Lucky Lady.

Over the weekend, Other and I were standing on the sidewalk with my now-retired-and-moved-across-the-country advisor and his wife, who were in town to visit, discussing university politics that could eventually affect my job.

We were accosted by a group of young men who were celebrating a blushing groom's upcoming wedding. They were doing this by publicly humiliating him; he was wearing a t-shirt (meant to be signed by well-wishers such as ourselves) with condoms pinned to it and holding a teddy bear that if I remember correctly was wearing a diaper. It was a pub-crawl and sorority initiation rolled into a bachelor party.

But the more I think about it, the more baffling the array of signifiers becomes. A ball and chain around the ankle would have been pretty straightforward. But what do the condoms mean? Now that you're married, you won't have to use them? Or now that you're married, you can finally have sex? (unlikely...) Or is it meant to simply make bystanders think about sex and then somehow reach the conclusion that they signify that this poor schmuck isn't going to be able to have sex with anyone else for the rest of his life?

And the teddy bear is even more puzzling. It tends to be used by sororities to infantalize their pledges, along with things like pacifiers. But in this case it might seem to signify a baby - you know, because then comes baby in a baby carriage. But I know they sell baby dolls at the grocery store... why wouldn't they just have gotten one of those?

So I guess I'm making the case that the best man totally should have been fired. Can't even put together a sensical humiliation.