BEST MAN SPEECH
October 27, 2007
wedding speech given at St. Gregory of
Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco, CA
I’ve known Dave for 17 years. We met at Olivet College when I was a freshman and Dave was a junior transferring in from another school. Somehow, we found ourselves at the center of the oddest group of misfits, mostly freshmen, who seemed to have no other friends.
There was _____, the Trekkie from Texas who held a number of unselfconscious attitudes the rest of us called bigotry. There was _____, the ex-Marine whose nickname was “Gunny.” Gunny was Dave’s creepy roommate, and he had a permanent case of lockjaw which he attributed to the U.S. military doing disease experiments on him. There was _____, the born-again Christian with a thing for pornographic movies … _____, the flighty girl who couldn’t stay serious for more than 30 seconds … _____, whose low self-esteem had a tendency to suck the energy out of the room … and _____, whose talkative but clueless nature would fill the room back up again, and not necessarily in a good way.
What can I say? They were works in progress, just like we all are, and Dave and I spent a lot of time and energy trying to keep these people from being openly hostile to each other. I’m not sure whether our little group was funny or just plain sad. But I’ve come to believe that Dave’s and my first commonality was our insistence on showing compassion to the least and the lost, even if it meant missing out on a potentially exciting social life for ourselves.
Dave and I also shared a love of music. And the obvious place for this to play out was on the airwaves of WOCR, the campus radio station.
Where on earth did we get the idea to cast Dave as Robin Leach? Dave doesn’t do a very convincing British accent. And I don’t know how Robin Leach changed, in our twisted minds, from the well-to-do host of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” to a disgraced, washed-up, former TV host who must now eke out a living doing odd jobs, for which he is paid in breadsticks from Tim’s Pizza, the main college hangout. But somehow, Robin Leach landed a weekly, 5-minute segment on my morning radio show called “Lifestyles of the Poor and Semi-Educated of Olivet College.” Dave wrote the script every week, and we usually performed it unrehearsed.
In another case of libel against Mr. Leach – why did we hate him so much? – Dave made him a bumbling fool, incapable of the most basic pre-show research. On Election Day in 1992, Robin Leach gave our listeners a rundown of the three leading presidential candidates:
Yes, we did this show nearly every week for two and a half years. No, Olivet College was not a very exciting place!
Dave and I kept in touch. We actually moved to Seattle in the same summer, 1994. I was living rent-free with relatives, which enabled me to get on my feet. Dave stayed until he ran out of money.
But that’s the thing: Dave has this knack for seeking out exciting experiences—you know, sucking the marrow out of life. He’s done cross-country bus trips with the strangest characters. He has lived in a room about the size of a large ice chest. He spent time at Cambridge and had his heart broken by a young Korean woman. He has also earned a Master’s degree and sung in an experimental choir. I won’t even begin to list his odd jobs; Robin Leach would get jealous! Dave has a knack not only for finding unique experiences, but for seeking out the unique in the everyday, and also for appreciating even the bad experiences for what he learns from them. And somehow, he does all this while maintaining a shy, unassuming persona.
On a sunny winter day in 2001, Christy and I were visiting Dave for the weekend. We were members of Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle, and we’d heard exciting stories about St. Gregory of Nyssa. So we dragged Dave to church with us. There, we ran into our friends Jim and Tim, former Saint Mark’s folks who had moved down here. Christy excused herself to the restroom, leaving just the guys. Another man came over to say hi to Jim and Tim. He said, “Ah! You’re here! … and you bring … men!” Jim looked at Dave and me, shrugged, and said, “Well … as it were.” “Oh,” said the other man. “As it were. I see.”
Well, something clicked at St. Gregory’s, because Dave kept coming back. Within a few months, they had him teaching Sunday school! After six years, he now talks like an Episcopalian, adeptly using words like “liturgical” and “diocesan.”
Now, since I wasn’t around when Dave met Cheryl, I’ll leave that story to someone else. All I can say is that it’s about time a woman really discovered the treasure Dave is. And, Cheryl, I’m so glad you have that honor, even if you must now be subjected to the series of mix CDs I have made for Dave called “Guilty Pleasures: Forgotten Hits of the 1970s, volumes 1 through 14.”
The word “amen” is an ancient summing-up word. It means, “All that we’ve just said, we are passionate about. We will do our part to make it real. And we ask God to support us as well.” Or, in the words of Jean-Luc Picard, “Make it so.” In that spirit, I intend this speech as a prayer for Dave and Cheryl, for their life together: a life of excitement, uniqueness, and compassion. Amen.