The Sunshine State [Day 2]

Friday, May 26

I awoke in a panic, as I wandered from room to room in the dark, looking for a bathroom. I opened a door and found a closet. Behind another door and I found Dupa snoring in his bed. After what felt like hours, I realized I was in our condo. In Florida. And I was really, really hungover.

Lucidity was slowly reacquainting itself with me. I was missing my left sock. A wad of ones sat on my dresser. I vaguely remembered vomiting in a parking lot. I made a mental note to check my shoes and shorts later for collateral damage. [Note: Not a spot on them! It’s almost as if I’ve done this before.]

I felt a tinge of embarrassment. Any guy does when he’s thrown up in front of his buddies. When you’re that guy, you feel like you’ve let everyone down. I found the bathroom, flipped up the seat, and as I pissed I realized that there were flecks of something all around the bowl.

“Dupa hurled, too.” Then my struggling brain fully processed this information. “I’m not the only one.” A sizeable grin spread across my face as I washed my hands and hobbled back to bed.

A couple of hours later, I was still the only one in the condo awake. I’d showered and shaved before Dupa shuffled into the living room, plopped down in the leather armchair, and joined me in watching tv.

Me: “Did you vomit last night?”
Dupa: “I’ll clean it up.”
Me: “I did too, in the parking lot outside the strip club.”
Dupa: “Ha! I didn’t even make it inside. As soon as I got out of the Uber I ordered one of my own.”

The same driver who had dropped us off had taken the request, and swung back around to pick him up. Then he had to talk to Dupa the whole way to the condo to keep my Polish comrade from throwing up right there in the car.

We’re both adults, by the way.

Ton had texted me around 9 a.m. to ask if we wanted to go fishing with the rest of the boys. It took me until 12:30 to respond, but I’d wager he knew my answer well before that. It hardly mattered anyways, since their fishing boat encountered engine trouble shortly into the trip, and they had to head back for land. A Snapchat video of Ton, TK, Balls, and Tiger Blood smiling and partying as the boat charged out into the Gulf was immediately followed by a subdued one of them puttering back shortly thereafter.

About an hour later Dupa and I were meeting up with the guys at Bubba Gump’s. Just being out in the sunshine on a deck overlooking the bay was doing wonders for me. I couldn’t say the same for TK, who sat opposite me at the table, looking shell-shocked. Our waitress, upon first seating him, had unabashedly commented, “You look terrible.” It was an astute observation.

Hemsworth, for the record, hadn’t even made it out of his hotel bed. When Ton texted him about lunch, his full response was, “No.”

Catching up on how everyone else’s night had ended was a therapy session in and of itself.

• TK gave the full account of making it rain:
  
  Tiger Blood handed him $100 in ones and they walked over to the edge of a stage. He then told the dancer to spin on the pole.
  
  Dancer: “No.”
  Tiger Blood: “I’m paying you money. Get on the pole so we can make it rain on you.”
  Dancer: “No.”
  Tiger Blood: *to TK* “Fuck this bitch, we’re not giving her shit. We’ll spend our money on the next dancer. *a moment passes* Fuck it. *tosses dollars in the air and walks away*”
  
  
• Ton, meanwhile, had a different kind of difficulty with a woman.
  
  Me: “Did I imagine it, or was Mrs. Ton there?”
  Ton: “She was there. I didn’t want her to come out, because I knew we’d end up getting into a fight. And I was right.”
  
  
• Tiger Blood called an escort service when he got back to his hotel room. But he got tired of trying to negotiate a reasonable price, so he gave up on it and went to bed.
  
  

We inhaled tall drinks, fried seafood platters, sandwiches, and burgers. Dupa and I had arrived later, and our food orders were about 10 minutes behind everyone else’s. I claimed Ton’s burger for myself as it was delivered to the table, without a second thought or a shred of a fuck given. Bachelor party hangovers are an every-man-for-himself blood sport.

After lunch Tiger Blood and I were talking to a cashier and the manager. When we told them that we’d been out for our friend’s bachelor party the prior night, the manager said, “Ah, so you guys went hard last night.” Then, pointing at me, she added, “I can tell.”

Still, we were the only two interested in doing a bit more day drinking, and we walked to Hooters for a beer […and maybe in futile hopes of running into Svana again]. The groom, Ton, and Balls left to prepare for the rehearsal dinner. Dupa went back to the condo to sleep more.

He awoke a couple of hours later, ambling out to the living room to find me watching River Monsters. Our friend Shafe arrived in town and had immediately begun texting Dupa, who told him we’d meet him at the bar in 30 minutes. Two hours later we strolled into The Hut Bar and Grill, and found Shafe pounding Bud Heavies with a chip on his shoulder.

The Hut was my kind of place. Right on the water, live music, an engaging bartender, and hard-hitting Hurricanes. I put back four with dinner, while Dupa did five and a LandShark, and Shafe drained Bud bottles like an ancient Aztec priest performing sacrifices on the steps of a temple. In other words, things were just like you’d expect them to be.

When the rehearsal dinner ended, the participants headed for Daiquiri Shak and instructed us to do the same. When we got there, we found them to have largely taken over the deck in front of the building. We grabbed seats at a nearby table, ordered ourselves beers, and jumped right into the flow. And I got some face time with my favorite University of Alabama alum (sorry Amari, you’ll have to settle for second).

Tide was tipsy, and had the look of a woman both relieved everything was finally happening and stressed that it wasn’t all over yet. Still, relief seemed to be her dominating emotion, as she kicked back with some beers and entertained us. Inevitably, she delivered the quote of the night.

Tide: “I told my mom, ‘I can’t wait to finally have sex!’ She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Oh shut up.’ I have a past life; I used to be a bit of a hoe…”

A random local from a table near ours made her presence known. Blonde, 40+, and wearing her standard-issue Florida jorts, she jumped up and did her best embarrassing-aunt-at-the-family-picnic dance. Not the least bit apologetic, she explained to us, “It’s Friday. You’ve gotta let loose!”

My immediate reaction was, “She’s the female version of Dupa.” I can’t honestly remember if I was the first one of us to say it, though, because Mrs. Ton and Tide both made the same observation. We may have all said it simultaneously. Dupa saw it too. He stared in awe, occasionally putting the corner of his phone in his mouth for lack of a verbal reaction. I know the man well, and those are the telltale signs of him being flummoxed.

Our group was soon joined by four of the girls from the bachelorette party we’d met at CJ’s the night prior. Balls had made a connection with one of the bridesmaids, and invited her and her friends to come hang. It occurred to me for the first time that they were all blonde. And hot. And, as often happens when you have four beautiful young blondes at your table, we suddenly had a douchey pest hovering around us.

Looking like the least popular member of a boy band [“JC Nahsez?” “FuckBoy?” Yeah, let’s go with FuckBoy.], he interjected himself into our consciousness by making an unsolicited response to one of our comments. As we paused to ask ourselves “Who the fuck is this guy?” he zeroed in on the blondes, grabbing a chair and pulling it over close to two of them.

We shrugged off the intrusion, figuring he was the girls’ burden to bear. But when he disappeared for a moment, we asked them what his deal was. “I don’t know,” one of them said. “He’s annoying.” When he came back around, the ladies gave him a cold shoulder. He tried to save face by buddying up to my boy Billy, who in turn told him, “You should probably just walk away.” FuckBoy reluctantly accepted his fate, and extended his hand in my direction, looking for a handshake. I just stared at him.

FuckBoy: “You’re not going to shake my hand?”
Me: “Nah.”

I think he yelled “fuck you” or something as he walked away, I don’t know. He didn’t matter.

We resumed our various conversations and drinking. With the next day being a big one, though, most of us started clearing out around 1 a.m. I was one of them, strolling off down the street—our condo was only a block away. And I hummed a tune as I did.

After all, it was Friday. You’ve gotta let loose.

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 3

I may be the only one who loves these quote posts so much—and I don’t care. I’m totally fine with the fact that this is all for me.

Pulling these together is never as easy as it would seem. There’s a wealth of material, sure; but often I neglect to make note of quotes as they happen, and therefore don’t have it at the ready when writing out the story (it may be shocking to read, but sometimes I tend to forget things when I’ve been drinking). Of those I do remember, I try to save some for a DSTDT post, but inevitably a lot of quotes are told as parts of other narratives. Typical of this new age of social media, though, I did manage to collect a couple from my friends’ Facebook status updates (that’s right folks—nothing’s sacred anymore). And, as usual, I have also included one of the many random moments of brilliance from years past that have sat in my crew’s vault, dusty and unpublished—until now.

• During our pre-Brewski, Friday-night-on-the-town in Johnstown last April, Dupa was in rare form. He put on a one-man show, dancing with the girls, wearing Shannon’s earrings, and spitting out zingers left and right. Far more than the alcohol, though, what seemed to inspire his verbal mastery on this night was our favorite doctor’s revealing attire. During one pause in the group’s convo, he turned to Dr. Kelly and—saying, “Let’s pretend I’m an ostrich and your cleavage is a sand pit”—buried his face in her chest.
  
  The best of his best, however, came not much later. The girls and guys had momentarily dissolved into separate conversations, and during a small break in ours Dupa looked over again at Dr. By then he was merely the dummy to the booze’s ventriloquist act, and didn’t seem to realize that his thoughts weren’t being restricted to his head. Barely loud enough for her to hear, he said, “I’m BP, and you’re the Gulf Coast; wanna see my oil spill?”
  
  
• The following night at Seven Springs, after a long day of Brewski pregaming, Brewski Festing, and Brewski after-partying, our cast of characters found themselves pushed to their limits. By the end of the night we were a broken and battered platoon administering battlefield triage throughout the sprawling mountain resort. When he dragged himself over to the bar to get a beer at last call, Entertainer found LRG standing there alone, finishing a drink.
  
  Within seconds they were approached by a bouncer who was visibly unhappy. Pointing at LRG, the bouncer barked, “He’s cut off!” Entertainer, stunned, assured the bouncer that he would keep LRG from causing more trouble. “Look, it’s last call, so he’s not drinking more anyways,” he argued. The bouncer relented, and walked off. Despite the confrontation, LRG had remained decidedly unfazed.
  
  Entertainer: “What did you do?"
  LRG: “I don’t know. Kicked a table? Hit a girl? *shrug*”
  
  
• My manager may be a grandmother, but that doesn’t mean she can’t hang. I’ve seen this firsthand on a few business trips; the years, however, may finally be catching up to her. Last month her daughter got married, and among the dessert items at the reception were cannolis filled with a cream made with three different kinds of liquor. And it seems the baker used a liberal amount of each alcohol in the creation of these On the Rocks-worthy pastries, to the point where my manager told me, “I didn’t drink much at the wedding; but then when I went to bed…the ceiling fan wasn’t on, but it was moving.”
  
  
• Last Memorial Day, TD was out of hand. She bounced around without stoppage at her and Baby Joey’s annual party, dancing, yelling at people randomly, and kissing her girlfriends in true barsexual spirit. Late in the night, she and her friend Leah were the subject of a fantastic picture, in which Leah sat in shock as her friend performed an impromptu lap dance on her. Leah’s facial expression as TD’s sundress is thrust at her in the photo is priceless. After I showed them the picture, TD summed up the moment captured by the digital eye. “Everything Leah does with her face, I do with my crotch.”
  
  
• One weeknight last spring, her girl 2Ls popped up in my Facebook news feed with a quick message to a dear friend. “hangover, I'll meet you in the morning, 8am, give or take... until then, have a good night..”
  
  
• How in the name of Jack Daniels do you ever begin a serious drinking session knowing you haven’t eaten within the last several hours? I just can’t imagine another drinking rule as clear-cut and painfully obvious as “drinking on an empty stomach will destroy you”. And yet, one recent Tuesday morning I had the following conversation with a friend who had been sending me drunk texts at 6 pm the day before.
  
  Me: “So how you feeling today?”
  Him: “All good. A little lightheaded this morning, but I think that's because I haven't eaten in 24 hours. I puked twice, and I should not have driven home last night.”
  Me: “So, explain to me exactly how you say to yourself, ‘I haven't had any food all day. I should ingest some alcohol.’"
  Him: “Silly... I didn't start talking to myself ‘til drink #8 or so.”
  
  
• Pakistanimal’s birthday was last June, and we decided to keep it somewhat reserved. TJ, Dupa, and Pak pregamed at my place, and then we all hit the ‘Side to make the blurry happen. We were soon joined at the William Penn Tavern by a murderer’s row of LRG and a few of his homies, Jay Swag, and Mitch Canada. After several rounds of birthday shots and various drinks, Pak was dazed, and found himself in a moment of defiant truthfulness while staring at a random bar slore nearby. “Yeah, I’m fucked up,” he announced to her, “and I’m looking at your tits.”
  
  
• A few days before St. Patty’s Day 2010, my buddy Weatherman was looking for a pair of smiling Irish eyes on Facebook. “Any Irish girls want to hang out? I'm drunk off Captain, and we could make one hell of an Irish pirate.”
  
  
• A couple of Fridays ago, several of us took part in a bar crawl organized by one of TD’s friends. TJ and his girlfriend, who was in town visiting, were in attendance. Since “Racktacular” (TJ’s own turn of a phrase, not mine) lives in Tampa, it took until that night for her to finally be introduced to TD. It wasn’t long, though, before she and the crazy little blonde girl had become good buddies. At the second stop on the tour, a moment of beer-fueled jubilation took hold of TD, as she said to Rackt, “We just met—let’s bump boobs!”
  
  
• Tony, also taking part in the crawl (by the way: all proceeds were going to charity, so it would’ve been socially irresponsible of us to not get sloppy drunk that night), found himself engaged in conversation with two random guys at one of the bars. After he finally pulled himself away from his new fan club, Tony then had to deal with TJ, Dupa, and I, who of course made many comments and unfounded insinuations about his true sexual orientation and the intentions of the two strangers. His immediate response, though, did little to halt that line of thinking. Waving off our jokes, he countered, “Dudes fucking love me.”
  
  
• One night several years ago, BlahBlahBlah, myself, and a few others met up at Hooters in Station Square (which has since closed) for happy hour drinks and food. The Hooters Girls were running a sports trivia game, wherein each table competed against the others to be the first to correctly answer questions. Midway through the contest, the sexy waitress in charge of it read aloud a question involving Earvin “Magic” Johnson. BBB found himself unable to hold back his mouth, instantly (and quite audibly) shooting back, “I’ll give you a ‘magic’ Johnson.’”

Hooters Girl Rodeo

Love. Her.




A good woman is hard to find. A good one who is beautiful is even rarer. And a beautiful one who can ride a bar stool in a circle while perfectly pouring a beer? The only word coming to mind is "wifey".