the money dance
The Lucky Girl Who Gets to Take Jim Goad Home has invited me to attend her friend's wedding next week. My mind tunes in and out as her droning-yet-seductive voice holds forth on the impossibly elaborate bridal plans.
"Make sure to bring money with you to the wedding," she tells me, momentarily rousing me from my peaceful brain-wave flatlining.
"Why?" I ask, wondering whether people will be selling drugs there.
"Well, for the Money Dance, of course," she chides me.
In my seventy-eight years of life on this planet, I've been to at least a dozen weddings—Catholic weddings, Jewish weddings, goyish WASPy weddings, damn near every type of wedding except for a really rousing Negro wedding with tambourines—and it wasn't until tonight that I've heard of this "Money Dance."
I'm expected to stand in line and wait for my crack at a five-second tarantella with the bride, during which time my duty as a wedding attendee is to stuff some receptacle on her wrist fulla cash. But it doesn't stop there—I'm also obligated to sprinkle a li'l Green Sugar on the Money Tree and to cram some cabbage in the Money Box.
I've always wondered why people get married. Now I know.
