At the hotel, before the church service on my friend’s wedding day,
every gesture, every action, assumed a last-time-as-a-single-man
poignancy.
From the bathroom: “Last pee as a single man!”
Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball came on cable:
“Last Miley Cyrus video as a single man!”
Someone opened a bottle of red wine: “Last drink as a single man!”
Six of us, friends from university, laughed, fixing cufflinks, knotting ties, pulling socks. The groom and the best man had been roommates, and had known each other from their salad days at King’s College; the rest of us met haphazardly mostly in the classroom and the lab. For more than half a decade, we hadn’t been gathered together but no one had changed in all that time.
Groom and best man remained chatterboxes. One still slept till late in the morning; back in university, no one was sure he attended an early class. Another, due to a mechanical manner towards emotional situations and his general efficiency, used to be called stoic; he remained an early riser and a push-up practitioner. And then the very popular one in school remained affable and annoying for same reason; he was also the only one who had changed a little: he was married.
But not for long. There was the soon-to-be husband. And, later in the year, the Sleeper would waltz down the aisle, although he refused to reveal the date.
I wondered if this was the ultimate purpose of male friendship: to be grooms' men. Is this what the years of friendship had been about? All of those shared experiences upon which our friendship was formed, were they leading to this moment, to this role as grooms' men?
Would our arguments be the same, moderated by a woman, by women, now? Those heated arguments would lose that testosterone rawness we had as boys, as single men. Self-censorship taking hold over freedom of expression. To lessen our collective shock, the wife, the wives, would call the transformation maturity, and to those of us resistant to change— the dissenters, the bachelors— she, they, would advise to “go and marry.”
Once, just after a different wedding, I was in a vehicle with the newlyweds when apropos of what seemed to me unrelated the new bride said to her husband, "You're a married man now. This is now your business."
Other than the feeling wrong for being in their company when this was said, I had no problem with the advice. The boy who became the husband would be needing that line administered regularly. In fact, all young, newlywed men, would need that admonition. Perhaps this is the reason for a ring: a reminder of comportment, because you cannot trust a young man to remember he is married on his own.
Girls, for the most part, are surefooted about this, the ring being, mainly, an accessory, a mark of difference, of status. They seem to come equipped with intrinsic reminders of their marital status; and in the absence or delay in acquiring said status, furnished— some say by society, by family— with a longing for it.
Many women are born with an easy facility for the transition to women, to wives. Boys to men, to husbands? A tricky transition. Many remain in a state of arrested development. Perhaps it is biological wiring, connected to the anatomical presence, or lack thereof, of the childbearing apparatus. Perhaps it’s family; perhaps it’s Freud.
Apparently, men and women differ on the requirements of manhood. The man told to ‘be a man’ almost always has no clue what being a man has to do with the circumstance, while the female encouraging, or ahem, heckling, him is certain of what manhood constitutes. (The lack of the male apparatus has never deterred any woman from offering her view on masculinity.)
Like many men, I share that confusion. Or used to. One of my first informal efforts at art criticism was directed at the proclamation by a bus sticker: "to be a man is not a day's job."
I was a kid, the kind with the belief he had all the answers. In my head you're born a man. What else do you need? The hassled adult, dad or uncle tried to explain to the know-it-all kid, gave up, and probably closed by saying, “soon, Oris, you'd see the light.”
In the hotel room, as my friends laughed, and like undertakers wore black suits, for presumably male friendship’s ultimate role, I wondered if they realised we were contributing, unwittingly, heartily, towards a ceremony not only marking a union, but also commemorating the demise of a decade-long friendship.
Is self-destruction built into friendship? It seemed clear that the wedding would almost certainly destroy our friendship in the way we know it.
As I have said, the hassled adult might have mentioned “the light.” Now, did every step taken down that aisle mean a step toward illumination? Maybe.
Or was that simply the-last-question-as-a-single-
From the bathroom: “Last pee as a single man!”
Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball came on cable:
“Last Miley Cyrus video as a single man!”
Someone opened a bottle of red wine: “Last drink as a single man!”
Six of us, friends from university, laughed, fixing cufflinks, knotting ties, pulling socks. The groom and the best man had been roommates, and had known each other from their salad days at King’s College; the rest of us met haphazardly mostly in the classroom and the lab. For more than half a decade, we hadn’t been gathered together but no one had changed in all that time.
Groom and best man remained chatterboxes. One still slept till late in the morning; back in university, no one was sure he attended an early class. Another, due to a mechanical manner towards emotional situations and his general efficiency, used to be called stoic; he remained an early riser and a push-up practitioner. And then the very popular one in school remained affable and annoying for same reason; he was also the only one who had changed a little: he was married.
But not for long. There was the soon-to-be husband. And, later in the year, the Sleeper would waltz down the aisle, although he refused to reveal the date.
I wondered if this was the ultimate purpose of male friendship: to be grooms' men. Is this what the years of friendship had been about? All of those shared experiences upon which our friendship was formed, were they leading to this moment, to this role as grooms' men?
Would our arguments be the same, moderated by a woman, by women, now? Those heated arguments would lose that testosterone rawness we had as boys, as single men. Self-censorship taking hold over freedom of expression. To lessen our collective shock, the wife, the wives, would call the transformation maturity, and to those of us resistant to change— the dissenters, the bachelors— she, they, would advise to “go and marry.”
Once, just after a different wedding, I was in a vehicle with the newlyweds when apropos of what seemed to me unrelated the new bride said to her husband, "You're a married man now. This is now your business."
Other than the feeling wrong for being in their company when this was said, I had no problem with the advice. The boy who became the husband would be needing that line administered regularly. In fact, all young, newlywed men, would need that admonition. Perhaps this is the reason for a ring: a reminder of comportment, because you cannot trust a young man to remember he is married on his own.
Girls, for the most part, are surefooted about this, the ring being, mainly, an accessory, a mark of difference, of status. They seem to come equipped with intrinsic reminders of their marital status; and in the absence or delay in acquiring said status, furnished— some say by society, by family— with a longing for it.
Many women are born with an easy facility for the transition to women, to wives. Boys to men, to husbands? A tricky transition. Many remain in a state of arrested development. Perhaps it is biological wiring, connected to the anatomical presence, or lack thereof, of the childbearing apparatus. Perhaps it’s family; perhaps it’s Freud.
Apparently, men and women differ on the requirements of manhood. The man told to ‘be a man’ almost always has no clue what being a man has to do with the circumstance, while the female encouraging, or ahem, heckling, him is certain of what manhood constitutes. (The lack of the male apparatus has never deterred any woman from offering her view on masculinity.)
Like many men, I share that confusion. Or used to. One of my first informal efforts at art criticism was directed at the proclamation by a bus sticker: "to be a man is not a day's job."
I was a kid, the kind with the belief he had all the answers. In my head you're born a man. What else do you need? The hassled adult, dad or uncle tried to explain to the know-it-all kid, gave up, and probably closed by saying, “soon, Oris, you'd see the light.”
In the hotel room, as my friends laughed, and like undertakers wore black suits, for presumably male friendship’s ultimate role, I wondered if they realised we were contributing, unwittingly, heartily, towards a ceremony not only marking a union, but also commemorating the demise of a decade-long friendship.
Is self-destruction built into friendship? It seemed clear that the wedding would almost certainly destroy our friendship in the way we know it.
As I have said, the hassled adult might have mentioned “the light.” Now, did every step taken down that aisle mean a step toward illumination? Maybe.
Or was that simply the-last-question-as-a-single-
By Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
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