Army Wedding

*Dear Reader, please remember that I am a great lover of irony, and that you should take as few of my own statements literally as possible*

Well Dear Reader, I got to go to real live capital e Event this weekend. It was an Army wedding, the nuptials of not just one soldier, but of a soldier to another soldier. Both the bride and groom are friends of mine, and I'm glad that they were able to tie the knot before heading to the sandbox. Those two work together, and gods help them, really are in love. They're even in the same section, so that means that spend in the neighborhood of eighteen hours a day together. Any couple that can survive that amount of interaction, well, they've got something going on.

But friends, this wedding. It was amazing. It was a platonic example of the Army lifestyle and practice. No, I'm not talking about tall, strong people wearing dress blues, marching out up crossed swords, saluting, any of that nonsense. No, what I mean is that the bride wore a low-cut white sun dress and that the groom wore board shorts and flip flops. One of their wedding presents was a half empty case of lime-flavored bud light beer. The wedding reception consisted of people standing around smoking while a Dropkick Murphys album played at top volume on a car stereo. 

Here is the best man's toast in its entirety: “To prostitution, rape, riot, and revolution.”

A poem, all in one line.

But Dear Reader, don't think for a minute, not a single minute that there was anything wrong with an inch of this wedding. Oh, failing that, at least that much more wrong than want you might be unlucky enough to see at any wedding. 

I have been a guest at quite a few weddings recently(oh, don't soldiers love to find a wife the week before they leave on a deployment) and this wedding was absolutely free of that most odious element of so many weddings, pretension. 

These two kids got married married because they loved each other, because they wanted to spend the rest of forever with one another. The decided not to simply have a court house wedding because they had friends who wanted to be with and celebrate them when they took that step. 

They weren't trying to show off their wealth or their class or their piety. They just wanted to claim their relationship as a crucial element of their lives. 

A lot of folks in my unit are already seeing their marriages fall apart. Some units see a fifty percent or higher divorce rate during the year of deployment. Just think about that. Half the marriages a unit has at the beginning are likely to have been destroyed by the end. 

I have to think that some of that has something to do with people not knowing what marriage is about. Certainly, I'm terrible with romantic relationships, but I have a theory that it has something to do with people letting other priorities get between them and the love for their partner. People's selfish desires, their grasping at ideas of class, their love of money and alcohol and drug, all sorts of nonsense stops them from remembering the basic humanity, the silly little needs and wants and dreams of that person who've they've decided to have a life with. 

But these two, at least so far, the only part of their marriage they care about is being together. And that seems pretty good and healthy to me.

Comments

[rosa]

You posted a link to a post with someone toasting rape on a feminist blog? What is wrong with you?

[CombatQueer]

Friend, if you read a little more of the blog I think you'll find that I tell stories of folks in the unit doing and saying terrible thing.

Telling these stories does not mean that I approve of them.

Telling the stories is my way of exposing the bullshit, sterilizing it with sunlight