I bought a new suit last Saturday, just in time to wear it to my ex-girlfriend's wedding.

And given that I was going to this wedding without a date, I decided to make sure the suit was sharp. So I dropped about $400 on the outfit. I even spent $20 on *socks*!!

After all, when you go to weddings, you never know who you might pick up.

I hadn't been at the location of the wedding (the Elms in Excelsior Springs) for five minutes before the short-haired groomsmen approached me.

"Have you set up the music equipment yet?" one asked.

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," I replied.

"Well, don't you think you ought to?"

"I don't know."

"Well, you're paid to know."

"I haven't been paid yet," I answered, honestly.

The groomsmen -- two brothers of the groom and a friend -- were getting a bit peeved at this point.

"You'll get paid afterwards," one of them growled.

"I want to get paid now," I said, once again, honestly.

Then, as we all sat looking at each other, a bridesmaid came out.

"Have you seen the DJ?" she asked the groomsmen.

"He's right there," one said, pointing at me. "And he's not being cooperative."

The bridesmaid looked at me. "That's not the DJ!" she said. "The DJ is blond and has short hair."

The groomsmen looked at me, annoyed.

"I still want my money," I said.

No one seemed to find it nearly as funny as I.

:)

But I paid for it. Massively.

I sat down in the next-to-back row of the gazebo, placing myself deliberately where the first girl I ever kissed would have to see me as she marched down the aisle to marry a short-haired normal. I wanted her to look at me and remember our love and know just what she was going to miss, at least unless she allowed me to feed her dog a gothic bone or two on the side ....

Behind me sat a young couple with two children under the age of two. The

youngest child, still a lapdog, had something to say.

"Gargle," said the baby.

"DADDY!" screamed its sibling.

"Shut UP!" I thought, smelling the charcoal fuel of the decorative torches along the walk to the gazebo and suddenly hankering for baby back ribs.

A soloist sang, and the groom and his groomsmen marched to the front of the gazebo, their tan cummerbunds accentuating their yuppie blandness. Draped in Big Bird-yellow glory, the bridesmaid, brides matron and the other attendants followed suit. Or tuxedo, anyway.

Across the aisle from me and up a few rows, a baby yowled. Six rows in front of me, another baby joined in, screaming like a chef had read my mind and started work. Behind me, the Daddy-child lifted its voice in wail, joining the chorus like a neighborhood dog that doesn't want to be

the only canine to silently watch the mailman walk by.

"Gargle," the Daddy-child's sibling repeated.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw that my ex stood at the end of the walk with her mother, poised to begin her march. She was beautiful.

Not because of her dress, of course, or because it was her wedding day. She's just damn hot. She's my ex-girlfriend, after all, and I don't date trolls.

Although I've gone so long without a date that I'm considering it. I've been chased naked in public by black bears, awoken my parents with the moans of a girlfriend and accidentally sent an e-mail to my entire company -- including the president -- claiming to be the "Magic Snow Faerie," so I understand humiliation. Believe me, when I say to you, that there is nothing in this world that is more pathetic than going to your ex's wedding without a date.

This is particularly the case when your ex belongs to an entirely different social strata than you. In my case, my ex-girlfriend is now a doctor, and her monthly student loan payments are more than my take-home pay. Everyone at the wedding -- except for me -- was distinguished, clean cut, colorfully dressed and conservative. So not only did this black-clad long hair stand out like a morning hard on, this black-clad long hair stood out like a morning hard on that couldn't attract the helping hand of a date.

That's not to say that I didn't try to get a date. Heck, I cruised the playgrounds, the junior highs, the high schools and even the colleges. In desperation, I turned to women my own age. An equal-opportunity dweeb, I gave every race and gender and person of disability the chance to turn me down. My favorite was the girl undergoing chemotherapy who told me she was going to be washing her hair that day.

I even turned to a young woman at work whom I had dated a few times. It was far too early in our relationship for me to spring a wedding date -- much less an engagement -- but I tried it nonetheless.

"Why would you take me?" she asked.

In retrospect, perhaps I can concede that my answer was too honest.

"Because you have a pulse."

So after she turned me down, I turned to the single man's best friend -- and I'm not talking about a dog (or, for those of you from Arkansas, a sheep). I'm talking about the adult entertainment store.

There, I actually could have picked up a blow-up sheep for a minor amount of money, but I wanted to make a better impression than that. But

I gotta ask, do you know how expensive a blow-up woman is?

Good grief! And these things aren't even self-cleaning!

Sure, I could have gone with the cheap-o models for $20 or so, the kind whose mouths can be used to hold Coke cans when you're finished. But anyone who's ever been cut by the sharp vinyl seams on an air mattress can appreciate how dangerous those cheap-o blow-up dolls can be!

And lets face it, if I were gonna buy a doll for this wedding, I might as well get one that's gonna last. I know the importance of multi-use items, after all; my suits are all reversible, I've actually used the toothpick and tweezers in my Swiss army knife, and I was a Boy Scout way back when ... well, a Cub Scout, anyway, but same difference.

And I still look damn good in one of them yellow kerchiefs.

But there was no way I could afford the better-quality blow-up dolls, or "inanimate companions," as I prefer to call them. The good ones, which actually have real hair, can weigh as much as 50 pounds! And, I decided, if there is one thing in this world that possibly could be worse than attending your ex-girlfriend's wedding as a dateless dweeb, it would be showing up at said wedding dragging your lifeless date in a little red wagon ("she's just had a bit too much to drink, is all"). Fifty pounds gets pretty heavy after a while!

So there I was, a dateless hard on in the next-to-the-back row of my ex-girlfriend's wedding. Robin, my ex, approached at a stately pace as the wedding march tinkled on.

"Gargle," the baby behind me said emphatically. "Gargle, gargle, gargle."

Robin reached the gazebo. I could see her clearly now, behind the veil of her cream-colored gown. This was the girl who taught me to kiss, who only required two bouquets of roses and a dozen phone calls to appease her after our first french kiss aroused my gag reflex and made me throw up. (That kissing scene with Tom Cruise in "Top Gun" should have come with a label that read: "Too Advanced for 16-year-old virgins!")

This was the girl I dated off and on for three years in high school. Robin was the girl who led me to seek the wisdom of "The Wonder Years" and who was on my mind when I listened to Mr. Mister's "Broken Wings" 10,000 times in a row the first time we broke up. I played Kevin to her Winnie and Dawson to her Joey.

Robin was the girl who drove me insane as she flitted between me and her other two suitors, Drew and Troy. She was the girl who never wanted me more than when I had finally decided to move on and had just landed a new girlfriend.

This was the girl who let me slide off her pants for the first time on the day I left for college, who cried silently next to her German shepherd, Cleo, as I drove off in my sun-bleached Ford LTD 10 minutes later. This was the girl I devastated when I, a freshman in college, crashed her junior prom as the date of one of her best friends.

Robin gave me my first tie for my 16th birthday, and it was for her that I dressed in pink and gray and paisley all through high school. She made the mistake of telling me she loved penguins, and I inundated her with dozens of the stuffed, ceramic and painted creatures. This was the girl who, for her 14th birthday, received the first piece of jewelry I bought for a woman. As a 16-year-old, I spent $79 on the gold necklace at a kiosk in the mall, when what I really wanted to buy was a promise ring.

Robin wouldn't have gone for that; indeed, she was uncomfortable with the significance of the necklace. I would be her husband, she told me all through high school, but after college, after we both had experienced life.

And there she was, this beauty in cream, walking by me to marry the second man to whom she had been engaged. She did not look at me, as I so yearned. She did not glance at the long-haired man her high school love had become. She simply looked at the man who stood where I always wanted to stand.

And then she grinned at him who supplanted me.

A grin, I say, a grin!

In the movies, she would have smiled -- delicate, tentative and even, dare I say it, tremulous. And then she would have turned toward me. Our gazes would have met like the Titanic and the iceberg, and as reality sank our childhood hopes, she would have acknowledged the first boy who ever loved her.

Instead, she glided toward her future over an aisle lined with red and white rose petals. In her wake they looked wilted, like my heart, and in my mind a 16-year-old, tousle-headed boy began to sob.

In reality, I snorted. I sounded like Snufflufagus having an orgasm.

In the distance, I believe, an elephant responded with a trumpeted mating call.

Robin turned, and for the first time, looked at me.

"Gargle," said the baby behind me. Tentatively, and, dare I say, even tremulously.

Then it puked into my hair.

Robin turned and continued down the aisle as I tried not to cry over spit milk and a mortified mother tugged at my hair with wet wipes. The sent of aloe filled the air, and I tried not to feel like an ass.

The service was pleasant, if long, and the minister made the audience laugh several times. When it came time for the reception, I headed to the bathroom to wash my hair.

I missed the symbolic throwing of the bouquet. I also missed the throwing of the garter, which disappointed me. How ironic it would be to catch the garter of my ex-girlfriend.

I did, however, get to hang out with her mother, who was feeling no pain. She did, however, feel my ass several times. I'm figuring it was a motherly pat.

But I can always fantasize.

Todd Foltz fantasizes an awful lot sometimes.