Mike and nikki best man speech

Introduction

Evening everyone. For those of you that don’t know me, I’m Houston, and I gotta say it’s nice to finally get some proper recognition. Best. Man. It has a nice ring to it. There’s a certain rightness to it. I’m sure you all feel it too.

For me it feels a little like the moment we first meet our other half. You know the moment where your palms grease up, you feel those random kicks in your chest, your throat is gravel and your imagination takes your life thru a future you didn’t know you had. It’s our body’s weird way of telling us we’ve found our soulmate. For Mike that moment came 11 years ago when he met me. 

Thanks to people

I’d like to thank everyone for coming. Special shout outs to Dave and Lisa. You made my best friend and I love you guys. Likewise to Char and John. Your influence helped shape an independent bombshell who’s made my best friend very happy and I love you guys too. Bridesmaids, I’m sure only a handful of things got thrown at you today by the beautiful bridezilla and you have my sympathy. Groomsman, I’d be honored to stand up at the altar with any of you. 

You know there’s an unwritten rule that on wedding day none of the groomsman should look more handsome than the groom, and while there’s nothing I could do short of wearing a bag on my head, I’d like to thank you all for doing such a great job.

Honorable mention to Chad Nykiel. Raise your hand Cheese. He introduced me and mike back when we were full-time delinquents. Without him our lives may have turned out very different as a result might not be here together today, so single ladies if you want someone else to thank for your free booze and food, Chad’s the stud in grey over there. He’s embarrassingly good at ski ball and will surely lie about where all his scars came from. 

Compliment Bride & Groom

Nikki, thank you for letting me briefly steal the limelight on your day. You look absolutely marvelous, and if Mike was more distractible, well, best not to pull on that thread. All the time people ask Nikki at the ripe old age of 26 how do you maintain your figure? You guys wanna know? She’s a vegetarian. Kale’s out of the bag, Nikki. But seriously, It’s not easy to be a vegetarian in a society whose poultry-lobbied media convinces us we need meat. Nikki knows, she lives it every day. What most people don’t know about Nikki is she’s not a vegetarian because she loves animals. She’s a vegetarian because she hates plants. For the longest time I wondered what you were mumbling in between bites of salad. “Ya screw you onions. Time to die broccoli.” 

She eats what she hates, Mike. Best remember that. 

But really, I’m so happy these two are finally tying the knot. I think marriage is going to be great for them. It’s gonna teach them loyalty, kindness, compromise, self-restraint, fair play. All those other qualities you guys wouldn’t need if you’d just stayed single.

How I know Mike 

Mike and I have known each other almost half our lives. Our friendship’s survived time and distance because we’re bonded over the most powerful thing life has to offer: Story. 

Everything is story. Our entire identity is just a game in emphasizing and exaggerating those past memories we feel fit the story of our lives. Stories shape communication and transcend culture, but mostly they allow us an escape from an otherwise prickly world. They let us maintain our child-like spirit, and there’s a special kind of freedom in always being able to feel like a kid. 

We could all do with more of that, because the truth is we never really grow up. We’re just forced into adulthood because it’s what’s expected of us. That’s something me and my best friend have always called bullshit. 

It’s why we’ve always been unashamedly enchanted by comic books. Comics gave us a peephole into how we’d like to believe we’d act were we burdened with responsibility. They helped us imagine what we could be in life. They were picture book life lessons that shaped who we are, because when you’re raised like me and Mike were, by bullheaded men - sorry Dave, not sorry Paul - you tend to be a little harsh on the world and those in it. But you see these fictions that bind our friendship, they taught us empathy. By way of character development, we learned to understand even those we hated. Story, and specifically comics, taught us how to be humans and it’s a gauntlet we might not have survived without each other. 

Now Mike doesn’t hear this enough because men posture about how hot women think they are instead of telling each other how they feel, but I’ve always looked up to him. It’s always seemed what I’ve struggled with he’s had figured out from the beginning. With girls, with work ethic, with life, Mike’s always seemed one step ahead of the people around us. 

And so to stand next to him all these years, I had to make my own value. I became the shithead hype guy, the one who could rattle the inner Mike I met a long time ago. Or at least that’s what I’d become, until he found someone who could do that and so much more. He has that someone for everything now, and I’ve struggled coming to terms with it. Please don’t leave me. Remember what we had. 

You’re probably getting the sense he means a lot to me. I’m sure you all have a relationship where you can relate to that. And I’m sure you can also relate to that point where you start to feel a little possessive. 

So when a female comes along and suddenly your best friend stops telling you how much he can leg press and how he would’ve kicked this or that guy’s ass in front of him at Chipotle for looking at him wrong, you get really scared. 

How I know Nikki

Which is why the day I met Nikki I was a wreck. I think I both mourned and rejoiced within the course of an hour.

I’d come down for his graduation and he’d just started talking to this girl he met and she was amazing and blah blah blah the whole time I’m thinking ya great man I just flew 1600 miles to see you, what about me!? 

We were slated to watch the new Jason Bourne movie that night and I was so pumped until Mike asks ‘Can I invite Nikki over to watch too?’ And I’m just thinking this mother-

So she comes over. I say, ‘Hi how ya doin, ya how long you known Mike oh a month that’s great I’ve known him the better part of a decade so check yourself.’

So we start watching this movie. Mike and Nikki are cuddled up like some showy contortionists while I’m on another couch all by myself and I just remember looking over at him, like, who the hell’s going to tuck me in with harry potter theories now? 

But then I saw something. 

It wasn’t anything more than a look. If you’re not familiar, the Bourne Legacy’s an action movie with Jeremy Renner parkouring off walls like a damn superhero, but there’s this one scene where Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weiss are beat to shit. Government’s after them, Ya know bullets are flying, Everything is pandemonium, but in the eye of this shitstorm they share this look. They share this look of visceral recognition that says despite all this noise around us, despite the tragedy the next moment might bring, this moment is ours. It’s for us and us alone. When I glanced over at Mike and Nikki, they were mirroring the characters. Just like Jeremy and Rachel, Mike and Nikki hardly knew each other. They didn’t know each other’s baggage or pitfalls. Had no idea of what their future might be. But it didn’t matter. They didn’t need to know. Whatever they’d been searching for in life they found in each other’s gaze. That’s love. Every opportunity I’ve had to see them since: on trips, up at the altar, even right now, they’re always sharing this look like the rest of the world is just noise. 

Love and Struggle and Marriage

Now wouldn’t it be nice if love could survive on a look? 

It’s too bad reality doesn’t work like that. But Mike and Nikki, they’re going to love each other until it kills them. I know this. I know this because they’re shallow, stubborn freaks.

They’re shallow because like most of us, physical attraction’s what brought them together. It’s part of what’s kept them together, and fortunately, I mean just take a look, it’s part of what’s going to keep them together. And don’t tell them any different because they’re bull-headed.

They get an idea in their head and that’s that. Get out of their way. These two took life by the short hairs and said ‘look, I don’t care how I’m supposed to end up. I don’t give a shit what my past says I’m meant to be. I’m doing things my way life, so back off.’ They share this will. And if Mike is stubborn, Nikki is downright obstinate. She may look like a woman of 27, 28? but she’s just another adult-shaped kid. She gets what she wants. It creates a bond no one else can touch.

And until you’ve tried it, you don’t know the amount of courage it takes to reinvent yourself. You don’t know that the only way to happiness is to risk being completely cut open. To rip yourself from your life you were consigned to and make one for yourself changes you in a fundamental way.

It turns you into a freak. As social animals what makes us us is how different we are from others. There are points to our lives because they can’t be carried out the same way by any other person. It’s differentness that gives our lives meaning. And no one finds more meaning in being alive than a pair of freaks like these. 

But see this shallow stubborn freakshow cocktail, it’s not the recipe for romantic love. It’s the instruction manual for an indefinitely passionate partnership. Only a few people are capable of making it: 

1. You mix attraction and similarity into a big ass bowl and you stir. 

2. You blend in shower beers and sarcasm and a shared vision of the future. 

3. You pre-heat the oven to a hot breath on your neck. And bake forever. 

4. Finally, to keep your partnership from going stale, you sprinkle on some struggle. 

All good relationships need it.

Because it’s struggle that gives us a glimpse of what we risk losing, and for some smart few, that’s all it takes for us to come to our senses.

So I’d like everyone to raise a glass, and wish Mike and Nikki a sprinkling of struggle as they write their love story. May they stay shallow, stubborn freaks who never grow up, so they may continually appreciate just how lucky each of them is to have found someone so perfectly tailored to the other.