Richard Baum

It started when I turned to my friend cross-eyed, with my fingers pulling at the sides of my mouth and my tongue poking out. Admittedly, the church probably wasn’t the most appropriate venue for my astounding “funny” face, but when the Priest has told the congregation that he can see them all smiling, it takes a more mature man that I am to resist reacting like that.

I am at the wedding of the friend of a friend. I don’t really know the bride or the groom. All I know is that I’ve never been able to fully control the urge to dive head-first in to hysteria when I’m at events designed to be solemn. Weddings, funerals, Council meetings. I can’t help looking for ways to break the tension. God how I hate minute-silences. Every time I have to stare into the middle distance and think of anything, ANYTHING, not to laugh. I know I shouldn’t, and I have no excuse, but like some people can’t help tucking into cakes when they’re trying to lose weight, I can’t help thinking about funny things when everyone else is trying to be silent. The demon in me comes knocking when all I can hear is the silence of others.

And now that my face has been greeted with a snort of laughter from my friend, it really is game over. She tells me we shouldn’t laugh. Under normal circumstances this would help. If she told we shouldn’t drink bleach and paint, I wouldn’t. But she tells me shouldn’t laugh, and I simply must. Like the urge my heart has to beat, it is beyond my physical control.

I am immediately lost. Completely beyond redemption, tumbling into a whirlpool of utterly uncontrollable laughter. It starts with a chuckle, and when she returns it, it grows to a roar. A helpless, back-arching, stomach-clenching, head-rolling cataclysm of utterly inappropriate hilarity. There is nowhere for me to go. This is only heading in one direction.

On the harsh wood of a church pew, in this holy place, surrounded by the images of Christ’s journey to the cross, I am in hell.

People now turn to look at me as I make seal noises in a really very bad attempt to stay silent. Every gasped breath sounds like a wounded animal crying for help. I try to suppress the noise, but I am gone. Lost to the madness. Tamsin, my poor, poor fiancee, stands next to me with a facial expression heartbreakingly combining shock and mortification, but I am at the mercy of a force greater than my body can handle. She hits my back to make sure I’m not choking on something. My spluttering, gutteral cries are sadly nothing to do with that. 

My friend has escaped. She too couldn’t contain herself, but she could get out, to the end of the row, to the back of the church and to the safety of the noisy world beyond, with its buses and sirens and birds. I am beyond redemption. I was too slow, blinded into inaction by the tears in my eyes. Others have really begun to look at me now. I pray for a hymn, something to drown out my gasps.

The Priest calls for silent meditation.

Oh God, why hast thou forsaken me?

I cannot be silent. I can only meditate on the sight of my mouth, wide open and gasping for breath as I cling to the seat, juddering.

I am ruining the happy couple’s day not through meditation but through laughing so hard that my back shakes. I am so hot now, sweating with the pain of keeping it all in. I am so embarrassed that the shame alone should stop me. I think of dead relatives, of war and lost love. Nothing helps. It’s all funny when you think about it… The bride and groom haven’t noticed. But her mother has, and she wants me dead.

I want to scream out so much. I simply cannot stop. I can’t breath, let alone stop. I’ve forgotten what it is I was laughing about in the first place now, but everywhere I’ve turned fresh amusements have replaced that first one anyway. The organist’s crazy playing; the choir and their average age of 143; the man in front who really does look like Fester Addams. I have been led into temptation. And I have succumbed.

But I have to pretend it’s not laughter. I try to splutter a cough, but I break out into a giggle. Hauling it back in, I make a noise like a seagull diving for a fish. It makes it worse. Now I use the tears to my advantage and pretend to cry. Can they tell I’m crying with laughter? Yes, of course they can.

A man now comes up to speak at the alter. Will his words drown me out? I don’t know, because his accent is so ridiculous to my hyper-sensitive humour that his every utterance sets off another jerking spasm of laughter spewing from my sweating face.

And then they go to sign the register, and I am done. Murmurs begin in the aisles. One or two look my way. My friend returns. I fan myself cool with the order of service. We don’t look at each other. We just smile at the happy couple as they come back of the aisle. The bride asks why I look like I’ve been crying. I tell her I always get emotional at weddings.

Rick