Musings of a Groomsman

It recently occurred to me while talking with someone that I have a wedding approaching for a high school friend of mine who’s getting married in the spring of next year. It got me thinking about all the times I’ve been to a wedding (two), or been in a wedding (one too many), and just how much I really dislike them.

I was a groomsman in 2008, an experience which made me realize that the process of marriage can involve a couple of things: the first is the love and commitment of the two individuals coming together; the second is not so much a single thing, but rather a string of things aimed at putting me personally through Hell.

I don’t think I would have agreed to do it had I not been lured to dinner one evening by the bride-and-groom-to-be under mysterious pretenses. I’d been forewarned soon after by another friend of mine that they were going to ask me to be involved, but by that time I had already agreed to dinner, and so my fate was sealed. By the time they presented me with my little cookie — Will You Be My Groomsman? spelled out in black icing — and footed the bill for my meal, what was there to say except for “Yes. I’d love to.”?

This was months before the actual wedding day, but still there was no way out. Any excuse would have reeked of falsehood and done nothing but expose me as the petty ass who had to debate at great length whether or not to make up a lie to get out of his responsibilities after having received a free meal. And so, as the date drew closer, I went with my fellow groomsmen to be measured for a tuxedo that I would never wear again.

It’s not so much the money I hate having to spend; it’s the time. Money I can make again after a little effort. But the time itself? That I’ll never get back. And not only is it a wasted afternoon and evening, sweating inside clothes that makes me look like I’ve shrunk, Benjamin Button style, sometime between the fitting and the ceremony; but it’s also all the other little things, too. Like, for example, the bachelor party and dinner out with the fellow groomsmen, most of whom I get along with fine when my girl friends are there to buffer them, but whose stories of car mechanics and gay jokes (while neither excluding nor entirely malicious) grow thin after a while.

The reception might be the worst of it, though. Crowds by themselves are enough to keep me away, but to have to dance in front of them: that really makes me uncomfortable. There were moments when, while trying desperately to keep up with the commands from the Electric Slide, I found myself inventorying everything in my possession that I might use to shove into an available electrical outlet. I might lose the use of a limb, I thought, but at least it would spare me another three-minute eternity of “Pour Some Sugar on Me” or “Brick House.”

To the members of the audience who were either disinterested or able to keep off the dance floor, I must have looked pathetic. “Look at that poor retarded man,” they surely whispered across the tables, watching me writhe and shuffle to “Cotton Eye Joe.” Or maybe the kinder ones just thought, Well, it’s nice they let him join in on the fun.

In May of 2010, I’ll be part of another joyous union, this one along the southern, sandy coast of Alabama, a place that simultaneously thrills me and fills me with dread. The former due simply to the fact that I enjoy taking trips. The latter because, in my mind, the Deep South has never seemed an ideal place for a twenty-three-year-old homosexual, more than a little out of shape, whose eyes without prescription glasses are only slightly more valuable than a book of matches in a forest fire.

I agreed not so much because I had to, but because I really do want to be part of their wedding bliss. They are my friends. And I like being invited places. One thing that helps, beside the fact that it will afford me the chance to get away from my usual day-to-day life, is that the wedding and reception will be casual. No tux, and not a lot of people. I can deal with that. But if we somehow end up in a building, dancing in front of a crowd, I’m making sure to have at least one paperclip in my pocket and an eye on the nearest open outlet.