Jack Burns Lives!

Last night I was forced to attend a wedding for one my wife’s co-workers. It was a full blown fundamentalist Christian affair with a lot of talk about everyone giving their souls to Jesus. The ceremony opened with the preacher telling us that he was “going to read a passage, and that it was very, very important that everyone, especially the bride and groom, listen carefully.”

What followed was a well known line of misogynist bullshit about how “the wife must always submit to her husband.” In fact, the submission theme came up again and again (along with being saved) throughout the ceremony, so much so I began to wonder if it was actually a sect of the Taliban.

The preacher was a complete lunatic, a really dangerous man, fully equipped with the official preacher hairdo and a bizarre, unnerving smile. He repeatedly twitched his head from side to side, then upward toward god and occasionally downward at a bridegroom’s ass. And he had that “preacher voice,” something that’s very difficult for me to describe, except to say that all Southern Baptist preachers appear to have mastered it. There’s a certain cadence with carefully planned pauses and a lot of inflection.

To make matters worse, the reception was held at a fancy country club, where the centerpiece is a massive, chemically engineered monstrosity called a golf course. It sits where there used to be several hundred acres of forest, native flora and fauna, about ten miles outside of the city limits. Why so far out? The theory, of course, is that’s where the growth is headed, that the existing megalopolis will eventually metastasize to that point. My prayer is that the fuel will hit $5.00 per gallon and stop the cancer dead in its tracks. Sort of a peak oil induced chemotherapy.

There were hundreds of yuppies, tons of wasted food and a $5,000 wedding cake. Yes, the cake cost five grand, and it tasted like shit with a piece of rubber on top, otherwise known as Marzipan.

The only redeeming thing about the whole affair was the open bar, where I liberally ordered glasses of marginal cabernet while concentrating on keeping my tongue in check. As luck would have it, a congregation of gross blowhards drunk on scotch decided to park right next to me. You know the type. Business suits, swollen alcoholic faces with golf course tans, laminated teeth and obnoxious, spaghetti western like laughs. They apparently thought the entire world wanted to hear their horrible jokes, almost all of which were demeaning toward women.

I came away thinking the whole affair was really sick. An overblown, orgy of waste. I felt dirty, like I’d been contaminated by some viral pathogen, but it also hardened my resolve to get the fuck out of here.

Welcome to the world of Southern men, Kristy, where mindless preachers command you to a life of quiescent servitude and submission. And while you’re home barefoot and pregnant, the men will be at the club getting drunk, saying all sorts of ugly things about their wives, telling dirty stories about their girlfriends, engaging in “power talk” about how they made big bucks while eliminating competition and laying off staff.

And on Sunday morning, they’ll all walk into church with big smiles and act like everything is good, because god is in control.