61 Frames Per Second by John Constantine Today in Nerve's videogame blog: Street Fighter. The movie. A new one. With that chick from that Superman show. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about!
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Mad Men's January Jones struts her stuff in Vanity Fair. Plus: Damages returns, the latest Gossip Girl guest star and Donna Martin capitulates.
Like most people on the planet, I have little in
common with Britney Spears. I do not know, for instance, what it is like to
seduce the world out of hundreds of millions of dollars by
swearing that I will remain a virgin until marriage, all the while dressing like
a schoolgirl, dancing like the good Lord's own best stripper, and begging
in song, to "hit me one more time," whatever that may mean. As a middle-aged,
unemployed male whose breasts are not what they used to be, I had begun to
think our stars would never cross.
promotion
And then
came the singer's marriage this past Saturday to "childhood friend"
Jason Alexander. It was an arresting bit of entertainment gossip, not just
because a seemingly uber-controlled celebrity would make such a rash
move,
but because, at least in my case, it sounded so familiar — déjà vu in the
extreme. Familiar-sounding little chapel (Little White Chapel/Silver Bell
Chapel), similar time (that tradition-obsessed hour of four a.m.), same mistake
(going to the chapel without a license from the
county clerk). I was never in the Mickey Mouse Club, but flashbacks
remind me that I am in the Woke Up Married in Vegas
Club.
His vows were impromptu poetry: "Do
you take this bodacious, salacious, super-fine damseliciousness to
be your . . . "
Stranger still is to have been through such an odd experience, to know the
factors involved so intimately, and see it regurgitated after a PR team has
had a chance to digest it. Denials that Britney was drunk and had to be carried
out of a casino, coy assertions that they were just friends, "not boyfriend
and girlfriend," etc. In the haze of vague details, the New York Post brought
in a handwriting expert to analyze the marriage certificate. He concluded that
the
union
had
not been consummated. (The "y" in Britney apparently
suggested she was "not in a sexy state of mind").
Three years ago, I would have been as mystified as the
next person. I
would have just continued flipping through my People magazine in search
of an update on Siegfried's rehabilitation. But because of my unwanted expertise,
I feel obligated to speak
up, to reveal what inspires such behavior before someone does it again.
So, here it is: the likely truth of what happened. There
are three factors that must be present before one can wake up
in Vegas
married. They
are, in no particular order: lots of alcohol, a weakness for extreme
experiences, and some dirty nasty porn-star-like fucking-sex.
The alcohol, I'm willing to bet, was tequila, the unofficial sponsor of
impromptu weddings. When Ms. Spears' handlers suggested she hadn't been
drunk, they were likely cadging their definition from Dean Martin's personal
dictionary, the man who quipped, "You're not drunk if you can lie on the
floor without holding on."
My own soon-to-be bride hit the ground outside the Hard Rock casino's
entrance. And it really wasn't that she was that drunk, more that we were
laughing so hard, were in such delirious spirits, she needed to rest.
People leaving the casino just stepped over her, and around me. We'd done so
many shots that, by the next morning, neither of us could remember who first
suggested the marriage. Anyone who has visited Vegas with a lover has
joked about getting married there, but thanks to the tequila factor, at some point
late in the evening, Ms. Spears and Mr. Alexander were no longer sure if
they were joking, which would have made the situation all the more funny.
If Ms. Spears' limo driver were anything like our taxi
driver — and since he allegedly walked the
bride down the aisle, I'm pretty sure he was — when they tumbled into the back
seat and asked to be taken to a chapel, he didn't
suggest they sleep it off. This is
significant, because he was the first sober person to hear what they were
doing, and instead of being the voice of reason, he went along
with it. He got into it. The moment he pulled that limo out, it was like Alice
tumbling
down the hole. Next stop: Wonderland.
A Las Vegas wedding chapel is just as tacky
as you could imagine. In fact, it is an almost uniquely shoddy environment. As
the staggering, laughing couple were asked to select their wedding package —
whether
they
wanted the stripped-down wedding, or something fancier, like flowers and a
picture, or the top of the line, including a video — they would have been
leaning on something like a cracked glass counter, taking in the
yellowing plastic flowers in the display case and the trucker hats and
T-shirts emblazoned with the chapel's name. In terms of
ambience, Las Vegas wedding chapels are a mere few steps up from a truck-stop
restroom, minus the urinal cakes.
Of course, in the moment, this is all
perfect, part of the dreamy, intense surreality of the moment,
a critical part of the appeal. I have done some crazy things in my
life — been drugged in Turkey, branded in college, mauled by a bull at rodeo-clown
school — and yet, that marriage in Vegas was the most mind-blowing. To
desecrate such a solemn institution is one
of life's most intense rushes. It is bungee-jumping with a veil and laugh track.
I can only imagine that Britney was lured on by the adrenaline.
And that rush would have continued as she walked down the aisle and to the altar.
Everyone who gets married in Vegas is later asked if
Elvis performed the service. The answer is that he didn't — either because he
wasn't
working that late, or was only available as part of the most expensive package
— but
whoever did was strange. Britney may have had the apparent Don
King impersonator who officiated at my ceremony. His vows were an amazing
bit of impromptu poetry: "Do you take this bodacious, salacious, super fine
bit of damseliciousness to be your . . . "
It is summed up by the sudden awareness: What the hell is Don King
doing at my wedding?
It is about midway through such officiating, if I am not mistaken, that the
groom would have noticed a change in his bride-to-be. The tone of the
laughter would have changed, would have become scrambled up with something
that sounded a lot like crying, and the tears of laughter — well,
suddenly they would be just tears. Not tears of sadness, exactly. Nor gladness
either. It is the confusion of all those girlhood fantasies of marriage crashing
into a wall, summed up by the sudden awareness: What the hell is Don King
doing at my wedding?
The answer to the question, what is Don King doing at my wedding, is only
partly explained by tequila and an appreciation for "crazy" experiences. If
those were the only factors involved, the participants would have ended up at the Liberace
museum. What makes the impromptu Vegas wedding happen, what keeps that
county clerk open all night, is that third factor, the mind-clouding,
reason-scrambling powers of a bout with serious sex.
There should be a word for the hypnosis we are all prey to in the moment
before orgasm. Think of the things we have all suggested or
thought on the verge of ecstasy. We should do this all the time. We
should never stop.Etc. Peter Farrelly, in his novel The Comedy Writer,
captured this moment. The main character becomes so lost in the moment
while masturbating that he suddenly thinks it would be cool to taste his own
semen. Only afterward does he wonder what the hell he was thinking. Which
is how it usually works — we climax, and reason returns. The lights come on.
But there's another type of sexual relationship, one in which the lights don't
come on right away. It is something everyone experiences when we
first learn that sex is not about being polite, or doing what is socially
acceptable. There has to be a
bit of that first onset of sexual madness, that suddenly sensible notion of
tasting one's own fluids, that gets one down the aisle at four a.m. No
offense to any of Ms. Spears' previous partners (wink-wink, Justin).
And then . . . the morning after the wedding. One of life's great unsung
pleasures is waking up out of a bad dream. It's a gorgeous moment of
appreciation for the status quo, an unexpected bit of thanksgiving for life
as it is.
Actually, that doesn't come on right away. Even in the
morning, it's hard to get a clear view of things, which is why the marriage
may have lasted the
fifty-five hours it did. It doesn't take a critical theorist to realize
that Las Vegas is a city of make-believe. When my little error went down,
we were staying at the Mandalay Bay. I'd spent the day bodysurfing in the
"ocean" in the desert. In such surroundings, it's hard to figure out
exactly how stupid any action really is. You can't quite get your bearings.
Eventually, and over time, the reality sets in of just how inane the
marriage was. For the first time, I sincerely scared myself, was left
wondering what else I was capable of. I have never since taken pleasure in
drinking. I'm guessing Britney Spears feels similarly rocked.
And yet there is a redeeming aspect to the experience.
By treating it so shabbily, she has mentally stripped the institution of its
considerable romantic power. Marriage, after such a fiasco, is revealed not
just as fairy tale but as its other incarnation: formidable legal
contract linking two unrelated humans together. It's something more people
should probably understand, going in. And now Britney is free to wait for
someone with whom she can enjoy the earth-shattering sex, as well as a
chance of a future.
n°
Leif Ueland received
a Master's Degree in the Professional Writing Program at the University
of Southern California. He has written for public radio's Marketplace and
several newspapers, and had a play produced in Minneapolis. His first book,
Accidental Playboy, was published by Warner Books in November 2002.
