Bachelor Party

Yesterday I went to the first bachelor party I've been to in a very long time. Almost all of my friends are married, or on a break from being married, so it's been a long, quiet run. But Tall Brad decided to wait until he was in his 30's before tying the knot, so after half a dozen years of no bachelor parties, and an even longer period of bachelor parties that involved at the most nothing but cards and beer in the basement, I found myself in the back of zebra-striped school bus, rolling through Minneapolis and Saint Paul with the windows down on an almost 0 degrees F night, sometimes using the dancer's pole (no dancer) to keep myself from falling over.

The night started out horribly, before I even got to Brad's bachelor party. Feel free to ask about that in email if you're interested - I'm not blogging details. But I went anyway, determined not to let a bad day get me down. There were a couple of hours of a cash game of poker first, and it took me too long to figure out that I should just be throwing in my 50 cents on every hand almost like an ante, and before I knew it my $20 was down to $2.50. Then I quintuppled-plused up to $13.50, which got me through another 30 minutes until it was time to load into the bus and head to Minneapolis. I decided to consider not having to buy another $20 in chips a victory.

I think we started with a good 20-some people on the bus. We made three stops, and every time we stopped, we seemed to lose about 5 people. I heard rumors of fights with bouncers, being poured into cabs, and "went home with x who has a car..." Unfortunately, I saw very little of that and had to content myself with making fun of those who remained on the bus and couldn't figure out which way the bar was when they stepped off. I actually remained fairly sober, in part thanks to the price of drinks at the second stop (The Seville - I ponied up my drinking money to the best man instead so he could find the groom an appropriate lap dance. He was concerned about his lack of expertise in that area, and I figured with the extra money he couldn't go wrong, although I don't have a lot of experience in lap dance costs and etiquette myself. I find them somewhat disturbing, primarily because there are several sorts of lap dance recipients: the talker who is just out on a bachelor party/etc and not a regular and talks to the woman giving the dance about what it is she does other than strip, etc...I think Brad falls into this group. There's the guy who closes his eyes and has some sort of other fantasy. There's the all hands, can't restrain himself guy. And there's the get them to sit on your lap and talk as long as possible without actually buying a dance guy, who eventually falls into the all hands category when he finally has to purchase a dance or she'll go away. While it's questionable that I find the humor behavior more interesting than the dancers, I do have to say that my priority at a strip club, the few times I've gone, has been to drink, and when the drinks get expensive enough, then I have to find something else to do - people watching works. And if you don't believe the drinks get expensive enough to deter drinking, then you didn't get to hear Brad talk about his $7.50 glass of water. Sure...breasts are nice, but I'm not really a horndog, so I'd rather they had a good 2 for 1 special. I did drink my only hard alcohol of the night there - someone bought a round of Baileys and Guinness [drop a in b, so it looks like a Guinness in a Guinness - I think it's called a carbomb]), and the total inability to get to the counter for a drink because of the crush of people at the last stop (Williams). I actually stepped out of Williams after 10 minutes of trying to find a beer and just walked across the street to McDonalds for a late-night meal. More than one person on the ride home noted that that seemed like it was perhaps the wisest course. I did consider wandering another block down to grab a quick round of sushi at the sushi bar at Uptown Mall or a real meal at Chang Mai Thai, but I was worried I'd miss the bus.

The groom got enough to drink and made use of the big cardboard box with the trashbag in it, although that seemed to sober him up a bit and he got better as the night rolled on. The best man, however, wasn't used to drinking that much and spent the trip home trying to hold his head together. When we got back to Brad's I helped him sign all the paperwork ("I can't read that...") and get inside where it took him about six seconds (you could have timed it with a watch) to find a couch he could spend the night on. So while he may have beat me and Tweet at Big Game Hunter, I think I won the lack-of-hangover game.

There were the standard injuries. Brad W. noted how he'd managed to run into something and bruise his face. He was worried it was going to be worse the next day than he suspected. Then he rubbed beer in my hair. I think it worked well to make it stand up a bit, giving me the illusion of fuller, thicker hair. But the real injury resulted from a drunken attendee who thought it would be fun to throw the ball and chain (a bowling ball with a very large set of metal links) at other people's feet. I was trying to figure out how to insert myself between the ball and the intended victims so I could shut it down, but was really concerned that it would probably lead to a broken finger or three. I won't be coding much soon, but I still have to be able to use a computer keyboard and Blackberry.

While I was contemplating my options, he lobbed it at D's leg. D. looked annoyed and kicked it back, and drunk guy (B.) chucked it at D.'s head. Oh yeah...chucked a bowling ball with a chain attached to it at someone's head. I think he was lucky D. was drunk, because if it had been the more sober me that was hit in the head with a bowling ball, I might have pounded him into the bus seat. There was no concussion or shattered bones or nose, but D. did get a huge welt on his face and a cut that thirty minutes later was still oozing blood, and he was pissed. There was a very uncomfortable bout of yelling on the bus, and ball-throwing drunk B. just didn't know to shut the fuck up. If you lob a bowling ball at someone's face, you don't spend a lot of time trying to explain how you said "sorry" and it should all be better and if it needs to go outside well, it sure can...you just apologize and shut the hell up and let other people defuse the situation. Of course, if you were sober enough to think it through, perhaps you wouldn't have lobbed the bowling ball at someone's head in the first place.

Hopefully D. woke up this morning without a concussion. If he's healthy, and he seemed like he wouldn't scar, it'll just be the story everyone remembers from the wee hours of the bachelor party twenty years from now.

I assume all those people crashing on the couches woke up this morning with some serious hangovers. My only real fall out was a bit of stuffiness from the smoke Ryan was generating at the back of the bus. Even with the no-smoking policy at the Minneapolis/St. Paul bars, you can still pick up a healthy dose traveling with smokers to and from the bar. By the way, thanks for the pizza Ryan, the Bella Pizza was pretty tasty during poker.