A Proper British Wedding
Disclaimer: The preceding story was fictional. No actual person or event was depicted. By accessing this website and writing, you agree to the terms of use.
The maternal instinct triggered was nothing short of divine as I escorted a bemused Henry away from the microphone onto which he clung, and through a queue of cantankerous family friends who had gathered for his cousin’s wedding.
For those unfamiliar with Henry, let’s just say he is often the perpetrator of bemusement; this turn of temperament that Henry’s sheer presence triggered was a phenomenon.
Fantastic to say that one man could invoke such passion, and I think for those individuals involved, they owe a debt of gratitude to our dear Henry, who inspired a response generally unfound in the inertia of their routine Anglican lives.
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ARCHIBALD
Archibald, whose impressive 6’3 figure was greatly shortened by his incomprehension of healthy lifestyle choices, marked my induction into a proper British wedding. To Archibald, business was a series of pot roasts and potatoes, which he described with an enthusiasm that I could only suppose, is usual of a very hungry man.
A roast! A big ROAST, and some potatoes, POTATOES … good wine… WINE …
Poor Archibald stood baffled as he lamented that his millennial underlings didn’t enjoy ROASTS and WINE, often opting to drink water at the pub during daily post-work team building sessions.
I tell them to get out of here if you’re going to do that! Makes no sense to me… Have a beer and let’s order some scotch, and more wine… that’s how business gets done!
Archibald would later make his mark in the queue to assault Henry… at that moment of intrusion, I wondered if more food at the reception table would have helped; maybe some ROASTS, A PORT, and POTATOES … a sort of ‘how to train your ogre’ pack for those dealing with the perpetually underwhelmed.
I slept with his sister.
When we were younger.
Yeah it was weird because I used to sleep over his house; and one day he saw me with his sister but he didn’t say anything. He just walked out quietly.
His sister and I have spoken about it as adults and it’s fine; she’s married with children and we get along great… I don’t know what his problem is…
He lives in our family house now, you know. Dad gave it to him for a fifth of the asking price. He and his wife were having fertility issues until they moved in our home, and then were able to get pregnant.
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JONATHAN
Sweaty and glazed, our friend Jonathan carried the usual messiness we’ve come to expect from a man whose hardest decisioning has been which powder dealer to use when vacationing in his parent’s winter and summer homes.
No mate- I’ve given it all up. I’m a father now and a husband. Priorities are different. I do keto now.
Jonathan’s proclamation is accompanied by a fifth glass of wine and a hearty mouthful of bread.
Well I do a sort of modified keto. My father bought a plane you know? HAHA. So should make it easier to fly out to the Bahamas on that.
I politely stare at our friend while Henry smiles into a snarl and begins probing a mouth-stuffed Jonathan about his marriage and very absent wife.
Have you been seeing anyone new?
Jonathan falters; his delay in appropriate reaction is compensated by a series of staccato sentences reminding him aloud of already being married.
Do I see myself married to Nelly forever? No, probably not. But I certainly don’t want another wife. I … I … I’m married… I have a child, I just want to be retired and playing golf- I don’t want another wife.
It’s an odd statement given that Jonathan is only 35 and regularly claims to not have to actually work given his parent’s funding.
Henry sees the weakness in poor Jonathan and continues to probe:
I was telling my cousin on the ride over that the hardest thing I had to do was get divorced; it felt like a FAILURE on my part. But you know what- I could see myself getting married again, likely a few times- maybe 5 … how about you?
Jonathan’s red faltering face rebounds as he begins a defensive diatribe:
I love my son, my two children. I’m a good father. I love my children.
Still smiling Henry reassures a now disoriented Jonathan that the quality of his fatherhood isn’t under question, just his marital satisfaction.
Later on, Jonathan would also make his way into the queue; attempting to grab the microphone away from Henry after an awkward Archibald fumbled an initial attempt.
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JESSICA
Henry we appreciate your words but we want to get the DJ on the dancefloor; everyone wants to dance.
Sapphire-eyed and thin, the bride’s shrill voice bellowed across the reception hall at Henry who was mid-speech after having thwarted other interruptions by Archibald and Jonathan.
While it is known that Jessica isn’t a fan of Henry, it was striking to see a display of such aggression. I suppose it was the same aggression her eyes had shown throughout the day, always within a strong line of vision with Henry; the bride held an uncanny fixation for someone she professed to deeply dislike.
Her apparent dislike in fact, had caused her to inform guests before the wedding about Henry to a point of making Henry invité d’honneur. In fact one guest asked me to explain what I saw in Henry, to which I replied, and she agreed that the fact that he is such a fixation (in an age of endless digital sensations) should say it all.
In a group chat the bridal party amused themselves with a picture of Jessica’s sapphire eyes set on Henry as he gave a prescribed reading in the church for the wedding ceremony. Everyone else was facing forward listening, but Jessica was turned around watching. The reading was chosen by the bride and groom, and mentioned LUST and COVETING of someone’s sister. In jest the picture was accompanied by comments of Jessica longing for her despised Henry.
The virality of media elements is still something yet to be defined, however to all those closest to Henry and Jessica, we could see there was a dynamic in that photo that resonated with us on a cellular level that went beyond banal irony.
We all married our PEERS. My father was a very aggressive, domineering man so to me, it was important to marry a peer- someone who I saw as an equal- NOT someone like my FATHER.
Jessica’s husband, a handsome banjo player and Henry’s cousin was that peer.
No I’m sorry but you CANNOT be prime minister.
The day after the reception we joined the bridal party at a local pub for drinks. Jessica was two bottles into a rose while her handsome banjo playing husband stood pleasantly and quietly by her side.
Jessica was holding court at the table when Henry and I walked up.
The conversation was quickly taken over by Henry who declared his intentions to become prime minister.
No. You cannot live in Asia or wherever and be prime minister. And I’m sorry but I would not vote for you. You should NOT be prime minister.
As Jessica’s sapphire eyes lit up in her denunciations of Henry’s proposed political plans, Henry dismissively spoke about the opportunity to target the underrepresented immigrants in London.
It wasn’t until Jessica finally asked:
Why do you even want to be Prime Minister?
That Henry’s attention was turned, as he leaned into the table, pulled her in with his raucous eyes and said:
Because. I. Just. Want. It.
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SOPHIE
She used to write me love notes in boarding school. She would cut letters up and glue them to form words. Her mother was a friend of my mother so our families would vacation together, but to be honest my mother didn’t care for her mother very much.
Very blonde and very British, Sophie stood a petite 5’2 with a narrow smile and electric blue eyeliner above her top lid. Seemingly coordinated with her mother’s purple and also inexplicably hovering eyeliner, Sophie was a sweet sort of cabbage patch figure whose smile never wavered while speaking to Henry.
I told her she was fat. That she’s a smart girl and that if she wants to get ahead she needs to lose weight and pull herself together. She used to be a waif of a thing and now look at her- what a mess.
Poor Sophie had mistaken rudeness for intrigue as she prompted a conversation with Henry over the topic of his most recent court battle. To be fair, Henry was hardly one to be hurling physical criticisms as he had packed on a few pounds since I last saw him, however, like most men, he carried his mild belly with the same assuredness that often defines success in those blessed with both delusion and divinity.
Bunnie boiler. That’s what my father calls her.
The whole family is brilliant but wacko. One brother is on a terrorist watch list; he created exploding yogurt packs – as a gag; anyways he had to change his name. The other brother is a brilliant financier who would assault his wife with a giant Ninja sword. He would just randomly take the gigantic thing out and start swinging it at her.
It appeared that Sophie’s congenital affliction manifested itself in her infatuations for Henry. Having developed a crush on him at 13, she lost her virginity to him at 19, and appeared to be unnervingly aware of his happenings at 35.
She showed up to my apartment soaking wet, in the middle of the night, asking if she can come up. Tells me she has already slept with 3 guys and asks if I would like to be with her.
I was 23, in the middle of writing a novel, which is what I did when I wasn’t out making a circuit with other women on my father’s dime, so I said okay.
Henry and I are seated at the bar area of restaurant where the reception was held. It is the day after the wedding and while we have been summoned to attend drinks at the pub with the rest of the bridal party, we have made an unspoken decision to delay.
It’s light and airy at the bar, and we sit in high woven stools chatting about the night before. The orange and ice from the aperol spritz Henry sips from makes him look childlike as he tells me about Sophie.
So I go to have sex and I hear ‘OUCH’; I look down and she tells me, ‘I lied Henry. I’m a virgin. I just wanted you to be my first.’
Bunnie Boiler.
——
RENAULT
Sophie’s stepfather, a dilapidated looking Frenchman had been at the wedding the night before.
He came up to me last night before my best man speech and said: ‘You’re a fucking mess!’ while offering me marijuana. I asked him, ‘hey – do you have any of the real stuff?’ And he said, ‘What? Cocaine? No.’ And calls me a ‘piece of shit.’
I tell him, ‘look Renault, I don’t like you. But you’ve been able to keep a family together for 20 years so I respect that. So while I don’t like you and I think you’re the piece of shit, I respect you so get the fuck out of my face because respect is the closest thing to a pleasantry that you’re going to get from me.’
As Henry described Renault to me, I realized he was the same loud figure who had heckled Henry during his best man speech; a round, gluttonous sort of figure, Renault made his dissatisfactions known from the crowd.
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THE BET
A lot of people lost a lot of money because you showed up.
The groom had chosen three best men. As his cousin, Henry was the primary player with Jonathan and another serving as replacements in Henry’s absence. Henry had a way about him, it was the same way that inspired men and drew women, a sort of unpredictableness that made him desired and hated. His attendance at the wedding would be no exception to that expectation, and some wedding guests thought it would be amusing to take bets on whether or not Henry would show up. His cousin, the handsome Banjo player took the longshot at a 10 to 1 odds that Henry would come and ended up winning almost ten thousand dollars.
Can you believe - people were making thousand dollar bets on me?
The sting of those bets was felt as Henry took the floor to make his best man speech. Jonathan had already spent the better part of the night attempting to dissuade Henry, who had joyfully offered to share the floor with Jonathan who in fairness was also a best man, albeit a runner up to Henry.
THE SPEECH
Marriage is the most important thing that you could enter into in your life. I have been … well many people are aware of the things that I have undergone, having been sued and various things, and yet nothing has been more devastating to me than breaking apart a marriage, and that’s breaking apart a marriage where the both of you are actually HAPPY TO BREAK APART.
:: interjection by Archibald::
So the first thing I would say to you is to keep the marriage together, because you know it doesn’t really matter if anyone goes after you for SIXTY MILLION DOLLARS, or DESTROYS YOUR NAME IN NATIONAL MEDIA, or whatever they do, it doesn’t really matter.
:: interjection by Jonathan::
And I say this as someone who is divorced, and happily, very happily divorced, What I’ve learned over the past two years, where I’ve admittedly had run ins with all sorts of schmucky tabloid journalism is that family is the only people you can depend on. They might hate you, they might criticise you, they might tell you things that you don’t want to hear but you can depend on them. And marriage isn’t about boy loves girl or girl loves boy, it’s about the conjoining of families, and being able to rely on each other in need.
:: interjection by Jessica::
I wasn’t at the wedding of my Father and Nina because I was in Asia making about two hundred thousand dollars a month, which led to a scenario of all the things that you will find when you GOOGLE ‘Henry Michael Emmerson’.. it is a very difficult job to become the stepmother to two children who are ultimately not your children, and to do it in a very graceful way.
::interjection by Renault::
I’m not easily silenced so don’t worry.
Twice through Henry’s speech marked the loud crowing of the crowd; the reception guests baited into mischief through the interjections of Archibald, Jonathan, Jessica, and Renault.
The countenances in the room were a thing of joy; Jessica’s pre-sell of Henry’s infamy for the uninitiated shown through as Henry’s words head-butted the elephants in the room.
I feel a responsibility to say this on behalf of my mother because I am so like her; we are so similar; we’re so unlikeable and loveable at the same time, and she would want me to say all of this to you.
ROOM SERVICE
After having watched my friend endure an endless assault from the crowd, I promptly stood, as if guided by a maternal instinct outside of my own, to retrieve my little pup. Sure, he was a grown man, and one with gusto, but to withstand attempts at silencing with an unwavering determination, invoked a deep sense of pride and protection. I wondered if Henry’s mother was in that room, making her way through certain of us, as I led Henry out of the restaurant. Archibald stopped to apologize in as patronizing of a way as can be expected from a man who lives for his next round of pot roasts and potatoes. We dismissed him and walked on, making our way to the hotel.
LAW & ORDER. GREEK SALAD. PIZZA.
Henry and I sat cross legged around the dishes spread out on the white comforter that hugged the bed; dressed in sweats, we were kids with debit cards debating in each moment whether to breathe, chew, or gab with the TV playing in the background of the suite that his father had accidently booked for us in the center of London during Royal Ascot. In that moment of calm satisfaction I felt that there was some divine, maternal spirit looking over us.
Henry poked fun at my salad choice while simultaneously eating it instead of his pizza.
I confess to Henry that I had given up sugar and alcohol. Henry confesses that he has given up business class flights and jewelry. We both giggle, the events of the night so far removed from our thoughts.
I offer to make him a video, capturing his speech at the wedding. We both understand that history rests with the unintimidated- fortunately Henry and my friendship contains plenty of that.
I’ll have my media arm edit a video of your speech; that’s what people will remember …
Henry smiles and laughs:
You’re a legend.
We both giggle again as we create our account of a proper British wedding.
#happybirthdayD xx