Vertical and Horizontal Love

My friend and co-worker Ray got married tonight. We closed the store early and went down to Long Beach. The wedding was held on the Queen Mary. When Ray first told me he was getting married at the Queen Mary, I thought he meant in the little park beside the boat. That's where the main stage was when I saw All Tomorrow's Parties at the Queen Mary (it was curated by Matt Groening!), so I figured that's where the events went down.

No. It was on the Queen Mary. At the top of the ship. It's a really nice view, even though you're essentially looking out over a shipyard. You barely even notice, though, on a Sunday with no ships around. Ray and his new wife Erin waited until just around sunrise to actually come out. In the Industry, we call it Magic Hour. Hey, they're both actors.

And everything went really well, except for the guy running the ceremony. They had this kind of strange Reverend guy doing the service who kept bringing the subject back to Jesus even though everyone at the ceremony clearly wanted to hear about Ray and Erin. He will heretofore be called The Ramblin' Marryin' Reverend. Please picture him with a silly goatee and that lame local pastor way of speaking, where he makes a lot of obvious, folksy jokes and lowers his voice at the ends of sentences to let you know what he has just said is important and insightful.

To start with, he announced, "We're all here to celebrate the union of Ray and Erin, but more importantly, we're here to celebrate God."

Um, excuse me? I was there to celebrate the union of Ray and Erin and that's about it. Well, okay, also to celebrate the union of free booze and my digestive tract. But mainly Ray and Erin. God, and his kids or whatever, they didn't really enter into it. I don't waste Sundays celebrating fictional characters, okay? Unless I'm seeing an all-day film festival, in which case I totally waste Sundays celebrating fictional characters. But those are samurai, so it's different.

But okay, well enough, fine, whatever. Ray and Erin are a bit more religious than me (which isn't hard to do...) I'm cool with it.

But it just kept going. Someone reads a passage from the New Testament about how Jesus turned the water into wine, which happens at a wedding but doesn't really have anything to do with actually getting married. It could have happened anywhere one might require wine. Like, say, an Italian restaurant.

"Hey, Jesus, Son of Man, paisan, I'm about to enjoy this delicious veal scallopini and we've completely run out of vino. Mamma mia! This is a no-good! My method of speaking, she is egregiously stereotypical, you know? Fuhgeddaboutit!"

But that wouldn't mean the story was about an Italian restaurant. That's just the setting. It's about Jesus and how he's miraculous, innit?

Anyway, then there was another Bible passage about how Jesus said that your first priority and duty was to love God, but you should also love your fellow man, cause that's really the same thing. It's a very nice sentiment, really, and Christians seem to forget pretty frequently that their Lord and savoir was all about forgiveness and love. Except, you know, for fags and the children of fags. "Fuck the children and adopted children of fags," Jesus was fond of saying.

So, still, I was doing okay. Lots of Jesus talk, but I can take the Jesus talk for a little while as long as it's not too in my face or intolerant. But then they reverend guy came back on and started doing this really painful, long, rambling speech about vertical and horizontal love.

Here's the best I can explain it...You love God and God loves you. Ditto Jesus. That's what we in the Industry call "vertical love." I know, Vertical Love...it sounds like an Ace of Base song, but it's not. Apparently, it's a common theological term. I think St. Augustine might have thought it up. Also, it can be perfectly inserted into Steve Miller Band lyrics:

Vertical love...
It's drivin' me mad
It's makin' me crazy (crazy)

So, man-on-God love, that's vertical love. That's the kind the Old Testament Bible is ALL ABOUT. Love God a lot. Don't just kind of make googly-eyes at God from across the room at the big freshman dance. You should be making out with him under the stairwell before they even crown the King and Queen. With tongue.

I mean, Old Testament God wants you to love him way more than your family. He told Abraham to kill his own kid, and Abraham was like, "no," and God was like, "yeah, or I totally won't like you any more." And Abraham was all, "you like me?" And God was like, "I like like you. But only if you kill your son."

Old Testament God was a co-dependent God, which is totally a contradiction in terms, which is why Judiasm is so weird and fucked up and confusing.

But back to Christianity and why that's weird and fucked up and confusing. According to the Ramblin' Marryin' Reverend, Jesus came along and switched everything up. He said that loving your "neighbor" was the same as loving God, that you could express your love for God by being really cool to everyone around you! Brilliant!

That means that, when you get married, you're committing to love someone forever, therefore you're committing to loving God forever. Which means that getting married is secretly all about loving Jesus even more than you did before! Sweet! He's tricky, that Jesus. Here you are, you think you're marrying some girl, but instead you're committing yourself to love the Lord. Cheeky bastard!

That love for your fellow man stuff, by the way, is called "horizontal love." Yeah. Seriously. Horizontal love. Now, this guy wasn't a priest, so he's allowed to get married and have sex. And you can't tell me that someone who has had sex before in their life doesn't realize that the metaphor "horizontal love" is going to cause people to snicker.

You probably snickered when you first read it, didn't you? ADMIT IT!

Yet on and on this guy went, talking about how Jesus loves horizontal love. Finally, he went into a paragraph that was scientifically designed to make my goofy fellow video store clerks and I begin laughing. We couldn't, of course, because you can't laugh in the middle of your friend's wedding ceremony. It was scientifically designed, all right, by evil Nazi scientists.

I swear, here's what the guy said as close as I can remember it. The last part of the speech was in the form of a direct prayer to God on behalf of Ray and Erin. [NOTE: To fully understand the prayer, please note that, in accordance with Ray's Filipino traditions, Ray and Erin are covered with a veil that is tied up with a cord]:

"Lord, please grant Ray the ability to please Erin as she needs to be pleased, and in a way that is pleasing to you. Lord, allow Erin to please Ray as you see fit, in a manner that pleases you and is above all pleasing to you through Ray. As this rope and cord cover their, so let them be coated in God's love."

All this talk about pleasing God...I thought Zeus was the one that was always coming down off the mountain to screw human girls, not Yahweh. Keep it in your pants, Lord.

Mercifully, after that, the ceremony was almost over. All that remained was the actual business of, um, marrying Ray and Erin. That wasn't the most important thing, as you'll recall, so Ramblin' Marryin' Reverend thankfully made time for it after we all heard about Jesus' pearly white God juice.

And the actual marriage part went off without a hitch. It was the first wedding I have attended since childhood, and what surprised me most was how composed everyone was.

If I was getting married, I would be so fidgety that most of the guests would assume I was some crazed drifter looking for spare change for a crank fix, who just coincidentally happened to have a tuxedo on. Not just because long-term relationships frighten me, but also because any massive, life-changing decisions cause me levels of anxiety generally reserved for bad LSD trips or Hitchcock movies. The Three Stooges handle important ceremonial occasions with more poise and confidence than I do.

Ray, though...steady as a rock. You'd think the guy was celebrating the installation of a new muffler or being the 10,000th customer at Cinnabon. I've seen people significantly more fired up and excitable over the birth of puppies at the apartment of someone they barely know. Erin, too...They just handled themselves with such grace and tact, it was really something to see. Apparently, they have dated for about 9 years now, so I guess this won't exactly be a life-altering moment for them. Things will be as they have been, except now they'll wear rings and think lame, middle-aged comics who do "wife and kids" humor are funny.

Otherwise, no real changes. Well, that whole true love lifelong commitment thing. I guess that's kind of new.

There was an open bar for the first hour of the reception (nice!) so I had a few cocktails. I asked initially for a "Seven and Seven," one of my personal favorite drinks, only to discover they had only one of the two required "sevens." Whiskey, yes. Seven-Up? No. We had to make do with Sierra Mist. I'm happy to report that, if you drink it really fast, and chase it with champagne and flavorful little prosciutto-wrapped melon balls, the taste is nearly identical.

I talked mostly with my boss (who sat to my left) and my co-worker and co-Cinegeek Ari (to my right), but also to a woman I later discovered was Christian Bale's sister. I can't really decide if that's interesting or not. It sounds like it would be kind of interesting, but then you think about it and realize it's not, really. But she was interesting, even if meeting her brought me no closer to meeting Christian Bale, which in and of itself wouldn't actually be all that interesting because he's not really like Patrick Bateman or Bruce Wayne.

My Mom once went to a wedding and wound up meeting author Tom Wolfe. He was there in one of his trademark all-white suits. Now that's interesting.

At one point, I was reluctantly brought to the dance floor by the bride to participate in YMCA. I went with, mainly because a girl was grabbing my hand, and I tend to just blindly follow whenever that happens. But also because it was a bride on her wedding day, and you basically have to do what they say.

Regrettably, I had to flee a few seconds thereafter because The Chicken Dance came on. I'm sorry...I look ridiculous enough dancing in the first place, but dancing to the Chicken Dance? There's only so much public humiliation one guy can handle. Plus, hearing the Chicken Dance reminds me that, in my apartment tomorrow morning, I'll be awoken by loud, blaring Mexican polka not unlike the Chicken Dance before 7 am.

I feel like this report is relentlessly negative. Is it? Because, really, I had a good time. Some free drinks, I checked out a big-ass boat, the store closed a few hours early, there was some chicken and potatoes, Ari came away with a vase and I got home with "Extras" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" waiting for me on the DVR. Plu,s you know, a friend married a smart, beautiful actress who makes him happy, and that's a nice thing that even a bitter troll like myself can appreciate, kinda.

I'm just a sarcastic ass that can't take in a beautiful ceremony bringing two people together without turning it into an opportunity to bitch and moan and amuse myself with snarky commentary.

By the way, don't you think the Ramblin' Marryin' Reverend is a good idea for a kid's show? Every week, the Reverend wanders around, giving long speeches and marrying people and singing songs about the number 4 and why God wants you to love geometrically. I think it would be something sweet for families to enjoy, unlike those unwholesome Teletubbies.