Al was there with his wife, also their friend Teena, and music was playing from Al’s iPod through Jim’s mammoth speakers, a lot of top 10s from the 1960s forward, which were surprisingly seductive, also lots of Sinatra. Also of course Beatles and Billy Joel. There were spirits on the counter, and we all got more spiritual by the minute.
Teena was deeply involved with her new PlentyofFish account, a free online dating service, and was actually online as she sat there, fending off IM requests with a thumping rhythm. Some very hot guys hit on her, offering coffee and dinner, and Teena found no easy way to communicate she wasn't looking for anything tremendously meaningful at the moment. So she agreed to several coffees. Sort of.
The music got louder and Jim's daughter Olivia wanted to dance. So Jim hung up a disco ball and shone a light on it, then put out a machine that spread stars across the ceiling. Then he switched on the karaoke machine and gave the mike to Olivia, but very soon turned the mike off, in consideration of those who could still hear. Everything hushed down suddenly when Jamie called to say goodnight to Olivia, but by that time Olivia only wanted to get the party cranking again.
“Daddy, will you please turn back on the disco ball?” Olivia whined, straight into Jamie's ear.
My brother could always turn sorrow into hilarity, sometimes in feats of high inspiration. I remember the night neighbors Pete and Sue came over to visit Jim and Jamie, and somehow a tape of the infamous Tanya Harding wedding night video got put in the machine. We gollied and shucksed along about whether to watch it, as everyone there but me felt some need to square such a thing with regular church attendance. But then, almost without conscious control, as if resigned to the inevitable, we sort of collectively pushed the button.
And there we sat, grim as death, while images of a naked Tanya Harding riding wild and free bathed the room in lurid blue.
Once into this show we could nowise figure a deft way out of it, and so well before Tanya shouted her final war cry the anticipation of post-video embarrassment had gotten thick. In a moment the video would end, and all of us Protestants would face each other in shame and awkwardness.
It was at that moment Jim arose from his seat and cued up his Favorites of Cha-Cha album on the stereo, featuring 15 of the greatest cha-cha hits of all time, making it the soundtrack to Sonya’s moment of love. It was perhaps the greatest use ever found for the cha-cha version of Theme from "The Magnificent Seven," that proud and strutting tune.
The cha-cha music put Tanya and husband into just the right aesthetic context for us. What looked grim and lurid in one light looked completely different on a sporty cha-cha background.
It was in something of this mood that the music got cranked up again, on this first night of my brother’s return to singleness, a night that might have sunk into deeps of gloom. Instead, we remembered a happier way to channel light, with my brother as usual holding the disco ball.
3 comments:
You know, we Catholics have found a rather unique "Journeymanesque" way of handling the ending of a marriage. You see, as Catholics, we are asked to participate in the sacrament of Marraige, or as my son Joseph says, we get "weddinged". Since the sacrament is an eternal union pledged before God, the wedding party, the photographer, and Aunt Bess, it can never be broken...wow...never be broken. So exactly how do Catholics end their marriages? Well, before you can say easy peasy lemon squeezy, there is a process akin to bending time and space to wedge oneself into the past for some revisionist history work and poof...the wedding never happened. It is called an anulment and it basically states that those hideous wedding gifts that are still in their original packaging up on the closet shelf over the clothes, well, they don't exist. I have yet to determine if your wedding photo album vaporizes right there on the small lamp table between the sofa and loveseat ala the instructional tapes given to Mr. Phelps on Mission Impossible at the moment the anulment is final.
I am always sad when I hear of a split-up and I know that many times it is for the best. That still doesn't stop me from being sad. I wish the best for Jim and his former Spouse and I hope that his party continues long after the disco ball is down and the friends have slept it off.
I also wonder if there are other useful applications of the anullment effect in areas like global conflict, presidential elections, slipping on ice, and foot in mouth events. Just think what we could achieve. Forget the "easy button", this would be our own personal undo command. Some of us may even be able to "reboot" ourselves into shiny happy people.
Wow. Pat has the right idea. But I guess I had the wrong religion.
I had forgotten about Tanya Harding and her dirty tape. I suppose that the neighbor from the church choir remembers it painfully.
Oh well.
Thanks for a great post!
PMZ, my heart goes to the children, of course. How many children must accept the fact of their non-existence, we just can't tell. They should be COUNTED, at least be counted as theoretical existences, if not actual people. I know the church forbids acknowledging them, but think how much suffering might be alleviated should we face this problem square on. An end to Vague Existence, is my motto. Let us vest each one of us with the most complete and thickly-blended existence possible. It is only right.
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