I Fucking Hate Weddings.
One day, my father invites me to a wedding. Whose wedding? A cousin’s. Didn’t I remember her? We were inseparable when we were 3. I should try to make it. She would be thrilled to see me.
I’m old enough to know that when your father invites you to a wedding, it’s not because he wants to see you. He wants you to see other people, young people (like you), who have their lives figured out (unlike you), taking important life decisions. The most important life decision I’ve ever taken is suspending my Medium membership (as a protest against my inability to set up the Medium paywall in Nigeria.)
Like all young people my age, I hate weddings. Marriage isn’t exactly a fantasy amongst many heterosexual, educated, upwardly mobile men in their 20s. There’s an entire research about this (smh academists will research about anything won’t they?) To us, weddings are a stunning reminder of our lack of personal responsibility, loss of personal freedom, and the dread of commitment ahead.
So I decided that hell would have to freeze over before I would attend that wedding. Turns out that on that Saturday morning, hell did indeed freeze over; so I attended the wedding.
Everyone from my childhood is at the wedding. Uncles and aunties whom I last remembered as young people now have children of their own. I quickly become uncle Victor, wearing a smile and high-fiving kids who are utterly embarrassed at the forced introduction. I’m embarrassed at their embarrassment because I used to be a child too. Older aunties tug at my bulging belly and pull my goatee and remark upon my dramatic physical growth (aka fat). They introduce me to their children, most of them as old as I am, and expect us to hit it off immediately. We give each other polite smiles and turn away. This particular brother couldn’t even be bothered to look at me; he just gives me a slimy handshake and continues thumbing through his phone. I’m immediately embarrassed because first, I swear, I didn’t want to meet you too. Didn’t even want to be here.
Inside the banquet hall, the extravagant decorations and the sheer volume of food quickly remind me that I need to be closer to my family because there’s no way I’ll be paying for all those myself. Jesus. Why do people even get married when they could just run away to Port-Novo with their sweethearts and start a little farm there?
Anyway. I’m at this wedding, sitting on a roundtable while watching the stewards waltz past me with food trays — over and over again. I’m getting impatient because, as you may have already figured out, I’m here for the food. I look over to the other end of the hall and there’s my dad, sitting at a table with more significant family members, and there’s an entire banquet laid before them. I figure that my surest chance of getting food is to make him notice that I’m starving so he can at least, invite me to his table.
I try to get his attention by vigorously waving at him whenever he looks in my direction. At some point, our eyes meet, and then he quickly looks away. Someone leans into him and asks a question to which my father replies, shaking his head. Leaning into my childhood trauma, I have deduced that the person asked him “Isn’t that your son, Victor?”
To which Mr Daniel responded, “I have never met that person in my life.”
I wasn’t even hungry. It’s just that there’s a psychological angle to wedding meals. It’s not about the food itself but its significance of it. I’m taking time off Succession to be here, at your wedding that I really don’t care about. The least you could do is to give me food — an acknowledgement of the sacrifice I’m making. It’s also an acknowledgement of our relationship; our familial bond. Remember how close we used to be? Remember all those times we shared two halves of oranges? Or when I gave you a finger of tangerine? Now I have to hustle food at your wedding? y u gonna do me like that, man?
Ok, I was hungry, too. I didn’t get food. I was probably adopted. I felt a dip in my self-esteem because not getting food while watching your other family members eat does that to you.
I get up to take my leave. First I must inform my father, on whose invitation I’m here. He asks if I’ve greeted my cousin — the bride — personally. I tell him no. He says I must register my presence personally. That’s how she will know I came. That’s how she will remember to return the honour when it gets to my turn to marry. Plus we used to be really close, when we were 3, remember?
So I follow him to greet my cousin. She sees my father and beams. She sees me and smiles politely and thanks me for coming. She’s grateful I came. She’s grateful that everyone who came, came. But between me and her, we both do not remember who the fuck the other person was. She was certainly not thrilled to see me.
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The title is a click-bait. I actually hate weddings but not as loathsomely as the title suggests. I have a short story out on Lolwe. You can read it here.
@Good_pikin is my IG handle.
