What is it about a wedding?
"What is it about a wedding?" the voice said, making me chuckle since it was exactly what I had been thinking.
I looked around, and then down.
If you look in the dictionary for Mrs. Santa Claus, well, there she was. Barely five feet tall, the best part of five feet wide, tightly curled silver hair, a round face with round cheeks and a round chin, tiny ears, a button nose, and a small Cupid's Bow of a mouth. I just knew, looking at her, that when she laughed she'd jiggle like Santa's bowl full of jelly.
I guessed her at 65 and strained for the name. Christ, I must have met a hundred people already this weekend.
Ah, there it was.
"Trudi," I said, "you literally just said what I was thinking."
"Oh," she said, moving closer, not that there was much room between us to begin with.
"Yeah," I said, "There's something about all the young people all full of energy that kind of gets to you."
She giggled, an oddly cute sound from her Medicare-eligible face. "It's the pheromones," she said.
"The what?" I said, feigning ignorance.
So she started explaining the intricacies of female pheromones and their impact on males.
"Trudi," I said, "I was just kidding. I know about pheromones and you're right, the air is thick with them."
She closed the remaining few inches between us and laid her hand on my arm.
"Thick enough to make an old Jewess think pretty hard about asking the only age-appropriate, unattached man in the place to dance, even if he is a goy," she said.
That made me laugh.
I took both of her hands in mine and asked, "Would a nice Jewish girl be willing to dance with an old goy?"
We had been through the YMCA-Chicken Dance-Hokie Pokie medley and the DJ was getting down to the slow dances when the bridesmaids and groomsmen would find their way to the nearest broom closet or some other semi-private room. We walked onto the little dance floor to Julie London doing
Cry Me A River
.
I took her in my arms, caught the beat, and stepped off into a simple box step. It turned out, that was about all she could handle.
And I felt my years of being a faithful husband slipping away. This woman was so perfectly my type that she was getting to me way below the level of any thinking. She was short and round and soft and very VERY busty, just like I like my women. And she made it pretty clear that she was interested too.
"You know," she said, as we stepped off to Marilyn Monroe's version of
I Want to be Loved by You
, a more uptempo song, "all of those jokes about Jewish sex are a bunch of
shtuyot
," anyway, that's as close as I can write the word she used.
"A bunch of what?" I asked, laughing.
"Shitooyot," she said again, "Nonsense." She flashed a gap-toothed grin, "Bullshit."
"Oh? Like what?" I asked.
"Oh, you know," she said, looking up at me, grinning now, "Like - What is Jewish foreplay?"
I'd heard it, but played along. "I'll bite," I said, "What is Jewish foreplay?"
She smiled. The smile your gramma might have given you if you were a particularly good boy.
"Four hours of begging," she said, giggling.
I laughed, dropped to my knees, and said, "Please."
She laughed, looked at her watch, and said, "Three hours and fifty-nine minutes to go."
I laughed, got up, and we picked up the dance. A few people looked at us but I figured that little play was being seen as just a part of the post-wedding reverie.
"Tell me another one that's bullshit," I said.
She smiled and snuggled against me as Marilyn finished up in her too-breathy voice, "poop poopy doop."
"How a gentile girl eats a banana," she said and then mimed holding up a banana with her left hand, using her right to peel it in four long downward movements, and then lifting it to her mouth.
"How a Jewish girl eats a banana," she said and did the miming of peeling thing but at the last instant reached up with her right hand, put it on the back of her head, and pushed her head down to the banana.
I laughed again. That one was a new one to me.
"And that's not you?" I asked.
She looked up at me under one raised eyebrow, being genetically enabled to do the one-eyebrow thing that I am NOT able to do, and said, "Oh dear me, no."
She repeated the peeling mime but this time the punch line was both hands on the imaginary banana and her dropping to her knees to take it into an obviously eager mouth.
"Okay, Sluterella," I said, laughing and pulling her to her feet, "You made your point."
"Have I," she asked, standing close enough that those heavy breasts pressed against me.
"Oh yeah," I said, "I really REALLY want to see how you handle my banana."
I took her hand and went in search of my son and his new bride.
Stephen saw me and dragged his new bride, Meg, away from the crowd of well-wishers that had them surrounded.
"I have offered Trudi a ride and think I'll leave you young people to do young people stuff," I said.
He looked at me with a smile that was too knowing and wrapped me in one of those big bearhugs he used to remind me how much bigger he was than I am these days.
"Thank you, Dad," he said, "for coming. And tell Paula we missed her."
"Wouldn't have missed it," I said, grinning.
I hugged my new daughter-in-law, welcomed her to the family, and stood back and watched as Trudi and Meg huddled, giggling.
Finally, they broke their huddle, Trudi came over, put both hands on my arm, and said, loudly enough for all to hear, "Come on, handsome, let's leave these youngsters to their fun."
There was a golf cart waiting and I helped her into its back seat and then draped my arm across her shoulders while we were shuttled the half-block to the field where the cars were parked.
She giggled when she saw my little midlife crisis still retained through my 75th birthday. The little Fiat 124 Spyder is, in my view anyway, the most beautiful piece of rolling sculpture ever produced that was within reach of the middle class. I bought mine as a 50th birthday present for myself and over the intervening 25 years slowly rebuilt and improved it. Now, the car almost 50 years old, was far better than new, and unlike when it was new, it was reliable.
Trudi giggled when she saw it and asked if we could put the top down.
