Once in Love with Amy
Once in Love with Amy O n December 15, at sundown, at his residence atop an icy slope in rural New Hampshire, P. J. O'Rourke, the author of—among other classics—The Bachelor Home Companion,...
...RET 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1991...
...It was a chill moment...
...P. J., ever the gentleman, averted his gaze and opted for the scotch...
...but P. J., ever the gentleman and always the deft opponent of social hurt, interceded with a gallant riposte...
...Chris Bean, a local justice of the peace and noted divorce lawyer...
...Unfortunately, I arrived too late...
...Or woodcoq, as the yuppie might say...
...As logic and fact were against such grim scenarios, the writer, whose name I dare not divulge, poked his fingers quite hostilely in the Swell's eyes, but with no lasting damage...
...And let's attack those woodcock legs...
...Hundreds, pal, the woodcock is a member of the centipede family...
...The wedding had already taken place...
...I flew from Washington and traversed icy roads in a desperate attempt to warn P. J. that were he to persist in this mad venture he would kill any future sales of The Bachelor Home Companion and deny Miss Lumet the fullness of her youth (she is twenty years his junior...
...And off the benedict went to partake of a bottle of scotch and to complain that the ring finger of his left hand was beginning to ache...
...The couples friends may be divided into three categories: the Manhattan Swells, the Political Literati, and certain Early Americans who inhabit the hills and hollows of sylvan New Hampshire...
...Throughout the rest of the evening much hilarity prevailed, save for the fleeting altercation that followed when one of the Manhattan Swells insisted to one of the Political Literati that Operation Desert Shield would be a precise reprise of Napoleon's retreat from-Russia or, even worse, of Vietnam...
...Amy was quite beautiful...
...A shocking illustration of the sectionalism that still divides our Republic and fragments its commonality was provided by one of the Manhattan Swells...
...It was Conservatism's Wedding of the Decade...
...Only a disgusting vegetarian or a deviant teetotaler would spoil such a feast for the sake of literature...
...P. J.'s best man and chef du jour, Morgan Entrekin, the distinguished publisher, had already made extensive preparations for a capital feast that would include several hundred exquisite little woodcock legs sauteed in olive oil vergennes to be washed down by an oaky chardonnay at the zenith of its potability...
...And so the Christian ritual took place, officiated by Mr...
...P. J. looked sober—no, somber...
...P. J., the son of Placenta Marie and Chatsworth Antonio O'Rourke of Ethiopia, Ohio, married Miss Amy Lumet, daughter of Gail Buckley and Sidney Lumet, both of New York City, in a double-ring ceremony notable for its sauteed woodcock legs...
...All were equally represented in the half dozen or so witnesses attending the wedding and in far larger numbers in the mob that arrived shortly thereafter only to be told that the joke was on them...
...Confronted by an appetizing tray of a dozen or so well-turned woodcock legs, the pathetico inquired of an Early American standing nearby as to the number of legs on a woodcock...
...Once in Love with Amy O n December 15, at sundown, at his residence atop an icy slope in rural New Hampshire, P. J. O'Rourke, the author of—among other classics—The Bachelor Home Companion, foreclosed any further comment on the subject by tying the knot, or, as others would have it, the noose...
Vol. 24 • March 1991 • No. 3
