I returned late last night from the wed­ding of my friend Jere­my in Tip­ton, KS. For the most part, the trip was event­ful, or bor­ing, and some­times both togeth­er. The Inter­state sys­tem is a won­der­ful thing, It can take you most every­where, and if it can­not get you there, it can get you damn close, but it takes a hel­la long time to get most places.

Tip­ton is a severe­ly small town. Due to recent con­sol­i­da­tion, it lost its high school to neigh­bor­ing Downs, arous­ing much ire from the denizens of Tip­ton. I came up with an Idea for the mas­cot of Downs. Cur­rent­ly the Drag­ons, I feel that they should become the Syn­drome, and each team should have an extra play­er.

The ini­tial thir­teen hour haul from South Bend to Tip­ton with the best man, Sven, was bro­ken up by a stop in KC to see the Roy­als thrash the Cleve­land Indi­ans. This was the begin­ning of Jere­my’s bach­e­lor par­ty, he con­sumed rough­ly one beer per inning and threw up in the back­seat of my car on the way to the gen­tle­men’s club.

I’d nev­er been to a strip joint before, and I real­ly have no desire to go ever again.

Grant­ed, it was fun to watch Jere­my, but the whole atmos­phere seemed hol­low. One of the guys bought me a lap dance, and while my body enjoyed the car­nal [i’m at work right now — a nun just walked in and asked for a com­put­er] aspects, it did­n’t even real­ly get me that turned on. It was like those East­er rab­bits, choco­late­ly on the out­side, but noth­ing fill­ing it up but stale air. I was bored after the first half-hour. Appar­ent­ly the only attrac­tion that the club held for me was the curi­ousi­ty of the unknown. It only took me thir­ty min­utes to under­stand the inter­ac­tions between cus­tomers and staff, that is how shal­low it felt. It was a baby-pool cul­tur­al­ly.

It did teach me some­thing of myself thank­ful­ly. Pure unimag­i­na­tive phys­i­cal­i­ty does not turn me on. I need at least the appearence of appeal­ing per­son­al­i­ty to give me that nudge. I have no inter­est if there is no rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion of desire. So when I crush hard on a girl, I’ll know there is more to it than just lust. Boo­bies in the face aren’t that inter­est­ing unless there is a vest­ed emo­tion­al intent behind them.

We Notre Dame folk were put up in a small house that dou­bles as a hunt­ing lodge right down the street from both recep­tion hall and church. Hell, every­thing is right down the street in a town that has only a gen­er­al store and one restau­rant.

The next day I met most of Jere­my’s gigan­tic fam­i­ly. He has some cute cousins but told me not to hit on them. That evening, after the ridicu­lous 115 degree weath­er, there was a pool par­ty in the near­by town of Beloit. I had not been swim­ming in ages and the heav­i­ly chlo­ri­nat­ed water was good indeed.

The 4th was the rehearsal day, after the rehearsal, we had pork brisket, baked beans, pota­to sal­ad, and home­made ice cream at the huge local hunt­ing ranch. Then we blew up an arse­nal of fire works for sev­er­al hours.

The wed­ding day was boil­ing hot, espe­cial­ly in the church in a suit. I video­graphed the wed­ding with­out a hitch and the recep­tion din­ner was roast beef, mashed taters, corn, rolls and amaret­to wed­ding cake. The dance was great, I sup­pose I enjoy danc­ing when I don’t feel oblig­at­ed to try and dance well, and can just be crazy. I was crazy, and it was a blast. I also caught the garter. Appar­ent­ly it was arranged by Jere­my and Christy to get me togeth­er with Christy’s friend There­sia. Well we end­ed up danc­ing togeth­er and we talked a bit, but I’m not real­ly inter­est­ed. Besides, she lives in the mid­dle of nowhere Kansas.

We ND folk stayed up ass late talk­ing and then arose ass ear­ly to dri­ve home. The dri­ve home took a bit longer because of a traf­fic jam, and we did­n’t arrive in SB till 11:30. It was a long but good week­end.