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.

Wedding Bliss

Marriage is a many splendid things.

I still can’t believe that I’m married. It’s going to be a year this September since the “BIG Day,” and for the most part life is exactly as it was prior to the pomp and circumstance of our “small” wedding. Our wedding was small in the same way that a 747 Jet is smaller than Howard Hughes’s “Spruce Goose.” Even though I’m not really a big party person, I must admit that I did enjoy the wedding more than I thought I would.

But a wedding is a short celebration, when compared to “the rest of your life.” It’s only the first centimeter of the tip of the iceberg. After everyone goes home, and you clean the nonsense off your car—you have to go and live your life.

Right away, people were bombarding us both with a very stupid question: “How does it feel?” I guess we were supposed to feel different, but at the time it was like turning 16 or 25. We just keeping marching forward, there is no sudden, dramatic transformation—and being married is a bit like that or so I thought.

Eventually there are things that you notice. There are little things, like having the same last name and being introduced as “Mr. and Mrs.”

As time passed, people quit asking us “how does it feel?” But it’s kind of ironic that they stopped, because a few months later things have begun to feel different.
And then it happened—I had what I’d consider to be the first “real” incident of my new married life.

Up until last month, if someone had hired me to write a dictionary entry for the word “marriage” (or better yet, put a gun to my head and asked me to define it), my response would be pretty much: “Marriage is when two people make an everlasting commitment…blah, blah, blah” you get the drift. My answer to the question “what is marriage” would have been bullshit. But last month something happened. It was so perfect, that later as I thought about it, I realized that it is the actual definition of marriage.

Jason’s No-Bullshit Definition of Marriage: Marriage is when you are told “TAKE MY DOG OUTSIDE SO HE CAN SHIT,” then when you get back inside after cleaning up a big, steaming pile of dog crap you are immediately asked “GIVE ME $20!” and you not only don’t kick this person’s ass, but you actually fork over the money with no qualms.

That’s marriage.

But just incase you’re confused let me reiterate—marriage is being told to do unpleasant things, doing them, AND then for some reason paying $20. Now, if someone other than my wife ran up to me and said “Take my dog outside so he can shit” and then followed that up with “Give me $20!” I would not only NOT give them any money (or take their fucking dog outside) but I’d kick the crap out of them. I would literally kick them so hard in the gut that they would shit themselves.

And yet my wife can not only get me to essentially PAY HER to take her dog out (because after I do it, I’m asked for money), but she does not get a massive beat-down. Somehow, as if by some kind of “marriage magic,” she is able to get away with it.

Now please understand, my wife is a very sweet lady and I lover her very much. She’s very patient and tolerates my insanity quite well. And I don’t regret marrying her for one second—but somehow marriage allows her this insane “free-pass.” After this particular, picture-perfect definition of marriage, incident happened I sat back and shook my head. I just couldn’t believe that she not only got away with it, but that I felt absolutely no ill-will towards her.

It’s really quite amazing.

So maybe the short-hand for “Marriage is when you are told “TAKE MY DOG OUTSIDE SO HE CAN SHIT,” then when you get back inside after cleaning up a big, steaming pile of dog crap you are immediately asked “GIVE ME $20!” and you not only don’t kick this person’s ass, but you actually fork over the money with no qualms” could just be that “marriage is amazing.”

Content Coming July 31!!!