The Sunshine State [Intro and Day 1]

I’ve come to learn that, in life, a little success is a dangerous thing.

Five years ago, I attended the wedding of my friends Ton and Mrs. Ton. The occasion, as I said in the ensuing blog, was as close to perfect as I’d ever seen a wedding get. The presence of an insane amount of alcohol and zero amount of dress code, in a barn deep in Ohio farmland, meant the dial was cranked to “lit”—maybe the only time that’s ever been true of a barn.

That blog enjoyed a brief moment of fame. The happy couple shared it with their relatives and friends, and On the Rocks’ page hits soared to a level rarely seen without the involvement of a half-naked Playboy Playmate.

The best man at that wedding was TK. The following year he met a beautiful, charismatic little maniac of his own. He brought her to Pittsburgh that summer, and seconds after being introduced to “Tide,” she and I were best friends. Despite her being an Alabama grad, and me a lifelong Auburn fan. Despite us not being in the same location again until the night before their wedding, four years later. Homies. 4. Life.

In planning her wedding, Tide took cues from the stories she had heard about Ton’s. The location would be unconventional: on the beach in St. Pete, where the couple met and lived. The abundance of alcohol would be measured, targeted, and then intentionally exceeded. The dress code would be non-existent, and she encouraged Dupa to let his creativity take the wheel. And she ever-so-subtly hinted that she wanted me to blog about the event.

I did my best to casually dissuade her from expecting the dust to be blown off my keyboard. Life had moved me away from the carefree days of scribing tales of drunken adventures. Respectability had crept up my walls and rendered me unrecognizable behind tangled, ivy-like swaths of adulthood. I spent my workday combing through business plans, not internet articles about blotto Rummy Award candidates. I was out of the game. A ghost. A minor footnote on a long-forgotten page of a book buried in a time capsule.

Then, as TK and I tossed back shots at his bachelor party, he said he wanted my wedding gift to be a blog about his nuptials.

…Fuck.



Thursday, May 25

I landed in Tampa for the first time since 2012 (ironically, the year of Ton’s wedding). A couple from my flight, who had seemed perfectly calm until that point, took five steps out into the humid air outside of baggage claim and began yelling at each other, while strangers like me watched. Florida’s crazy is an airborne virus.

I texted Dupa, my roommate for the weekend, as my Lyft ride cruised away from the airport. He had landed an hour or so before me and was, of course, already at the bar. So, when I got to the condo we had rented on Airbnb, I dropped my bag, changed into a pair of shorts, and headed out to catch up. A frozen margarita with a Modelo Especial floater was waiting for me when I arrived at the waterfront location.

After dinner, we found Ton—who was returning the favor by serving as TK’s best man—and two other groomsmen at Hooters, just up the boardwalk. Before long the man of honor and Balls, another groomsman, arrived to officially kick off the bachelor party. We caught up in the way old friends with new lives do, cold beer and big laughs punctuating each sentence. A beautiful brunette by the name of Svana, wearing innocent glasses over I-might-be-crazier-than-you-think eyes, was our beer concierge. She provided us with a steady supply of Corona and Modelo buckets, walking up to our table seemingly each time someone in our group was finishing a highly contextualized sentence.

One of us: “…and I get a text from him saying, ‘Be right back. Just tore my ass.’”
Svana: *stands there blinking*

Some members of the party were Cavs fans, intently watching Game 5 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals. Others, such as myself, were Pens fans, intently watching Game 7 of the NHL Eastern Conference Finals. With the latter headed towards a late finish and Hooters closing, we moved our collective to a bar called CJ’s on the Island.

The Pens fans gravitated towards a giant projection screen in the back of the bar. There we found that the game was being closely followed by a bachelorette party, a lively group of 20-something gals from Pittsburgh. One of them had even graduated from the same high school as I did—albeit 10 years later. *sigh*

I’d reached that special stage of the night, when you’re never without a drink in your hand, but you have little to no idea what you’re drinking, or how you obtained it. I do know that at one point, as my head swam with (beer and) euphoria and relief from the Pens’ overtime win, I stood at the bar talking to someone when a voice called out over the speaker system.

“♫Defi’s a bitch…♫”

I turned to find Dupa smiling at me from a nearby stage, with a mic in his hand and five bachelorettes in pink shirts crammed around him and a karaoke machine.

I shook my head and returned to my regularly-scheduled drunk.

I took comfort in not being the drunkest among us, though. Our boy “Hemsworth” had been rocked from about an hour into our stay at Hooters. At one point, he appeared before Ton with a lollipop in his mouth.

Ton: “Where’d you get the sucker, buddy?”
Hemsworth: “The nice man in the bathroom gave me this.”

CJ’s doesn’t have a bathroom attendant.

Our next stop was Mermaids, a strip club (because of course). But how we transitioned there is a question I can’t answer, since I remember none of it. Not the conversation about going, not leaving CJ’s, not the Uber ride. And I don’t remember feeling queasy upon arrival. But I do remember unceremoniously hunching over and hurling in the club’s parking lot.

It was as though I’d stepped out of the car and found God waiting there to sucker punch me in the stomach. Ton patted me on the back while beer, margarita, shots, and my self-respect evacuated me under the dim street lights. Then I stood up, took a breath, and into the club we went.

I was, as one might imagine, not in the best frame of mind for a strip club. I tried my best to participate, swigging back a few beers while trying to shake off my advanced state of “wrecked.” Mrs. Ton seemed to materialize from out of nowhere, and she and others tried to nurse me back to health. Our buddy, “Tiger Blood” [he was the Charlie Sheen-est thing since Charlie Sheen that weekend, as you’ll soon see], handed me a wad of 20 fresh $1 bills to make it rain on a dancer. I threw them without loosening the wad first, and the bulk of the bills smacked her in the rib with a thud. I think that was the moment when I decided I needed to leave.

As my Uber pulled away from Mermaids, I got a text from TK. “I just made it rain!”

It’s a minor miracle I guided the driver back to the correct location. And another one that I remembered the security code to the front door. Dupa had disappeared while we were at Mermaids; as I stumbled through the condo in the direction of my bedroom, I saw his closed bedroom door and let out a “Ha!” Then I crashed into my bed and gave in to the darkness. Day One in Florida was a wrap.

Drunks Say the Darndest Things 7

Do you really need the intro? Can’t we just skip the foreplay, like adults? Okay, not like, you know, adults who still care about things. I mean: like married people.

Look, you’re smart people. You know what this is all about. It’s the end of January—the truly savvy amongst you have probably been wondering how much longer they’d have to wait for this to be posted.

Each year I record the best drunken quotes—that I can remember—that my friends and I have slurred, and package up the crème de la blotto crème for the readers. And I usually throw in one or two that are from years past, that I hadn’t written about—or hadn’t remembered—before that posting. Because there’s nothing better than someone thinking the dumb shit they said is dead and buried, only to have it brought back up several years later and enjoyed by all.

• The Saturday dedicated to Swag’s birthday celebration in ’13 had gone pretty much how everyone had expected: Everyone got drunk, except for the man of honor, who got really drunk, and had to be taken home by his girlfriend before midnight. He had piled on multiple gin & tonics and shots at the bar, after multiple beers and shots while we all pregamed at his place. “Slow and steady” was not in his skill set that weekend. He was out to sprint the marathon.
  
  The next morning, the few of us who had crashed at his place sat around his living room, trying to steady ourselves. Swag leapt up from the couch and casually announced, “I’m getting a shot of Fireball.” JL, being the best friend that his hungover state would allow him to be in that moment, called out behind him, “Swag! Water is acceptable, too.”
  
  
• As I’ve stated before, the wild Raleigh weekend that I took part in last March involved five guys in very different places in their social lives. And the one married guy on hand wasn’t making his place look like a place the rest of us really wanted to be in. We were driving back to Raleigh from Chapel Hill, when Trip admitted that his fiancée’s sexual appetite was more than he could handle at times. T.C.’s jealousy boiled over. “Hey,” he cut in from the backseat, “I had to buy a pair of Uggs to get sex the last time!”
  
  
• Later that night, after we’d gotten rid of the two random chicks who tried trolling for out-of-town dick, we all settled in for the night. With five grown men and only two beds, MoFo was the odd man out, and forced to set up camp on the floor. Feeling bad for him, Hurley pulled the comforter off the bed he and Trip were splitting, and tossed it down to MoFo. When Trip protested because he didn’t want to be cold, Hurley countered with impassioned logic. “Trip, we have the sheet!”
  
  
• Christmas Eve, as has become our tradition, saw TD, Boy Toy, and TJ join my cousin, her husband, and I at my mom’s house for dinner, gifts, and lots of wine. While we warmed up with hors d'oeuvres—and lots of wine—in the kitchen, we somehow got onto the topic of pain meds. My mom mentioned that, after all of the cleaning and cooking that she’d done that day, she took a Vicodin to help with her back pain. TD couldn’t hold back her stream of consciousness. “You’re drinking wine and taking Vicodin? You’re a hardass bitch!”
  
  
• In case you were questioning my pedigree, my dear mother got hers later in the night. TD said she was too full to eat dessert, and with a twinkle in her eye Mom replied, “Yeah, ‘cause you’re a skinny little bitch.”
  
  
• Last week, Armo, TJ, one of TJ’s buddies from work, and I were at the Penguins/Blackhawks game, having a drink between periods. A stunning blonde standing at the bar quickly became the subject of our conversation, as she talked to her girlfriend and scrolled through her iPhone. When Armo offered, “She looks healthy,” I countered, “She looks…like she takes dicks to the face.”
  
  
• I missed the first night of Trip’s bachelor party, but from all accounts it was a night of drunken stupidity befitting a party thrown in Trip’s honor. At dinner that night, some of the bridegroom’s closest friends took turns standing in front of the room to tell a few stories about him and sing his praises. Then his old man stood up. “I went out one Saturday, got drunk while playing 36 holes, and then went home. Nine months later, this little bastard was born. The moral of the story: Play 54.”
  
  
• My Lil Sis, TD, has more game than an Xbox. One night, during a recent trip to New York City, she fell in lust with a cute brunette bartender. While telling me about it over text messages the next day, she reported, “I just texted her and said I have Molly in my tits to motorboat.”
  
  
• Under The Porch (UTP) and Four-Foot-D’s (FFDs) hit it off swimmingly at the Fourth of July party, and were all over each other at the end of the night. I was standing on the porch, doing keg stands with some guys, when we looked over and saw the lovebirds making out in a chair. “Haha,” one of the guys—who was one of FFDs’ friends—blurted at UTP, “You’ve got Chlamydia on your face now!”
  
  
• One night during my oft-referenced beach trip to OCMD in 2003, we watched as one girl’s bad decision-making imploded her vacation.
  
  A group of us had gone to Brass Balls Saloon for their beer pong night. After Armo and I finally got knocked off a table, we sat down at the bar and watched a pretty redhead flirt with our buddy as he played on his table. She was in her early 20s, like us, and she was pleasantly hammered. And she was making it very clear she wanted there to be further hammering.
  
  After 20 minutes or so of her shameless sloring, a guy in his mid-30s appeared in front of her. Without saying a word, he yanked her purse out of her hand, rifled through it, pulled out a room key, and then threw the purse back at her. Muttering, “Have fun,” he stormed off.
  
  Our friend and Little Red Riding Slore left the bar together. When the rest of us got back to the house we’d all rented, one of the bedroom doors was shut and familiar noises were coming from the other side. Uncle Paulie had been at another bar that night, and when he got back we filled him in on the story. Giggling like a schoolboy, he ripped his shirt off, flung open the bedroom door, and ran in announcing, “I’m here for the gangbang!”
  

[A bonus postscript: A couple of nights later, a few of us were in line for calzones at the pizza place around the corner from the house. We soon noticed a familiar face behind us in line, a few people back: Little Red Riding Slore. And she was with the older guy from Brass Balls. Seeing us, and the shit-eating grins on our faces that made it obvious we recognized them, they left the line and the pizza place without placing an order. I can only imagine the rest of their trip went just as well.]

Free Wheeling

Typically, a bachelor party’s potential is based on the personality of the bachelor himself. The more charismatic and larger-than-life the man of honor is, the more likely the party will be worthy of attending. That’s why I can’t wait for the time to come when TJ and Dupa have their respective bachelor parties. Or for when they each eventually have their second, third, and fourth bachelor parties.

When T.C. informed me that he was planning our buddy Trip’s bachelor party, I found myself with a goofy smile on my face, and no words on my tongue. None were needed. Trip is a legend amongst those who know and have partied with him. To what exotic locale would this ode to the Clooney of Western PA take us? Vegas? Montreal? Rio?

Wheeling Island, West Virginia.

There was, however, logic behind this choice. Trip is having a big destination wedding, and knows that means only a limited number of his friends can attend. So to offset that, he wanted to make his bachelor party as accessible as possible. The party would actually span two days, with events on the first day taking place all around Pittsburgh. And T.C., the best man, has been a part of at least two prior bachelor parties held at Wheeling Island, neither of which was short on good times and laughter.

But…Wheeling? To grow up in Western PA is to know that no matter how shitty it is to live here, you always have West Virginia there to remind you that it could be worse. This was not going to be a night of flashy decadence, so much as a night of drunken hootin’ & hollerin’.

I’d planned to catch up with the celebration at the bar on Friday night, but a hard few weeks of work had me backing out of that plan by Friday afternoon. Instead I saved all of my strength for Saturday, and stepped into the casino ready for action about 5 that evening. T.C. met me at the front desk and escorted me up to one of the three rooms he’d booked, where IC Light, Miller Lite, and Shock Top cases were iced and waiting.

Most of the party participants, including the bachelor himself, were still at the golf outing portion of the day. That left T.C., Trip’s college roommate Rex, Trip’s brother-in-law Vince, and I to get the boozing and gambling started. After pounding a few IC Lights in the room, I found myself the first of many Beam & Ginger Ales at the casino’s central bar, where we watched the Belmont Stakes (eight of the guys had each thrown $20 on one horse in the hopes of cashing in on the 20/1 odds; sadly, those odds don’t pay out on a fourth place finish). Then we found ourselves the blackjack tables and got to it.

I’m no stranger to the inside of a casino, but I’m still a relative novice when it comes to blackjack. So there was hesitation in me as I laid down $100 at the $10 table, wading into the kiddie pool with T.C. and Rex. I quickly, though, found myself recounting some of the wisdom Dupa taught me in Vegas, when I made $100 last over four hours. Once again I managed a fluctuating stack, never busting but never going more than $10 over. I’ve realized that while others play blackjack to shoot for the moon, I’m simply at the table to float softly in the air, five feet off the ground like a kid on a seesaw.

Besides, I was content with pounding through the Beam & Gingers they were bringing me every 15 minutes. And I found more than enough entertainment in the guy at the other end of the table. He was an old-timer, well into his sixties, who somehow still hadn’t mastered social interaction. He seemed like a nice guy, but…

He was seated in first position at the table, but was always the slowest to act. He made poorly-thought-out jokes to the pit boss about cheating. After a short while, Trip arrived from the golf outing and joined us at our table; when Awkward Grandpa learned it was our buddy’s bachelor party, he called over one of the chair massage girls walking the casino floor. But, as he bought a massage for Trip, he blurted out, “And give him one of those—what are they called? Happy endings?” A few minutes later, he asked her, “How much does it cost to massage you?”

At one point, I was sipping a Beam & Ginger and weighing the pros and cons of seeing an old man get his ass whooped by security on a casino floor. I mean, I really wanted it to happen, but I knew I’d kind of feel bad afterwards, for at least a few minutes. (Especially since I’d probably try to get a few kicks in myself.)

I cashed out at $60 and joined the rest of the guys at the café just off the floor, where I ate the greasiest double burger ever. By the time I got from the food counter to our table, the bun was soaked through and clear. Mmmmm. One of the guys (“Baby J”) made a trip to the room and came back with cans of Miller Lite in his pockets. It helped to wash some of the grease from my palate, but I still felt like I’d drunk a can of WD40. Thinking about the mixture of ground meat, crude oil, cheap beer, Jim Beam and ginger ale that was in my bloodstream that night makes my skin crawl. I’m fairly certain it’s the chemical compound to pink slime.

It’s always best not to think about things like that in the moment, though. So…#TurnDown4What? Our swarm of tipsy, grease-addled 30-year-olds moved to Wheeling Island’s dog track, where we promptly overtook the bar. I made one bet, while pushing my Beam & Ginger Ale total near double digits; it was on a dog named “Whisky”-something-or-other. It just felt right.

My deeply scientific method for picking a winning dog didn’t pay off. One of the guys in our group, though, won $300+ on a trifecta bet, on a race at another dog track. And none of those mutts were named after what he was drinking at the moment. How does that even happen? I drank more whiskey to cope.

After enough whiskey and gambling—and gambling on Whiskey—it was time for the third side of the bachelor party pyramid: strippers. The thing about Wheeling Island is, it’s very “West Virginia” everywhere but on the small patch of land where Godfathers sits. Inside that oasis, the girls are all cute (at a minimum), the staff is relaxed, the clientele is civilized, and the bar is always well-stocked. In a lot of ways, it’s actually one of the nicest strip clubs in the area. It’s an even better coffee shop and steakhouse.

As cute as all of the dancers were, I quickly detected a theme: None were bigger than a B cup. Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m a lover of women, no matter what size their feminine wiles come in. But one of the underrated perks of a strip club is that you (normally) get to see the whole range of sizes. It’s something a lot of women don’t really seem to understand: Your man isn’t looking at other women naked because he doesn’t want to see you naked. He’s looking at other women naked because they are other kinds of naked women. The more, the merrier, and the inevitable variety of body types and sizes is an ingrained part of that. But at Godfathers on this Saturday night, it was all bee sting everything.

I ordered up drinks for myself and a few others, while I watched our buddy “Play-By-Play” talk up two dancers that looked barely 18, one of whom was wearing braces on her teeth and little black socks in her clear heels. When Play teased her about her socks, she said, “I don’t like walking on that stage in my bare feet!” “But,” he responded, “…you’re a stripper.”

Someone had just sent Trip off to the lap dance room with a dancer when he got called to go up onstage; Baby J had arranged for him to receive the ceremonial beating. The last time I saw this happen at Godfathers, two dancers beat GG’s bottom like he stole their tip money. Baby J had arranged for four dancers to take out their daddy issue-fueled rage on Trip. Ruh roh…

Those four modestly-chested women absolutely destroyed our buddy. And we rained dollar bills all over the stage while they did it. 5’3” girls took belts from seemingly nine feet up in the air and brought them the full nine feet down to Trip’s ass, where it laid prone on the stage, unable to stop the massacre. One dancer grabbed the waistband of his boxers and yanked like she was trying to save them from a burning car. When the band had been completely separated from the rest of the shorts, she relented and moved onto other means of torture.

When his five minutes of hell were over, Trip slowly picked himself up, paused, and then began dancing around the stage, even taking a twirl around the pole.

When he walked down off the stage, the dancer who had been trying to take Trip back to the lap dance room earlier came and collected him to finish that task. The rest of us fell back into our standard bar demeanor and, honestly, I don’t think anyone paid any attention to naked girls on the stage for the rest of night. As I ordered up another Beam & Ginger at one side of the bar, Vince called me over to his side to collect one of the shots he was pouring out. Play renewed his pursuit of Socks. I looked through the DJ booth and noticed I could see into a mirror in the dancers’ dressing room behind it. Then the thought occurred to me that I was spying on naked girls…at a strip club. I turned back to the booze and fun around me.

At one point, while talking to T.C., I heard the sound of glass crashing at my feet. Looking down, I realized I was holding only the top tenth of the Collins glass that I’d been drinking from. I checked my hands for cuts. Nothing. I checked my torso for bullet holes, thinking maybe someone had sniped me. Nothing. No explanation. My glass had seemingly spontaneously combusted. “At least you’ll get a free drink out of it,” offered Vince, as a bouncer swept up the Beam & Ginger murder scene.

When I stepped up to the bar, though, they wanted payment for my new drink. Dammit. I wasn’t the only one who was feeling shortchanged, though. Trip came back from the lap dance with a confused look on his face. “She didn’t get naked. She said they aren’t even allowed to take their tops off during dances.” I guess, even in an oasis, a little West Virginia can find its way in.

From there, the night wound down in pretty timid fashion. We headed back to the casino, where Trip and Vince sat down to play at a $25 blackjack table. (Vince’s gambling that day, where he broke even while probably putting about $50k in play overall, would get our rooms comped.) Some of the guys went to bed, some stood around watching the blackjack action. T.C., Bear Cub, Baby J, and I sat down at a nearby video roulette table, where I turned $10 into $28. Grinding is my life. I finally called “No mas” around 3:30, finding the room I’d been in earlier that night and passing out on a bed next to T.C.

And, really, that’s the best outcome you can hope for when you’re partying in West Virginia.

Streets is Listing

'Tis the season for yearend lists. I don’t normally do these. But during a moment of day-to-day tedium last week, it occurred to me that there is a ton of stories that accumulate over the course of a year. And while this year, compared to previous years, I’ve been slightly better at getting those stories told via this page (100+ posts in 2011!), the sheer volume of drunken shenanigans practically begs for reflection in the waning days of December.

But the prioritization involved in a “Yearend/Top 25/etc.” list is an especially foolhardy pursuit when you’re dealing with experiences. It’s easy to separate the bad from the good, but how do you deem Good Experience A empirically better than Good Experience B? You may end up with a few really high highs and a few really low lows, but the overwhelming majority of items are going to populate a middle realm where no one event is substantially better or worse than the next. And let’s not forget just how arrogant it is to assign rank to items in a published write. I am one person, and this post will be read by millions hundreds tens of fans; although I may list one event as being better than another, what makes me think that each of those ten readers will agree with the ordering?

This list, therefore, is as random as the life it is fueled by—the items are, however, in chronological order. But no numerical value has been assigned to these moments, so that they may stand as equally brilliant moments of boozy fun I’ve had in 2011. Some of them have already appeared in On the Rocks posts this year, and therefore I didn’t go into too much detail about them here (for the most part). If you want to read more about those specific tales, a link to the corresponding post is provided. For those happenings that are being published for the first time, though, I’ve given a few choice comments.

Here’s to 2012 being a great one.

Top 15 Drunken Moments of 2011

• The Buffalo Trip. Hurley and I drove up to Buffalo, NY—the homeland of GTB [obviously, he’s no longer a “groom to be”, as his wedding took place 2½ years ago; but I’m too lazy to create a new alias] and his crew of boozing all-stars—to join T.C., who was already in town for a business trip, on the second Friday of February. We pregamed at GTB’s house with a few card games, and then headed off to run the town. We bounced from bar to bar to bar, but the only thing I remember clearly is falling in the snow in GTB’s front yard when we got home. The next morning the Pittsburgh boys, all of us enduring massive hangovers, climbed back into our vehicles and crawled back home.
  
• The Pirates’ Home Opener. How do you make a baseball game tolerable to watch? Spend all day getting really, really drunk (and, also, don’t watch much of the game itself). Although we were without our patron saint of home openers, Chief, we boozed at a level that would have made him proud. Beard passed around a handle of Jim Beam until it was completely gone (tradition is tradition); I made out with a shy buxom lass named Kim in the Hall of Fame Club, where we had just met minutes earlier; Baby Joey got kicked out of the same HOF Club for pissing in a bathroom sink; and Dupa molested a female coworker on the McFaddens dance floor. It’s a grand ol’ game.
  
• Four Loko Night. One Saturday in April, Dupa and I decided to go Loko with the case that TJ had bought me for my birthday. As it happened, our buddy Weiner (yes, that’s his real name) was in town with his girlfriend, and they joined the fun. Before long, my apartment was filled with more than ten people, most of us holding 24 oz cans of happiness. Particularly fun to watch was TD, who was consuming her first ever Loko (we only let her have a half a can, being that she was a virgin—and because the can is the same size as her). We later spilled out into the night and hit up Shady Grove. I even performed a lap dance for one of our friends' girlfriends (hey, it was her birthday, and I owed her—she gave me one on my birthday).
  
• Brewski Fest. Beer. Lots of beer. Add in a surprise attendance by BlahBlahBlah, and Tony deciding to leave at 5 am, only to head out the door to the deck and stand there in confusion, and you have something special. And Dupa and I had an idea for a new contest at the annual event: This year, many breweries had stacks of stickers at their booths as part of the swag offered to the Brewskiers. Dupa and I, then, began collecting stickers, applying them all over our bodies. We looked like drunken stockcars. Dupa eventually won by slapping a Full Pint Brewing sticker on his forehead. Now that’s commitment.
  
• The Jim Jefferies Show. When Jefferies announced that he would be coming to Pittsburgh for a weekend of performances in May, my crew quickly made plans to be there. The Aussie comic is one of our favorites, and each of us can recite “I Swear to God” by heart. Hurley and I got boozed up during dinner at Rock Bottom, and then met up with Dupa, Shannon, Stef, and Entertainer at the Improv, where we proceeded to get even boozier during the raucous show. Afterwards we all headed back to Rock Bottom for more drinking, and were eventually joined by others—including Jim Jefferies himself. Best line of the night: Jefferies telling Enzie he wanted to fuck her, kill her, and toss her body in the river.
  
• Redbeard’s Happy Hour Night (post). I've already spoken on how great the random Friday night in June was. Proof that, in life, it’s often the unplanned moments that turn out the best.
  
• Furry Safari (post). Friends, fun, and fur. Plus lots and lots of booze. And an uninvited guest. And then lots and lots more booze.
  
• Armo’s Pool Party (post). Easily the best party of the summer. An entire day and night spent in perfect July weather with beer, lemonade vodka (to TJ’s detriment), bikinis, and craziness.
  
• Xmas in July (post). Hallelujah.
  
• The Admiral’s 75th (post). Say what you will about my family, but we know how to throw one hell of a party. Big Sis tearing down the house at the afterparty, Step Bro hitting on everything in a skirt without a care, the Sunday barbecue carrying on into the wee hours of the night, and a Mason jar of moonshine making the rounds. Yessir.
  
• Esq’s Bachelor Party. In September we gathered for our homie’s last hurrah. Beer pong, scotch, and hookup horror stories at Breitling’s estate, a bus ride to Station Square, and copious amounts of boozing. When walking into Buckhead, I managed to smack my head off a low hung light, causing me to crumple to the ground, and making several cute girls nearby shriek, “Oh my god, are you alright?!”
  
• Dupa’s Dirty Thirty in Vegas (post). Yup. [And yes, the third installment is going to be published…eventually.]
  
• Halloween. Enzie, Chappy, his fiancée, and I helped TJ and Glitter take their son (as well as his friend, who was escorted by his mom—Glitter’s friend Jenn) around Chappy’s neighborhood. And along the way Chappy and I worked on the case of Sam Adams Oktoberfest that was in TJ’s backpack. As the night went on, we had to dig through the candy his son had been collecting to get to the bottles; in other words, we had to find our way through the treats to find the trick.
  
• Whisky Fest. Thanks to TD and her sister Green Pants, I finally got to take part in this coveted November affair. Heinz Field’s exhibition hall was filled with every premium spirit one could ever hope to sample, from Johnnie Walker Blue Label (which was tasted-dry by attendees within two minutes of each bottle being opened) to Courvoisier Rose. Boy Toy and I spent three finely-attired hours working our way around to every table that we could, while growing more and more functionally dysfunctional.
  
• The Ugly Sweater Party (post). The first time I’ve ever enjoyed helping friends move furniture.
  

Something Borrowed

Let me preface this story by saying that it’s not mine; and, because of this, there is simply no way I can tell it as well as its rightful owners. But my friend that relayed the escapade to me doesn’t have a blog—to the best of my knowledge. That leaves it up to me to share it with the world via On the Rocks. If he or anyone else involved should ever want to sit down and dictate a first person account to me, I’ll be more than happy to put it on the page. But it is just too good of a tale to wait until that theoretical day. As I summarized back to my friend after hearing his rendition, “It’s like ‘The Hangover’, but without the happy ending.”

Late Thursday night, after a night of making a modest income at the Rivers Casino poker tables, I met up with Pakistanimal and stopped by our favorite spot in Shadyside. We were shocked to find the place nearly empty, which is rarely the case at 12:30 am on a Thursday night. We would quickly realize that this was a blessing in disguise, though. With all of the time we’ve spent in this bar, we’ve come to know some of the staff pretty well, including “A-Train”, a bartender. And without the usual pressing crowd of patrons demanding his attention and rocketing up the decibel levels, A-Train was able to tell us about the crazy several days he had spent in Las Vegas the week before...

The trip was actually a bachelor party for his brother. Among the wolf pack would be the bride’s brother, who A-Train had never met before the car ride to the airport. Providing that ride was the bride’s grandfather, a no-nonsense old timer. And as everyone piled out of the car at the curbside check-in, the old man grabbed A-Train’s arm and held him behind for a moment. “I want you to watch over my grandson while you boys are out there. He’s a fuckup; he’s always been a fuckup. Don’t let him get into any shit!” [Does anyone else picture this grandfather looking and sounding like Jack Palance, or is that just me?]

On their first day in Vegas, “Brother of the Bride” (BOTB) quickly got obliterated at the pool—to the point where he looked like this guy. The bouncers, as you would probably expect, soon informed A-Train and the other bachelors that BOTB needed to be removed, and offered them the opportunity to do it first. Very gracious gents, those Las Vegas bouncers. A-Train and the guys walked BOTB to his room, despite his protests. When they threw him on his bed, though, he was soon lights out, and wasn’t heard from until the next morning.

As the trip went on, this became a recurring scenario. BOTB would—seemingly without explanation—get irreversibly wasted faster than anyone else in the party. But despite this, the others were able to contain him and prevent any major damage from being done to person or property. And so on the final day in Vegas, when he again turned into a blacked-out mess early in the day and the boys again put him to bed well before sundown, no one thought anything of it.

The next morning the bachelors all awoke and packed up, wary of the 11 am departure time of their flight home. All, that is, but for one guy. With only about 30 minutes left before they needed to leave for the airport, one of the party members gave an alarm that sent chills up the spines of A-Train and his brother: BOTB wasn’t in his room, and had neither been seen nor heard from since the day before. In a last attempt at remaining calm, A-Train suggested someone call BOTB’s cell phone. “We tried that. It was in the room.”

“Fuuuuccccccccccccccccccccc...............”

The next 30 minutes were a frantic search for clues. They packed up his belongings and lugged them to the lobby, in the unlikely possibility that they would find him down there waiting. They talked to bellhops and the concierge, hoping someone had seen BOTB. They called members of the bride’s family back in PA, on the chance that he had called back there because he didn’t know the phone numbers of the guys in the bachelor party. They called the Las Vegas police, in the event that he was wallowing in a drunk tank. They talked to the Hard Rock security team and filed a missing persons report. One of the guys in the party was staying in Vegas an extra day, and was tasked with being the main contact should any information about BOTB’s whereabouts be turned up.

As the departing partiers, including the now sick-with-fear groom, rushed through the lobby to catch the flight for which they were already late, BOTB came stumbling towards them through the front doors.

Despite being stunned by their missing comrade’s miraculous materialization, they wasted no time with explanations. They shoved him into a cab and sped as fast as possible to the airport. Along the way they learned two things:

1. BOTB had spent the entire previous night at the strip club across the street from the Hard Rock, receiving private dances from a stripper to whom he’d taken a shining.
2. BOTB was still, to that very moment, blacked-out drunk. He had no clue where he was, what was going on, or why everyone was so panicked.

When the group reached the front of the security line at the airport, the TSA agents took one look at the wounded soldier. “No.” Several minutes of begging, pleading, and promises to sober-up and look after him finally convinced the security agents to let them move on to the gate. Once there, party members were dispatched for coffee and food to combat the inordinate levels of alcohol coursing through BOTB’s body. They tried to get information about his night out of him, but he seemed to know almost as little as they did. Someone suggested he check his pockets.

BOTB clumsily reached into his left front pocket, and pulled out a receipt. He handed it to A-Train, who looked it over. “$1500. Damn. What about your other pocket?” BOTB fumbled around with his right pocket for a moment, finally pulling his hand out; clutched in his mitt was a wad of receipts as thick as a wallet.

He thrust the small bundle towards A-Train, who took a moment to read through them. When BOTB asked what the total was, A-Train couldn’t do it. He handed them to someone and said, “You tell him.”

“Fifteen…thousand…”

They asked BOTB how he’d racked up that many charges on his credit card. He told them that the card company, after a point, began calling the strip club each time they rang up another exorbitant charge. “They’d hand me the phone; the card company’d ask about the charge, and I’d say it was ok. After a while they started making me fingerprint the receipts for confirmation. And they just kept bringing out champagne…”

Member of group: “Did you at least get head or fuck her or something?”
BOTB: “No…”
A-Train’s brother: “Do you know how many call girls you could’ve gotten for $15,000?!?”

Organized Chaos

I have a lot of friends. And not just in the Facebook sense of “I once shared an elevator with this person, found out that we both play Farmville, and now we’re ‘friends’-slash-‘neighbors’.” No, I actually know a lot of people. And a lot of the people I know also know a lot of people. This means that I meet a lot of the people that they know. And that means I end up knowing a lot more people.

And with all of that, you would think I’d have a much more exciting dating life. But that’s neither here nor…anywhere, frankly.

I say none of this to brag, of course (especially not that last part). Instead, I bring it up as evidence that I’ve been exposed to many types of people. And I think most can be narrowed down into one of two styles of friendship:

1. There are those who refuse to leave a man behind. If they walked into the club with six other people, you better damn well believe they’re leaving with those same six (or they will at least have a reasonable amount of confidence that any buddy left to go his own way is going to end up someplace safe and/or advantageous…and/or disease-free). 
2. On the other side of the coin you have those guys who don’t really give a fizzle where or how anyone gets anywhere at the end of the night. This doesn’t mean that they’re less of friends; if they feel you’re in any real danger, then they’re in the saddle, guns blazing. But short of seeing you blacked out and walking down the middle of a busy freeway, they’re going to leave you to your survival instincts after a long night of boozing—typically because they, themselves, are relying on their own survival instincts.

I’m tempted to say that there’s a third group, one comprised of people who straddle the line dividing the first two. People who, on some days, will fight for the good of the team; and who, on other days, will do for self, and worry about sorting out the details of everyone else’s well-being in the morning. People like…me. But the more I think about it, the harder I find it to put myself anywhere but in that second category above. The truth of the matter is, 95% of the time I’ve got only my survival in mind. I love my real friends, and will fight for them against any adversary. But I’m also what they call a “grown ass man”; all things being equal, if I associate with you on a friendship level, then I expect you to handle yourself as competently as I do. If you’re in true peril I’ll assist; but if you’re just acting a fool, I’ll catch you on the next one.

If you’re wondering where all of this is coming from, let me get to the point: Tank’s bachelor party took place last month.

Ahhhh…all starting to make sense now, isn’t it?

Ladies, you may not quite be up to speed, but I know that the fellas reading this are already with me. [Feel free to skip ahead a couple of paragraphs to get to the action, guys; I’m going to take a moment to assist the women.] I think most of the fairer sex is somewhat misinformed as to what goes on when guys get together for bachelor parties. In telling the tale of GG’s stag party last year, I explained how the party’s traditional involvement with exotic dancers isn’t quite as scandalous as you might have pictured. But with or without ladies of the pole-spinning arts, there’s a fundamental rule about bachelor parties that guys tend to accept as unspoken law: Coordination is a fool’s errand.

Sure, you can expertly lay out plans for the night’s start; but the levels of booze and testosterone are each steadily building in everyone’s bloodstreams throughout the event. Each is strong enough on its own; when mixed together, you have an incredibly powerful hallucinogenic. 15+ deranged guys are not going to stick to an itinerary. No, they’re like a rack of billiard balls. And anything—be it woman, whim, or other distraction—can come rocketing in like a cue ball at any moment.

Tank’s little brother, BAL, was in charge of putting the party together. Around 20 or so of us gathered at Tank’s house in Dormont that afternoon for beer, food, and college football. Tank’s kitchen and dining room were overrun by snacks and hors d'oeuvres, as well as burgers and hot dogs fresh off the grill; his game room was equipped with two large flatscreen TVs and fine Cuban cigars; his laundry room was converted into a beer pong arena and stocked with Irish Car Bomb ingredients; and his patio, where the kegs were located, became a beer garden/smoker’s shelter. A table for beer pong—complete with pong balls, cups, and pitchers—had also been set up on the patio; but with temperatures in the upper 40s, it remained dormant. The man of honor drank from his very own black chalice with the word “PIMP” spelled out in glittering (albeit fake) diamonds. A DD limo would be coming after 8 pm to take people to Station Square. With that, a loose framework was created for the day’s shenanigans.

Breitling arrived in a new, all-black International MXT. As he parked on the street in front of Tank’s house, he blew the horn; the blast that resulted boomed through the quiet neighborhood and rattled windows up and down the street. An elderly woman came out of her house yelling “fucking asshole!”, and was intercepted by Chief.

Chief: “I’m sorry about that, ma’am! He was just having a little fun.”
Woman: “Well tell him he’s an asshole! What is that thing?”
Chief: “I think it’s a train!”

While every guy in my alcoholic family adds a distinctive and pleasing flavor to a gathering, it’s my W&J brothers that always deliver the best return on my drinking investment. This is true down to the smallest of interactions. For instance: As I stood on the patio with Chief and Finn trading all of the familiar insults, degradations, and aspersions that are by now customary and as warm as a brotherly embrace, a pause eventually came to our banter. Chief, never to leave a moment free of mischief, reached over and picked up a pong ball from the table. He then sized up Finn’s cup—sitting on the table less than two feet away—and fired a shot directly into it with a playful chuckle. Finn, unfazed, picked the ball out of his beer, shook it off, and began taking the measure on the cup in Chief’s hand, again less than two feet away. Cocking back his hand, he snapped off a shot with everything he could muster—directly at Chief’s forehead.

That was likely the last time that day that a pong ball was thrown in jest, though. The games inside quickly took on more and more importance, as the competitiveness in the air was ratcheted up by the sudden (but not unexpected) introduction of cash to the table. Ten, twenty, fifty, and even one hundred dollar bills were soon being tossed on the table by gladiators and spectators alike (which for me quickly brought to mind my experience at the W&J frat party several years ago). Being low on funds, I only made one bet, putting $20 on Esq and Baby Joey to beat Chief and our buddy, “Sloku” [for those of you curious about the genesis of that alias: his spiked hair reminds me of the DragonBall Z character, Goku—he even dressed as him one Halloween—and he speaks with a slow, deliberate tone]. When I lost that to Butters, I thought better of risking anything further. At its peak, the day’s wagering featured a battle in which each of the four men on the table put up $100 of his own money—small change for a Vegas craps table, but nearly unheard of in middle class Pittsburgh beer pong. Baby Joey has long maintained a much more modest income than his older brother Esq, a young hotshot lawyer. But having recently found a lucrative new career path, Joey was unexpectedly covering his sibling with the laundry room’s impromptu beer sportsbook. “I’m into Joey for $150,” Esq said incredulously. “The world’s coming to an end.”

Though two limos were supposed to move the party to Station Square at 8, it was after 10 by the time we were ready to be moved. I had intended to only attend the first half of the day’s events, and to therefore go easy on my bank account by skipping the club-hopping. By this point in the night, however, Chief and others were well lubricated by the high of beer pong glories and the…beer…of beer pong defeats (not to mention by a few rounds of Irish Car Bombs done in toast to the groom-to-be), and I was told that I would be insulting them by not staying out at their cost.

So my choices are (1.) go home and fall asleep on my couch watching Chappelle Show reruns, or (2.) smoke cigars in a limo ride to Station Square and party with my boys…for free? Well, I guess I could stay out a little longer—for Tank’s sake.

We hit Steel House a mangled, slow-moving, low-laying cloud of 15 or so drunks, speaking loudly in coarse terms, ordering rounds of shots and apologizing to anyone nearby who wasn’t as inebriated as us—which was everyone. I’m quite certain that by this point I was no longer standing and/or walking, but instead floating; I was being carried along by my own piece of the cloud, a cushy haze that enveloped my comprehension and speech patterns. Soon we had spread into Barroom, onto the dance floor and throughout the surrounding lounge areas. Then there were kielbasa sandwiches from the vendor on Barroom’s deck, and then…well, somehow I was walking through the front doors of Rivers Casino with Butters, our friend Dirty, and Joey.

I really don’t remember how we got there, though I think it was via limo. We found Breitling and another guy from the party at a Pai Gow table. After some further searching we found Esq alone at a blackjack table. And after talking to other various party refugees found strewn around the casino floor, we learned that Tank and BAL were in the poker room. Chief was first said to be somewhere at a craps table, but subsequent reports placed him heading for the doors and—hopefully—a cab to Tank’s house.

Rivers being a PA casino, last call for alcohol comes around 1:30 am. Great; dry and broke in a casino. Now that’s living. The next few hours were spent touring the floor with Butters and Joey, watching our scattered crew play their chosen games of chance.

• Blackjack: Esq was losing badly, but stubbornly kept throwing more money on the table, against our advice. 
• Pai Gow: Breitling spoke in loud, obnoxious streams of profanity and bravado (standard) as he built up a $5000 stack of chips in front of him. While walking past this vivid display of the rich getting richer, Butters paused, looked at me, and said, “I hate him.”
• Poker: On our second stop to the poker room, we found a Tank-less BAL. The groom-to-be had, it was theorized, headed home. The younger of the two brothers was committed to staying on the table for the long haul, having just invested another $200 buy-in. The early end to drink service didn’t seem to have hindered his inebriation much, as he looked as though he could pass out in his chair at any moment. Sometimes you simply leave a man to die the death that his dignity desires.

We found Dirty and, all four of us being sober and exhausted, grabbed a cab back to Tank’s house at 4:30 am. His drained fiancée, Katie (a saint of a woman, really), opened the door for us. She assured us that Tank had, indeed, found his way home, and was sleeping it off in their bedroom.

Just like we’d planned.

AWOL

It appears that I’ve hit another lull in my drunken exploit chest-thumpingchronicling, and I really can’t offer up a legitimate excuse for it. I’d like to blame it on the heavy increase in work that has been heaped upon me at the office as of late. But since last December I’ve had a shiny new Dell—complete with all of the MS Office bells and whistles—sitting in my apartment, and that instantly negates the “lack of free time in front of a computer” defense. I could tell you that the slow down has been a result of a concerted effort to scale back my drinking and carousing, but…well I’m sure you would find that only slightly more believable than Ben Roethlisberger wearing a purity ring.

In reality, tons of drunken days and nights have come and gone this year without the slightest mention on the page thus far. Even renowned drinkers’ holidays like New Years Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, the Pirates’ Home Opener, and Brewski Festival have eluded narration in 2010. What can I say? I’m a slacker.

To try to get myself back into the swing of things, I’m going to give a few quick stories from some of my social dealings in recent months (ahh, bullet point formatting; my crutch-away-from home...).


Pirates’ Home Opener

• The entire event was one prolonged, blissful blur. About midway through the day, I found myself in that interesting state known to drinkers as “half blacked out”. It really is an interesting phenomena that only true drinkers can appreciate; if you’ve never spent a random morning trying to weave together the previous day or night’s storyline from various pieces of memory that are separated by chunks of complete blackness, each about 15 to 45 minutes in length, then no words on a computer screen are going to do it justice. My recollection of the day goes from tailgating to McFadden's, to walking into the T station downtown with Steph, to boarding the Incline, to eating calamari at Redbeard’s, to sitting in Steph’s living room watching “Zombieland”. All of which covers several miles of Pittsburgh real estate, spanning from the North Shore to downtown to Station Square to Mount Washington.

If scientists ever determine the exact amount of drunk you have to get for you to be “half blacked out”, television producers could create one hell of a reality-TV game show. Picture a camera crew following around a sloshed, unknowing contestant; then, in the studio the following day, the hungover person has to correctly deduce what in the fizzuck happened to him or her.

Player: “Bob, I’m going to say I vomited behind the McDonalds, then went inside; ordered seven Happy Meals—and a shake; drunk-texted that girl at work I have a crush on; and then fell asleep in the backseat of my buddy’s car.”
Host: “And that’s your final answer?”
Player: *nods while wincing, and then takes a swig of Gatorade*
Host: “Okay—judges, let’s see the tape!”

• After the movie, I had recovered quite nicely. It was only about 8 pm or so, and I decided to resume my inebriation. The boys had all convened at Redbeard’s, and beckoned me to join. It’s about a ten minute walk to there from Steph’s house, and as I finally rounded the corner onto the street where the bar sits, I saw a minivan taxicab parked up ahead. Outside of it stood Jay Swag, Pakistanimal, and MG, who were loading Dupa into the back. He had, it appeared, reached his limit a little earlier than expected. They had almost closed the sliding side door on him when, giggling, he hopped out and ran around the back of the van, and then climbed into the front passenger seat—even though he was the only one taking the cab.

• One of the bartenders at Redbeard’s was Asian-American. Pakistanimal—who had long ago that day throttled past “civilized drinker,” and was now barreling along at a very dickish mach-3-drunk—decided that the best way to endear himself to this gent was to address him as “Jackie Chan.” Want to guess how well that one went over? Approximately ten minutes after I’d gotten to the bar, Pak was being shown the door.

• Earlier in the day, while hanging out at the large tailgate party thrown by Steph’s company, I met a woman who used to work for the same corporation that employs Dupa…and The Ex. While exchanging small talk, I mentioned to her that my ex-girlfriend also works for said corporation.

Her: “Oh really? Who?”
Me: “[The Ex’s real name].”
Her: “Oh—she’s crazy!”
Me: *choking on my beer*
Her: “But I guess that’s why she’s your EX-girlfriend!”

Brewski Fest Eve

• The night before the grandest of beer drinking days found Dupa, our boy “The Entertainer”, Shannon, Dr. Kelly, her friend “Fist of Fury” (FoF), and I drinking ourselves silly in Johnstown, where Dr. Kelly is a surgical resident. Johnstown surely wasn’t prepared for the party that Dupa, Entertainer, and I bring, and we quickly made an impression on Dr.’s boss, an attending doctor who was seated at the bar near us. After about 20 minutes of our typical unfiltered social commentary, the attending got up and walked clear around to the other side of the bar, trying to find a seat as far away from us as he could.

• All of us were sufficiently hammered by the time the bar closed, and we retired to Dr. Kelly’s house. As soon as we arrived, the three girls all ran upstairs to put on t-shirts and sweats. Standing in the kitchen, we guys decided to make ourselves more comfortable as well. So when FoF, Shan, and Dr. came back downstairs, they found all three of us guys just as we had been before—minus our pants. Dupa cooked up frozen pizza rolls, I mixed myself a Gatorade & vodka, and Entertainer air-guitared to 80s music, all in our polo shirts and boxers.

Rocky’s Bachelor Party

• My buddy Rocky will be kissing his freedom away blushing bride at the altar soon, and last weekend roughly 30 of us gathered at Wheeling Island for his last hurrah. Fairly early in the night, one of Rocky’s friends found himself up $500+ from the blackjack table. He decided, in true gambler spirit, to place a $500 chip on “red” at the roulette table. Our crowd of drunken Pennsylvanians watched with baited breath as the little white ball spun around and around, finally landing on…red. A roar went up like Wheeling’s never seen before. The brave soul collected his two $500 chips and went straight to the cage, and then to the bar to buy a round of tequila shots.

• Rocky’s fiancée, beautiful and virtuous, has only one flaw: her utter distaste for anything stripper-related. Therefore, unlike Gaelic Gangsta’s stag party at Wheeling Island last year, there would be no shaming of the groom-to-be at the hand of Godfathers’ maniacal exotic dancers. I don’t think Rocky was even allowed to look in the club’s direction from across the casino’s parking lot. The rest of us, however, had no doubt that we’d be visiting at some point. The plan, therefore, was to get the bachelor as stupid-drunk as we could early in the night, so that we could put him to bed and then head over for a dance or two. But around 12:30, it became clear that Rocky—true to his namesake—wasn’t going down without a fight. No matter how many shots and cocktails we poured into him, he wouldn’t fall.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Rocky’s cousin, a police officer, formulated a new plan: members of our party were to peel off inconspicuously two at a time and head for Godfathers. As we stood talking and laughing a short while later, and with Rocky up at the bar, “Po-Po” looked at Dupa and I and ordered, “Alright, you two—go.” We looked at each other, shrugged, and walked off through the casino towards the doors. About five minutes after we arrived at the club and got seats at the bar, two more people arrived from our group. And then two more. And then two more. Eventually about 16 to 18 of us were enjoying performances by West Virginia’s best. I’m not sure if Rocky ever figured out where half of his party had gone. Hell, I can’t be sure he even figured out that we had gone.

• I recently became a part of the Twitter craze (right at the cutting edge of that trend, I know), and decided to do my best to give play-by-play to the bachelor party’s proceedings. The following is a portrait of 18 hours of madness:

6:00 PM May 15th: “On my way to Rocky's bachelor party on the Island. This...is...going...to...get...ugly.”
8:43 PM May 15th: “Dinner buffet: conquered.”
9:52 PM May 15th: “Dog races and vodka gimlets.”
11:18 PM May 15th: “Middle-aged white man on stage singing ‘My Prerogative’. Oh...my...fuck...”
11:35 PM May 15th: “If you were up $500 on the night, would you throw it all on red on the roulette table? Our buddy did. Tequila shots all around.”
12:43 AM May 16th: “Shots and gimlets flying. This is starting to feel like Savannah.”
1:21 AM May 16th: “Strip club. No bachelor. Weird? Not for our crew.”
7:52 AM May 16th: “5 hours of poker followed by getting locked out of a hotel room. Feels pretty standard by now.”
11:18 AM May 16th: “At Perkins in Wheeling, and looking at our waitress...I think I see where Tiger was coming from.”
12:23 PM May 16th: “Bachelor party was successful. Quote of the weekend: ‘You go home, tell her you love her, touch her where she pees, and it's all good.’”

That’s all for now. I need a bottle of Gatorade and some sunlight. But I promise to have more soon. Salud.

Grown Man Business

Strippers and bachelor parties go together like gin and tonic water. The general presumption, at least amongst brides-to-be, is that their future hubbies end up in a dark back room receiving an endless string of lap dances and affections from beautiful women. From my own personal experience, however, this isn’t very accurate. I can count about eleven stag parties in which I have taken part over the years. Ten of them featured performances by exotic dancers; of those ten, the bachelor was too drunk at half of them to even make it into the strip club. And even when he does stay conscious long enough to see the inside of the club, it’s rare that the bachelor ever gets a sendoff anywhere near the fantasy scenario described above. Sometimes he just hangs out at the edge of the stage with his buddies, sliding the occasional dollar bill into a garter. Sometimes the best man takes him to the private room and buys him one innocent lap dance from the girl of his choosing. And sometimes he gets the will to live beaten out of him onstage by two dancers (who, invariably, experience simultaneous flashbacks of domestic violence, and as a result go all Tina-whooping-Ike-with-a-boot-in-the-limo on the poor, unsuspecting sap).

Unfortunately for Gaelic Gangsta, his bachelor party in Wheeling, WV last weekend fell along the lines of the third—and least enjoyable—scenario.

Most of our party crew began the night by pounding beers at the TGI Fridays in Washington while watching NCAA tourney games. I met up with them late, though, and had only enough time to chug one Miller Lite draught. We caravanned to a Hampton Inn a couple of miles away from Wheeling Island, which would be the night’s main event. The best man, “Mo-Fo,” had booked two rooms, but we had 11 guys congregated. So while he and three others went inside to check in, the rest of us played the old prom night game of “hang back in the parking lot.” We waited about 10 minutes and then finally went inside to catch up with them. Unfortunately, we didn’t know what the room numbers were, and had to try stopping on each floor. When we reached the second floor, the elevator doors opened to a temporary wall; third floor, same thing. The hotel, apparently, was doing some remodeling. “How much you wanna bet,” said GG, “that one of us is going to crash through those walls tonight?”

“I fully expect there to be a man-shaped hole in one of them tomorrow from you running through it,” I replied.

When the doors opened on 4, we half-expected to see another temporary wall. Instead it was Mo-Fo; he ushered us down the hall to the rooms, one of which had a large, full cooler of cold Labatt Blue cans and Smithwick’s bottles awaiting us. “Weatherman”, the bride-to-be’s brother, brought a bottle of Jack Daniels that he was daring to splash Coke at. And it was only about 7 pm. This night was not going to be for the faint of heart.

When everyone decided that it was time to head to the casino to eat, Mo-Fo called the front desk and asked about arranging for the casino’s shuttle to pick us up. The woman at the desk informed him that all he needed to do was push the “dice button” on the room phone, and he would be connected with Wheeling Island. “Wow,” Mo-Fo said impressed. “You guys are on top of it!”

At Wheeling Island we ravaged the buffet, washing down chicken, steak, and pasta with beers, Jack, and vodka. While gathered around a table at a bachelor party, the discussion topics typically have a more macho flavor to them. You’ve got plates with meat piled high, bottles of beer, glasses of whiskey, 12-14 virile young guys, gambling; it’s like a big stew of “manliness” symbolism. One of our friends sitting at the table (“E Bomb”—man, my ability to craft creative aliases is really starting to fade), though, is openly gay [which almost sounds like a sociological experiment: “Let’s throw as much testosterone-fueled, heterosexual overload at a gay man as we can, and then see what happens”]. But E Bomb long ago proved himself able to drink and joke with the best of us. When conversation eventually came to GG’s scrap the previous Saturday, E Bomb weighed in:

E Bomb: “If I had been there, it would’ve been great to knock him out and then look down and say ‘You just got your ass kicked by a faggot!’”
Me: *choking on my Red Bull and vodka*

After eating we hit the dog track to bet on a few races. While not busy raking in the free money (GG, Weatherman, and I all won at different times), some of the guys bought and passed around shots of Jack. After an hour or so it was deemed time to hit Godfather's Gentlemen's Club, which is within walking distance of the casino. Weatherman and I were among the first to arrive at the rendezvous point on the casino floor. He decided to throw a $20 on red at the roulette table; I followed suit, putting $20 on black.

Always bet on black.

I took my small winnings to the cage to get cashed, and Weatherman sat down at a slot machine. He threw in $5, and after a few minutes of automated whirling and beeping, it posted a $95 win. The rest of our group showed up as Weatherman took his voucher to the cage. He was still standing over at the window several minutes later, though, and the rest of us—eager to have naked breasts shook in our faces—began to get impatient. I went over to ask what the hold up was, but once I looked over his shoulder I understood. Being laid out in front of him by the cashier were ninety-five $1 bills. Weatherman looked at me with a big grin. “I’m gonna make it rain!”

Though I had heard mixed reviews of it throughout the day, I was impressed with Godfathers. The girls weren’t superstars, but they were solid 7s and 8s (I think that may count as a 20 in West Virginia). We pooled money to buy a VIP table and bottle service, and we poured ourselves vodka and Jack from a small lounge of leather couches stage left. One of our guys—who seemed to appoint himself Secretary of Strip Club Affairs as soon as we walked in—picked out two dancers, and worked out the terms of the show they would perform for the bachelor. GG was quickly being led to the stage by a tall, tattooed girl with jet black hair (“Tats”), and a petite blonde with a well-sculpted derriere (“WGWA”). He smiled like a little kid about to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. Oh, if only he understood that this was a show for us, not for him.

While he sat on his hands in a chair backed against the pole, Tats and WGWA proceeded to do their best to remind GG of every reason he loves and cherishes his fiancée. To the cheers of the rest of us, they paddled, teased, tickled, and abused him like two deranged cats slowly killing a mouse. A few minutes into the show, Weatherman handed out wads of his dollar bills to some of us. Together, we gathered around the edge of the stage and tossed a rainstorm of Washingtons across it while two borderline sadistic exotic dancers beat our drunken friend silly. The only word I can conceive of to describe it is “wondrous.”

For the grand finale, WGWA climbed up onto GG and stood on his thighs—10 inch stripper heels and all—and began thrusting her g-string covered crotch into his face, pinballing his head between her pelvic bone and the pole behind it. Having enough, he wearily raised his hand and tapped out on WGWA’s firm heiny.

We packed our trampled buddy into the shuttle to the hotel, and the bulk of the party called it a night as well. A few of us, however, decided we wanted to gamble some more. Mo-Fo and his boy stuck to the blackjack tables, and I headed downstairs to the poker room at about 2:30 am, where I repeatedly ordered cups of ice water from waitresses and watched my chip stack fluctuate. At about 9:30 I finally decided it time to tap out myself, down only $55 from what I had stumbled in with. I cabbed it back to the hotel, where 10 guys were packed into two modest hotel rooms like refugees.

As we all said our goodbyes before hitting the highway back to PA, GG showed us a lasting reminder of his last night as a free man: a bruise on his ass about the size of a coaster on a coffee table.

Yep—definitely not for the faint of heart.