The Sunshine State [Day 3]

Saturday, May 27

I stumbled out to the couch and turned on the tv. An hour or so later Dupa experienced déjà vu, as again he shuffled out to the living room to find me watching River Monsters (*shrug*...it was a marathon weekend).

After watching Jeremy Wade swim with tigerfish in the Okavango Delta, we strolled down the street to Screwie Louie’s for lunch. Sipping Coronas on their deck, watching tourists and locals pass by in various states of dress and consciousness, was the purest expression of beach life that you can find.

There’s something intoxicating about it. Even with all my objections to living in Florida—and there are many—I can fully appreciate the appeal, living at your own pace and holding onto each gust of warm ocean air. It was just this siren call that lured TK away from the life of a corporate drone in Pittsburgh. And it led him to the love of his life, who he’d be marrying a few hours later. Hard to argue with those results.

Ah yes, there was a wedding to get to. The open-ended dress code led me to an easy decision: a 90-degree day on a Florida beach? Shorts, short-sleeved button down, and boat shoes, baby. Watching my friends sweat in suits, dress pants, and long-sleeved shirts, I patted myself on my back all day [much credit is also due to my personal stylist, Alex, who helped me in shopping for my wardrobe prior to the trip].

Beauty like this is perfect...for drinking.

My esteemed associate, Dupa, however, chose a tailored white linen suit, blue pinstriped shirt, and sandals. I cannot, in good conscience, hate on that decision.

The location for the ceremony was beautiful, with blue skies and blue-green waters serving as a backdrop. The one thing it lacked was alcohol, and I kicked myself for not following through on my idea to bring a cooler full of beer.

A grounds crew hastily assembled the archway that would serve as the altar; while we stood watching, someone pointed out that there was a beachside bar about 500 yards away that sold drinks in large, reusable cups. Dupa and I looked at each other, nodded, and headed off in that direction. We returned just before groomsmen began ushering parents and others down the aisle. I sipped on a tall cup of piña colada, while snapping pictures of groomsmen sweating out booze and a beautiful bride joyously striding across the sand towards her destiny.

The parents and the bridal party formed a receiving line afterwards, leading up to the edge of the beach. I told Tide’s parents how lucky we all felt TK was. I told TK’s parents I was friends with Dupa, but I was the good one. “That’s what we’ve heard,” his mom confirmed.

I complimented Tide on the silver and blue color scheme she’d chosen for the groom and groomsmen, but suggested one change. “The ties,” I explained while tracing my finger across TK’s navy-blue neckpiece. “They should have orange stripes running across them.” The bride lunged at me, connecting her tiny fist hard on my arm (and I really think she was aiming for my face, but was just too short to reach it).

War Eagle.

Our buddy “Grunts,” was following me in the line. After he congratulated TK, he pulled back from their hug to add, “I’ve got a present for you in my back pocket.” He leaned forward to reveal a bottle of Smirnoff Ice.

TK: *incredulous* “Did you just Ice me?” *grabs the bottle, cracks it open, takes a knee, chugs it down*

The wedding photographer was Johnny-on-the-spot, kneeling opposite TK to get an action shot of the icing.

Shafe was several people back from us in the line. When he got to the end and gave the bride a hug, he added, “I’ve got something in my pocket for you.” Then he leaned forward and revealed a bottle of Smirnoff Ice. Badass bride that she is, Tide took the bottle, cracked it open, took a knee, and chugged.

Have I mentioned that these two were made for each other?

While the wedding party did the photography portion of the day, the W&J demographic of the guest list piled under deck umbrellas at the beachside bar where Dupa and I had gotten the pre-ceremony drinks. Shafe yelled “Play Hall & Oates!” at the musician playing live on the deck, Billy’s girlfriend explained to me the difficulties of being a young teacher on the beach in the age of social media [“I can’t be out here with my tits out.”], rounds of drinks were bought and drank, and Mrs. Ton [“I’m allowed to look—I’m married, I’m not dead.”] and I scoped out the talent coming in off the sand.

Just as we were preparing to leave for the reception, Dupa struck upon an idea. He asked the bartender if they sold six packs. They did. He looked back at us with a grin, then ordered up a sixer of Smirnoff Ice to go. In one swift moment, he had just turned the wedding reception into a warzone.

The wedding’s second stage was held at the local Elks Lodge. Located right on the bay, the hall featured a deck with a beautiful view of waterside mansions, perfect for smoking the hand-rolled cigars that were available to all guests. The space was beautiful and yet still unpretentious.

And when the groom made it to his seat after his first dance with his bride and a dance with his mom, he found a cold bottle of Smirnoff Ice waiting for him. He sighed, cracked it, kneeled, and chugged.

A friend’s fiancée came back to our table with a margarita in a large glass, and I knew what my next order would be. Dupa got one as well, but soon decided he needed to be mobile, which could be awkward and troublesome with a large, heavy glass. He grabbed his large plastic cup from the beachside bar, poured his margarita into it, screwed on the lid, and began circulating. When he was due for a refill, he asked the bartender if she’d make a margarita directly in his travel cup. She happily accommodated him, and I wanted to hug her. But instead I restrained myself and handed my own travel cup forward for my next margarita.

Meanwhile, Grunts returned to his table after visiting the buffet. A Smirnoff Ice was on his chair. Another victim.

I filled myself up with delicious chicken parm, roast beef, veggies, potatoes, and more. It felt less like indulging in fine dining and more like packing sandbags against the rising river of margaritas flowing through me. It was needed fortification.

During his best man speech, Ton recalled a story from their college days, when TK had insisted they buy a bottle of Hypnotiq for a party. So, to christen the occasion, Ton motioned to TK’s sister, who walked a bucket of ice with two bottles of Hypno up to the front of the room and sat it in front of the bride and groom. Ton cracked open a bottle, and they each took a swig of the awful fruit juice/cognac mixture.

Wanting revenge later, TK called Shafe over and said two words: “Get Ton.” So, as we all stood at the bar talking, Shafe walked up, tapped Ton on his shoulder, and pointed down to his hunting boot. Ton found a bottle of Smirnoff Ice looking up at him. Crack, kneel, chug.

The dancefloor was active all night, whether Billy was performing N’Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye” routine, which he’d learned in middle school, or Dupa was posing in the middle of it with his shades on, his shirt mostly unbuttoned, and his arms outstretched like a bird of prey swooping down from the heavens. And when Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me” came over the speakers, Grunts looked at me and lost himself in the tune.

Me: “You’re so white.”
Grunts: *laughs* “I may be a white guy, but I still hate Trump!”

One of TK’s groomsmen, “Insider,” was a former Super Bowl champion, a hulking man with arms like bridge support beams. He was the sage, measured voice of wisdom most of the weekend, the old head offering advice from someone who has seen and done it all. But even sage Super Bowl champs can get Iced, especially when the groom orders the hit. Another chug.

The reception wrapped at 10 pm; TK and Tide said goodnight to the parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, as one after another Ubers pulled up to the Elks Lodge like choppers to a Saigon rooftop. Everyone was instructed to head back to Daiquiri Shak.

When we got there, though, I helped the bride and groom drop off some things at their apartment, which was walking distance from the bar. I gazed out over the Gulf from their beachfront balcony, while Tide took a moment to relax and TK put away the items we’d brought back. They were both ready to cut loose and truly celebrate the day without pretense. Or, as TK put it when Tide paused to ask if she should take her ID: “If they ask for my ID, I’m gonna whip my dick out. *nodding to me* And you can quote me.”

There’s something amazing about watching a bride walk into a bar in her wedding gown. The looks on people’s faces were somewhere between shock and joy. Everyone congratulated her, as heads snapped around from every direction. Tide had to feel like a celebrity; I felt like part of her entourage.

We headed for the deck, and were soon joined by various wedding guests who had been drinking inside. As I stood at the bar ordering us a round, I struck up a conversation with three strangers: a couple and a cute friend of the wife. [It’s really amazing how frequently this happens, and each time it begins with some unsolicited question/comment about my height.] Before my beers had even been served, I was posing for a picture with them. Later in the night they would get Ton in on the act, too, as the cute friend requested that my buddy pick her up for a photo.

The bride, too, was beloved by cameras. My favorite picture of the weekend came while she stood at the railing of the deck, a lit cigar dangling between her fingers, a Bud Light within arm’s reach, and an air of confidence radiating from her as her eyes lock on something in the distance. In another picture, she leisure poses while being held aloft by the arms of TK, Ton, and me.

Inside the bar, madness reigned.

• Tiger Blood and Shafe were vying for the attention of the maid of honor, Tide’s sister, who wasn’t interested in either of them. It was like watching two salmon race each other up a frozen stream.
• Insider was dying to break free from the confines of his tuxedo, and removed everything but his pants and the Nike Pro tank top he was using as an undershirt.
• Balls’ bachelorette party friend had come out yet again, and she seemed entertained watching the chaos around her.
• Tiger Blood got a lead on someone who could sell him some coke, and asked me if I “party.”
• Grunts’ wife, all of 5’5” and 100 lbs, put on Insider’s tux vest—which fit her like a dress—and danced around.
• Insider, meanwhile, arm-wrestled all comers, including Tiger Blood and the maid of honor.
• Tiger Blood explained, "You've never really done coke until you've done it off a stripper's ass."
• Grunts’ wife climbed up on a pool table to dance around, to the horror of her husband, who pulled her back down.
• Tide and TK made an early exit, to get to the final wedding tradition. Or, as the groom so finely put it, “She’s gonna be shorter in the morning.”
  

Absent from all of this was Dupa. By all accounts he had been in the bar when everyone first arrived, and Mrs. Ton even managed to get a picture of him standing near the pool tables with his pants around his ankles. But not long after, he pulled an Irish goodbye. Gone without a trace, before the bride and groom had even appeared.

In the end, it seemed like a perfect tribute to the day. There really can’t be a better gift for the bride and groom than the knowledge that their wedding was too much for Dupa to handle.

Lose Yourself ... In This Story

I'm making these extended breaks from On The Rocks far too common, and I apologize. But this time I had a good reason, as Defi alluded to in his last post. Let's just say I recently discovered my soldiers indeed march.

So I got a little throwback for you, but be warned, it's a long one. It goes back to my first days in Appleton, almost six years ago now. This was also right about the time I discovered my knack for getting in good with strip club bouncers and bartenders and earning untold amounts of free cover, unlimited access and hundreds of gallons of booze simply for being ... well, me, I guess.

There's really no downside to such benefits. Sure, every once in a while you have to run to the store for somebody or, in extreme circumstances, fill in at DJ, but for the most part, they're a win-win situation for me.

Unfortunately, part and parcel with those newfound powers came my gift and my curse: my uncanny ability to game strippers.

I discovered this dastardly ability when I first hooked up with Jackie (not her real name, or her stage name, but appropriate given her affinity for whiskey). Jackie was a brunette dancer who was one of the more selective (read: less ho-ish) employees at my regular spot. She and I started dating in the fall.

On Nov. 6, 2002, "8 Mile" was released in theaters. I was looking forward to seeing it. Unfortunately, I also had a minor medical issue at the time - I know what you're thinking, and it had absolutely nothing to do with my genitals, I swear - so I was in some discomfort and on medication that day. Some new friends wanted to go catch the movie in a group, and I invited Jackie. She was bartending at the club that day, but told me she'd be off before the movie started and to come pick her up.

So I cruise by, and she comes out looking all kinds of good: jeans, heels, tight top, just smokin'. She hops in, and I immediately notice she's buzzing. I also hear lots of glass clinking inside her goosedown coat. She turns to me, says "Voila!" and produced six bottles of Smirnoff Ice that she'd boosted from the bar to bring to the movie for the crew. Not exactly a fifth of Absolut, but still cool of her. We roll off to the theater to meet my peoples.

We get there just before the movie started, so the theater's packed. Turns out our group of eight or 10 has to break into couples to find seats. She and I find seats and she proceeds to hammer through the coolers all by herself.

I'd mentioned she was already tipsy when I picked her up. By the time we walked out of the theater, she was positively drunk. At one point, she was piggybacking me across the parking lot.

My friends decide they want to head to a bar downtown. Jackie and I agree, and jump in my car to meet them there. However, once we got to the door, Jackie realized she didn't have her ID on her. She says she can head down the street to a bar where she knows the bouncer and thus won't need it. I offer to go with her, but she insists I stay with my friends. But I'm not a complete asshole; this girl was already wobbling and she was hot. I wasn't going to let her loose in a nightlife district on a Saturday night by herself. So we stroll down to the spot.

Park Central is one of those "six bars in one" type places. It's a big building, two stories, with central hallways and multiple bars leading off them on each floor. Jackie announces we're going to the karaoke bar - lucky me - so we trudge upstairs. At this point, I'm tired, in pain and developing a headache. Yet I soldier on.

We get a table in the karaoke bar and chill for a while, her with a drink and me with water. She's yammering about doing a song onstage. At some point, I doze off, head dropping down to my chest. I come to a bit later, I don't know how long, and notice Jackie's missing. I figure she's gone to the bathroom and doze back off again.

A bit after that, I wake up again to see a bouncer picking up her coat and purse from her chair. I say, "Yo, that's my girl's stuff, dog." He looks at me and offers this gem: "The police said I had to come get her coat."

I look around and see no police. The bouncer points toward the central hallway. I walk out there to see Jackie in handcuffs, cursing out a group of three officers and alternately threatening to sue them and kick their asses. I walk up very slowly and ask a policewoman talking to another bouncer what's going on.

Apparently, Jackie saw some girl at the bar she had some kind of beef with and threw a drink in her face, then slapped her, although Jackie claimed the girl shoved her first. Brilliant. When the cops show, they run her name and discover she has a warrant for missing a court date. Even more brilliant. The bail is $300, and Jackie only has $150 in her pocket.

By now, it's after 1 a.m. I tell the cop I'll be at the station with the rest of the money. After hitting the ATM, I head over to the department. (For those who don't know, I HATE the police. Not in a "it's cool, it gets you street cred" kinda way, but in a HATE way. For good reason.) I'm almost doubled over in pain. I fill out the paperwork. Jackie eventually comes strolling out, a bit more sober, eyes streaked from crying. She's still threatening to sue everyone.

I indicate we should leave without saying anything. As we walk outside, she's still running off at the mouth, then suddenly says, "What, you don't have anything to say? You don't have my back?" I quietly and politely observe that getting into a barfight when you've got a warrant isn't all that smart.

"Oh, well, f*** you!! Just shut up!!" She storms off in the other direction. After 2 a.m. on a November night in central Wisconsin, in heels. Ten miles from her house.

Once again, the 1 percent of me that's chivalrous overrides the other 99 percent. I get to the car and drive down the block to where she's walking, roll down the passenger window and tell her to get in. She's ignoring me. I pull into a driveway to cut her off and ask her to just get in so we can go home and go to sleep. She stops, looks at me for a minute, then gets in.

To get home, I had to take the main drag through Appleton's downtown, College Avenue. At this point, it's fairly empty because the bars are closed. It's crawling with cops looking for drunk drivers and the like. The speed limit is 35 mph.

I'm rolling down College at a perfect 35 mph, not saying anything, per Jackie's request. Of course, she's absolutely insane when she's drunk, which I was about to find out.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" she asks. "You can say something." I reply that she had just requested that I shut up. "Well, you can at least get my back." Once again I reply, very politely, that I can't get her back when she does something as stupid as what she'd done, and that bailing my girl out of jail at 3 a.m. while I'm sick and in pain is not high on my list of fun things to do.

Her response was to go completely and utterly batsh*t.

I wish I could repeat what she was yelling at me, but I'm not even entirely sure it was English. She's ranting and raving and flailing her arms around and screaming and jumping in the seat and DID SHE JUST OPEN HER F***ING DOOR?!?!?!?

Why yes, yes she did. And she was now trying to jump out of my 1996 Neon that was rolling along at a brisk 35 mph on a four-lane, well-lit road with half the local police department currently patrolling it. I am not making this up.

With my right hand, I reach out and grab for something, anything that will keep me from catching a vehicular manslaughter case. I get a good hold of her goosedown and yank her back in the car, HARD. The door slams shut as she gets pulled back in. She turns to me and continues to flip out, only now she's swinging her arms at me.

Please realize, I'm still trying to drive in a proper manner lest Johnny Law take notice of my car. So my eyes are on the road. All I see is blurry threatening movement very near to my face. I figure she's taking a swing at me. I reflexively swing my right arm up to block the expected blow.

Except she wasn't swinging at me, she was just flailing her arms. And my intended block became an unintended uppercut that glanced off her jaw.

FREEZE

She stops cold. Stops screaming, stops moving, stops everything as she stares at me with eyes the size of golf balls and her jaw hanging loosely. Meanwhile, my testicles are trying to crawl back into my abdomen as I ponder the fact that her brother has served time in prison and is so casually violent that I once saw him stroll across a bar and punch a stranger straight in the face, breaking his nose, for what he, the brother, said were inappropriate looks at his sister. (I guess the fact that his sister was a stripper, and thus depended on inappropriate looks to pay the rent, never occurred to him. But what more can you expect from a guy who hangs out a strip club where his sister works?)

"You hit me." "No, I didn't. I - " "You just f***ing hit me in the face." "Jackie, no, I - "

Cue more insanity.

I drive another block before finding an empty parking lot across from a pizza restaurant to pull into. I park and lean over and try to gently hug Jackie to calm her down. She ain't havin' it. She breaks free and gets out of the car still screaming, and my Midwestern and Northern peoples know how sound carries through cold air. She heads over to a bus stand and sits down to wait for the bus. At 3:30 a.m.

I get out of the car and walk over, trying to reason with her. At this point, I just want to go home. I tell her to get in the car. She doesn't have to look at me, talk to me, acknowledge I exist. Just get in the car. Jackie refuses and screams at me some more, right as two guys are locking up the pizza restaurant across the street. They look over their shoulder to see a pretty girl screaming at some random guy and telling him to stop hitting her.

Guess what kinda reaction that got.

I see them start to walk toward us and consider that leaving this crazy trick might be my best course of action. Right then, however, she comes to her senses and realizes it's about 20 degrees out. So she starts walking down the street in the opposite direction of me to begin what I figured was the 10-mile stroll home. No, really.

I get back in the car before the pizza twins make it over and drive down the street the way Jackie was walking. I pull into the first sidestreet ahead of her, pull a Uey and wait for her to walk by, pleading out the window with her. "Just get in the car, I'll take you straight home." She walks by without even looking at me.
I figure there's a 50-50 chance I'm a dead man once her brother hears about me "hitting" her, but if I leave her out in the cold in the middle of the night, that knock my chances of survival to zero. So I pull out again, go up to the next sidestreet and wait.

This process repeats itself a couple more times before she finally relents and gets in the car. I drive her home without a word between us, and she gets out without even looking at me.

The next morning, as I'm calculating whether or not to buy a gun and whether or not that would be enough to stop Jackie's brother, I get a call from another bartender at the club. Turns out Jackie talked to her that morning and told her what all had happened. However, since Jackie had sobered up by then, she had returned to her normal, sweet disposition and told a fairly accurate version of what happened: she'd started a fight, I hadn't hit her, I was trying to be a gentleman, I was right, etc. On top of that, she had left $150 with this friend for me to cover the half of her bail I had paid.

Needless to say, that night pretty much ended our relationship. Worst part? I never even got to hit it.

Which is why when I ran into her again four years later, I made sure my 1 percent of chivalrousness was rewarded. With interest. :)