cool dry place

A wedding is no longer a one-day event. It spans months and is composed of several preliminary gatherings in plain clothes before a catered climax in coordinating colours. It is a time for celebration, but also for reflection, and for integrating the results of these reflections into your everyday life. A wedding is like Black History Month or the International Year of the Volunteer.

Last night we attended a buck and doe. People wore cowboy hats and threw coins at liquor and thrashed and twirled shouting “Hey Minesing! Jump on it!”

It’s pronounced “jum-POWN-it”.

Until very recently, these parties were a foreign concept to me, but now I attend them each time one of Sherry’s high school friends gets married. Each one so far has occurred in Minesing’s old-timey schoolhouse turned event hall slash public library. Each one consists of raffles and games and a cold-cut platter and Sherry trying to drink me social. And Big & Rich. There’s always Big & Rich.

Author’s note: Thornton’s public library is also its fire hall. Yo Thornton. Jum-POWN-it.

Now, I had a good time, and I thank our hosts for their hospitality and I congratulate them on their impending nuptials. But, this being the Internets, I wish to register a complaint.

If I attend an event whose theme is “Harvest Moon”, and I put up with the driving techno beats and bright flashing lights and with the Sherry trying to teach me (while we’re both full of rye because that’s the only way I dance but actually lets put some irony quotes around “dance” so it looks more like ‘dance’ cause lets face it I am man-Elaine) to two-step during songs that are either in three-four time or composed of driving techno beats, and I walk in and see on a stage a guy and a computer and a turntable and a milk crate full of old records, I expect to hear some Neil Young. Maybe a little ditty called “Harvest Moon”.

I’m just sayin’, is all.

We went mingling and ran across Ryan the unlicensed veterinary surgeon. I kept my mouth shut because I fear that man. He is strong and goateed and has a putty knife spattered with avian blood in the back of his truck. He’s a contractor who wants to work in real estate. He is my human antithesis. I think he could kill me just by looking at me and I don’t have the right sunglasses to do the same thing to him.

Sherry is a tact sandwich. She shouted over the din, “Have you hacked apart any more injured animals?”

His girlfriend hid her face.

I tried to will her to stop talking but my eyes aren’t very expressive when it’s dark and anyway she wasn’t looking at me. I silently cursed all our human ancestors who didn’t use their telepathy organ (located in the abdomen, naturally) and allowed it to shrink to vestigiality. “Appendix” is Greek for “non-verbal communication at parties.”

“After you told us that story,” Sherry continued, “Regan wrote about you on the internet and he sometimes writes fiction so everyone was all, ‘Did that really happen?’ and we were all, “Yeah. All true,’ and now all our friends think you’re a terrible person.”

I waited for him to annihilate me with his eye-lasers or at least hold me down and go at my wrist with a boxcutter, but he smiled. He reiterated that he was just trying to be humane.

He said he put a Wendy’s cup over the bird’s head so it couldn’t see.

We talked about real estate for a while.

Our friend Lindsay drove us home. She had Big Shiny Tunes 3 in her CD player, with the volume turned down low. I rested my head on her running shoes in the back seat and argued with Sherry over whether 19 is a prime and sang low and off key over Fastball’s “The Way”.

because I’m still in love with you
on this harvest moon…