Dan Brooks is no gentleman, but his hands are steady enough by mid-afternoon to transcribe the remarks of Colonel Rawlins Birch, the nation’s foremost authority on gentlemanly conduct. This week, the Colonel considers how the gentleman might conduct himself with decorum at weddings.
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By Colonel Rawlins Birch |
June being the traditional month for weddings, and weddings being the traditional way for those who have given up on dating to placate those who have given up on their careers, the Gentleman will likely be called upon to witness several nuptials this summer. This is a disaster. |
The modern wedding is a tedious affair, combining the pacing of a middle-school play with the company of a family funeral. In olden days, weddings were enlivened either by the promise of sex or the presence of firearms. The contemporary wedding—in which two people who have been sleeping together so long that they’d rather go to Pottery Barn promise to keep doing tomorrow what they did yesterday—offers neither.
Given this dreary spectacle, it’s no surprise that contemporary etiquette puts great pressure on the Gentleman to enliven a wedding. Unlike the bridesmaids, who are expected only to cry and be fat, the family of the bride and groom—who are expected to hold up babies and look accusingly at anyone who tries to dance—and the female guests, who should bring coke, the Gentleman is expected fulfill a complex array of duties in order to ensure that everyone has a good time.
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Choosing a date
The primary role of the Gentleman at a contemporary wedding is to supply a point of contrast with the bride. The bachelor attending as a friend of the groom is expected to bring the most startling date possible—a twenty year-old meth addict in white lipstick, a conceptual artist who sculpts alternative vaginas or, if none of those is available, a medium-obvious transsexual. This will remind everyone that marriage is a necessary invention, like penicillin. If you are a friend of the bride, you should bring a girl who looks like her only sadder. If you are married, you should bring your wife and then drink so much that you spend the evening flirting with the transsexual, so everyone remembers that a marriage is nothing that can’t be undone.
