This Saturday found me in a vaguely familiar place: church. I haven’t been to one of those since Christmas 2006 when Beau’s family dragged me to a midnight mass despite the fact that most of us were half in the wrapper. But this weekend wasn’t a holiday. It was a wedding. That means I stopped hissing at statues of saints long enough to quietly sit through a ceremony.
Let me preface this by saying that I was raised Catholic. I went to church every week in my childhood. I sat through Sunday school classes where I was scolded for asking questions, not understanding the concept of blind faith, and drawing fancy hats on Jesus in my work book (and then further reprimanded when I called my teacher an idolater for putting so much emphasis on a pictorial representation of Christ). I’ve studied the Bible more in depth than most Christians. That said, I am now an enthusiastic atheist. If that or blaspheming bothers you, now might be a good time to stop reading.
Anyway, I can be respectful when needs be, so I behaved. We were seated too far back in the church to hear or see what went on up front which was a pity because friends of ours were getting hitched somewhere up there. After a quarter of an hour of straining my neck and failing to catch anything, my mind started to wander. For awhile I watched everyone around me kneel and sit and chant and make elaborate hand gestures all the while thinking that truly, mass must count as cardio. I abstained from the general hocus-pocus except the standing bits (because my ass was falling asleep) and the hand shaking (because I like smiling and saying nice things to people on occasion). For the remainder of the time I admired the interior of the church with its marble columns and painted murals and wondered how much money could have been donated to charity instead of pimping God’s crib. Of course, studies show that God is between 17 and 30 feet tall so they had no choice but to vault the ceiling that high, but the rest is a bit much.
Eventually, the ceremony was over and we moved to the reception hall where I visibly relaxed and unclenched because there was an open bar and that is a religion I can wholeheartedly believe it. In my magnanimous way, I grabbed a few scotches for the boys before asking for my rumndietcoke. The bartender shook his head. I spoke louder as if he were hard of hearing, “RUM AND DIET COKE.”
He gestured behind him at the sparse array of bottles and said, “This is what we have.” No rum. Fuck, I thought, God is pissed at my sacrilege. The bartender suggested I try something else and handed me something blue and fruity. I was dumbstruck. Defeated, I took my blue cocktail back to the table and sat pouting while Beau laughed at me.
Five minutes later I returned to the bar with a friend all the while lamenting the plight of the rumless. She told me her drink of choice was gin and Sprite but she couldn’t have too much because it gets her into trouble. Trouble you say? I ordered a round for us.
An hour later, I was dangerously flirting with Tanqueray, sending texts to Bologna about this delicious mistress. The rest of the evening flew by in a blur of gin, baby quiches, and holding my new friends’ hair back while she vomited on the sidewalk. I spent the majority of the time dancing to Polish techno with a dozen accountants. At one point I paused to wonder how I came to be spinning with my arms above my head, surrounded by stupefied bean counters but then someone told me it was time for the second dinner and this one included meatballs and I lost my train of thought.
In conclusion, gin gives you a crisper feeling hangover than rum, don’t eat a bowlful of sauerkraut when you’re drunk, and God may or may not shop in the big’n’tall men’s department of Macys.
2 comments:
I truly, thoroughly, enjoyed reading this. Thank you.
Gin is a cruel mistress. Whom I love. Forever. Almost as much as I love you. Woot.
Post a Comment