Best man duties give new perspective
By PETER WICKS
This summer I was a best man at the wedding of a close friend. I say "a" best man because, by a somewhat unorthodox arrangement, I was sharing the honor with two other friends. But while we were three in number, we were one in purpose: We all wanted to make sure the wedding was the best day of our friend's life, while at the same time accepting the least possible amount of responsibility.
Two duties were absolutely unavoidable. Firstly, each of us had to wake up nightly in a cold sweat after dreaming of increasingly elaborate scenarios involving the loss of the rings (on good nights, involving the loss of the rings and Oscar Winner Halle Berry).
Secondly, we had to organize the stag night. The stag night tradition began in England as a ritual to ward off evil spirits, but that was a long time ago. In these less superstitious times the principal purpose of the stag night is to get the maximum amount of alcohol into the groom in the shortest time possible.
Traditionally, the stag night took place on the night before the wedding, but a full two weeks before the ceremony has become the norm in modern England. This gives the groom ample time to have his stomach pumped and let the hair grow back. Organizing the stag night requires a delicate sense of judgment: As best men it was up to us to navigate between the Scylla of a sober groom and the Charybdis of a dead one. (The bride was particularly insistent that the latter outcome would not be tolerated.)
We did not take on the challenge empty-handed. To aid us in our duties, we had acquired the Bottle Bong, a device of such fiendish brilliance it's hard to imagine how people ever got blood poisoning without it.
Deceptively simple in appearance, the Bottle Bong is in essence two rubber tubes, a short thick one and a long thin one which fits into its side. Used correctly, the bong is capable of thrusting the entire contents of a beer bottle down the user's throat in a matter of seconds. (I don't fully understand the scientific principle involved, but I think it has something to do with quantum gravity.) With the possible exception of the Resident Evil series of video games, science has never been so much fun.
This powerful device was ideally suited for our nefarious purposes, and yet on the back of the packet were printed the following words: not for use with alcohol. As shameless abdications of responsibility go, this was almost heroic in its brazenness. It occurred to us that other companies would do well to learn from the Bottle Bong's manufacturers. For instance, Smith & Wesson might have avoided all their expensive legal difficulties by the simply selling their handguns in packaging which clearly explained that they were "under no circumstances to be used with bullets."
Our attempts to do permanent damage to the groom's liver were based solely on reverence for tradition; there was no malice involved. But that is not to say we were without grievance; the groom had after all managed to organize a wedding which, at three to zero, had what is probably the worst ratio of single best men to unmarried bridesmaids in human history.
Now, I don't want to come across as another hormonal, sex-obsessed guy, but those of you who have never watched close friends your own age get married will just have to take my word for it that the aphrodisiac effect of such events is so well-established as to constitute a scientific law. Since the wedding, all three of us have been feeling rather, well, not to put to fine a point on it, frisky.
Shortly after the wedding Andy actually asked out a complete stranger on the street. She said "Yes," which is the sort of thing that happens in movies, except that she wasn't on the run from corrupt government operatives from whom she had stolen crucial computer files. Or if she was, she didn't mention it.
Meanwhile, Mark has announced that he's looking for a wife, which is fine except that I have images of him going up to women and saying things like, "I was wondering whether you'd like to get some coffee sometime, because I'm terrified of dying alone." It was his birthday last month. I sent him a copy of "The Rules."
As for myself, I spent most of the summer watching "The West Wing" on DVD and developing a serious crush on Stockard Channing. It may seem like a pipe dream, but according to the Internet she's had so many husbands that from a statistical point of view, it's almost inevitable that we'll get married.
Peter Wicks is a graduate student in philosophy. He can be reached at pwicks@nd.edu. Tonight Peter will be performing in "Is This Thing On?," a stand-up comedy show at the Alumni Senior Club. The show starts at 9:30 p.m. and features graduate and undergraduate performers. Entry is limited to those over 21.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, December 5, 2002
