Part Three - "The Best Man"

The first time, when I lost my Wedding virginity, was most definitely the best. My brother asked me to be his Best Man and I said yes. Well, he didn’t so much ask me as tell me; and I didn’t so much say yes as to agree and note the date in my diary and then started to crap myself about making a speech.

For reasons I have long since forgotten we had decided to travel half way across the country to see Lincoln City play Doncaster Rovers in the second division. Neither of us supports either Lincoln or Doncaster and as it was 12th versus 18th in the bottom division of the English professional football leagues it meant that it wasn’t much of an obviously attractive game to go and watch. But as with most things Danny (my brother) did, it was a last minute, spur of the moment decision. He decided that he was going to go to a pointless football match, so he went. And he decided that I was going was going to go with him, so I went too.

It was only during the two-hour-plus drive to the game that I discovered that Danny even had a girlfriend, by the end of the match she had become his fiancée and I had become his Best Man.

Driving along a country road, Danny’s phone rang and he answered it quite quickly. I could only hear Danny’s side of the conversation, but to be honest I didn’t really care what was being said because every time Danny changed gear he would take his free hand off the wheel and the car would lurch to the left. The fourth time it happened the front passenger wheel of the car ran across the grass verge on the side of the road and I grabbed steering wheel to keep the car in a straight line. Seeing the look on my face Danny soon hung up his call and took back full control of the car.

“Sorry about that.”

“That’s ok. Just let me know the next time you want to kill me so I can take the appropriate action.”

“I’m not trying to kill you,” Danny replied, “Just to scare the shit out of you.”

“So I’ll die from a heart attack rather than in a car crash. That’s ok then.”

“Sorry Jack, it was…” Danny tailed off; it was as if he deliberately didn’t want to tell me who it was on the phone. “I really hate missing her calls.”

“So, new girlfriend then?” I asked.

“Yeah, well not so new as it happens. We’ve been together about four months.”

“Four months! You’ve kept her quiet.”

“Not really… Well yeah I suppose I have. I don’t know why, it wasn’t deliberate. It’s just a bit different this time. It’s a bit weird.”

“Weird, why? She’s not married is she?”

“No.”
“Boyfriend then?”

“No, not at all.”

“Is it you? Have you got someone else on the go?”

“God no, not at all.” Danny was definitely emphatic about that.

He sat and thought for a while, a couple of times he went to say something, but stopped himself at the last second. Eventually he spoke.

“It’s weird because I have never felt like it before, it’s like its too perfect. You know?”

I didn’t know, but I didn’t say anything and let him continue.

“It’s almost as if I were to tell anyone about how good things are, they would tell me it’s all bollocks and it will all go away and I really don’t want it to go away.”

I didn’t know what to say; in the 26 ears since Danny had been born I had never heard him be so earnest or honest. I wanted to act, for once, like his big brother, give him some advice or tell him how pleased I was for him, but words failed me, so I said the only thing that came to mind.

“Well don’t let it go away then.”

“I won’t mate,” he replied, “I won’t.”

We arrived at the ground half an hour later - having survived only one more near crash (pretty good going for Danny) – we quickly found our seats in the main stand. Somehow my seat managed to have a pillar blocking both goals – not that it mattered in the first half, neither net was anywhere near threatened. It was hardly thrilling game.

Ten minutes before half-time I’d had enough and decided to head to the little shed in the corner of the ground to buy a Bovril and a meat pie.

By the time I had returned to my seat, with a cup of tea and a hamburger (apparently Bovril and meat pies went out of fashion years ago – at least in Lincoln), Danny had a strange look in his eyes.

“Well,” he said, “I took your advice.”

“Good.” Then I stopped and thought for a second. As far as I could remember the last time I had given Danny any advice was when he was fifteen and I had told him not to let our parents catch him coming home at 3am steaming drunk. It was advice he had ignored and I didn’t recall advising him in any way since. “What advice?”

“Earlier, you said not to let it go away. So I’m not. I’m getting married.”

“Wow.” For the second time that day, Danny had left me not quite knowing what to say. “Wow.”

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

“Sorry. Wow. Yes of course. Congratulations. Wow. Brilliant.” My powers of conversation has failed me, I can’t remember the last time I had been so taken aback. I did however manage to get one question out. “How did this happen?”

“Just now, I gave her a call and told her about our conversation in the car and told her I didn’t want to let her go. So she asked if I was asking her to marry me, I said yes and then she said yes and now I’m getting married.”

“Wow.”

“I hope you are going to say more than wow at the wedding. Because you are going to be my Best Man.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“O.K.” and then under my breath, I muttered one more thing. “Wow.”

"The Best Man" is copyright Angus Burns 2007.

Part Two - "The Best Man"

A little later on, when the Bride and the Groom had got up to go and circulate around all the tables, I was left sitting on my own like a lemon at the front of the room when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw a vaguely familiar face beaming back at me as if I were a long lost brother who had finally been found after years of searching.

“Excellent!”

“Thank you” I replied.

“No seriously, once again you were truly excellent…”

Once again?! My mind suddenly started racing, had I met this beaming idiot before? Probably, I’d met so many beaming idiots over the last few months (and idiots do seem to beam a lot when they are at a wedding).

“Admittedly you did use some of the same material as you did for me, but you were still excellent.”

Oh God! I’d been his Best Man too, I’d always known that one day something like this would come back and bite me on the bum.

“Well, you know” I replied, “Some things are just funny and if you can’t laugh at someone cross-dressing as a Nun more than once, then there’s something obviously wrong with the world.”

I didn’t actually quite know what I had meant by saying that, but the man I was talking to seemed to understand, so I didn’t try to force the point.

“Actually, that’s what I wanted to thank you for.”

Thank me? Now I really didn’t understand.

“I’m glad you used that story, because now I think Suzanne is finally convinced that it was just a funny story in your speech and I didn’t really do that or any of the other stuff you mentioned at our wedding.”

I suddenly realised who it was I was talking to, but before I could get into a proper conversation, he had to go.

“I think I’m needed back at my table, but thank you again.”

“No problem Rob” I said shaking his hand, “Good to see you again,” and then he walked back to his table.

Rob had been the bloke who had been worried that his life seemed a little dull so he asked me to ‘spice things up a bit’ when it came to my speech. So that’s what I did. Mild mannered computer programmer Rob became an international spy with a taste for danger and fast cars, but who in his spare time liked to cross-dress as Sister Mary-Catherine. It was utterly preposterous stuff, but fortunately almost everybody in the room got the joke and the speech went down like a house-on-fire, it was probably one of the best reactions I’ve had.

There was one person though who didn’t get the joke and that was Suzanne, Rob’s new wife. For some bizarre and inexplicable reason she took every word of my speech as the Gospel truth. She convinced herself that the man she had married was not the man she thought he was, and proceeded to start an argument with him right in the middle of their first dance. Let’s just say that the rest of the evening was hardly the joyous occasion it should have been.

I’d inadvertently had almost caused a marriage to fail after just 4 hours and at the time it had really go to me. That was the first time I had considered giving the whole thing up. But now despite that issue having been resolved, I felt even more like I wanted to just pack-it-all-in and never have to go to another wedding ever again.

I watched Rob go back to his table, he kissed his wife, she told him something, he laughed, they both laughed, the whole table laughed. They were all having fun, enjoying the special day.

It was then it occurred to me that for me wedding’s had lost that special something that they were supposed to have. That excitement, that buzz, that sense of joy. They used to have it for me, the first few weddings especially that had it and I loved it. But it had turned into boredom and apathy and same-old same-old. I didn’t want that, I wanted the excitement and the spring in the step, I wanted it to be how it used to be, I wanted it to be how it was at the first wedding.

"The Best Man" is copyright Angus Burns 2007.