Wednesday, November 07, 2007
The Funeral Crasher
In summer 2005, The Wedding Crashers came out in theatres. Before becoming a traditional guy gets girl, guy loses girl, guy gets girl back romantic comedy, it starts off as a raunchy romp with two sociopaths crashing weddings for the free liquor and the abundance of easy access sex partners. The premise comes to mind because I found myself in a similar adventure earlier on this year. Except I was on my own, no drinks were served, and I didn't dare to bother with the skirt chasing. I wasn't out for that, as a friend of mine once said, nowadays if you take somebody home, you've got to boil them first. Though something tells me the skirts occupying the social event I crashed were probably more vulnerable than drunken bridesmaids.
The social event I crashed was a funeral. I knew the celebrant... sort of. He was my brother [Marshall's] friend decades ago. His name was [Russell Gregory]. They parted ways when my brother joined the [Lunatarian Religio-philosophico-politico Sect]. The sect stressed on its members to be "awake". [Russell Gregory] was much more interested in the ordinary life of chasing skirts, getting wasted, and having a "good time". Neither of their life paths appeal to me. Though life in the Lunatarian compound did give my brother some hilarious stories to tell me, and that I hope to use in something some day. The climax of the Lunatarian Saga lead to its leader [Professor Spork] going to jail for being a pain in the ass to little boys when indoctrinating them, if you get my drift. He's currently in jail where, according to his followers, he's learned how to make tomato soup, and is suffering from angioedema, a disease they purport as "having angel's blood."
Anyway, back to the main story, somewhat...
The two old friends went different ways. My brother went on to be the eccentric Magician/Armchair Anthropologist/Pharaoh/Teacher/Solipsist/Mysterian/Mortgage Broker/Gene propagator who still stands in this world today. And his friend... well, he doesn't stand at all. As newspapers said, he never quite grew up. Story goes, [Russell Gregory] had been dipping his anatomy into the forbidden regions of a woman other than his current girlfriend. His roommate [Oscar Aswani] was privy to this fact, and he wanted to dip his anatomy into the forbidden regions of [Russell Gregory's] girlfriend. So he figured that telling her about [Russell Gregory's] foray into the forbidden would give him access to her forbidden region. Boy was he mistaken.
The girlfriend confronted [Russell Gregory] with the news. Then he asked his roommate why he did that. Push came to shove, and as what usually happens between emotives who think with their anatomies rather than their brains, a gun fell into the arena. [Russell Gregory] used it to help him put a crater in [Oscar Aswani's] chest. It took him 10 hours to die. When the cops arrived at their shack, [Russell Gregory] figured prison wasn't his thing, so he used the gun to put a crater in the back of his head. At least it didn't take 10 hours for that one to knock him out.
So that's the long-winded back story. I know about it, because I made it my homework at the time to find out what I could. It made the viewing of his corpse much more personal. I don't feel sorry for him, he made stupid choice after stupid choice, and he's wholly responsible for his fate, and his roommate's. The only reason I went was because, the 21 years prior to that, I had never seen a dead body before. I had to know how I would handle seeing a corpse.
So I showed up. I didn't know a single person there, other than the decedent. I vaguely remembered him. I just remembered seeing him a few years before he was a corpse and he said, "Hey, you're Todd S. Gallows, right? [Marshall's] little brother? I used to be his friend, [Russell Gregory]." I would have never anticipated staring down at his corpse in just a few years to come.
When it came to seeing his corpse, I underplayed my enthusiasm and anxiousness, slowly approaching the body, as everyone else stood around crying their eyes out. His body, though obviously real, looked fake. His face was very square, I guess due to the reconstruction they had to do on him. And his fingers were stiff and shriveled. It looked comical for some reason, and I wanted badly to laugh, but I held it in, surprisingly. And as incognito as I slipped in that day, I slipped out. A mere shadow of gallow.
I thought about the corpse that night before going to bed. I juxtaposed the image of what he looked like during that time I bumped into him, then what he looked like in the box. A fascinating experience, but I got my fix. I needn't go as far as to make it a hobby.
"Party at the St. Mortos Funeral Home! A deadly good time! Remember, this is a BYOC event. Bring Your Own Casket!"
