Stag and Doh!

      Well, it looks like I'm going to a wedding in a couple of weeks-- in Pennsylvania. It's a family affair, and it means a very long drive in cramped quarters, and Doctor J is not particularly enamoured of long trips anymore. (Commuting does that to you.) It's not so much that I mind making the trip or seeing the people. I don't, however, especially like going to weddings anymore, especially by my stag self, my perpetual bachelorhood calling attention to itself as much, if not more, than if the groom suddenly developed a case of uncontrollable priapism. ("Magnetic north? It's over--- there.") It's that Don Pedro symptom I've mentioned here before, only exaggerated, because everyone and their cousin's-cousin's-half-sister's-mentally-unstable-aunt has to approach you with trite instructions not that far removed from Benedick's "Get thee a wife!" Ah, yes, as if that's going to happen. There's a better chance Paris Hilton will tour Bangladesh with her very special readings of Neil Diamond's greatest hits. That, however, is neither here nor there: it's the questions, the stares, the craptacular spectacularity of it all. It wouldn't be so bad if I could go in, wish everyone well very quickly and bug out quicker than Charlie Sheen after a mandatory roll with the wife. But, nay, nay, 'tis not so easy. 'Tis ne'er so easy. Which means I'll likely be making frequent and many trips to the bar to toughen my tolerance. Gawd.

      Don't get me wrong: I'm not without my own romantic streak, and I'm not so cynical about things that I'm negative about such ceremonies from the get-go. I'll even try to keep myself from such negativity by hoping the best for the couple and occasionally imagining that Peter Cook is conducting the service. ("Mehhhh-wij...") I dunno. These things just make me very, very uncomfortable, especially with those when are yous aimed at me explicitly or implicitly at every turn. My uncle, the father of the groom, asked me when he was last up here that question, and I turned my old joke on him, the one about what my given name says when you spell it backwards. He liked the joke-- everyone does, it seems-- and it got me off the hook for a bit as it commonly does. It never, however, works as profitably with female friends and relatives, all of whom seem to get a look of matronly Oh, you will-wisdom in their eyes before they proceed to pretend they know your future better than you do. Aaargh. The only way to avoid such stuff, in my experience, is to be as glib as possible. I have a funny feeling that joke's gonna get a lot more mileage on it soon. It may soon be time to roll back the odometer.

      So: two weeks or so until the trip. Two weeks to spackle over my cynicism and rehearse my chipperness. You can do this, Doctor J, you can do it. Just remember one beautiful word: Mehhhh-wij. God bless Peter Cook.

      (Curious aside: have you ever noticed that when a couple marries, we generally refer to it as "a wedding ceremony," and yet when we inter someone we refer to it as "a commitment ceremony"? Suggestive, n'est-ce pas?)