A Wedding In The Mountains

The bride looks hot in a drunk way

He’s wearing a dicky bow.

“You know, the average heart beats 100,000 times a day, Frank,” he says.

I’ve only known him since the start of this meal, but already, he feels okay about subjecting me to his painful facts. His name is Geoff, and he is a university Dean.

I’m not sure how he expects me to react. Am I to ejaculate into my Black Panther y-fronts? Am I supposed to raise my eyebrows so high in surprise that they vaporise a whole row of Starlink satellites? Am I supposed to choke on my tiny sandwich, die and be reborn as an intergalactic time-travelling dwarf called Phillip?

That’s the thing about weddings. You don’t know who they are going to seat you next to or opposite.

Thankfully for us, my wife and I are seated at a table of eight with five vegans, and that means that the share plates of pulled pork, duck pancakes and arancini balls are left to us, and Geoff.

Meanwhile, the vegans are served stacks of zucchini and capsicum with cashew nut sauce. It’s fucking depressing. And ethically speaking, I’m an honorary vegan — I’m right there with them and their cashew sauce. But, logistically speaking, I’m a caveman.

“How’s the — erm — the — nightshade platter?” I ask with a smile. They all seem happy enough, but I know at least one is considering a spontaneous revolution.

I’m prepared for it. I keep my knife under my jacket in case I need to defend the meat.

Everyone is dancing at this wedding.

All the kids whoop and scream that’s my jam or some shit when Flow Rider comes on.

“What the fuck is that shit?” I say, and everyone, apart from Geoff, scowls.

“Frank, calm down,” says my wife.

“What?”

“You’re upsetting the vegans,” she whispers.

“Do vegans not like swearing?” I ask them all.

Nobody answers.

All the twenty-year-olds with tight skin, testosterone, endorphins, and their hopes and dreams are flapping their joints around to Flow Rider, and I realise this is their retro music. They’re whooping to Flow Rider like we whooped to The Beatles or The Stones. It’s disturbing and makes me feel like a dusty clock in the back of someone’s closet.

Then, I realise there is no mobile phone coverage at this wedding cos it’s up in the mountains.

“So, that’s why all the young folk are dancing,” I say.

There’s fuck all else to do except drink and dance. No tweeting or TikTok at this wedding, thank Christ.

The booze is free and high quality, so I am obliged to always have two drinks on the go.

My tools of the trade are cider and champagne. The champagne is older than I like. It’s the kind of crap rich people wet their knickers over. It’s dark yellow, like the piss of a dehydrated zebra, and it tastes like wood and monocles.

I prefer the young stuff myself — transparent, almost like water and playful, fruity. Still, it’s free, and you can’t complain. Sometimes it’s fun showing indifference when a wealthy person gives you the privilege of tasting their vintage crap.

The bride is horrifically drunk and high on cocaine, and she is doing the rounds.

She gets to me and doesn’t care that we’ve never met, but she tells me she loves me, kisses me on the lips and gives me a hard-on. I turn around to check if my wife is looking, but she is talking to one of the vegans and eating an arancini ball.

The bride asks me what I do, and I tell her I’m a Wedding Crasher like Vince Vaughan.

She laughs like a nitrous whore, turns round to Geoff, the University Dean, and says, “Your husband is so funny.”

Geoff says, “Thank you. I didn’t know you knew my husband,” but the bride has already moved on to the vegans.

My wife wants to dance.

She grabs my arm and pulls it out of the socket while I have a mouthful of pulled pork which tastes like chewing a used tissue soaked in barbecue sauce. Usually, I’d decline any kind of dance, but they’re playing Time After Time. It’s not the greatest, but it reminds me of the film This Is Where I Leave You, which is my jam.

Some young whippersnapper has spilt a drink on the dance floor, and my legs go from under me.

I slip backwards and smack my head on the floor, and everyone is laughing at me because they’re all arseholed on old champagne, and I’m wondering if I’m about to die because I can smell my head.

I’m afraid to move my neck in case it’s broken.

“Can someone call a paramedic?” I whisper, but my wife pulls me to my feet again. I’m alright for now, it would seem, but I think to myself that someone should clean that up. Like the last person though, I don’t say anything cos I’m too arseholed on champagne and cider.

“Fuck this,” I say, leaving my wife and her friend dancing to Icehouse. I go out into the cold night and light up a joint. I take up my phone and remember there’s no coverage in these damn hills, so I start writing this article instead.

Then Geoff, the Dean, comes out.

“Is that Marijuana?” he asks, and I explain that as a Dean, he should know that’s derogatory, and the preferred term is cannabis.

He likes that intellectual titbit, and he has a big toke.

I ask Geoff if he thinks taking a shit at a wedding is acceptable.

He tells me he never took a shit in public for twenty years, but now he’s liberated, he shits everywhere. We laugh about the way he phrases it.

I head to the toilet cos I can’t take it anymore.

Toilets are fun places to be stoned but average when you don’t have phone coverage. All the world’s music is on the cloud now, so I’m sitting on the throne, listening to Phil Collins echo from the main room and the sound of young hillbillies snorting cheap speed off a toilet seat next door.

I’m trying to shit with the hiccups. I have to lean forward to help the shitting process, yet I need to sit up straight to cure the hiccups. So I try to blend the two, and the shit coming out is like a string of sausages, each separated by the moment of hiccup, which causes the sphincter to shrink, creating a small gap between each sausage.

And I know I’m going blind from constantly staring at this phone, but I still can’t shit without it.

What does a phoneless shit even look like these days, anyway?

I’m writing this damn story in notes and wondering what people did while shitting at weddings in the past.

I finally head back out, and things are wrapping up.

It’s that last bit where lonely people sit around or dance in an effort to get laid.

“Shall we go?” my wife says.

I look around for Geoff, the Dean, to say goodbye. I notice he is dancing a stoned dance with the groom’s mother who must be eighty at least. I also see they are right on the glint of liquid on the floor and I know at least one of them is going down.

Fortunately, Geoff, not the old bat, hits the deck.

He lands awkwardly on his elbow and I hear the crack. My wife and I both make a face. But Geoff is fine, for now. He is too arseholed on old champagne and weed. No doubt he will feel it in the morning.

‘Someone should clean that up,” says Geoff. Then he keeps on dancing.

I laugh and shake my head, down the rest of my cider and champagne, and we walk out.

“Well, that was alright,” I say.

We walk for ten freezing minutes to our hotel, and I notice I’ve got mobile coverage. My wife goes to sleep, so I smoke another reefer and put on This Is Where I Leave You, and I finish writing this damn article.

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