Did I tell you how I lost my tongue?
It all started at the ice cream shop when a friend, Elan, suggested a drive to his sister’s wedding the next day.
“She’s marrying some guy named Johnny, who she met just a few weeks ago in Toronto. I’m going for the drama, as all of us have just learned about it. It should be a smash. My father’s having none of it.”
I told Elan that my cousin was in town and that I’d been instructed to watch out for him over the weekend.
“He’s blind,” I told Elan.
“Even better,” Elan said. “Bring him along.”
Elan came for us after breakfast. He waited at the car with a big mellon-slice smile on his face.
“This is Ted. Ted, Elan,” I introduced. “Ted, Elan has a big smile on his face.”
“Hello, Elan. Somehow I knew you had a big smile on your face,” Ted said in his dark glasses.
“The drama’s already started,” Elan said. “My father had an argument with Johnny’s mother about genital studs. Apparently, my father is threatening to boycott the whole affair.”
On the way, Teddy asked Elan what he thought of such a wedding. “I haven’t thought about it seriously,” Elan said.
Ted said, “I’m sure we could cook up a way to complicate things.”
“Is he evil?” Elan asked me.
“Blindness isn’t why I was asked to keep an eye on him,” I said. “Besides, it’s not our wedding to ruin. It’s your sister’s and this Johnny’s. You should take it just a little seriously.”
“He’s right,” Ted said. But I knew his ironic tone.
“I know that tone,” I said. “Please, Ted.”
Ted laughed. “Elan understands, don’t you Elan. Wedding’s are about reputations.”
We arrived at Elan’s house, where both sides of the family had gathered quickly for a small JP service in the garden and a reception to follow. I said hello to Elan’s mother and father who were seated beside Johnny’s mother, who was showing them slides on her little camera.
“This was Johnny back stage. Oh, don’t mind the metal in his tongue,” the mother said.
“Why is he showing his tongue to the camera like that. It’s obscene,” Elan’s father said.
I poured some mid-day wine. Elan and Ted had disappeared, which I thought a very bad thing, but before I could begin a search, Elan’s sister grabbed me and drew me into the backyard.
“Steve,” she said. “It’s a horror. Johnny’s brother is refusing to speak a word for him and my father won’t walk me down the aisle. You’ve got to at least give a toast. Someone has to speak for us.”
“Me,” I said. “Why me?”
“You’ve always refused to take sides. Johnny may not be what they’ve wanted for me. But I love him. He loves me.”
“Why go through with any of this?” I said. “I mean why a wedding like this?”
“All you need to do is break the ice at the reception. Stand up and tell everyone that love is important. That’s it all that matters.”
I could see Johnny under a tree with a few of his friends. They were smoking cigarettes, which I knew Elan’s parents found abhorrent. Against the colorful garden backdrop, Johnny’s short sleeved faux tux t-shirt looked like a flat-line above a patient. One of his friends passed him a can of beer and he killed it with a long chug, then crushed the aluminum and tossed it into a planter.
Maybe love was all things are about, I thought. Maybe, I thought, this story will end with everyone pulling for the side of love.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come up with something. Have you seen my cousin, Ted?” but she was off after hugging me thanks and ran to Johnny. She leapt into his arms, but being thin-limbed and rather short, Johnny caught her and toppled over with a laugh.
It was nothing near high mass. Elan’s mother and father watched from the back porch railing. Johnny’s mother cried from the front row of folding chairs. During the JP’s words, Johnny turned to his mother and said, “Would you fucking quit it?” and once Johnny stopped teasing about losing the ring, he finally threaded Elan’s sister’s finger through it then turned to his friends, raised his fists, and cried, “Fuck yeah.”
I watched Elan’s parents from a reception table. Johnny’s friends were seated nearby where they fiddled with guitars and an amplifier the size of a portable air conditioner. A few of Elan’s relatives had come to the tables, where they sat quietly with squares of store-bought cake. Elan’s sister gave me the signal and I rose. One of Johnny’s friends handed me a mic that smelled of whiskey. I watched Elan’s parents on the porch. As I was about to speak, I saw Elan and Ted come out of the patio doors. The two were nude. But what made their nudity interesting were the plywood squares Ted must have fashioned to wear around their necks, so that each gave the impression of John the Baptist on a platter. They joined Elan’s parents at the railing and stood there. Their genital hair fluffed out prominently above the pink blooms near the porch.
But the parents were so intent on what their world had become, of the beer cans strewn on their lawn, that they didn’t notice. Indeed, if someone took a photo and showed it around, or put it up on the Internet, it would appear that Elan’s parents agreed with it all, that they had all come to the balcony together as witnesses or collaborators to a great perversion. For me it became a dioramic moment, a pause in the progression of disaster and biblical parallelisms, and I stood frozen, waiting for someone other than myself to notice that image on the porch. I said nothing.
And that’s how I lost my tongue. Tomorrow I’ll tell you how I lost the hair on my balls.
