The Idi-Odyssey
Book One: The Wedding Master
by
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The first time I traveled out West, I married a box of Rice a Roni. The second time, a few years later, I was ordained. Both trips included San Francisco and Lake Tahoe, but that was where the similarities ended. On that second trip , I would retrace my steps back to the west coast, this time with a non-starchy girlfriend, Tara, for her cousin’s wedding. Weddings often forced a re-visiting of places previously explored. Like Sisyphus, doomed to roll his stone up Mount Olympus, it was my destiny to continuously re-live past travels through wedding destinations, rather than use precious vacation days to discover new, uncharted territories. After visiting and sightseeing for a few days, Tara and I left the city by the bay to drive to Lake Tahoe for the wedding. On our way out of town, we stopped at a non-descript barber shop so I could get my hair cut. We were in the Castro district. The entire area (shops, trees, benches, pets) was completely draped in thousands of rainbow flags flapping flamboyantly in the limp-wristed breeze. At the time, I had no idea what that meant. I knew San Francisco was a gay ol’ town, but had no idea that flying a rainbow flag was their Jolly Roger, so to speak. I walked past the rainbow colored barber pole into the hair salon. It was filled with large muscular Australian dudes who were cutting, shaping, flexing and humping about to songs by the Village People (the songs may have been in my head). Either way, it was raining inside; raining men, that is. Macho men; macho, macho men. And for some reason, certainly the odds were against it, amongst all the male hairstylists, a petite Asian woman who barely spoke English cut my hair. Tara left to take a walk. Feeling sassy and a bit gay but mostly in the happy and free sense of the word, I asked my Asian hair samurai if she would dye my hair blonde. I was in a weird mood and felt like doing something new and different. Tara and I had reached a calm level of boredom in our relationship. So to fill the void, I would change my hair color. Genius! Haircut equals attitude adjustment.
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About the Book
“ACTUALLY, I COULD ORDAIN YOU RIGHT NOW IF YOU LIKE.” THOSE WORDS PRESENTED NEWLY BLONDE, NON-RELIGIOUS ME WITH AN OPPORTUNITY THAT WOULD ULTIMATELY SHAPE THE IDIOCY OF THE YEARS TO FOLLOW.
In the United States over the last ten years, twenty-three million couples have married. The Idi-Odyssey is the story of my random journey through .000003% of those weddings. The story begins with an unplanned ordination in Lake Tahoe by Yukon Dave, a white-water rafting guide/minister. A myriad of ridiculous weddings situations and relationships followed, ultimately leading to the “Year of the Wedding” during which my younger brother Russ married the same woman three times in the same year.
Not to be completely outdone by the marital gymnastics, I secretly married my girlfriend to keep her in the country a week after Russ’ first wedding; and despite my father’s counseling, “Don’t feel any pressure to get married just because your younger brother did.” Along the way, there’s also the Nantucket whale penis, the great gift wars of 1999, the Idiotarod, the weddings I officiated and much, much more.
About the Author
Scott W. Stram is an attorney licensed in New York and New Jersey. An English major in college by default, he has published many (several) articles in major (minor) news outlets (e.g., his law school newspaper). He resides in Mount Vernon, New York. This is his first book.