Growing Pains

I had been nervously anticipating my friend’s wedding for quite some time now. It had been stressing me out. Loss of appetite. Developed facial tick. Loose, watery body waste. I had it all and I wasn’t even the one who had to bind my eternal soul to another human being.

Doesn’t that sound fucked up? Binding souls and whatnot?

The Groomsmen gathered, trying on their suits and being fitted correctly for the special occasion. I stared at myself in the mirror. This wasn’t just a suit. This was a goddamn tux. With cufflinks and vests and fucking suspenders. Suspenders!

Looking at myself head to toe in that mirror is when I realized that I am fucking old. Really fucking old. It’s easy to fool yourself when you have a little kid’s haircut, t-shirts with dinosaurs on them, and an awesome Boba Fett belt buckle.

If I hadn’t realized this I’d probably turn into that creepy guy who goes to high school parties and hits on fifteen year olds. Like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused but never that cool.

What was worse is sitting there during the actual wedding, listening to the priest go on and on about love, commitment and honor. Every word he spoke rocked my core. As if it was emphasized with a large church bell going off right over my head.

And as I sat there at the reception, listening to slow songs start, and watching my friends and family grab their significant others, I just looked down at my eleventh rum and coke and then threw up into the biggest handbag I could find – maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was the notion of bound souls. I wondered, what exactly binds souls? The ability to tolerate another human being? Enough free space to love someone as much as you love yourself? Troll magic?

Or maybe it’s how people measure success. Basing it primarily on three factors: a job, a wife and kids. I clearly was in no way successful. This is something my friend’s dad (in all his arrogant cock suckeriness) made evident to me.
He took a small joke like me wanting his son to marry my sister and turned it into – this is a direct quote – “Ryan wants his sister and my son to get together so he can be in a family with some success.” (This is in front of my parents, by the way) He then followed with, “We can’t all be medical doctors.”

Are you fucking kidding me? This guy is like Satan. (That is, if Satan looked like William Hurt... which I imagine he does) Generally I’d shrug a comment like that off given the fact that I’ve done so many things in my life that people only wish to do. My legacy lives on in archival Swiss Chalet commercials as a kid who once asked for a roll. I’d usually just counter his bullshit comment making fun of the fact that he’s a) a big raging period stain b) his new wife has had so many collagen injections that she looks like Howard the Duck (but with huge pointy implants) and c) that I have something that he’ll probably never have: respect from people. A complete cock shit like that guy would never really garner legitimate respect.

But maybe he’s right. Maybe there isn’t a way I can be successful being an “artist”. Maybe the first step is to bind my soul for eternity. I don't know, that sounds like the Devil's work...