If you were to construct a graph illustrating my wedding attendance over the course of my life, and I can't think of any reason why I would except to illuminate this narrative, you would see a steady rise throughout childhood and adolescence as my mother blithely stumbled into matrimony several dozen times. I could be exaggerating here, I'm not sure; all I remember is an unceasing parade of drunken housepainters parenting on the Here's five bucks, get the hell out of here model.
The peak would be in my 20s as various friends and relatives made it official, including a goodly number of plus-one situations where I knew no one save my date. You would see a gradual tapering off in the 90s as I distanced myself further from polite society and its rituals in favor of the subterranean oozings of the tweaker, culminating in a thudding nadir and flatline after attending my last nuptials in 1998. Perfectly understandable that the invites stopped coming; save for carnivorous megafauna or armed thrill-killers, there's not many you want less than tweakers at your wedding.
It had been a good 12 years since that last joining of lives and hearts, a depressing affair involving a couple of 22-year-old co-workers making the worst decision of their young lives, when I got a call from a friend in Berkeley. He, a Catholic priest, was coming up to Mendocino, specifically Gualala, to officiate at a cousin's wedding and thought of me, the one other person he knew in the area. I should come as his guest, he said.
Is that even done? I wondered aloud. I never heard of officiants having plus-ones. You'll be my assistant, said the father. Well, that was good enough for me, and an interesting tidbit for my c.v.
If you find it curious that I have a priest friend, I'll just say that I wasn't always a degenerate dope fiend and he wasn't always a priest.
He's not exactly a Jesuit, either, if you know what I mean. I think he went to one of those offshore seminaries. He likes to party, too, within acceptable Catholic-priest limits, which are surprisingly elastic, as least as regards alcohol. The pot-smoking probably would have been frowned upon.
I don’t know if the church has modified its position on the issue following legalization or if that would require some kind of Vatican III-level earth-moving — probably, Rome is not known for making snap decisions — but if you've never gotten baked with a priest before you’re missing out. I could be generalizing, as Father Phil is the only man of the cloth I've gotten faded with, but somehow I feel that the sort of rigorous, dogmatic training undergone by seminarians pairs nicely with the Mendo sticky-icky. With that in mind, I made sure to have a few nugs of the finest when the wedding day rolled around.
I spun on down to Gualala fully loaded with the necessary prophylaxes against boredom, sobriety, and ennui; an eighth of bright-light-green bud of a strain called Retarder, a teener of crystal, and a cooler of Newkies (Newcastle Brown). The church was an attractive, nondenominational wooden affair tucked charmingly into a wooded glen, and when I arrived the padre was in the parking lot leaning against his car — a vintage Chrysler 300 — in blue short sleeves with a clerical collar, smoking a cigarette and looking pretty damn cool for a sky-pilot.
"What's the good word, your holiness?" I said.
“Saving souls, smoking bowls," he said. "Not really, though. I have to keep it cool at the Redemptorists. I only agreed to do this knowing I was going to get stoned. I presume you brought something, yes?"
"You presume correctly, Your Grace," I said, exhuming from my pocket and displaying the nugs. “Behold… Retarder! Leave us repair to the woods and ignite this greenery.”
Twenty minutes later the good father had lapsed into a pre-seminarian state and was giggling uncontrollably over some clever observation I'd made.
“Father Philly, gettin' silly," I said. "Alright, enough of this. Time to shape up, I can hear the guests arriving, you okay? Ready to bind these poor fuckers in holy matrimony?"
"Hell,” said the padre, smoothing his smock and running a hand through his hair. "Let's do this."
Phil's cousin was a pleasant, unassuming, fortyish gent with a broad smile that seemed to erupt with little or no provocation, a condition I attributed to nervousness. His intended was a Russian immigrant in sunglasses and sporting a haircut like Uma Thurman's in Pulp Fiction.
"Nice to meet you," I told her, shaking her extravangantly taloned hand. She tipped up her shades to reveal the eyes of a Komodo dragon and gave me the most probing, avaricious stare I'd ever experienced, seemed to recognize something and turned it into a sly little half-smile and barely perceptible nod. I shivered inwardly, feeling violated, and wondered what Phil’s cousin was getting himself into. Was this one of those mailorder deals? Probably it would be impolite to ask. Should I object during the objection phase on the grounds that she was a reptile, and were those objections even binding? Ultimately, and wisely, I decided to mind my own and just enjoy the festivities.
I was in the bathroom relieving myself before the ceremony when I felt a sharp poke in my back, something you absolutely don't want to feel in that very vulnerable and usually private condition. I spun my head around to see what could possibly be important enough to invade my space like that and saw the bride, Katja, standing there. "You. Give me some of whatever you got,” she said.
I staunched my flow, zipped up, and turned around. “Who the what now?” I said.
“Drugs. Give me some. I know you got."
I mumbled and stammered something noncommittal, feeling like the situation could not possibly be improved by giving her dope, and she actually started reaching for my pockets. I backed up and said, "Alright, alright. Calm down. Here." I pulled out my sack of crystal and handed it to her.
"Yez, now that's what I talk about," she said.
"Am talking,” I corrected.
"Huh?"
“You need to use the present participle. That's what I'm talking about."
“Shut up, you."
She held the bag up to the light, tapped it, opened it up, dipped in one long, curving talon and scooped out the majority of my stash, snorting it all in one mighty inhalation. Her heavy-lidded peepers began glittering and pinwheeling immediately and she handed back my severely depleted sack before addressing the mirror and turning her face this way and that. "Hokay. Getting married now," she said, leaving the bathroom without so much as a thank you.
“What the hell just happened?” I said aloud.
As it turned out, my title of “'assistant” was a meaningless sinecure and I wouldn’t actually be involved in sending those young hopefuls off into the seas of connubial bliss on the good ship matrimony, at least not actively. That was fine with me, because the way the bride was gnashing her teeth up there on the altar it looked like anyone in the general vicinity was in danger of losing a finger. She was visibly sweating, hopping from foot to foot, and she had a real bad case of the jittery eyeballs. That nailful of zip she'd so casually snarfed was no ordinary crank, but creature Bob's A-number-one, and when Bob gets to cooking, folks sit up and take notice, and when he grades it A-1, it’s Katie bar the door. I hoped her heart didn't explode up there. Phil’s cousin, looking extremely uncomfortable, had been gradually sidling away from his beloved and their joined hands were now stretched to the utmost, arms nearly parallel to the floor. Father Phil caught my eye, cupped his hand, and made a drinky motion. Good idea, I thought. I could use a beer. I was halfway out to the car when I realized he wanted me to get some water to cool down the superheated bride. I got the water and handed it to Katja, glad to finally be of service, and she threw it directly into her face. I knew exactly how she felt. Refreshed, she shook off the excess water like a retriever, squared her shoulders, yanked her intended back into place and said, "Hokay. Continue.”
The rest of the procedure went off more or less uneventfully, though Phil's cousin continued to look increasingly more distressed and confused. Well, if nothing else, he was in for a noteworthy wedding night.
I spoke to the padre a couple of months later, and he told me that apparently Katja's motives were less than pure and she’d done a bunk after liquidating a number of convertible instruments and clearing out their bank accounts. Needing grounds for an annulment, Phil was forced to admit to performing an unsanctioned ceremony in an unconsecrated, i.e., not Catholic, setting, and got into a little trouble with his superiors.
“Will you be publicly scourged?” I wondered. "Flagellated?"
"Nah, we don't do that anymore,” Phil said. "Pretty much I was just instructed not to conduct any weddings without express permission from the diocese.”
Boy, I never thought the Catholic Church, of all institutions, would lose its teeth like that. Sure have come a long way since the Inquisition. No wonder kids today are so undisciplined.
Although I'll be back in the swing of things and ready to dance the funky chicken and bunny hop once more, at my age the religious rites I’m likely to be invited to will involve more weeping and wailing than rice-throwing and drunken toasts. I’m considering having myself ordained in order to get invited to more weddings, and I'll be the most liberal officiant imaginable. Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere — will be my motto. In other words, if you want to get married to an octopus at the bottom of an abandoned salt mine on Midsummer's Eve, I'm your man.
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