A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT -- Short Fiction; Genre: Comedy

Don’t you just hate weddings where the brides show up? I know, I do too.

Of course I didn’t always hate them. In fact I used to feel strongly that a bride should invariably show up for her wedding. I mean, consider the amount of resources—monetary and human—that would have been exhausted on the wedding. The least you do is
show up, right?

And not to mention the poor guy stranded on the alter, exhausting his own resources on the continence to withhold his tears. I sure wouldn’t want to be that guy.

But all this are archaic beliefs which I now think repulsive and no longer hold.

I believe now that weddings where the brides show up, all smiles, like naïve little high-school girls, are not only boring, but should be eradicated. The brides should either show up crying, uglily, or not show up at all.

And please, if you hold a contrary view—although I don’t think any truthful human being should—but if somehow you do, don’t blame me for mine—blame Hollywood, those eternal romancers of the absurd. Yet really who can blame them? when they do such a great job of it.

I mean, you can’t tell me you don’t feel absolutely alive when you watch your favorite couple on television, or the ones you loath, finally about to get married, and the unlucky groom sways on the alter awaiting his bride, and after awkward seconds of no-show, eyes an equally bewildered priest who returns him a hey-don’t-look-at-me-I-have-no-idea-what-the-hell’s-happening-either look.

But this Hollywood romancers know something I didn’t know at first; something my antagonists still don’t know—that the faith of the whole movie hinges on those particular moments.

That they could choose to make the bride show up. And we’d all smile and grin, and for a fleeting second the hopeless romantic in us would manifest but disappears almost as fast as it came. And we’re left with nothing. Nothing! Just a good old welcome back to our boring lives.

But when the bride doesn’t show up. My God. When the congregation murmur and give each other looks. When those like me, who were secretly anticipating the bride to be a no-show, grins wickedly. That’s priceless! That stays with you long after you’re done with the movie; even the hopeless romantics—a group to which my own Grace belonged.

And she knew of all these things I’ve written. I’m pretty certain I joked about it once to her, on our first date. She must have smiled inside her.

I had forgotten this, obviously. But Grace hadn’t—obviously. Well when I stood on the alter, lonely, I did not let my hurt show. I did not give the priest a what-the-fucking-hell-karma-ass-shit-is-going-on-right-now? look. Oh no. I couldn’t let her have the last laugh.

I only stood there, lonely on the alter, laughing like a mad man, while the crowd murmured and shuffled their eyes, wondering just how mad I was.

THE END.