Toast

Clink. Clink. Clink.

The best man stands up, tails and all, with a half raised flute of cheap crystal and a butter knife in hand. Someone hands him a mic and the big band (one of three) grows quiet. It shrinks loudly.

The bride gives the groom a quick hug mostly because she loves him. She's also concerned. I can see in her eyes that she's concerned that the half-tucked dress shirt the best man is sporting and the flush of his cheeks indicates that this toast will be too interesting.

And. Scene.

A great Mexican poet named Guillermo Aguirre Fierro once wrote the Bohemians toast. A prose narrative dedicated to the one woman that drunkards can always come back to. The one that puts up with a drunk mans lack of shame, stench and pain. A woman who appreciates the grotesque out of pure love. He goes on to say that he does not toast those who provide warm bodies and willing lips. He does not toast those tartlets bought on street corners for a dime or two nor does he toast the women we've pursued and fallend madly in love with. In a heart-wrenching tone and with a quivering voice he extolls:

"yo brindo, por mi madre, bohemios." - a toast, to my mother, fellow bohemians...

Perhaps it is my fathers love for this piece of art that I have dedicated a short lifetime to giving toasts. It starts with a flute and ends, one always hopes, with a quiet and reflective calm.

You want to meet everyones expectation, quickly greet those expectations with a kiss and a handshake and then trip their expectations and then run past them.

I want to give a toast to make us laugh and cry. To reminisce with a forward looking stance. One that is just long enough to make a point but short enough to carry some weight. A toast is meant to be heard by dozens of intent listeners. Everyone hanging on to your every word. I hope to never give a toast in a room. By myself. My only company a bottle of Jack and my words.

A toast is a graduation speech. A toast is one of the last chances a grown man will ever ever get to stand on a pedestal. To preach his beliefs and impart a little bit of back-cover wisdom on a crowd.

I want a wedding toast.

---

We always knew Jack would end up like this - a ball and chain that he'd bedazzle just to confuse us. You see, Jack and I lived on the same hall freshmen year of college. His room and mine were direct opposites to our size. We were an unlikely pair - a northeastern conservative kid and a liberal Mexican. And we had a blast. We would play midnight football, pick each other up when we fell (due in large part to these annoying things called stairs) and go to the gym together. That's pretty much how he got huge. (Pause). Jack was my brother. And we rushed and pledged and he convinced me of the unthinkable every night. I hated pledge. And every night we would come back, he would sit with me and talk me through the unwinding psychological process that it was for me. That semester I met a girl who would end up serving Jack more than me. Because of her Jack me Patricia. I hoped at the time that my Cupid's arrows would work in just the right way. All of us being here today tells me that my aim was true and my arrows pure. ANd they grew close - Jack and Patricia. You look at them and you see stability. A rock. In an environment in which most of us, myself included, get easily downtrodden by the jabs of life, Jack and Patricia always found it easy to stand above it all. They are the dandelion flakes floating, ever so gently, above the rising sea of confusion (that's probably global warming reclaiming its territory). The Greeks used to say - may the gods keep the wolves in the hills and our women in our beds. Interesting how they never mentioned their friends. With that in mind I'd like to say, Patricia, you're an angel for taking someone like Jack - who's been the nicest and naughtiest boy in his prime. Jack. You got lucky man. You once told me that this was the only relationship worth cultivating. That the relationship you build with a significant other is the one that will stand the passage of space and time (I elaborate only to make you look good - NOTE TO SELF: wink at Jack). Like the constant gardener and as I raise my glass - Jack, my friend, brother, you just found a perfect flower.