94 turns into 151.

151 turns into Highway 20.

Four hours. A straight shot east through the heart of Wisconsin’s Amish country. Gotta be careful ‘round those parts. You see a horse and buggy, you better roll up the fucking windows, man. You might catch a cobbler’s hammer to the dome.

My wife’s childhood friend was getting married back in Iowa. For me, it was just a free vacation to a place I didn’t want to go. That’s what it’s like to be an adult when you’re broke. The only time you get to leave the state is when someone gets married or dies. Iowa is my Hawaii.

I convinced my wife to bring the dog. I wanted someone to cuddle with since she was spending the night at her friend’s house. I don’t know what they were doing— putting on face masks, or braiding each other’s hair— whatever white women do before a wedding. I didn’t care, as long as I had my fraaand:

I used to dread spending time with her parents. I think it says more about me than it does about them.

We’re just… different. They’re simple, good people. I’m neither.

I think that’s why I hated them for a while. We tend to hate people who illuminate our shadow side. Carl Jung defined the shadow as the unconscious aspects of our personality that don’t fit neatly into our ego ideal, i.e. the nice little story we tell ourselves, about ourselves. The parts of the story that we leave out? That’s our shadow.

We like to think that we’re mostly good, which is why we tend to reject the negative aspects of our personalities and project them onto other people. It’s like the kid in the schoolyard getting bullied who tries to get the attention off of him and onto somebody else. It’s our ego’s defense mechanism— it creates these blindspots to protect itself.

Compared to most people, I have a pretty dense shadow. There are a lot of ugly aspects of my personality that I’m only now coming to terms with. Two of my big character flaws are that I have a tendency to be elitist and judgmental. I don’t have patience for people who I subconsciously deem to be inferior. I tend to avoid people like this at all costs. But when it comes to your in-laws, you don’t have a choice.

But then again— who the hell am I? Who died and made me fucking Picasso? Last time I checked, I was a broke alcoholic former comedian who’s only five months removed from spending a week in the mental hospital. How am I going to sit there and judge these people? As far as I can tell, all they’ve done is selflessly loved and supported their daughter, which is more than I can say. These people open their home to me and I have the fucking gall to judge them?

Jesus Christ, I’m an asshole!

These are the feelings you don’t admit to yourself, and then once you do, the feeling you feel afterwords is fucking brutal.

As ashamed as I am of these feelings, I don’t think I’m alone in feeling them. Most of us look down on other people— hell, that’s the whole point of TLC. We’re all elitists on some level. We watch Honey Boo Boo make fart noises with her belly button and recoil in horrified delight. I think it says more about us than it does about Honey Boo Boo.

We’re so caught up in this John B. Calhoun rat experiment that we lose sight of each other’s humanity. Most of us are terrified of being at the bottom of the pyramid, not realizing that the pyramid only exists because we believe in it. We participate in classism, mostly because we’re terrified of being seen as lower class. There’s always someone we can point to and say, well, at least I’m not that guy. Again— get it off of me and onto someone else.

Like anything, it all comes back to fear. I cling to this sad idea that I’m better than other people because the alternative (aka reality) is just too painful for my vulnerable narcissistic ego to bear. It’s easier to be a judgmental asshole than admit that you’re 29 and you have nothing going on in your life.

It’s not easy to admit these things to yourself, hence the drinking.

I stopped at the Kwik Trip in Mineral Point and picked up a four-pack of Boxer ICE tallboys for $2.49.

I spent the night on the couch next to Butter, finishing up that Jeffrey Dahmer show everyone’s been talking about. Now there’s a guy I’d love to have a couple of brewskis with. Maybe watch a movie, take a couple of pictures… What’s the big deal? He said he’d pay me!

Her stepdad farted into the room the next morning and woke me up.

“Looks like you had a rough night,” he said.

“I think it’s going to be a rougher morning,” I said, picking up the grocery bag full of empty cans and bottles next to me. He laughed.

“Butter ate your wallet,” he said.

“WHAT?”

I sprung off the couch and galloped into the bedroom, her little feet clicking on the tiles behind me.

She did, the little shit. At some point in the night, perhaps as revenge for keeping her up so late, my 8-month-old yellow lab took it upon herself to completely obliterate my leather wallet. Look at this shit, man:

Credit cards, debit cards, smoothie-shop loyalty cards, dollar bills, and leather strips—all torn to bits by that little shit!

We took her to the dog park later that morning as a reward for her bad behavior. She quickly met up with another yellow lab named Charlie, the same age. The two did jujitsu moves on each other for the better part of an hour.

Sure, I was hungover, but this wasn’t my first barbecue. Recovering from a hangover is a simple three-step process:

1. Drink an obscene amount of coffee on an empty stomach

2. Have catastrophic diarrhea

3. Nap for 6 hours

Unfortunately, I didn’t have that kind of time. We got home around noon and the wedding was at 4, giving Butter and me only about two hours to nap before I had to get up and shower for the wedding.

When the time came to get dressed, I reached into my bag and realized I didn’t pack any shirts. Not a single goddamn shirt. Normally, my wife packs for me, but she says I need to start doing more things on my own. I disagree and I think this proves my point.

I slipped into my days-old T-shirt and sweater. They weren’t really wedding-appropriate and they smelled like Boxer ICE, but they would have to do.

The wedding was in Jesup, a 20-minute drive east from Waterloo. Her stepdad is a no-GPS driver, which is a bold move. I can’t even get to the office without a GPS and I’ve worked there for over a month. These motherfuckers will just head east and hope for the best. Godspeed.

I sat in the church and felt evil. Like a cigarette burn on an otherwise pristine white tablecloth. God, I could go for a cigarette.

An old portly woman in a gray sweater went to the lectern and read the classic wedding verse, 1 Corinthians 13:

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Yeesh. Lots of things I can work on there.

By the time Eucharist rolled around, I was ready to stretch my legs. The priest informed us that this would be an intinction-style Eucharist. To Wikipedia!

“You don’t have to go up if you don’t want to,” my mother-in-law said. Fuck that, I was getting in on this action.

When I got to the front of the line, I froze. I didn’t know what to do.

“Sorry, did you need gluten-free?” asked the young woman holding the bowl.

LOL. Gluten-free Jesus? Sounds like a terrible Christian folk band.

I grabbed a gluten-full piece of bread and turned to the young man to her right who was holding two chalices. It was time to dunk this donut.

“THIS IS THE BLOOD OF CHRIST, SHED FOR YOU,” he said.

I didn’t really know how to react to that so I just nodded awkwardly and walked away, doing a makeshift sign of the cross on my way out the door. God’s gonna be so pissed when he plays back the tape of that one.

After the ceremony, I found my wife in the back of the church.

“Hey, you wanna come back to my place after this?” I said.

“Ew,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on,” I said. “I’ll pay you.“

I handed her a chewed-up dollar bill.