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Brush With The Weird Part Deux before/after From the encounter with the insane, I thence went to my former best friends wedding. Thither thus, wither thouest go? Exposition. I say 'former', because when I was going through a spot of despair, shortly after he asked me to stand in his wedding (my despair not related to this) , just as I had pushed all but two people away (fewer to say goodbye to, you know, makes it easier...), he took it upon himself to sanctimouniously kick me out of his wedding party, because, as he said, "Man, I hadn't heard from you, and plans had to be made." Well, fuck me silly. So, nothing I could say, what does one man say to another about how to run their wedding? Nothing, nothing.
Apparently I was to be the best man, but, regardless, should I have been, the position is not one to be held in high regard, because the best man does not indeed receive a phone call in a month, nor when he is in dire times and dreaming of peice at the end of a smoky forty five in a wooded area somewhere with a 911 operator on mute wondering if she got a crank call. Let some other devalued creep take the position, I am not worth a hundred million dollars, and as such, like most of the rest of the population, take it in the ass everyday. For this, and a litany of other betrayals, the nome de plume 'best friend' is in absentia. So I take a nap, and get a call from a friend's girlfriend who is standing in his wedding, and the guy whom I now feel is my neeeeew best friend, (smacking of junior high here, all I need is a bad haircut and an extreme love of hygeine, clean people, those teenagers. All about the shower and washing of body parts...and while I'm on a tangent of a tangent, let me say the ennumeration of guy friends at any age over twenty is an unrewarding task, and should never be mentioned around anyone.), and we go to the wedding. Catholic service in a presbyterian church. Apparently Rome asks a lot of its people to get them hitched. Protestants don't care if you fuck with a rubber, and get you in and out quickly. Yeah for protestantisim. Christ wouldn't like you either. And a kid squirreled around, as kids will, thumping his head on the wooden pew with a sound of a rifle shot. A thump that would make me dizzy, which he played off quite well. I tried not ot laugh outloud, but wasn't entirely successful. Dumb little bastard got what he deserved, just as I did when I was his age. Don't try to show off to me how you run your mom, dude. Anyway, the bride, ever immature and something of a wallflower almost passed out up at the altar. She literally turned green. And as they turned, to present themselves to all assembled, the left side of the church, her family, apparently all in cahoots, had donned large fake red wax lips, causing her to gasp. They, apparently, thought that this was very funny. I didn't, but then, I think some things are funny that others don't, and that's okay too. Later on, at the reception, where there was no DJ, as my former best friend was to cheap to pay for one, instead burning some CD's and setting up his stereo system (bad idea) for people to dance to, which no one did. Someone hooked up some polka's, which I detest, that is a diatribe for another time. And I sat next to the family, her family, or a large portion of which, who had a remote controlled fart machine. A fart machine. Let me say that again: a fart machine. It was a little black box with a remote control, designed to simulate all the uprarious fun of gastric noises without all that bother of smell. I don't think they got the hang of it, though, passing it to one another while someone pressed the button. Then they tried to pass it to my table, not receiving much success. They did, however, think so highly of the fart machine, that they ordered the photographer over to take a picture of it with me, my friends and the fart machine. There is often a paradox in my mind that there is oftentimes much more money than suaveness in this world, and they bore this hypothesis out. At one point, I looked over, and they had a new toy, some sort of jel in a bag, that one crams into a cannister, and in the process of doing so, more fart noises are generated, as if we hadn't had enough already. As I watched, a mixture of discovery and disgust playing through my thoughts, I noticed the fervor and enjoyment glide across the faces of the sixty five year old man and the eight year old, both of whom got large amounts of delight from their ass noise simulators, while the rest of their table roared with glee. And it dawned on me. My former friend had married into a family of geeks. Which is a bitter pill to swallow on one's wedding day, and there is always a bitter pill to swallow, but usually it is in the form of some genetic freaks wandering about, or some mental infirmities, bats in the family belfrey, that one sometimes does not seem to learn about until that fateful day, whether kept deliberately in the figurative or literal basement, only let loose to roam when functions of civility and society require their presence. Look sister, (or brother) you're one of US now, and they belong to you. (and you to them) Married into a geek family. A wealthy geek family, but a pack of nerds, the socially awkward. I sat back after my meal with a horrendous jones, the hoots of the easily entertained abounding around me, a creature beyond there ken, and wondered silently about karmaic justice in all its weird ways.
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