The Wedding Incident
An SPH Experience by suckerthrow.
Jen is one of those women who doesn’t look like she’s had two kids. She’s petite—barely five-two—with a tight little frame, fake tits that sit high and proud on her chest, and honestly, almost no ass to speak of. I’m not saying that to be mean; it’s just a fact. She’s built like a spinner, all front and no back. But what she lacks in curves, she makes up for with this killer southern charm. She has this way of drawing out her vowels and smiling with these full lips that makes every sentence sound like a compliment, even when she’s telling you to go to hell. Cute smile, infectious laugh, and an energy that makes her the life of every room she walks into.
Her husband, though—Lord help him. The man is a walking Ambien. He’s not a bad guy, I guess, but he’s the type who’d rather sit home and watch a documentary about soil erosion than go out and have a good time. To save money, he stayed home with the kids while Jen came with us. I think she needed the break. Two kids and a husband who treats fun like a communicable disease? Yeah, she deserved this weekend.
—
By the time the reception was in full swing, both my wife and Jen were properly loosened up. They’d been doing shots of something caramel-colored with the bride’s college friends, and the two of them were off in their own little world—gossiping, laughing so hard they were leaning on each other, swapping stories I could only catch fragments of as I passed by.
I danced with both of them. A lot. My wife first—she pulled me onto the floor during some upbeat country song I didn’t recognize, and we two-stepped like we actually knew what we were doing. She looked incredible that night. Her hair was down; she was wearing a fitted dress that hugged every curve; and she had that glow that only comes from a combination of good music and good liquor. She ground against me during a slower song, her back pressed to my chest, and I held her hips and let the moment breathe.
Then Jen cut in. Not literally, but she grabbed my hand and pulled me into a group song, and suddenly I was dancing with my wife’s best friend while my wife cheered us on from the edge of the floor. Jen dances like she’s trying to shake herself apart—all hips and bouncing and hands in the air. Those fake tits of hers were doing their best to escape her top, and I did my gentlemanly best not to notice. She spun around, pressed her back to me for a second, and I could feel every inch of her compact little body against mine before she spun away laughing.
“Your husband can actually dance!” Jen shouted to my wife over the music.
“I know!” my wife shouted back, grinning. “Don’t get any ideas!”
“Too late!” Jen yelled, and then cackled at her own joke.
—
The reception wound down around eleven, but nobody was ready to call it a night. Someone mentioned a pub downtown that stayed open late, and before I knew it, a caravan of wedding guests piled into Ubers and headed that way.
The place was called something Irish—I don’t remember what. Dark wood, sticky floors, a DJ in the corner playing top forty remixes, and a bar that was four people deep. It had that perfect after-party energy: too loud, too crowded, and exactly where we all wanted to be.
My wife and Jen found a spot near the edge of the dance floor, and I volunteered to get drinks. I shouldered my way up to the bar, wedged myself between two women I didn’t know, and started scanning the tap list on the wall.
That’s when I saw it.
Sitting right there on the board, in black marker, between a pale ale and a stout, was a beer called “I Have a Small Wiener Hells Lager” by One Family Brewing. I blinked. Read it again. Looked at the bartender. Looked back at the board. Nope, it was still there.
I laughed out loud. The two women next to me glanced over.
“You okay?” one of them asked.
I pointed at the tap list. “Have you seen this?”
They both looked up. The one closest to me—a brunette in a bachelorette party sash—snorted into her drink. The other one leaned in, squinted, and then her mouth fell open.
“Oh my God,” she said.
I waved the bartender down. She was a college-aged girl with a nose ring and the exhausted expression of someone who’d been serving drunk wedding guests for two hours straight.
“What can I get you?” she asked.
I grinned. I couldn’t help it. I looked her dead in the eye, standing right there between two women I’d never met, and said: “I have a Small Wiener, please.”
The bartender stared at me. She blinked.
“I’m sorry—what?”
I straightened up, cleared my throat, and projected my voice over the thumping bass from the DJ:
“I HAVE A SMALL WIENER, PLEASE.”
The bartender’s face went through about four stages of processing. Confusion. Recognition. Amusement. And then she just smiled, nodded, and reached for a glass.
The brunette next to me nearly choked. Her friend covered her mouth, eyes wide, and they both looked at me like I’d just proposed marriage to a houseplant.
“What an unfortunate name,” the brunette said, laughing.
“Tell that to the brewery,” I said.
The bartender slid the pint across the bar. I paid, tipped well because I’m not a monster, and picked up the glass. The label on the tap handle had a little cartoon wiener dog on it, which somehow made the whole thing better.
—
I carried the beer across the pub, navigating through clusters of drunk wedding guests and random locals, until I found my wife and Jen standing just off the dance floor. They were mid-conversation—something about one of the groomsmen who’d been hitting on everything with a pulse—and I walked right up and held the beer out in front of me at chest height.
“I have a small wiener,” I said.
They both stopped talking.
My wife looked at me. Then at the beer. Then back at me. Her face was completely blank—the kind of blank that means she heard the words, but her brain is refusing to assemble them into meaning.
“WHAT?” she said, leaning in, trying to hear over the music.
I took a breath. I spoke louder. Louder than I probably should have, given that we were in a public establishment surrounded by people.
“I HAVE A SMALL WIENER.”
The words left my mouth and just hung there in the air like a grenade with the pin pulled.
My wife’s face went red. Not pink. Not flushed. Beet red. That deep, from-the-chest-up crimson that you can’t fake. Her eyes went wide; she snapped her head toward Jen, and then—without a single second of hesitation, without a stutter or a breath of uncertainty—she said:
“I know you do, but what did you order?”
The words hit me like a freight train. I stood there, beer in hand, mouth open, and then the laugh just erupted out of me. A real, genuine, full-body laugh. Because what do you say to that? Your wife just told a bar full of people—well, effectively just Jen, but still—that you have a small dick, and she did it with the precision of a sniper.
Jen laughed too, but it was different. Hers was that awkward, uncertain laugh—the one where you’re not sure if you’re supposed to find something funny or if you’ve just witnessed something you weren’t meant to see. Her eyes flicked between my wife and me, and I could practically see the gears turning behind them.
“Wait,” Jen said, tilting her head slightly. Her southern accent made everything sound like a question even when it wasn’t. “Is that the name of the beer, or are you telling us that?”
She pointed at the glass in my hand. I turned it so she could see the label.
My wife didn’t even let me answer.
“BOTH!” she said, and broke into a laugh so hard she had to grab Jen’s shoulder to keep from doubling over.
Jen looked at my wife. Looked at me. Looked at the beer. And then she laughed too—a real one this time, that high, bright giggle she does when she can’t hold it back anymore. But I could see it in her eyes. That quick little assessment. That flicker of something passing through her mind as she looked at me—standing there holding a beer called “I Have a Small Wiener” — while my wife confirmed it wasn’t just the beer.
She was filing that information away. I could tell. Jen’s the type who notices everything and says about half of it. The other half goes into a vault she’ll pull from later at the most strategically devastating moment possible.
“Y’all are terrible,” she said, shaking her head, but she was still smiling. That cute, southern-charm smile that could talk you into anything.
I took a long sip of my beer. It was actually pretty good—crisp, light, a little hoppy. I’d drink it again. Though I was going to have to think about whether I wanted to order a second one, because I wasn’t sure my ego could survive round two.
My wife was still giggling, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. She leaned into me and put her hand on my chest. “You walked right into that one, baby.”
“I really did.”
“Like you always do,” she added, and patted my chest twice in a way that was somehow both affectionate and deeply condescending.
Jen sipped her drink—a vodka cranberry she’d been nursing—and gave me this look. Half amused, half curious. Like she was seeing me in a slightly different light. Like the conversation had peeled back a layer and she’d glimpsed something she hadn’t expected to glimpse on a Saturday night at a pub in the middle of nowhere.
“Well,” Jen said, raising her glass, “here’s to honesty.”
“Honesty,” my wife repeated, raising hers.
I raised my small wiener beer. “To honesty.”
We clinked glasses, and the moment dissolved into the noise of the pub—the DJ, the chatter, the clinking of glasses. We went back to dancing. We went back to drinking. We went back to being three friends at a wedding after-party, riding the high of a good weekend.
But now and then for the rest of the night, I’d catch Jen looking at me with this little half-smile like she was replaying the moment. Like she was doing the math.
And every time, my wife would catch it too, and she’d squeeze my hand a little tighter, and I could see her fighting back a grin.
Some things don’t need to be said out loud twice.
Once is enough.
The End.
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