I need an opinion

Posted by Johnny at 2:26 p.m.

Ok, let me start off with a boring story.

I'm doing some recording work for a girl I knew in high school, who we will call Abby, in exchange for her fiance building an acoustically treated vocal booth in my basement. The work he's doing would normally run around $1500, so I'm basically giving her 8-10 songs out of it. This is beside the point. Also, she found me through another girl that I recorded (and asked out), who happens to be a good friend of hers. We'll call this girl Betty.

Abby is getting married very soon (next week) and I was under the assumption that I was not invited to the wedding... because she hadn't invited me. I was fine with this, because I try to avoid churches if at all possible, and, from what she has told me, the reception was going to be dry to accommodate the alcoholics in the family.

In the last couple weeks, I've been mixing and mastering a song for her to play at the wedding. She wrote it for her husband-to-be, so I wanted her to be happy with the result. I made a first mix, wasn't happy with it, then made a second mix that was about 90% of what I wanted. She was impressed with my perfectionist tendencies and felt like she is getting a really good deal, which she is. Perhaps it was out of guilt, but whatever the motivation, she invited me to her wedding.

Let me clarify: she invited me to the ceremony. They don't have enough food to invite me to the reception, so I'm invited to the church part, and she made it sound like she really wanted me to come. I haven't been to any kind of church service since last Christmas Eve with the Ex (no church this year! WOO) and I was planning to decline the invitation. That is, until I found out that Betty, who is now married and living out west, was going to be in town and at the wedding, presumably with her husband.

I've met Betty's husband, we'll call him Charlie, twice at the most and so far he has never said a single word to me. Not one. Not even "hello" or "goodbye." Something tells me that he felt threatened by my brief presence in Betty's life back in the spring. I mean, she was over at my house a lot during the recording process, and we hung out together for the last few weeks at school, so he was justified in his fears. They were futile, however, because after finding out that she was marrying the first person she'd ever dated at age 22 (he was 19!), I immediately lost interest in her. But once I met him and clearly saw how jealous he was, I abandoned any guilt that I had from spending so much time with her. And let's not forget that she let me buy her dinner, telling me that she was engaged half-way through the meal.

You'd think I'd want to spend less time with her in order to make things easier on Charlie, but he just seemed so immature that I couldn't help but want to toy with his perceptions. What can I say, I'm an asshole. Unfortunately, they were busy planning the wedding in the summer, so I didn't really get a chance to make him any less comfortable, and, not surprisingly, I wasn't invited to the wedding, so I couldn't give her a big congratulatory kiss like I had planned. Basically, my fun was at an end and I haven't spoken to her since August.

But now that she is going to Abby's wedding next week, I've been handed an opportunity for some light trouble-making. Operating under the assumption that she's bringing Charlie as a guest, I have several options if I go to the wedding.

I could, and most likely will try, to sit with them. Naturally, I'd sit next to Betty and make a bunch of enthusiastic conversation with her before the wedding starts, all but ignoring Charlie. If I was feeling saucy, I could also give her a big hug when I first see her. This might raise some flags. Finally, a kiss on the cheek would pretty much ensure his permanent disapproval of me, all to my absolute delight. I think these would all be within the acceptable boundaries of two friends who hadn't seen each other in four months, don't you?

Of course, I could spare myself some boredom and spare those newlyweds some minor hiccups by not attending the wedding and not being mischievous. But I don't know if I'd ever have another chance at this sort of thing. It would almost be worth sitting through a full wedding ceremony to cause a little bit of trouble and make a silent protest against the institute of marriage and the naive youngsters who feel guilty about having sex without that magical piece of metal around their finger.

But then again, I'd have to go to church. What should I do?