Expensive Evil - Infinite Weddings

Welcome back to Expensive Evil, nonfiction about my annual trip outside. That’s usually hyperbole, but I haven’t sent one in a year. It happens. I get distracted when empires implode.

In 2024, I went to endless weddings. The free half covers four of them. The paid half covers a surprise. Names have been changed to keep my ass unkicked.

Rated T for Teen. Comic Mischief, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes.

Around.

Brooklyn and Malaysia. I recommend Malaysia. But that leaves a year blank, doesn’t it?

I’m blinking. Heavily. But from a library carrel, not a better-funded blacksite. As for that year, I got a lot out of one suit.

Incoming Texts

“What’s your address? I have a surprise.”

“Are you coming?”

“No worries.”

“You’re always busy.”

“Just once. Just once.”

“You can meet my cousin.”

“Their dad’s your biggest fan.”

“You’re a brother to me.”

“It’s gonna be lit.”

“Please.”

“Please.”

“Please.”

The Wedding

Three blocks from the venue, a mural paired Machine Gun Kelly and LeBron James. Baffling. Why put the worm beaten into another genre next to LeBron? I couldn't imagine a more one-sided rap feud. Yet.

The question lingered as I checked into The Arcade. A fine diversion from electoral panic, though I wasn’t the ideal customer. The Cleveland venue preserved an 1890s aesthetic, ideal for people with a closer relationship to the past. The past and I were divorced, and not only because I was divorced. I had a soft ban on spiritual Novocaine. Flee far enough from reality, and you end up painting MGK.

I relayed my deft insight to Mario in our shared room. It was, per stunt wedding tradition, nicer than my apartment. And office. And childhood home. Perhaps leaving the BatCave was worth it, at least annually.

After hanging my suit, a white glint caught my eye. A security tag still clung to my blazer’s sleeve. Fair play, if I’d stolen it. Sadly, I’d paid like a fool. Macy’s had left me a souvenir anyway.

“Welp,” I shouted, inflected like “Fuck!” The hotel had a lot of kids.

The Other Wedding

Upstate New York had serenity and beauty. Shame nothing else finished loading.

The bus stopped short of the promised point, behind the promised time. No negotiation, no mercy, some pity. I entered the wilds with my plan in ashes.

No sidewalks either. The only path cut through the highway to roads in tax-friendly condition. Could I survive the libertarian dream? Going on foot would be a FromSoft tribute to Frogger. I sucked at normal Frogger.

A real frog watched me dither. Judgmental prick. I resolved, if nothing else, not to entertain the animal kingdom for free. They’d never done anything for me, aside from lounging on the food chain. That half-effort didn’t justify mockery.

Uber offered a driver two towns away. Highly rated, but I’d arrive after rings were exchanged. I could live an asshole, or die a comrade.

I started walking. Then running. Why live without honor? Trucks honked encouragement.

The Other Other Wedding

Perhaps I belonged in Ireland. My whiskey immunity looked normal, everyone respected good punchlines, and red hats meant nothing. Well worth the highway drama. Char dealt with roaming cattle and a dead tire as well as any New York lifer.

The Deikuns lined up two weddings in one week. Their own, where I was invited. And today's, where I'd improvise.

“This way, we have a free party,” Char re-explained. “Haman’s sister can pay.”

"That sounds loaded."

"She is."

“Solid. What’s her name?”

“You met her at Thanksgiving.”

“...”

“Kycilia.” He swerved around a cow. It wasn't the last cow he'd dodge, or the last explanation he'd make. But eventually, the thick creature learned. And then the cows thinned out. Somehow, we reached Kycilia's big day without wiping out a farm.

“Kycilia. Kycilia,” I chanted, scanning the country club. Perhaps an imperfect label: an old, white, wine-soaked hall had less automatic baggage. But my narrow mind settled on country club.

“There’s my Dad,” said Haman.

“Oh man,” said Char. He vaporized, and reappeared by the bar. Good trick. 

“He’s a fan,” explained Haman.

My nerves tightened. No one under forty should have live fans. Fans warped young egos into wraiths. A path ending in bath water sales or a Masterclass contract. Preferably bath water.

With ten more IQ points, I’d still be Blind Monkey. Authors’ mystique came from physical anonymity. I thought Neal Stephenson looked like a Crossfit Warren Ellis, but that might've been a daydream. And I couldn't tell you what Christopher Priest wears for a million dollars, or one presidential bullet.

Maybe for the bullet.

I eyed the exit. This was the one wedding I could get away with getting away from. As long as I moved now, instead of thinking about—

The Other Other Other Wedding

We arrived without bovine or primate casualties. I stared at the edge of the world.

The harpist grumbled about rain and priceless wooden heirlooms. Likely a skill issue. Had she noticed the cliff? She could tip the harp over the edge and never see it hit. A noble end for any tool. I stared at the edge of the world.

A sign to my left suggested survival. In minute print–if I read the subhead, I’d probably die screaming. The glittering ocean below was a mass grave for the clumsy. Worth noting, as a clumsy pureblood. My grandmother, mother, and alleged father all stumbled through life. I stared at the edge of the world. 

Someone waxed about family and loyalty. Another guest? Char knew plenty of people, even if he’d eloped. Someone probably said something compelling. I stared at the edge of the world.

I knew why tourists died here. First, vanilla stupidity. Then, the call of the void. Finally, their son: the idiot urge to challenge the rift. To show off to God. I had front handsprings down to muscle memory. Every muscle said to let loose, and every neuron fought back.

The speech on family peaked. Nice rhythm. I joined the applause.

The Wedding

“Where are you going?” asked Mario. Some people refuse to let a crisis breathe.

“Home Depot.” I stepped to the left.

“Mmm. Why?” He slid to the left. This dance again.

“I…have to try something.”

He waited for more.

“The internet says strong magnets can remove…nothing. Don’t worry about it. Catch you at rehearsal.”

“Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“Why is something always wrong? Maybe my organization and grace have peaked. Maybe I want to see the wonders of Cleveland. Did you know MGK grew up here?”

Mario ignored virtuoso comedy. He pecked at his phone as I riffed brilliantly on Machine Gun Kelly’s non-talent. They’d have appreciated it in Ireland.

“I’ll get the Uber. You’re a disaster.”

“It’s just a twenty minute walk. We’ve got eight hours.”

“That’s human time. Not disaster time. We’re taking an Uber.”

The Other Wedding

Was running bad for dress shoes? Probably fine. There couldn’t be more weddings this year. It defied reason.

Were rocks bad for dress shoes? Probably fine. Pockmarks showed character. A wearer that lived, even if it was just in the last hour.

Was climbing bad for dress shoes? Probably fine. Shoes came and went. How many weddings could there be in one year?

Was mud bad for dress shoes? Obviously. What kind of dumb question was that? Focus on the non-obvious, like running faster.

Was cow shit…of course. Again, not worth asking. I could aim for the grass to knock it off without losing time. Were those sprinklers ahead? Perfect.

The Other Other Wedding

Too late. Zeon seized my escape route, greeted his nervous child, and explained the joys of art. I nodded along. Six years of art training had ill-equipped me to discuss it.

“Congrats on Celia,” I improvised. “Kycilia.”

“Congratulations on a masterpiece.”

Masterpiece. This could work. How much did bath water sell for these days? I'd call it Scrub More Evil.

“There’s so much crap out there,” he explained. “But you’re smart. The work is smart.”

My heart warmed. It was also my first serious drinking session in a year. Still, someone loved Everything Abridged, my underrated baby. Have you read it? You should.

And maybe Zeon knew his stuff. He was another reformed ad writer, but with the pluck to flee the Empire pre-crisis. His Irish rebrand made him a man of the world.

“So eloquent.”

Not untrue. Some black writers hated that label, but they weren't getting free bourbon. Four Dublin pours in, I was an eloquent, well-spoken, credit to my people. As long as the drinks were older than me.

“How’d you like Post-Atomic Stress?”

The Other Other Other Wedding

At some point, our cliffside party became quorate. No Morana—I didn’t pry at the politics there. I was still locked onto the abyss.

That’s a compliment to the wedding. In the barrage of weddings (2023 had sent me to Kolkata) vows and rings became background fuzz. I’d reached the age where healthy (or notably unhealthy) social circles filled out with long-term couples and short-term wreckage. While there’s beauty in both, they become familiar. Then the brain retains MGK instead.

The cliffs added a spin. Lifetime oaths were big. The world was bigger. Perhaps I was better suited to poems about the sublime than eternal fealty. I could grasp infinite space more easily than loyalty. Even in fiction, I rarely wrote about pairings older than a goldfish.

Projection, of course. It’s always projection. I understood falling down better than falling in love, let alone what kept people together. I took two photos of the edge, one of the service, and then drifted back to the edge. The ceremony had a pro, anyway. He looked qualified.

The Wedding

At a glance, the cashier hadn’t slept since the primaries (fair). Yet she remained lucid enough to notice odd men out. Namely, two unfitted suits with enough magnets for an Oval Office hard drive.

“Nice suit,” she hazarded. I tucked the security tag behind my back. If the magnets failed, I’d hold that stance all weekend.

“Thanks, we just need these magnets to—”

Mario gave me Look #17. I shut up, and handed her the product.

"Like Cleveland?"

"There's a lot to like. Unique murals."

The cashier nodded. I pretended to miss Look #22.

“Hitting a party?”

“Basically. Ever been to The Arcade? I think we get a plus—”

Mario deployed Look #02. I shut up, and bought the magnets. We squatted in the parking lot with our bounty: a larger, stronger version of the discs I glued to Tyranid arms. I explained my experience to Mario, who asked how we’d graduated from the same college.

Then, under focused supervision, I tried Reddit’s best shoplifting technique on the security tag. It bobbed, then waggled, and then sat. Nothing.

“Anything?”

“Jack all.”

“Bigger magnets?”

“Sure, we’ll try that. But there’s another way.”

“Yeah?”

“Fire.”

The Other Wedding

Though I didn’t think I was having a heart attack, I wasn’t sure. A disconcerting gap. I inhaled the glass of water next to my name tag, and then someone else’s.

Eventually, my baby coronary ended. The tent was expansive and full. Half family, half artsy coworkers and acquaintances. One was dressed like Rasputin, by design, for reasons that might scan when my head cleared. Thufir was another schemer, only his notes produced more finished work.

Thufir’s brother-in-law spotted my corpse in the crowd, and welcomed me to the homemade carnival.

“Hey! We’re running a bit behind. Sorry about that, you know how it goes”

I heaved eloquently.

Once my breath settled, I took in the setting. Every fourth person had a costume evoking Raygun Gothic, or at least Ren Faire fantasy. Godspeed's “The Dead Flag Blues” hummed from the speakers. I laughed my parts off, while saner guests puzzled. Thufir had gone all in on doing this his way. Was there a better way to live?

The theme was essentially nerd gumbo. For my part, I’d gone for Nyarlathotep. Black shirt, suit, tie, and background. Alongside enough vaguely-magick baubles to fill a magick shop. A perfect fit, save the shoes. Today was a funeral for the shoes.

Lovecraft was my oldest in joke with Thufir, my column's slyer readers, and America at large. From my perch, Lovecraft was a gift to black America. We got to be a horror visionary's greatest fear.

The vows were more earnest. Heroic, even. Herbert would've been proud. And turned one of them into a giant worm.

The Other Other Wedding

Zeon explained his vision for the ceremony. As father of the bride, he'd perform a tight five.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “I like telling a joke or two. During my speech, I’ll say: we almost had Daniel Craig, a famous Irishman, appear. But they’re recasting Bond as Idris Elba. Here he is. Then you take the mic.”

“I see the appeal,” I said, semi-honestly. I’d watched enough dashcam videos to appreciate a good wreck. And now I knew I could sprint in dress shoes.

Things looked up: Zeon had brought American foresight. If this was the game, we might as well go hard. I’d be Idris Elba in the wedding speech, or Donald Glover if he got bored before then.

Then I caught Haman’s face behind him, and recalled my own flaw. This was real life, not my set. I was on track to inspire a family feud.

“Let’s…keep it focused on the couple.”

“Aw, c’mon.”

Talking him down took some time. And willpower. But I didn't have my own ride back to the airport.

The Other Other Other Wedding

Photos! My home training told me that posing and watching were more important than the void. Leaving me stuck: home training rarely held a solid majority in my head. It flaked on key issues, leaving a betrayed, agitated base.

Nonetheless, I felt some loyalty to the pro. After my photography failures, I knew he deserved deference. I tapped the poses and faces of my dancing days, sans acrobatics. Acrobatics made an event about you, and I intended to have friends when/if wedding season ended.

I couldn't take full credit for the flicker of adult behavior: the void saved my mood. Affairs dominated my thoughts during cliffless vows. Better to let my mind wander than ruminate.

I took a photo with Sazabi—Char's mother , an editor that had circled the globe twice. Char had emphasized the term elopement. Did that apply with her there? Either way, he'd learned well from my wreckage. And so the rumination began.

The key to enjoying weddings was forgetting mine. Granted, the split had fun fallout. The Other Man was a True Crime icon, adding sanity-preserving humor. After all, he’d been falsely accused. How could I resent death row alumni? Any vendetta went to time served.

The pro offered me a solo shot. Time to give Hinge its due. I let the tangent fall over the cliff, along with any inconvenient feelings.

Or was I telling myself a story? Projecting projection? I hadn’t taken life seriously before the altar. In fact, I’d already written Zeon’s favorite farce. How involved was the expanse in my state of mind, beyond dangling keys before my dead attention span?

Maybe it was a big, cool cliff. The photographer asked me lean more.

The Wedding

For safety, we had to pry the window open. Hotel management disliked safety, and designed the windows accordingly. So for extra safety, we stood on fraying chairs. Wooden relics older than us. Perhaps the hotel itself. Mario supported the window from above, while I fiddled with a lighter below.

“We might burn this hotel down," Mario noted.

“Hush,” I said. I inched the lighter closer. The torch was covered in cackling sugar skulls. Nakedly appropriative, but standards were dead. I turned up the butane, giving the fire hazard extra oomph.

“Why do you have that? You don’t smoke.”

The first hint of discoloration reached the security tag. If this worked, it’d fall off harmlessly. If it didn’t, I’d look like I lost a fight to a squid. A perfect excuse to sleep past rehearsal.

“I don’t. Bored postdocs, amateur witches, and Bay Ridge divorcees smoke,” I parried. 

“Lunatic.”

I couldn’t see Look #33. But I could intuit it. I focused on my craft.

“You know, we could put some flowers over it,” added Mario. A brilliant, day-saving solution. And several hours late– the tag popped off.

“There. And we still have ten before Luigi’s rehearsal. Easy. See what I—”

“Just put it on.”

The Other Other Wedding

Fate (basic event planning) sat me with Feyd. A slick player from both my dungeon master days and nightclub days. He had unleaded nostalgia for the former, and leaned further into the Sword & Sorcery half of the wedding theme. We watched the first round of dancing from a distance.

“It’s a new world,” I mused. My feet still hurt.

“Nah, the game’s still there. 5e's real similar. Running anything?”

I wasn’t. Feyd explained cutthroat LARP politics, undeterred by questions about the rest of his life. Meanwhile, I tracked the soundtrack's twists and turns. Godspeed gave way to Flash Gordon-esque synth cuts. Rasputin swayed in time.

“I’m on the board at ChivalReal, in Jersey,” said Fayd. “Not too far.”

“Mmm.”

“You should try it.”

“It’s not me.”

LARPs cost time, money, and time, resources I barely remembered. I also didn’t feel like it. A gap Feyd fought from every angle. He'd have thrived in ads. I could remember late agency nights, pitching clients that had settled on no before the first email.

“I play Jack the Temp," added Feyd.

I drained more water. Jack the Temp was Feyd’s junior year paladin, in our campaign marrying fantasy and slapstick at gunpoint. An enviable relationship with time; I couldn’t look back long without drowning. His golden years were my father/son boxing league. And LARPing took ages. The commute alone would eat the weekend.

"You could play Fenrir."

Ah, Fenrir. My min-maxed kingdom-burning, father-slaying, dryad-laying barbarian. Someday, literary critics could decode that mystery.

“New players are half-off,” Feyd added.

“Still not me.”

"It was."

More water. I tried turning it into Strega with my mind. No luck. My sober streak limped on.

The Other Other Wedding

“This is why I’m like this,” said Haman, exhausted. They’d taken the Idris scheme much more personally.

“I feel you.”

“Do you see?” added Haman. A thousand near-misses filled their eyes. “Do you see why I’m like this?” they repeated.

“Yeah.”

Haman left to plan The Other Other Other Wedding. Freeing me to discuss philosophy. I’d spent three years dry and indoors, contemplating word counts. Tonight, I’d contemplate oblivion.

“Meet Shock,” said an Expert Drunk. He was a musician, or had stood near one earlier.

"I'm ready."

"No one's ready for Shock."

A pet name. The bottle said Aftershock. Fine for a Ken Levine project or disaster film. Troubling for drinkable liquid.

Four shot glasses of bright-blue liquor sat before it. There were two of us. One was mine.

“This looks like undergrad poison.”

“It is. The worst we’ve got. Come try it before you go back to Kamala.”

“I’ve had enough.”

“Or Trump.”

I drank the antifreeze.

Awful. Beyond awful. Like something Mossad would feed a doctor. I felt more like a teetotaler after draining it than before. Yet comforted. All freshman antifreeze was the same. And I wasn't thinking about spray tan.

“I hear you’re Idris Elba.”

“Sure.”

The Other Other Other Wedding

I said goodbye to the cliff. Despite our love, I had to go back to America. For…something.

Why in hell was I going back to America? To learn new slurs? To see how much pressure my veins could handle before one popped? To take my shot at Caligula? I didn’t have the luck for that. Or the aim.

Then again.

I shook the thought off. Stupidity. Vain, dead-end, violent stupidity. Maybe I belonged home after all.

Allegedly, we had our own cliffs. Fine attractions, but surrounded by locusts. Americans couldn’t see the void without adding a subscription, pumping in sewage, and lamenting the void’s spiraling margins. Yes, I know VoidCoin looks like a pump and dump. But if you look closely, it’s a pump and pray. Keep praying, and wealth will return to all of us.

I promised the void I’d be back. Not like that. Alive. Likely alone, unless I looked sane in the photos.