(Thos posting devolves fairly fast into oral sex between men, so it is, alas, entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest.)
Musical overture: the chorus and verse 2 of the 1960s song “Chapel of Love”:
[chorus]
Goin’ to the chapel
And we’re gonna get married
Goin’ to the chapel
And we’re gonna get married
Gee, I really love you
And we’re gonna get married
Goin’ to the chapel of love[verse 2]
Bells will ring, the sun will shine,
I’ll be his and he’ll be mine
We’ll love until the end of time
And we’ll never be lonely anymore
Save this thought. In the original, written for a girl group, the narrator is a woman writing about her man. A later version was performed by a guy group; the narrator is a man writing about his woman. Finally, we get performances by Elton John singing to his husband David Furnish (they got a civil partnership in 2005, were married in 2014).
The main event. Now I’m going to show you a screen shot (from a short video) that I presented to you in an earlier posting — a young man facing the viewer saying “It”s what I need to finish my groom” — with a context that determines the interpretation of the noun groom as a fresh coinage. Forget all that, and don’t go looking for that posting. Look instead at that screen shot as if it had just dropped from the sky:
What might the relational noun groom mean here? How would he finish his groom? What do his rounded lips have to do with it?
The Modern English nouns groom. Not a crowded universe — just two. From NOAD:
noun groom: 1 a person employed to take care of [< verb groom] horses. 2 a bridegroom [AZ: shortened to groom].
The horse groomer seems hopeless in this context, so were left with Colt B. about to married to another man, which is certainly possible these days; see Elton John, above.
The participants in a conventional legal wedding are then bride and groom, who become, as the consequence of the ceremony, wife and husband. All the terms are sex-marked; how to adapt them for same-sex weddings and marriages?
The convention that has largely won the day is to use the terms appropriate for the sex of the participants: two women wed as each other’s brides and then present themseves as each other’s wives; two men wed as each other’s grooms and then present themselves as each other’s husbands.
Finishing the groom off. Now we ask how Coit could finish his groom (presumably, before the ceremony). Here I take my cue from Coit’s rounded lips. Well, yes, it could just be the lip-rounding of the /m/ in groom. On the other hand, Coit and his groom are gay, and for many in our world blow jobs are a casual bonding act, so that Coit would just be giving his groom physical closeness before the ceremony, would be getting him off — finishing him off — with a blowjob.
Colt’s lips are rounded in the photograph because he’s about to finish welcoming the man he’s about to marry, his groom, with a blowjob, how thoughtful and loving of him.
The blowjob as the gay handshake. From my 5/11/24 posting “The gay handshake”:
[photgrapher] Stanley Stellar views the sexual encounters at the piers, which (like those in t-rooms) are very largely blow jobs, as routine social enjoyments, roughly analogous to catching a burger and a beer with a buddy. This way of looking at things turns the received wisdom of straightfolk on its head: it’s not that gay guys are obsessed with sex, especially with giving and getting blowjobs; it’s that they think of blowjobs as a casual bonding ritual among men — pleasant and gratifying, but ordinary and of little consequence. Stellar and plenty of men who have sex with men hold this view as one piece of their social construction of reality; and it has found expression in the trope of the blowjob as gay handshake.
“Chapel of Love”. From Wikipedia:
“Chapel of Love” is a song written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector, and made famous by the Dixie Cups in 1964, spending three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The song tells of the happiness and excitement the narrator feels on her wedding day, for she and her love are going to the “chapel of love”, and “[they’ll] never be lonely anymore.” Many other artists have recorded the song.
You can listen to the Dixie Cups version, remastered in 2022, on YouTube here.
My earlier posting. To wrench all this back to reality, my earlier posting, from 12/19, was about:
“Titanium Edge, the “2-in-one nose and ear groomer that goes wherever razors can’t … to finish my groom” — with a noun groom, a nouning of the verb groom, to denote a regular routine of grooming, here specifically for men and in fact specifically for shaving; this nouning would appear to be a commercial invention by Titanium Edge’s ad agency.
Bonus from word history. From NOAD, a surprise:
noun bridegroom: a man on his wedding day or just before and after the event. ORIGIN Old English brȳdguma, from brȳd ‘bride’ + guma ‘man’. The change in the second syllable was due to association with groom.
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