How to Do Things With Words [edited]
The wedding ceremony seemed to go well, and many folks complimented the ceremony as "unique." The bride and groom recited vows that were written in a rhyming, Dr. Seuss-like style, while I wore a large Cat in the Hat hat (photos forthcoming). Folks seemed genuinely surprised and entertained. I noted only a few grandmotherly types seemed displeased. It was fun, and I hope to do some more hitching of a similar sort (I certainly dispensed a number of business cards). I've been thinking a great deal these past four days about the institution of marriage, obviously. As Carole Pateman points out, the institution is an especially heterosexist one (e.g., tracing the history back a hundred years, we find that marriage is basically the male "sex right" in regard to the body of woman). At the same time, of course, there is much to recommend a solemn (and good humored) obligation to support another human being; I can think of no more noble a thing than the promise and follow-through of supporting another person "in good times and in bad times" for life. It's a difficult promise, as over 80% of marriages apparently end in divorces. As I noted in the homily, "electric word life, it means forever and that's a mighty long time, but I'm here to tell you there's something else . . . ."
Need I name this something else, again?
Yet reading their faces I have a confident hope for the newlyweds; they seem very happy.
After the wedding, I had the fortune to hang with the newlyweds and friends, and suffered the good company of perhaps one of the most beautiful women in the world (I regret I am smitten, but that is too personal to write about in a public blog; I'll just have to leave you voyers in a state of wonder, as I am myself . . . . ). We went to see her Hotliciousness work the cat-walk at Marrazils or however the heck you spell and say the name of that over-priced yuppy bar. The Baton Rougian notion of a "fashion show" was, well, laughable (through the duration women painted with brown paint and wearing body-hose posed as writhing slabs of meat on the salad bar; this is more than the gaze! It's outright cannibalism!
After a sad parting with my date, I came home I decided to go back out to combat depression, hooked up with Shappy, Rog, Jen, Reedalicious, and notable others for more no-good behavior at the yuppie bar, and apparently a party afterward (I dimly recall being humped by a pug-faced doggie at an apartment off of Lakeland Drive), and then I really got my hang-over mojo on. It hurts today, but all in all, yesterday was quite the day, an epic of the electric word in technicolor, a full life drama that makes me think, damn, now this was an increadible day, all about love, death, about the undone and the done, speech acts, interpellation, and everything in between. I need more of these sorts of days. For the first time in months, I feel "awake."