, financial solvency, and lack of venereal diseases, these days the Best Man has lots to do: organize a bachelor party (I'm told it was a humdinger; personally I don't remember much after that fifth body shot off of Lola the Stripper's washboard stomach), deliver the viciously hungover groom to the actual wedding the next day (Emil still had his Emergency Room ID bracelet on), manage not to vomit during the ceremony, and then, finally, and most importantly, make a speech at the reception.

The Best Man's Speech is supposed to accomplish a few minor but cherished conventions: it's supposed to compliment the groom, his choice of bride, and form a verbal bridge between the carefree days of the groom's prior friendships and the more complex but equally rewarding years of mature friendship to come. In other words, the Best Man's job is to reassure the groom's buddies that they will indeed see him from time to time despite the nag he's chaining himself to, and to reassure the groom that his buddies will always be there to say mean things about his wife in private if he needs them to.

I worked very hard on my speech in the ambulance, riding with Emil to the ER after the bachelor party had taken a dramatic turn. The transcript which follows is taken from the wedding video, and more accurately reflects what was actually said than the scrawled speech written on cocktail napkins in the ambulance. I think I accomplished the goals of the Best Man's Speech admirably:

Ladies and Gentlemen, friends and family, I've known Emil for sixteen years. When we met back in prison we didn't like each other very much; he always wanted to pitch and I never let him. Being cellmates gave us time to get to know each other and by the time our parole hearing came up I was proud to stand next to him, hold his hand, and testify that we had each found Jesus and would dedicate our lives to upholding the laws of the land if we were released.

In short, I've known Emil long and well. And in many ways, most of which I don't wish to discuss here.

Over the years Emil and I have gone through a great many things and we've always supported each other: when my dog Skippy died, Emil was there to help me through it, tenderly digging a grave for poor Skippy and getting me drunk later that night before we traced the plate number of the car that hit Skippy and set it on fire, in revenge.

When I became addicted to Internet Porn a few years ago, alienating my friends and family, losing my job, ending up at one point getting busted for public lewdness in The @ Café in New York City, Emil was the one who came to my apartment one July evening, knocked me cold and kidnapped me. Emil kept me in a cold, dark basement for six months, deprogramming me. To this day whenever I see a computer keyboard I shake and vomit helplessly. While this has caused me difficulty and unpopularity at work, it saved me: if not for Emil and the vicious torture he put me through in that basement, I would be in some asylum somewhere, trying to log onto from a pay phone.

Emil has always been there for me, and I am pleased to be here for him today, the day he marries Petra.

In the four and a half days I've had the pleasure of knowing Petra, I've realized that Emil's life was but an empty and meaningless melange of sex, drugs, and progressive jazz music. In less than a week, she has become not only a dear friend of mine, but a dear friend of all the members of _The Inner Swine_ Inner Circle, _The Inner Swine_ being the magazine I publish which I really think you all ought to read and purchase subscriptions, because you see that large black guy in the back standing with several dozen men in fatigues? That's Ken [REDACTED] and he's going to be waiting for you after the reception, and all I can say is that he's much nicer to people who have subscriptions than to anyone else, and I can also say that I have less and less influence over him every day.

What? All right, all right, Emil, Jesus, calm the fuck down, okay?

Anyway, as I was saying, Petra has not only redeemed Emil from his obvious descent into damnation and syphilitic degeneration, but she has entered and improved the lives of all of us. She's a rare and delicate flower of womanhood, she's a compassionate and beautiful creature who's....energy and....emotion....and....and....ladies and gentlemen, I love her. Petra, I love you.

I cannot stand here and pretend that everything is okay, while I am dying inside! Petra, I've been dying inside all these past few days! Ever since Tuesday night I've been tortured by my love for you, while you marry this troll, this monster, this syphilitic mistake masquerading as a man! Oh, the stories I could tell you! Emil, the whoremonger! Emil the petty thief! The man he killed in Mexico! The drugs he dealt to little kids while on work release! The Kiddie Porn! Oh, Petra, you?re making a mistake!

Ladies and gentlemen, keep that madman away from me! Excuse me....pardon me....Ken! Help! Ladies and gentlemen, I beseech you! Petra! Petra!

(At this point the audio becomes garbled as many voices intrude and the action on-screen gets a little hectic. Occasionally you can here me shouting "Not the face!" but I don't think technically that's part of the speech. At this point I felt the explosive power of love, and it certainly beat the shit out of me)

I often wonder what became of Emil and Petra. I suspect he still communicates with other members of TISIC, but none of the bastards will admit it, and the court order prevents me from finding out for myself. If anyone has heard of Emil and Petra's whereabouts, please contact me. There's money in it for you.

# AMERICAN WEDDING CONFIDENTIAL #8: GABBA GABBA HEY: ONE OF US

It's always vaguely troubling when one of my intimates decides to chuck the glories and wonders of single life and get hitched. Not only is there a subtle hint that single life isn't as glorious and wonderful as I'd like to believe, but there is also the strong possibility that the wedding ceremony will be closely followed by children, tupperware parties, and stony silence when I next call them at 3AM drunkenly demanding that they come out and get pancakes with me. In short, when a member of _The Inner Swine_ Inner Circle announces plans to get married, I smile, congratulate them, excuse myself and spend an hour in the bathroom weeping and beating my head against the wall, crying "Why!? WHY?!"

Don't get me wrong; I'm not anti-relationship. I'm anti-marriage. I could go on and on about why I think it's an outdated convention, but I'll spare you, gentle reader. Just accept it as part of the TIS Canon and let's move on, shall we?

SO, when [REDACTED], TIS Publisher and dues-paying member of TISIC for the past six years announced she was getting married, I spent my hour in the bathroom moaning and then did the only sensible thing one can do: I went out and bought a new suit to wear to the wedding, because the number one rule of being Jeff Somers, Superstar is that you must always look incredible. My whole reputation is based on looking disco-hot all the time, you know. Of course, I did go out and purchase this suit by myself. You don't get to look disco-hot when you're cursed with my fashion sense; you have to get chicks to shop for you. Luckily, women in general are always happy to shop for men – it's genetically programmed into them, you see- and TIS Legal Counsel The Duchess was more than happy to shop specifically for me. We went to the mall, and I don't remember anything in-between parking the car and waking up in the trunk along with several bags from Macy's about three hours later. The Duchess' ways are mysterious ways, but she had procured for me the specified disco-hot suit, so all was well.

The wedding itself was being held in Staten Island, which is a vague place filled with fear and foreboding, or it was all of us who were filled with fear and foreboding and Staten Island is just a borough of New York. In any event, the intrepid members of TISIC had rented a pair of rooms so we'd have someplace to pass out later, and the bride and groom had thoughtfully rented a bus to take guests from the hotel to the church to the reception and back to the hotel. We carefully sized up the pros and cons of starting the alcohol consumption right there at the hotel, but eventually decided (after some harsh words and implied violence) that Satan was already working through us far too easily, and being sober in church was the least we owed [REDACTED], who had already made several verbal threats concerning our behavior at her wedding.

The ceremony is lost to the mists of time, of course; my instinctual defense mechanisms cause me to pass out cold the moment I enter any type of holy ground. Misty [REDACTED] and The Duchess propped me gently against one of the confessionals, or so I'm told, keeping me well out of harm's way, except for a minor speaking-in-tongues incident and one attempted exorcism, prevented by Security Chief Ken [REDACTED], apparently by using a handy crucifix as a club and shouting "The Power of Christ Compels You!"

I came to on the bus as we arrived at the reception hall; mysteriously, I had a beer in one hand already and someone had removed my undergarments. We descended on the cocktail hour as a well-oiled machine, spreading out to cover all the wet bars and commandeering a large table in the back, where I sat with the Ubiquitous Tim Reynolds and critiqued the fashion sense of our fellow invitees, who were not at all disco-hot. Two drinks later and we were called into the dining room, where we descended upon the place like a well-oiled machine, spreading out to cover the wet bars. Buckets of beer bottles were procured, shots were ordered up, and by the time the reception ended several transformations had taken place:

1. Carla had relinquished her title as "Dancing Queen". Some years ago I attended a wedding as Carla's 'date', which inspired the original American Wedding Confidential. In that watershed TIS article, I dubbed her the Dancing Queen because, after several rum-and-cokes served up in large plastic cups, Carla twisted the night away, often regardless of my presence on the dancefloor with her. This evening, however, the lovely and formidable The Duchess took the title away from Carla after she took me to the dance floor several times, often using brutal force. Fearing for my safety, I danced as I have never danced before. Oh, the horror.

2. TISIC had changed from "The Odd-Looking Strangers at Table 6" to "[REDACTED]'s Frightening Friends Who Set That Mutha Off". Indeed, despite [REDACTED]'s desperate attempts to distance herself from us all evening, by the time we were forcibly removed from the reception hall (Jeof [REDACTED] having been pried away from the beer taps in an embarrassing episode of weeping and begging) everyone in the place knew who we were and rightly feared us, mostly due to the many times Misty [REDACTED] grabbed the microphone from the DJ to introduce us and sing torch songs in a low, smoky voice. By the time the priest took off his collar and began whipping the Best Man mercilessly with it[1], we were all at the point where that didn't bother us at all.

3. Several Gallons of Alcohol Had Become Several Terrific Hangovers. From Jeof [REDACTED]'s first screams of "The Sun! It Burns Us!" to the last-minute search of the hotel for a missing Ken [REDACTED] (found sobbing softly in a linen closet on the fifth floor, an empty bottle of schnapps clutched to his chest), the morning-after was not a pretty sight at all.

And so TISIC gathered to send one of its own off into the frightening world of adult relationships. [REDACTED] may not ever speak to us again, but that's okay. We've got dirt on her to last a lifetime.

Congrats to [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], who got married in spite of my best advice.

[1] THIS REALLY HAPPENED. I SWEAR.

# American Wedding Confidential #9: Return of the Gigolo

THE IRRESISTIBLE PULL OF COCKTAIL HOURS: Despite domestic happiness in Hoboken, Your Humble Editor has not retired his Wedding Man status, and when old friend Marge (from the original American Wedding Confidential) asked me to be her date-for-hire at a friend's wedding, I was ecstatic to break out one of my two suits and cut a rug or two with her.

"Uh," she said carefully, "just so you know, it's not going to be a normal wedding."

"What the hell does that mean?" I asked, picturing Circus performers and possibly animal sacrifice.

"Well, my friend doesn't want any of the usual bullshit. No hokey- pokey, no chicken dance, no garters and bouquets."

"Oh," I said, disappointed. "No Circus performers?"

Having secured my enthusiastic participation, Marge began the delicate process of negotiating for my services with Legal Counsel The Duchess. After an undisclosed sum of cash changed hands, The Duchess's permission was granted and I took my suit to the cleaners to have several mysterious stains removed, and began my rigorous pre-wedding training program, which involves drinking fluids until the pale-yellow color fades from my skin, the dark bags under my eyes retreat, and the constant shaking ceases. By the time the date arrived I was looking fairly normal, as long as you define 'normal' as 'aged way beyond his years'.

Marge arrived and collected me from The Duchess, and we drove approximately six hours to the church, which was located in what can only be described as the hinterlands of New Jersey, the land of cows and asphalt. On the way, Marge instructed me in the rules and regulations of my wedding attendance:

"Rule the first: You will not speak to anyone unless I invite you to, for example, _Jeff, tell her about your recent bout of scabies_. Unless I preface a statement with the words 'Jeff, tell him/her' you will assume that silence is preferable."

"Uh – "

"Silence! Rule the second: If anyone assumes that we are a couple of any sort, you will disabuse them of that notion immediately, you frotcher."

"How can I do that without speak – "

"Silence! Rule the third: Your pants must remain on at all times."

"Aw, that's just mean."

"Silence! Finally, Rule the fourth: You cannot write about this in your lame publication."

I nodded solemnly. "I wouldn't dream of it." And made a note on my hand in black ink: _Mention rules in piece on wedding_.

The wedding itself was a sadly typical Catholic ceremony, filled with endless chanting and prayers, and, of course, a full two minutes of _Ave Maria_. The minister launched into a hippie-ish little speech about midway through, talking some rubbish about how life was a song and God was the baseline, and we all bring our own melodies into it. I swear if you'd simply inserted the word _man!_ after each sentence, you would have had, instead of a priestly Homily, a stoner's monologue, a typical college-evening conversation:

"The Universe is like a piece of wonderful music, man! and God is like the baseline, man! And these two wonderful people bring their own melodies to it, man!"

After this spirited outburst I dozed quietly until the wedding was over, was prodded awake in time to join the line and shake hands with the perplexed Bridal Party, none of whom had any clear idea of who I was. Marge hustled me back into the car and we drove approximately four feet to the reception hall, where, thank goodness, booze was waiting. By this time, word had circulated that news of my retirement from rent-a-date events had been greatly exaggerated, and the whole reception hall began buzzing with whispers. The liquor was removed to a secure location and all booze orders had to be conveyed via radio. I acquired a permanent shadow, a waiter assigned to follow me around and prevent, I assumed, property damage. He seemed a little afraid of me. I called him Rico. His name was something else, but I called him Rico.

Marge and I were seated at your usual Motley Crew table of loose ends, people who no one knew exactly what to do with. Marge made the introductions and we managed some painfully awkward conversation for a while, until I managed to worm my way into the lager supply and began ignoring everyone rudely.

It shortly became apparent that I was more of a non-entity to Marge than usual, as she was obsessed with the Bride's brother, a gorgeous young man who rendered Marge simultaneously speechless and unable to look away.

"Why don't you just go over there and say hello?" I suggested.

"Oh, no." She sputtered, tracking his movement across the room. "I couldn't do that." Her eyes flicked to me briefly. "By the way, I told everyone we were married."

I took this in stride. The reception was proving to be a sedate affair: no dancing (although a belligerently middle-aged couple went through a series of forbidden dances in spite of this Amish attitude) and none of the typical wedding embarrassments. As a result, Marge was not able to continue her traditional wedding behavior of double-fisting rum and cokes and dancing the Twist to every song. This was fine, because she replaced that behavior with grim, silent stalking of the Bride's brother.

Dinner was tasty, although one of our tablemates ate two portions of the fish before thinking to inquire about its crab meat content, then promptly swelled to twice his size and turned a bright shade of red. The rest of us crowded away from him.

Marge suddenly grabbed me fiercely. "Go move him." she hissed. "He's blocking my view of my future husband."

"I wouldn't touch me," the crab-beast advised from puffy lips. "There may be some scaling."

We crowded closer together. At this point we were saved by the arrival of the wedding cake, each individual slice wrapped in wax paper, the words THANK YOU FOR COMING NOW GET OUT written on it. We were all strongly urged to just leave and not make a fuss. Marge and I made our way to her car wearily.

# American Wedding Confidential #10: So, She's a Dog

BEFORE valiantly attempting to drink an entire bottle of scotch by myself and ending the evening moaning on the bathroom floor (or what I imagined was the bathroom floor – telltale grass stains on my pants indicate my memory may be suspect) I was intimately involved with TIS Overall Cool Chick Lauren Strutzel's marriage to non-TIS personnel Bob Boland. Specifically, I was the Man of Honor for the bride – a stealth Man of Honor who stood with the other groomsmen because the Wedding Committee thought having a man standing on the women's side of things was just a little too California.

Aside from showing up relatively sober and taking some sort of hygienic precautions, I had one duty as Man of Honor: to walk the Flower Girl down the aisle. The Flower Girl is named Maggie and she is Lauren's beloved dog. More on this later; for now let's just say that I had trouble reconciling the sober thing with this responsibility. This may have influenced my faulty (in retrospect) decision to attempt the aforementioned bottle of scotch, but I don't want to throw blame around.

So, a few members of _The Inner Swine_ Inner Circle (TISIC) got on a plane in Newark, New Jersey and flew to Denver, Colorado, with some terrorist anxiety, conquered via a generous helping of sausage and egg biscuit sandwiches. Denver is one of those bizarre Midwestern cities (Midwestern defined here as anything that is not Manhattan) that New Yorkers theorize must have extensive secret underground levels, since there is never anyone out on the streets; we arrive at the airports and spend weekends wandering around empty streets, where cruel winds blow and no one seems to know how to sell pizza by the slice. We spent most of the afternoon sleeping, and then Legal Counsel The Duchess and Your Humble Editor had to attend the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

Feeling suave and sophisticated because I was wearing the one and only sports jacket I possess (a Sears-Roebuck special bought in 1994 when I got my first real job, and not worn now in several years) I found the rehearsal to be chaotic and of dubious use; after it concluded, I was more confused than before as to my exact role in the ceremony. All I knew was, there was a dog, and there would be a lot of standing and sitting, and – forgotten by yours truly – I would be expected to give a reading. Stunned that I had failed to bring the text of my reading from New Jersey, I sidled up to the Bride and quietly asked what I should do.

"Make something up," she advised with a giggle. "I got enough problems."

I nodded and let the matter lie. The rehearsal dinner was held at a former country club, and was delicious, and fueled by lots of booze. The Bride's parents harangued everyone at our table about how wonderful their retirement was, and even distributed photos, which I believe I examined at least three times as they were confusedly handed about. The Duchess and I were supposed to meet everyone afterwards at a bar, but became lost in a three-square-block area of downtown Denver for almost forty minutes and managed to arrive at said bar just as last call was concluded. Humbled, we dragged ourselves home to sleep.

The next day we gathered with Jeof [REDACTED] and Misty [REDACTED], Esq. and ate a large, greasy breakfast at the Denver Diner, and then went shopping. Or, more accurate, the girls went shopping while Jeof and I fought sleep at every step. I found my reading on the Internet (my horror at discovering there are web sites with popular wedding vows and readings will be deferred for a later article – the horror, the horror) and napped generously. We all arrived first at the church, prompting a quick consultation ascertaining that we were at the correct church at the correct time, and then the usual wedding bullshit began: I posed for pictures along with the other men, who were friendly but bemused at my presence, especially since I'd taken to describing myself as "The Dog Wrangler" and to walking around walking an imaginary dog at all times. Perhaps 'bemused' is not the correct term here, actually.

Maggie herself found me completely uninteresting and quickly came to regard me as an impediment to her natural curiosity. She was rather unceremoniously handed over to me about twenty minutes before the ceremony for a 'getting to know you' period, which for the dog consisted of sniffing me once and then straining against her leash with unusual (and frightening) strength, and for me a constant state of panic concerning where the dog was thrusting her nose, which seemed most often to be into the crotches of guests. Said guests would then follow the length of leash from the dog to me, scowl as if memorizing my face, and walk away muttering darkly.

I must admit that the actual walk down the aisle went extremely well. Seeing new opportunities to explore, Maggie eagerly let me lead her down the red carpet, and everyone was very amused by the sight and startled by my dashing, rugged good looks (except Jeof [REDACTED], who cackled like a hyena, pointing and gesturing rudely at me). I had been told that there would be an agent of the bride's waiting for me just off to the left of the altar, but when I arrived at the prearranged spot there was no one there. I looked back at the gathered wedding party for help, but everyone was pointedly looking anywhere but at me. I tied Maggie to the railing of a nearby stairwell and strolled out to join everyone as calmly as possible.

The ceremony was beautiful: The bride was glowing, the groom appeared amazingly calm despite this obvious impossibility, and I managed to get through my reading despite a sudden inability to breath, which I chalked up to my prolonged exposure to a Catholic church. As a minor blessing, the reception began immediately following, and after making sure that someone had claimed the dog safely I drove us to a former funeral home to cut a rug in Lauren and Bob's honor.

And there, of course, I encountered my old arch-enemy, Johnny Walker Black. We battled, I fought fearlessly, and, sadly, lost.

But not before making contact with TIS deep-cover Mole Dan Sills. One of the last things I remember before succumbing to the charms of wily old Mr. Walker was Dan, honoring me with the traditional Hussars salute of old Russia. Then, there was darkness.

###

_Postscript:_ Although I didn't think I set any records with my scotch consumption that evening, the next day dawned and I felt like a small army of poisoned ants was living inside my stomach. Despite many nonsurgical attempts to remove them, I was laid up moaning until 11 AM, when I was finally, and rather humiliatingly, removed from bed by Legal Counsel The Duchess, who was unamused.

"Up, Rummy. I'm starving." she said sweetly.

After a greasy breakfast we dashed for the airport, where we were greeted by the startling sight of HazMat units and National Guard vehicles. I wanted badly to have a rapprochement with Johnny Walker, then, but it was not to be. I slouched onto the plane, walking my imaginary dog, and slept all the way home.

# American Wedding Confidential #11: The Circle of Life

## THE TRUE AND SHOCKING STORY OF A WEDDING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A GROOMSMAN INTIMATELY ACQUAINTED WITH THE EVENTS

WELL, the wedding-guest gig dried up for a while, largely due to a critical mass of restraining orders issued against me by reception halls across the country. This devastated me, and I am shamed to admit to my many fans and admirers that I let myself go a little during a depressed period, and probably couldn't have found any tuxedos that fit anyway. I locked myself in _The Inner Swine_ Compound (known affectionately as 'Camp Levon') and refused all visitors and wedding invites, and settled down to eat several tons of ice cream. Although the wedding invitations for Jeff Somers, Reception Gigolo continued to arrive every day from all points on the globe, I ignored them all, slowly expanding in my dim, dusty recreation room.

Then, one day, a breathless Ken [REDACTED] burst into my Rec Room, shouting: "Hey! Did you hear–" Here he stopped short, an odd expression dripping over his face. "My god, what is that smell?"

I ignored this obvious baiting, and to distract him, I offered him a Ring Ding dipped in ice cream. The effort of lifting it tired me, and I dozed off for a moment.

When I came to, Ken was wearing some sort of gas mask. "What's that sound, now?" he asked, his voice very Darth Vaderish.

"My heart," I admitted. The loud booming had an eerie quality. Ken began backing out of the room. I mashed one of the buttons on my chair and a steel door crashed down, sealing us in. Ken stopped and pretended to lean casually against the wall. "Now, what's the news?" I demanded.

"Uh, Misty and Jeof are getting married."

I was still for a moment, because an announcement of this magnitude does not often present itself. I mashed another button, raising the security door.

"Go fetch The Duchess," I said thickly. "Tell her I need to get into shape for a wedding."

###

The Duchess, as many loyal readers know, is a marathon runner and generally is in the best shape of anyone I've ever witnessed. It's frightening, actually, and I live with this person, which means I live in fear of being asked to run long distances. She was the perfect choice to whip me back into disco-hot shape, and immediately hung my old powder blue tux in plain sight as a taunt. She put me on a strict diet, and worked me relentlessly every day, and within six months I'd lost 200 pounds or so and had not sweated while sitting still in some time. I was a new man! And just in time, too, because Misty S. [REDACTED], Esq., and Jeof [REDACTED] were getting married, and The Duchess and I had been tapped to be in the wedding party.

Despite the fact that I've attended upwards of 20 weddings in my time, I'd only been in the wedding party once before–Overall Official Cool Chick Lauren Strutzel's. It's really two completely different animals, attending a wedding as an anonymous date-for-hire and being a part of the wedding party. With the former, I'm free to make a pig out of myself in all ways, to dance with a face painted on my painfully distended belly, to call the groom a jerk and announce that I have poisoned the main course. As a member of the wedding party, these things, while still possible, of course, are frowned upon. But those considerations were best left to a later time, a time when I was very drunk and somewhat sweaty, perhaps half-undressed. I would ponder the morals of wedding havoc during the reception then; in the mean time, I was fit, tanned–well, not 'tanned', exactly, but I had a healthy glow from the complete blood replacement therapy, pioneered so long ago by Keith Richards–and tastefully stitched into a rented tuxedo. With the dazzlingly cute The Duchess on my arm, I set forth from Camp Levon in Hoboken to witness the blessed union of two longstanding members of _The Inner Swine_ Inner Circle (TISIC).

###

Having had two experiences as a member of the Wedding Party, once on the Bride's side and once on the Groom's, I can now say with authority that your main role as a groomsman in these sadly depleted modern times is to drink a lot. Back in the good old days, likely I'd have been charged with making sure that Jeof didn't flee the wedding, or renege on the financial arrangements, which had made the purchase of Misty for him possible. Better times, those were. These days, though, the only roles I had were to: a) squeeze into a rented tux, b) drink whenever and whatever Jeof commanded, and c) not fall down or wet myself at the actual ceremony. These kinds of simple tasks are within even my frail energies.

First off, of course, was Jeof's Bachelor Party. This was the Best Man's responsibility, and Jeof's Best Man was his brother Jason, so I kicked back and waited for the call to arms while The Duchess and Misty fretted that evil was being plotted. The Duchess's mantra during this period was "Remember Jeff: A lapdance is sex." We had many merry conversations like this:

ME: Honey, pass the salt.

DK: Remember, Jeff: A lapdance is sex. And also a death sentence. Can you spell death sentence? It's spelled L-A-P-D-A-N-C-E. I'll pour this salt into your open wounds if you forget this.

ME: I think I'll pass out for a while.... <sound of Jeff's head hitting kitchen table>

DK: Pig.

As the wedding date approached, however, I started to think that Jeof wouldn't get a Bachelor Party, or that maybe I hadn't been invited to it, which was damned awkward. Eventually it was established that Best Man Jason had gone ahead and planned an extravagant Bachelor Party Weekend in Las Vegas, but had neglected to tell anyone, and had jetted off by himself. This didn't upset Jeof very much, as he'd been having conversations with Misty similar to mine with The Duchess, and had come to the conclusion that it was safer to avoid even the slightest hint of impropriety, unless he wished to limp down the aisle.

The Bachelor Party bullet dodged, Misty's family flew up from Florida and the Rehearsal Dinner came up with frightening speed. Misty and Jeof had chosen to be married in Bumfuck, New Jersey, population: us. The location of the wedding festivities was so far removed from what I would term civilization, I started to listen for the haunting strains of Dueling Banjos, but this might have been colored by the way The Duchess and I got to the Rehearsal Dinner. The Duchess's wallet had been stolen and I'd had to drive to Newark Penn Station to pick her up in the middle of the worst rush hour traffic ever experienced by man. Crawling down Route 80 at about three inches an hour, with The Duchess alternately surly and weepy about her brush with crime, I had plenty of time to contemplate my lot in life. I'd given up Ring Dings dipped in ice cream for this?

We made the dinner about halfway through, and it was great to meet the few people involved we didn't already know. The bonding process began, forging us into one unit with one purpose: making sure the Open Bar at the [REDACTED]-[REDACTED] wedding was used and used well. The bonding process mostly involved everyone shouting insults across the table at Jeof [REDACTED] until he broke down and sobbed, at which point Misty clutched him to her bosom while the rest of us high-fived and cheered. Misty normally would kick all our asses after a stunt like that, but there were members of her family involved, including her father, so the fearsome [REDACTED] temper was contained. I caught Ken's eye from across the table and we both got a little teary-eyed, because it was just like High School, except Jeof wasn't wearing a Metallica T-shirt, and my eyeglasses weren't larger than my head.

The next night, more bonding over alcohol was demanded of us as the [REDACTED] family gathered at a watering hole near the hotel and sang karaoke all night long. This chilling experience climaxed with the entire [REDACTED] family (and the southern-bred The Duchess) singing along to some song called "Chatahoochie" by Alan Jackson while Jeof, Ken and I stared at each other in mounting horror, wondering when the joke would break and, say, Eminem would start pounding forth. When this did not happen, I was starting to have some doubts about my eight-year friendship with the soon-to-be Mrs. [REDACTED]. I can only imagine what Jeof was going through, though he put on a brave face, doing shots with the [REDACTED] brothers as if nothing was wrong. Ken still has the look of horror on his face, and doctors fear it may be permanent.

The next day, of course, was the wedding, and so we left Misty in the care of her family and took Jeof home with us. On the way home we discussed the weighty topic of who in fuck Alan Jackson was, ignoring The Duchess's protests that he was a way famous country singer as obvious lies. The most satisfying explanation Ken, Jeof, and I could come up with was that he must be a relative of Misty's; perhaps an uncle.

###

### THE WEDDING

This brings us, finally, to the wedding itself.

I will pause here for one unexpected moment to say that Jeof has been my great friend for upwards of 17 FUCKING YEARS (holy shit), and has earned my affection and respect several times over in that time, and I've known Misty for the only-slightly-less amazing span of EIGHT FREAKING YEARS, and in that time has proved herself impossible to drive away no matter how infantile and demanding I work to be, and has also earned my devotion several times over. No one was happier than me when they decided to make it legal and get hitched.

Naturally, however, no amount of love or affection or respect will stop me from telling the TRUE and UNEDITED story of the [REDACTED]-[REDACTED] wedding. I have a journalistic responsibility, dammit, and I will never betray it. As long as it's funny.

We had all taken rooms in a nearby hotel. By 'nearby' I mean, of course, 'within an hour's drive' since this was Bumfuck, New Jersey–not even [REDACTED] Bumfuck, which at least has cable TV, but pure, unadulterated Bumfuck, where the fucking mall is the cultural center of the area. The Duchess, Ken, and I arrived around 2 PM, and I was immediately dispatched to procure a shawl for La The Duchess, who had forgotten hers and was pretty sure she'd end up with both arms amputated if she didn't have something to throw over herself. Ken [REDACTED] took this opportunity to accompany me to the mall and effect an amazing physical transformation with the mere purchase of a new pair of stylish glasses, and I thoroughly enjoyed asking everyone throughout the wedding if they'd noticed Ken's new glasses, which usually caused them to jump noticeably and swear that they hadn't realized Ken was even present at the wedding.

I bought a shawl at Macy's, and The Duchess seemed almost weepy with relief that I hadn't screwed up what would turn out to be my only real task during the whole wedding. I was a little miffed that she had such low regard for my abilities until she reminded me that only a few weeks earlier I'd been unable to lift my arms above my head without passing out. The Duchess and I dressed in our finery and she was whisked away by the girls for photos, leaving me and Ken in the care of the Groom and his party. We gathered in the Wedding Suite, made a lot of jokes about each other's tuxedo, and shared a solemn toast of Scotch with Jeof, who spent the rest of the day pretending he wasn't about to throw up.

We were transported to the site of the wedding by one of Misty's uncles (determined, after careful questioning, to not be named Alan Jackson). Being men, we left for the photographing about half an hour late, and then hit a wall of traffic, which I was convinced had to be the trapped citizens of Bumfuck trying to escape from their hellish existence, though others in the car seemed to think it was just mall traffic. This didn't make any sense to me, though, because malls are terrible places, and I can't imagine anyone actually going to one.

Upon arriving at the chapel, we were hustled outside by the photographer for photo opportunities in the freezing cold air, snow swimming frostily about us. It was cold. And when I say it was cold, I mean it was soul-chillingly cold. When we were done, none of us cared anymore if Misty and Jeof got married or started shooting at each other. We dragged our blackened and frozen limbs back to the hall, where the girls gigglingly removed themselves to the Bridal Ready Room, where they apparently drank champagne and plotted against me, but more about that later. The boys...well, the boys had nothing to do. So we just stood around and paced and played with our ties and made lame jokes at Jeof's expense, and eventually all dozed off in a big pile near the stairs, where we were found by the unsurprised women about an hour later, when people had begun arriving. We then made a pathetic effort at ushering (which we thought for a time was called ushing) and then received the five-second rundown on exactly what we were doing. It boiled down to standing still for 15 minutes and then walking 15 feet with a bridesmaid on our arm without tripping over our own feet. It was an arduous set of requirements, but we managed them. Well, I leaned rather heavily on The Duchess as we walked off, but that's understandable. It had been a long day.

###

### THE RECEPTION

You rarely need to know more about a Wedding Reception than whether the bar is open or cash, but this time there were plottings afoot, mainly involving The Duchess, the Bride's garter, and myself. The food was excellent, the DJ less obnoxious than usual, and for a change of pace I knew a large proportion of the people in attendance, so I was having a fine time absorbing all the Jack Daniels in the place when the throwing of the bouquet was announced. I knew that The Duchess, to whom I have pledged my troth (amongst other things), was out on the dancefloor without having to look; simply for the joy of torturing me I knew she would be there. I should have known that the girls had been plotting, because that's what girls do: They plot. The bouquet naturally was lobbed girlishly right into The Duchess's waiting hands, and I was pushed out onto the dancefloor to receive the garter recently extracted from Misty's leg. Jeof at least did me the honor of not even pretending to throw the garter; he just walked over and handed it to and gave me a hug. Although maybe he was implying that I couldn't be trusted to actually catch the ball, having seen me play sports in High School gym. In which case I'm going to sucker punch him when he gets back from his honeymoon, and then run away and hide from him.

I good-naturedly shoved that garter as far up The Duchess's leg as I could, and was then informed that I'd chosen the wrong leg. Random Wedding Rules like that are amusing to me, seeing as they spring up whenever it's convenient for the women. So I allowed myself to be chastised for ignorance by the DJ and then sat down so The Duchess could place the garter on my leg. Which I enjoyed. I'm wearing the garter now. But don't tell anyone. They wouldn't understand.

After that, the only thing I remember aside from the cheerful sight of the bottom of my glass is a Filipino tradition called the Money Dance. While a small part of me suspects that this tradition was cooked up by Jeof and a few of his uncles in the bathroom about five minutes prior to the reception, I have to admit it was brilliant! The gist is, people pay small amounts of money to the Bride and Groom (which they pin to their clothes) in exchange for a dance. I thought things like that only happened at Mafia weddings, but there you go. You learn something new every day. I paid Misty ten bucks for a spin around the dancefloor. About one dollar a second, and I was terrified the whole time of getting stuck by the dozens of pins covering her body, which explained my shaking and stammering. Or perhaps it was the buried memories I have of Misty in Terrifying Anger Mode, bubbling up and assaulting my psyche. Or maybe it was the gallon of liquor sloshing around inside me–the exact reasons don't matter, dammit! There were hundreds of Filipinos waiting to dance with her anyway.

###

Somehow, it was all over too soon. We all piled onto the hotel's shuttle bus and took a long, scenic tour of the back roads of New Jersey, insulting the newly minted couple as best we could. Back at the hotel, we assaulted the bar in the lobby and squeezed out a few dozen more cocktails before they closed up shop. A few more toasts, a few more hugs, and The Duchess and I stumbled up to our room to sleep. Lord knows when the rest of them wandered to bed, and really, it didn't matter. It was after midnight, and their day was over. Congratulations to Jeof and Misty, with all our love.

# American Wedding Confidential #12: Who's Gonna Drive You Home?

PIGS, as a connoisseur of weddings and wedding receptions, I know full well that it isn't necessarily the booze and the band that make up the soul of a wedding, it's the people sitting at your table. Sure, an open bar is the main inducement that gets my ass to the church in the first place, and a good band or DJ is a must to keep me from falling into an alcoholic doze complete with open-mouthed snoring. But it's the entertaining freaks you find yourself saddled with for a few drunken hours that really make the difference. All the free booze in the world isn't as entertaining as one really good Freak.

Legal Counsel The Duchess's friend Martha was getting married not too far from our home, meaning we could stuff ourselves full of crabcake and get home within twenty minutes, no fuss, no muss, and be in bed reading before anyone even realized that someone had filched a bottle of wine or two from the bar. These sorts of opportunities to debauch in our own backyard are rare, and we were excited at the prospect. Not even discovering that there would be a complete Catholic wedding mass prompted us to sneak out the back door. Well, it prompted me to try, but I was discovered on all fours by The Duchess (who must now be referred to as 'The Duchess', because The Duchess says so) inches away from the side exit of the church, and I believe only the presence of Jesus' disapproving, sad eyes kept her from hurting me terribly. But I digress. The point is, we stayed for the ceremony, and thus made it to the reception, where the real fun began, because The Duchess and I were seated at The Table of Misfit Guests.

###

Every wedding has a Table of Misfit Guests; I've even sat at one or two prior to Martha's nuptials. The TMG doesn't necessarily mean the people seated at it are Freaks–there's usually a specific Freaks table at any self-respecting wedding, sometimes shielded from the Normals by thick Plexiglass, sometimes located in the kitchen. But it's there, so while the people seated at the TMG may be Freaks, they may not be. And I'm not saying that simply because I sometimes find myself seated there, dammit. Basically, the TMG is for those guests who have an isolated connection with either the groom or the bride, and they don't mix well with everyone else. Often they are attending the wedding stag, as well, which just makes everyone uncomfortable.

The TMG at Martha's wedding was easily identified because a) half the people assigned to it decided to not come to the wedding, and b) we had Crazy Drunk Woman as a table-mate. To be fair, we're not actually sure that CDW was actually clinically insane. But she sure was drunk.

The rest of the table was more or less normal, and we were in the midst of the usual awkward introductions ("Hi, my name's Jeff and I'm not nearly this sweaty, usually.") when CDW announced, loudly, that she had four small children, that the small children were with her mother for the evening, and that she was getting a drink, did we want one. Since the rest of us all had cocktails already we demurred, which she took badly, demanding that we all drink with her. The general sentiment was that this was the one night out she was ever going to have, and she was hell-bent on making the best of it, and anyone who got in her way was going to get hurt. As she toddled off to the open bar to load up on booze, the rest of us looked at each other nervously, and eyed the exits.

CDW returned with a bright pink 'concoction' that was all booze, no kidding around with juices or sodas or what have you. If you lit a match near it, CDW would have died in a small explosion. She sucked on the little straw supplied with it as if it was her only air supply in the place, told us again about her four small children, and began eyeing the lone single man at our table the way a dog will patiently stare at you when it's pretty sure you've got food hidden in your pockets. The Single Guy, as we'll refer to him, was a nice middle-aged friend of the groom's who liked to ski and was immensely proud of his two college-aged sons, and who possessed an immense amount of patience, believe me. From that point on, CDW's attentions were mostly focused on the Single Guy. She persistently monitored his alcohol intake and urged him to dance with her, which he did, confessing later that he just couldn't resist a good band.

The Duchess coaxed me out onto the dance floor as well, and then tried to contain her laughter as I twitched spastically and sweated, often not in that order. We kept an eye on CDW and the Single Guy, feeling sorry for the poor soul, and vowed to intercede if and when things turned drastic. The rest of the reception went along those lines: We slumped back to the table to eat a course or have a drink, CDW demanded that we all drink more, faster, here, take a sip of this concoction, which could be used to fuel your car home tonight if need be, then The Duchess and CDW dragged me and the Single Guy back out onto the dance floor, where we flailed about helplessly, trapped, as usual, by women. Finally, however, the reception came to an end and the lights came up, leaving CDW blinking in confusion.

I was driving, so I was sober as a judge, which meant that for the first time in ages I'd failed to make a complete ass of myself at a wedding reception. It felt weird, to have the lights come up and not have everyone staring at me in disapproval. The Duchess and I held a quick conference concerning our worry that CDW was going to drive herself home despite the gallons of rum and vodka she'd poured down her throat...or, more probably, would drive herself into a tree, or into us. I'd overheard earlier that she was heading into Hoboken after the reception, so I made a fateful decision and offered to give her a ride into town. Being very drunk, she immediately collapsed into effusive 'you-are-my-best-friend-ever' mode, thanking and assuring us that she'd appreciate it, she just had to find her friend and let her know that she was going off on her own.

As with most of my rare moments of goodness, I quickly regretted it, as CDW proceeded to wander the emptying reception, stopping every three feet to have a conversation with someone. The conversation might have been this:

CDW: Are you my friend?

Person: No.

CDW: Want to be?

Person: Jesus, no.

I'm only guessing here, because I didn't actually hear any of this conversation. All I know is that The Duchess and I stood for about ten minutes, coats on, keys in hand, and watched CDW pinball from disinterested party to disinterested party, apparently completely unable to identify a total stranger from her good friend. Said 'good friend' obviously being partially blind, since they couldn't see CDW wandering the dance floor like Mr. Magoo, squinting at everyone hopefully. When we finally reached the exasperation point and approached CDW to inquire which decade, exactly, she'd anticipated leaving the wedding, she looked at us as if she'd never seen us before, grabbing alarmingly onto the lapels of my jacket and supporting herself on them. For a horrible moment I was pretty sure she was going to ask me if I was her friend, long-lost and quite missed, but then she recognized us, and apologized profusely, once again assuring us that she was just going to look for her friend and then we could be on our way.

We watched her toddle off, and I shot The Duchess a look. The look, loosely translated, said _We're going to wait an hour just so she can puke in the backseat, aren't we?_ and we shrugged, linked arms, and walked out, leaving CDW to her own devices. I think I did a little jig on the way out.

# American Wedding Confidential #13: A Very Special Episode

DATELINE, HAWAII: Right up front, let me say that most of the place and street names in Hawaii are all the same, and I could never remember or pronounce them properly. Thus, throughout this article I will refer to all things Hawaiian in a modified Ignoramus Engrish in order to avoid the strain of remembering which place was called Wainamalo Bay and how in fuck you spell Wainamalo anyway. I mean, every street in the town of Kailua on Oahu began with the letter 'K' and ended in the letter 'A' and had about sixteen syllables in-between, and The Duchess and I spent a great deal of time driving around sounding like we had marbles in our mouths as we attempted to pronounce the street names as they whizzed by. It was quite sad, in an ugly-American kind of way. Fairly amusing to the locals, though. So, instead of saying 'Wainamalo Bay' I will say something like 'Wee Bay' or, perhaps, White Sand Blue Sea #1. Or maybe I'll just grunt "Umma umma" and jab my finger at a map, and hope that you're psychic.

Yes, I got married. In Hawaii. The rumors on the Internet are true, except the part about Julia Roberts flying in to break up the marriage in a rage. That's a complete fabrication. But the rest of what you've heard— the smuggling, the arrests, the kidnapping plot, and yes, even me getting ejected from the plane for unruly behavior—all true. Sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.

###

### Little Packets of Love

Lord knows there's nothing I like better than a good, long plane ride, preferably packed full of screaming infants and really, really fat tourists, but why stop there? Why not go for the gusto and make that flight as hideous as possible, and make it a nonstop flight from Newark, NJ to Honolulu, HI. Why not, indeed. Ten hours in coach on Continental flight #15, sounded delightful—but turned out to be not so bad. I don't know whether it was the wise decision to watch Just Married almost immediately, which stunned my brain into a flatlined coma-like state with its sheer terribleness (although I must admit that Ashton Kutcher's delivery of the line "Thanks. . .Pussy." cracks me up, this dog proves for once and for all that the frighteningly skinny Brittany Murphy has the personality of a dust mote) or the mesmerizing regularity with which the snack cart bumbled its way down the aisle (the solution to all problems, Continental Airlines seems to have determined, being 'feed the stupid fucks in coach': Flight Attendant: Uh-oh. That huge fat man in row seventeen is complaining about the kids behind him kicking his seat. Other flight attendant: Oh. Load the cart up with those little packets of cookies and make sure he gets a double shot.) But the ten hours went by pretty quickly and we rubber-legged our way off the plane with only minor symptoms of Space Madness.

Unfortunately, the Space Madness, minor case as it was, prevented us from finding our way to the house we were staying at (a friend's place, generously offered to us rent-free) and we quickly found ourselves driving down a mysterious Hawaiian road with no idea where we were headed, and comforted only slightly by the fact that we were on an island, and therefore could only go so far wrong before the ocean barred our way. It was two in the morning, Jersey time, it was cloudy and overcast instead of sunny and brilliant. And I was in freakin' Hawaii. To get married. The world had gone mad.

The long drive through Oahu as we tried to figure out where we were gave me ample time to contemplate how and why I'd come to Hawaii with Legal Counsel The Duchess, referred to from now on as The Duchess. Was I in Hawaii to get married because I'd peaked on the physical attractiveness scale long ago and needed to take my last shot? Because of psychotropic drugs slipped into my coffee over a long period of time? Because I physically feared The Duchess? Probably a little of all of these reasons. Or, perhaps, it was love. Love and a slight fear of The Duchess.

###

### I Have Never Seen So Many Japanese People in My Life

My knowledge of the State of Hawaii prior to this trip was gleaned almost completely from The Brady Bunch, Hawaii Five-O, and, of course, Magnum P.I., so you can imagine my surprise upon actually arriving there. The first thing you discover is that Hawaii has been overrun by Japanese tourists. They're everywhere, and combine them with the huge native Japanese population descended from farm workers imported in the 19th century to work the sugar plantations after the native Hawaiians began dying off from various diseases brought to the islands by all the foreigners, and you have a Wall of Japanese from which there is no escape. Most of the signs on Oahu are in both English and Japanese, and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen stunned Japanese people, an experiment I tried several times.

The second surprising thing about Hawaii is that we stole it from the natives about one hundred years ago, in a series of shady dealings that the United States apologized for in 1993, officially, via congressional decree. For god's sake, we apologized for it. Of course, it's easy to apologize for stealing an entire country just because we wanted somewhere cool to go on vacation nearly 90 years after the fact. Now, I know that the USA pretty much stole its entire country from various indigenous peoples, and I'm somewhat proud of that—not so proud of the genocidal wars we inflicted on those people, but kind of proud of the brash and cunning way we swiped whole states away from heavily armed and organized people—but the fact that we actually apologized to the Hawaiian people is pretty fascinating, don't you think? I'll have to look into whether or not we apologized to other natives as we rampaged our way across the continent. The gall involved is stunning.

###

### The Best Eight-Dollar Shoes Ever Made

Once we found the house we were staying at, tucked away in a ritzy residential neighborhood in Kailua, we set about enjoying ourselves, which was incredibly difficult, considering that a gorgeous beach was a ten-minute walk away at Lanikai, Honolulu was a forty-minute drive away, Kailua was a cute little town with all sorts of shops and services, and, in general, Oahu being a lush, unspoiled place, for the most part. As we ran around the island I was struck dumb often by two separate and opposite reactions. On the one hand, I often came close to losing control of the car as we sped down the freeway and some stunning vista of perfect blue water and lava rocks came into view, and my feeble mind would flatline at the beauty of it all. On the other hand, there was something wrong with the modern scum of civilization ruining it. Here we are on some island paradise, and yet there are more automobiles here than you can believe, (Oahu has the most autos per capita in the USA), and people just park them anywhere. Driving anywhere on Oahu gives you a tour of parked cars ditched anywhere they'll fit, some of which very obviously will never move under their own power again—abandoned? Who knows? And the awesome majesty of the mountains and perfect sky and water is marred by the complex webbing of wires and poles that makes civilization as we know it possible. I don't have a solution to this—see my many ineffectual musings on the necessity of civilization so that I may have coffee every morning—but it just seems wrong that the first thing we do with perfect natural beauty is fuck it up with cable TV and carbon dioxide emissions.

Still, we could walk to the beach from our temporary home, and stood one night in near-total darkness, listening to invisible waves lapping at the beach, awed by the immensity of the ocean—no wonder the Hawaiian people thought Captain Cook was the Water God, finally come to celebrate the harvest with them back in 1778 when The Resolute arrived with the English Captain. It's easy, I think, to worship the ocean here.

We had four days before the wedding, and set out to explore possible locations for the vows. We should have chosen a spot before arriving, but felt that you had to see the place before you got married there. We went to several beaches and scenic points before choosing our spot, a strangely deserted, absolutely gorgeous beach about twenty minutes away. We made our arrangements with the good minister we'd hired to do the paperwork and then set about enjoying ourselves until the Big Day. We swam a bit, we ate a lot, we went to Pearl Harbor and lacked conversation of sufficient gravity for some time. We napped quite a bit and did a little hiking, during which The Duchess often chastised me for being soft, usually around mile seven when I started to whine that I was chafing. She would turn to look back at me and say, "Move it, Somers. I'll leave you for the birds if I have to. It's only been seven miles or so."

The Duchess can be quite cruel.

That's why I married her. Early on I discovered that thong flip flops can quickly become torture devices when you try to walk more than five or six feet in them, so we ducked into a ramshackle store and paid eight dollars for a pair of foam sandals. These quickly proved themselves to be The Greatest Pair of Eight-Dollar Shoes ever created. I've never encountered a situation that my trusty pair of Converse Chuck Taylors couldn't handle—those shoes will save your life, if you put your trust into them, and don't you ever doubt it—but these ridiculously cheap products of the Great Republic of China proved themselves to be very close in terms of usefulness and comfort. We walked all over Oahu in those suckers.

###

### The Man Without Pants

We had forbidden our friends, family, co-workers, and everyone else in the Universe to come with us. This might seem strange, and certainly caused something of a stir of confusion among our friends and families, but we had our reasons. Principal among these reasons was our sanity. There was also my concern that the Somers Clan had not been gathered together in one place since 1788, the occasion of which was marked by tidal waves, hurricanes, and freak hailstorms. I didn't want to find out what might happen with the Pacific Ocean so nearby. Using the quatrains of Nostrodamus, we selected Thursday, May 22, 2003 as our wedding day. We started the day off by taking a long walk through the town, and then it was time for The Duchess's drunkening, as she was very nervous about the whole affair. Exactly what she was nervous about I'm not sure, since I was on an island, reducing the flight risk. Perhaps she was afraid that once we were pronounced husband and wife I'd turn to her and shout "Yeehaw, woman! Kick off dem shoes and git me a beer!" This fear was obviously misplaced, as I hadn't thought of it yet. That would come later, and in fact my thinking of that phrase later on in the evening explains several of the bruises I returned to the mainland with.

About a half hour before Go Time, we drove over to the secret little beach our Minister had suggested to us. He asked that we not publicize where it is, exactly, because although it is a public beach, it's secluded and deserted and not even the locals seem to know about it, and he doesn't want to ruin it by allowing hordes of Jersey People descending on it like locusts, a sentiment I can understand. There we found Reverend Aki and the photographer-cum-witness, shook hands all around, and headed down to the beach for the ceremony. This took about an hour, and was held on a deserted beach with the waves rolling in and The Duchess weeping as if she'd just lost a puppy, and me struggling manfully to phonetically pronounce the Hawaiian phrases that Rev. Aki was feeding us. After pronouncing us man and wife, we all posed for some pictures and the Rev. Aki left us, wishing us well, in the hands of the photographer, a nice guy named Tony who was sincerely excited about our blessed event and helped us pose for more pictures on the beach, in which The Duchess' ruined mascara makes her look a little demonic.

Then we hopped in the car and headed for the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu, a beautiful and HUGE hotel that contained the restaurant we'd made reservations at. At first, everything went swimmingly as we motored down the highway singing along to the radio. Then the Tiki Highway Gods fucked us, which they had been doing on a regular basis since we arrived. The highways in Hawaii have this very strange feature: The exits on one side don't match the exits on the other. For example, when going east on H1 in Hawaii you will see a sign for Punchbowl Street. Going [REDACTED] on H1, however, you will not see that exit. Why this is, only the Tiki Gods know. All I know is, on our wedding night The Duchess and I had to take a scenic tour of Honolulu airport because we got very lost, but once we'd managed the U-turn everything was fine. This did mean we were a little late for dinner, so after checking in we split up: I ran up to the room to drop off our overnight bags, and the Duchess ran to the restaurant to claim our table. This seemed like a simple plan, but the Hawaiian Village is, as I said, huge, and finding your way around it is close to impossible. The confusion was exacerbated by the fact that the employees themselves seemed only dimly aware that anything outside of their immediate sphere existed, and provided no help whatsoever in finding anything. It took me twenty minutes to find my way from the room to the restaurant, and when I finally located the damn place I just breezed in, shorts and sandals and all.

The second I sat down, rolling my eyes at The Duchess to indicate the amount of effort involved in getting just that far, the manager was at my elbow.

"Good evening, Mr. Somers," she said breathlessly, "I must inform you that we have a dress code requiring slacks here."

The Duchess and I stared down at my bare, downy legs and the borderline-filthy sandals I was wearing. It's not often you get me into a classy joint, that much was obvious.

"Uh, I'm sorry," I said lamely, licking my lips to buy time. "But, uh, I don't even have a pair of pants with me."

We'd only packed for the night, after all. The manager stared at me for a moment, her smile fake and somewhat pained. Then she recovered and nodded cheerfully. "That's all right," she chirped, demurely draping my napkin over my hideously bare legs. "No problem." I glanced at the new wife and caught a brief glance of an expression I've come to know well as _Oh yes, I love that incompetent man of mine_.

We were relieved that we hadn't been ordered from the restaurant, or forced to go purchase a pair of $300 leather slacks from one of the boutiques in the hotel complex, but the manager immediately conferenced with the wait staff and I was pretty sure the conversation went like this:

Manager: See the guy over at 22?

Staff: Guy from Jersey.

Manager: Yes. Please note he is not wearing pants.

Staff: He refused to go change?

Manager: (dramatic pause) No. He does not even have a pair of pants!

Staff: No!

Manager: (shaking head) Jersey.

From that point on, while I couldn't be sure, I thought that the wait staff was looking at my legs all evening long. I imagine that I am still renowned in Hawaii as The Man Without Pants, the man who didn't even own pants, the man who might not even be aware of the existence of a garment known as pants, for all they know. I'm pretty sure I'm famous.

On the other hand, the dinner was fantastic. We tipped generously and drank like fish, and the next morning we ordered an obscene amount of room service, just because we could. And I did not wear pants then, either, just because I could. And because I had not brought any.

###

### The Incredible Burning Nipples of Jeff Somers

We stayed another week in Hawaii. We snorkeled, we hiked, we ate like pigs at great restaurants, we ate like pigs at little roadside stands. We confirmed the natives' opinions about the mainlanders, and Jersey people in particular. We even tried our hand at surfing, which is really, really difficult.

All this activity, of course, had a physical price. Let me tell you about the physical price my wedding trip and honeymoon extracted from me, to frighten all the young 'uns into lives of quiet solitude, contemplating original sin or something. Let me tell you about the blisters on my feet rubbed in nice and deep before I found the magical eight-dollar sandals. Let me tell you about the double-red sunburn I got on the top of my head as a living testament to my thinning hair. Let me tell you about the double- red sunburn on the back of my legs from snorkelling in the sun, so the plane ride home was torture. Let me tell you about the sore muscles all over my body from hiking and climbing and hiking.

Most importantly, let me tell you about my burning nipples.

On our last day in Hawaii, we had a 9 PM flight and an entire day to spend prior to it, so The Duchess decided she might as well learn how to surf. We were, after all, near Waikiki Beach, and there were a lot of places to learn how. So, we got up early and trekked to Waikiki at 9 AM, The Duchess paid her $35 and I got the camera ready. The lesson went well, and I was pleasantly surprised about an hour later when lo and behold, there was The Duchess riding a wave like a pro! Or at least not like a complete amateur. She looked like she was having so much fun, in fact, that I decided to just rent a board and join her.

What the hell, I thought. I knew I'd never be able to actually surf, but I thought it would be fun to clown around a little and enjoy myself. How wrong I was.

Half an hour later, I dragged my sorry ass from the water with a huge bruise on my ribs, several smaller contusions, and the aforementioned burning nipples, which had been rubbed raw on the board as I spastically attempted to stay on the fucking thing as walls of water crashed down on me, sometimes containing other surfers. That board irritated the fuck out of my nipples, bubba. When I got back to the beach I thought they were going to burst into flame and fall off. The good news was the intense nipple pain took my mind off of the rising bump on my ribs and the other aches and pains, not to mention the six gallons of seawater I swallowed in my desperate attempts to breathe underwater.

Don't tell me I haven't suffered for love. _I've suffered for it, bubba._

###

There were some adventures after that, mostly having to do with my apparent subconscious desire to destroy the house we'd been using, involving a washing machine, some red T-shirts of The Duchess's and some white afghans that were never meant to be washed...or dried, for that matter. But who wants to hear a story about newlyweds waiting three hours in a vain attempt to dry bedding while making their flight on time becomes less and less likely? No one, of course, especially since it makes me look like a moron.

So, we'll just say that after two amazing weeks we left Hawaii a married couple, and the abuse of Your Humble Editor, who once claimed he would never marry, began at the hands of his loving friends. And continues yet. And will probably continue ad infinitum. That's okay; all this negative energy just makes me stronger. Bubba.

# American Wedding Confidential #14: Fear & Loathing on Long Island

One thing I've learned over the long, excruciatingly boring years of my life is that every now and then a wedding will appear that for one reason or another you don't want to attend. Sometimes it's the loathsomeness of the couple getting hitched. Sometimes the date and timing of the ceremony conflicts with one of the many interventions people hold for my benefit—and I do enjoy a good intervention, especially if I can manage to show up inebriated for it. I still cherish the memory of one intervention when I quietly listened to the whole spiel and then vomited all over the participants in a moment of serendipity I'll be hard pressed to surpass. Sometimes the reason you don't want to attend a wedding is simply because it's too far away.

There is, of course, a difference between a wedding being held in a very cool, far-away land like, say, Italy, and a wedding that is simply two hours' drive away from us here in Hoboken—two hours is long enough to be a pain in the ass without getting us far enough away to make it count as a 'trip'. If I ever get invited to a wedding far enough away to count as a trip, I'd have to go to severe lengths in order to hide the invitation from my wife The Duchess, who would of course happily sell pints of my precious blood in order to be able to go someplace. When it comes to travel, The Duchess and I are playing touch football as Skins and Shirts and we're on different teams. Unfortunately for you, I am on Skins.

Recently we were invited to a wedding on Long Island in New York City. If you're unfamiliar with the New York City area, let me sum it up for you: There is Manhattan, which you can imagine as a huge circle crammed full of stuff, and then there is this foreboding gray space around the circle which represents the Outer Boroughs. People who live in the Outer Boroughs would probably disagree with this assessment, but that's sort of like me when I defend Hoboken as a center of culture and activity: We're both lying, both to you and ourselves. I don't know much about what goes on in the Outer Boroughs, and I don't really want to know.

The couple getting hitched out there is a really nice, enjoyable pair of people, though, and since we really like them The Duchess and I were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and drive out to Long Island to attend their wedding, which we were honored to be invited to. This was no ordinary wedding, though, and we quickly bit off more than we could chew. The happy couple was a mix of religions: Hindu and Catholic. The plan was to have a Catholic ceremony at a local church, and then, six hours later, have a Hindu ceremony at the reception hall prior to the cocktail hour. The assumption being, I'm sure, that anyone with a significant amount of travel ahead of them could just retire to the hotel they'd surely booked and relax during that period of down time.

The Duchess and I, who fancy ourselves bright, decided to cancel the hotel reservation. The Duchess had a long race to run the next day, and we thought it would be better to just leave the reception a little early and sleep in our own beds before getting up godawful early to make the starting line. So after the lovely Catholic ceremony, we had six goddamn hours to wile away before the Hindu ceremony and the reception. When things like this are months away, it's easy to dismiss them and assume you'll find a way. We're so innocent. So wrong. Six hours anywhere with no place to call your own is bad enough, but six hours on Long Island is exceptionally onerous. I'm not trying to insult people who live on Long Island or anything, but...move somewhere else. Anywhere. You owe it to your children.

I would hesitate to classify the six hours we spent wandering Long Island as the longest afternoon of my life, but I'm sure that when I die it will be in the top ten longest afternoons of my life, right up there with every job interview I've ever gone on and every Religion Class I had to take back in High School. These afternoons combined will make up 35% of everything flashing before my eyes as I expire, and that sucks.

We went to the movies for a few hours. We went to a strip mall—and were accosted by religious fanatics in the parking lot of a Borders books where the following exchange occurred:

Religious Fanatic Girl: Hi! I'd like to tell you about our church—

The Duchess: We're not from around here. We're from New Jersey.

Religious Fanatic Girl: Great! I—

The Duchess: One more word, and I'll make sure you see God.

Religious Fanatic Girl: . . .I'll pray for you.

We arrived early at the reception hall and got to see the Hindu ceremony from the very beginning. The room was, naturally enough, split pretty evenly between the Catholics on one side and the Hindus on the other, although the Groom's brother (and Best Man) was sitting right in front of The Duchess and I. There was a lot of talking and laughing during the ceremony. . .from the Hindu side of the room. The Catholics, used to treating every religious ceremony as a prelude to guilt, suffering, and death, were stone-faced and respectful. The Best Man was ready to leap across the room and throttle his family and friends, but was distracted from this by the threat of a horrible death through immolation.

Part of the ceremony involved an open flame, into which the bride and groom would throw various food items, each symbolic of something. After each offering, they would lead each other in a circle around the fire. I'm not sure what the rules about indoor fires are in New York City, but this one quickly grew alarming, especially when the bride's flowing Indian dress was taken into consideration—there were several moments when we all thought we'd be the next offering, in some sort of Indian Jones-like conflagration. The manager of the hall hovered nervously nearby, trying to inspire everyone to extinguish the flames but clearly worried about being branded a religious persecutor.

###

In the end we all survived, and settled in for a more traditional cocktail hour and dinner, although the dance music definitely had an Indian flavor to it, not that anyone minded. The Duchess and I found ourselves at a table that could not have been more clearly The Sundry Friends and Acquaintances We Don't Know What to Do With table, although there were two members of the wedding party parked there as well—a canny tactic I encourage all wedding planners to adopt, as it makes the Sundry Friends and Acquaintances feel a little more part of things. Still, we had a long ride home and an early wake up the next day, so around 10 pm we made our way gingerly to the happy couple and apologetically took our leave. We got home through the grace of god, because lord knows I still don't have any clue how to get on the Long Island Expressway when you're actually in Long Island. I'm assuming whatever deity spared us a fiery death back the reception hall was guiding us home, though it may have been sheer chance.

# American Wedding Confidential #15: Smile for Boobies

FRIENDS, these days I doze in semi wedding-retirement. It's been years since I was last asked to don the powder-blue tuxedo and bring my yellow eye, throbbing liver, and disco moves to a wedding. This is due to two obvious conditions: One, everyone I know is a lot older now and most of the folks who were ever going to get married have done so, and until the divorces start kicking in there's slim pickings; and two, I've obviously been added to a great number of security Watch Lists and been disinvited.

Still, I stand ready at a moment's notice to attend weddings and bring my own special brand of Cool to the occasion. When former TIS distributor, sometime publisher, and longtime confidant Dr. clint "Doctor clint" johns, Ph.D. (mixology) announced he was getting married I immediately booked tickets to Australia and bought him a Chip 'N Dip.

By the time I remembered that clint doesn't live in Australia and never has, I was already hungover and penniless in Sydney, forced to sell the Chip 'N Dip and several pints of blood for a return ticket.

###

The actual wedding was held in San Diego, California. When I mentioned to The Duchess that we had a wedding to attend in California, she promptly made plans to go early and spend some time shopping in ritzy neighborhoods. This was not unexpected, as this is the standard Duchess reaction to any sort of travel that involves airplanes. When The Duchess thinks of airplanes, she's swept up in a movie-montage involving the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song and vignettes of her walking around with ever more shopping bags.

###

### CHILDREN OF THE PLANE

So, we left New Jersey on a sunny Thursday morning, filled with somber wedding thoughts and, in The Duchess' case, thrilling thoughts of exotic La Jolla shopping. La Jolla, in case you're like me and did not know, is like a minor Mecca for shopping enthusiasts—an open air mall, if you will, filled with nothing but high-end boutiques. She kept murmuring La Jolla in a dreamy way as we stowed our carry-ons and settled into our tiny, nightmarish seats, and I immediately began trying to get the flight attendants' attention to begin liquor requests, my shirt pocket stuffed with five-dollar bills.

And then, the children began boarding.

There is nothing like being strapped into your 2x2 piece of plane real estate, trapped by FAA regulations and surprisingly strong flight attendants, and watching a parade of damp, wailing children board your plane. It was surreal. One by one, they were led on board by their wan, pale parents and deposited in what would theoretically be their seats during the six-hour flight. One plump family of five grimly took the row directly behind us. The kids immediately began screaming and kicking the seats.

I am not making this up for effect. Their asses hit the seats, and they began screaming and kicking. This continued for _six fucking hours_.

The parents were not completely useless. Attempts were made to bribe and entertain the dumplins, but they all failed, and after the four-hour mark Mom and Dad began fighting about some vague issue concerning her sister, while the children devolved into a mini _Lord of the Flies_ situation. By the time we landed several seats were on fire, a flight attendant was locked in the bathroom, weeping, and someone had shaved an "X" in the back of my head.

###

### SMILE FOR BOOBIES

By the time we got to the lovely resort the wedding was being held at (located on Shelter Island) it was dinner time, so we called for a cab and headed into San Diego's downtown for dinner, then went back to the hotel for some sleep. The Duchess had shopping on the brain:

ME: Well, the menu looks amazing.

DUCHESS: La Jolla!

ME: Uh, I'm going to have another Bushmill's.

DUCHESS: La Jolla!

We'd arranged to rent a tiny car from Enterprise the next day so we could tool around a bit. Enterprise has a pick-up and drop-off service which is great, and we were collected from the hotel by an affable kid who'd started work a few weeks before. He wore an approximation of office clothes I remembered well from my own early twenties (random slacks, well- worn and ill-fitting dress shirt, mismatched socks and old, well-used shoes) and a pair of wrap-around sunglasses, and was perfectly happy to offer us his opinions on everything ranging from the drivers you got stuck behind on Shelter Island Road (everyone drives 12 miles per hour, according to him) and his after work activities (mainly jet skiing). He also had one of those rubber bracelets on his wrist—you know, the ones like Lance Armstrong's Live Strong? This one said: BOOBIES MAKE ME SMILE.

I suspected our driver did not take his car rental career too seriously.

La Jolla was about a twenty-minute drive from San Diego proper, but due to the fact that California apparently expects drivers to exhibit psychic abilities it took us about half an hour. This is because the signage on the California highways is bizarre: Signs leap up at you with no warning, signs face the wrong way, signs are on roads in such a way that you can only see them after you've somehow guessed at the turn to get on the road. It was madness. No wonder California is going broke: No one can find their way to work.

La Jolla was everything The Duchess wanted, and it was also a beautiful little town on the ocean. We had a spectacular day wandering, capped off with a visit to a Karl Strauss brewery/restaurant for some of their delicious Amber Lager.

###

The next day was the wedding. We were still on New Jersey time, so we woke up at 5AM ready to go, which left us. . .eight hours to kill. The Duchess, in a rookie move, had told her job where she was traveling to and got stuck going to a convention center for a few hours to help out in a professional capacity, and I had to drop our rental car off and hitch a ride back with Smile for Boobies, which went smoothly enough.

We didn't know exactly what to expect from the wedding: clint is a brilliant fellow who thinks I'm amusing and creative, which makes no sense whatsoever. It's like a bend in the space/time continuum: Someone with a serious Ph.D. who is now working at an Ivy League university in an academic capacity (as opposed to my only Ivy League career choice: Laboratory Experiment Volunteer for Beer Money) should not find me and my zine amusing, yet there we were. I kept wracking my brain, trying to remember if I owed clint money, and if this was just a convoluted collection scheme.

As it turned out, the ceremony was, in my professional wedding-goer opinion, lovely. Understated, elegant, and touching. The Man of Honor played Beatles songs on guitar and ukulele as the guests gathered and took their seats, the groom's party were typically stiff and uncomfortable in their finery. We had a false start where the men all gathered up front and stood around for five minutes trying to look competent, which is pretty typical for weddings, and when the entrances began with the ringbearer, a preternaturally cute little boy, who ignored the carefully arranged white carpet and barreled right on through the crowd with a determined look on his face. The ceremony itself was performed by a friend and involved a very serene "sand ceremony" with layers of sand representing the merging of two lives. This kind of nondenominational, make-of-it-what-you-want ceremony is my preferred way to go. Why does no one ever think of the Guests? We're the ones who have to sit through everything. If you want a lengthy religious ceremony, do it in private like decent people.

Ahem.

The reception immediately followed right through the doors out onto the patio. This is by far my preferred way of doing things. No hours of lag time, no driving miles with crappy directions—just step out into the sunshine and there is the future love of my life, the bartender at the blessedly open bar.

###

### BARTENDER, I LOVE YOU

I walked up to the bar and said, "Tell me you have bourbon back there."

The bartender regarded me for a moment, as if weighing his options, and said "Jim Beam okay?"

I kissed him on the mouth and stuffed a dollar in his tip jar. Little did I know that under California law, we were then legally married. I didn't care. He refilled my glass every time I went back there, and via numerous thirty- second conversations while these transactions were completed, I came to know his entire life story.

Inside, our assigned table had been decimated by Swine Flu. Out of eight invitees, six came, but the other four were forced to leave within the first hour or so, leaving The Duchess and I alone with my many, many empty tumblers. At one point before everyone had left clint suddenly appeared, making an illegal unofficial visit to us.

"I'm not supposed to be here," he said furtively. "Alexis is in the bathroom. I'm supposed to wait for the official visiting of the tables. I hear you married the bartender."

"Ixnay on the arriagemay," I hissed, glancing at The Duchess. "She never needs to know."

He winked. "Gotcha. Whoops, there she is—gotta run! I was never here."

He dashed a smokebomb to the floor and when everything cleared he was sitting at the raised dais in the center of the room, looking smug.

The other guests at our table were mostly former employees of Tower Magazines, which once distributed _The Inner Swine_ under Dr. johns' guidance before being swallowed by corporate ineptitude. I found I was a minor celebrity after about three of these exchanges:

ME: Hi, I'm Jeff Somers.

THEM: _The Inner Swine_ Jeff Somers?

ME: Yep.

THEM: We hear you married the bartender.

###

### TOUCH ME I'M SICK

The Duchess, sadly, was not feeling well after weeks of marathon training in bad weather, and her stamina wasn't what it could have been. As a result we elected to make an early evening of it—not so early, either, since we were on New Jersey time. We looked around and found the bride and groom engaged in various official wedding activities and decided to just take a slow walk along the patio, and ended up back in our room, exhausted. We're not kids any more. We need our rest.

Our flight home the next day was at 7AM, so we were out the door before sunrise and on the plane before local authorities could detain me for anything. The flight home was peaceful and blessedly free from children, and our cats were still alive when we got home. All in all, a really wonderful trip centered on a beautiful wedding, and we wish our old distributor/publisher much happiness, and are proud to make clint the official TIS Linguist. Which he tried to decline, but failed.

# Excerpt from _Chum_ by Jeff Somers from Tyrus Books

www.chumthenovel.com

### I. Mary's Wedding

Tom and I were standing on the church steps, smoking cigarettes and enjoying the ozone smell of a late October storm coming. I was freezing, but was manfully pretending otherwise. We leaned over the wrought-iron railing, blowing smoke into the wind and tossing sentences back and forth.

"Bick cleaned up pretty good," Tom said.

"That's the consensus."

It was the kind of day that let loose a little patter of rain every time you ventured out to do something and then produced a thin, watery ray of sunshine the moment you retreated under cover. We were each wearing black suits, white shirts, shined shoes. We were each smoking cigarettes from the same communal pack. We were each about the same height and weight. Standing elbow to elbow, leaning over the railing in the same postures, we were each slightly aware of being twins.

Suddenly, Mike skidded out onto the steps, breath puffing into steam. His tuxedo was askew.

"You see Bick out here?"

"They've lost the groom," Tom said to me, quietly.

"Again."

"Haven't seen him, Mikey," Tom said over his shoulder.

"I hear he cleans up nice, though," I added. "Mare still in hiding?"

"Who knows – no one can get into the women's room to check."

We heard Mike's shoes skid back into the church, panicked, and resumed our weather watching. It was peaceful.

The bride was, at last report, weeping in the bathroom, having a vague sort of commitment crisis. Guarded by bridesmaids Flo and Kelly in pink dresses that sounded like paper tearing whenever they moved – and which resembled a marshmallow from some breakfast cereal – and attended only by the maid of honor, no one was getting inside for a first-hand report.

"Hope someone secured the Communion wine," I said.

"Bick, I'm sure. We should be checking the closets and other hiding places," Tom replied.

Clicking heels and we both turned in time to see Denise sweep outside in her little black dress and the cape she used to great dramatic effect.

"There you are," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "You could be lending a hand, you know. It's chaos in there."

"Hey, hon," I said, turning to lean with my back against the railing. "That's why we're out here. The chaos."

"We could only increase the chaos," Tom added, flicking away his cigarette. "We're chaos instigators."

"You look gorgeous, you know," I said.

She snorted in the way I knew meant she was pleased. "Well, I guess it's best that you two stay out of trouble. Have you – "

"Bickerman hasn't been out here," Tom said.

She snorted again, somehow communicating her opinion of Tommy (low).

"Has the bride reappeared?" I asked.

She shook her head. "The official cover story is that she's heaving her guts up from nerves."

Tom barked out a laugh. "That's fan-tastic. The bride is puking her guts out. Thanks so much for your concern."

I smiled. "You gals were out pretty late last night, rumor has it."

She eyed us cooly. "Didn't I forbid you to play with Tom anymore?"

I nodded. Somber. "You did."

She turned to go back inside, and Tom and I turned to lean against the railing again.

###

"Do you suppose the reception's on no matter what?"

"What, open bar, free food, blitzed bridesmaids and all?"

"Sure."

I sighed. "Tom, I don't think so."

"We've got to set this right, then. I didn't wear my school clothes just to admire the god-damn parking lot."

"A noble suggestion."

A moment of silence, then, between us.

More high heels, and we turned in time for the breathtaking view of Miriam, Maid of Honor. The younger of the Harrows sisters, just eighteen and painfully gorgeous. Tom and I held ourselves upright through practice and determination and I made a conscious effort to keep my mouth closed.

"Guys, crisis passed. We're on in ten minutes."

I nodded feebly. "Thanks, Mir."

We didn't dare watch her ass as she walked back into the church. It would've burst us into flame.

Tom and I turned to lean against the railing again, and lit up our final cigarettes.

"Crisis averted," he said.

"Still a bad omen."

More shoes on the floorboards. Tom and I passed a tired glance between us before we turned around to find Luis beaming at us.

"What are you DOING out here?" he said in his heavy Spanish accent. "The wedding is going to happen soon."

"We're waiting for a cable from the governor," Tom said.

"A stay of execution."

Luis, as was common, had no idea what we were talking about, as his English, while excellent, was not subtle. His common reaction was to smile broadly, which he did.

"Come inside. You should not wish for bad things to happen to Bick and Marie." He nodded sadly. Their names came out beek and maree. "Life is very hard."

I put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll meet you in there."

Luis seemed to be struggling for something more to say when Mike, bald head shining in the weak sun, a perfect shade of rich brown, skidded back onto the porch, almost tumbling down the stairs. The three of us just looked at him.

"Conference," he panted. "Bick's in the bathroom, now."

###

We walked through the corridor toward the basement bathroom like Important Men, in nice suits, grim demeanors. We walked in step. Next to me, I could feel the Glee, dark and tense, rising up in Tom like wings spreading. I was wary of the Glee. The Glee had done Bad Things before. Although usually amusing things, I had to admit.

The bathroom was at the end of the dim corridor. We stopped outside of it. Tom tried the handle, shook his head at us, and we both pounded on the door.

"Bick!" Tom shouted. "Bick, you punk-ass motherfucker I'm fucking wearing dark socks for you so this had better involve bloody puke!"

"Go away!"

The voice of Bickerman. Nasal but always at top volume, it took a moment before I could put my finger on what was subtly different about it: an almost complete lack of sarcasm.

Tom looked at each of us in turn. "I'll need five minutes."

"The door," Luis said somberly, "it is locked."

Tom shrugged, and with a sudden jerk banged his shoulder against the door. It gave with a small cracking sound, and Tom slipped inside, slamming the door shut behind him.

We took up our positions: Mike and Luis standing together in front of the door, me leaning against the wall across from them, smoking a cigarette. On the wall directly across from me was a stark white and red sign: NO SMOKING. As usual, I ignored it. We all did, always. It had become a silent game without rules that we played, smoking where we weren't supposed to.

There was no sound from within that we could detect. There was a vague smell of licorice which was maddening, as it had no obvious source.

"Do we have a backup plan in case he goes out the window?" I asked.

Mike looked stricken. "Why do we need a plan?"

"Because the girls will need someone to tear apart if he bolts, and he won't be here."

Luis nodded gravely. "It will be horrible."

On cue, the sound of high heels and the temporarily twin forms of Kelly and Florence appeared in their pink bridesmaid uniforms. Mary's best friends, Kelly dating back to their paste-eating heydays in Mrs. Fox's kindergarten class, and Florence credited with teaching Mary how to roll joints in college. Between paste-eating and joint-rolling, they had rounded Mary's education off nicely, and were rewarded now with the most ridiculous outfits ever fever-dreamed by a designer. Humiliated, they had each been terrors from the moment of the first fitting. We'd spent the intervening weeks hiding from them.

"Is he in there?" Kelly demanded as they drew up before us. Kelly had a sharply turned up nose and dark brown hair, giving her an automatically snobbish appearance. She always appeared to be looking down her nose at you. She was curvy and sometimes seemed to like it and sometimes seemed to think she was hideous.

I exhaled smoke and tried to stay calm. "We're not at liberty to say."

"Oh, for god's sake, Henry," Flo snapped.

Flo was a tall girl, so tall she'd obviously been made fun of during her formative years by cooler, shorter classmates. Dark red hair, gone to gray but carefully dyed. She still walked bent over, trained through the years to hide her height. She wasn't exactly pretty, but her sheer length of leg was enough to make her attractive, as was the fact that she could and often did drink any one of us under whatever table happened to be available.

"We had time for Mare's bullshit," I offered reasonably. "Why not Bick's?"

Luis, not quite grasping the exchange, smiled broadly, as if enjoying the show.

Flo and Kelly each stiffened, regarding me with dangerous expressions. "Mary," Kelly said through clenched teeth, "experienced a momentary existential Moment of Doubt which had to be worked through. Her fiancé is simply being an ass."

The women were always so sure of themselves. It was intimidating. I woke up uncertain. I didn't know how to function, how to dress. You fought back when you could.

"How about: They're both asses, as we're all standing outside the john like idiots."

"Henry – " Flo managed, and just then the door opened. Tom stepped back into the corridor, shutting the door behind him and taking the scene in. He was flushed.

"Ladies," he said with a slight nod of his head. Then he looked around at all of us. "He'll be out in a minute."

I grinned at Flo. "He'll be out in a minute."

# About the Author

Jeff Somers (www.jeffreysomers.com) was first sighted in Jersey City, New Jersey after the destruction of a classified government installation in the early 1970s; the area in question is still too radioactive to go near. When asked about this, he will only say that he regrets nothing. He is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, The Ustari Cycle from Pocket Books, and Chum, coming from Tyrus Books in Fall 2013. Jeff's published over thirty short stories as well; his story "Sift, Almost Invisible, Through" appeared in the anthology _Crimes by Moonlight_ , published by Berkley Hardcover and edited by Charlaine Harris and his story "Ringing the Changes" was selected for _Best American Mystery Stories 2006_ **. He survives on the nickels and quarters he regularly finds behind his ears, his guitar playing is a plague upon his household, and his lovely wife The Duchess is convinced he would wither and die if left to his own devices, but this is only half true.**

www.jeffreysomers.com

http://www.innerswine.com

@jeffreysomers
