Flash Flood - Part Two

The day of Critter’s wedding, I was rudely awakened at eight in the morning. After a few moments of complete disorientation about where I was, why it was light out, why I was the only person in a room with two double beds, and what the hell was beeping, I realized I had a text message. As I was pondering the proper epithet to express my distaste at the early hour of the text, I realized that it was probably a response to a text that I had sent late the night before. You see, I have a problem: I drunken text-message. A natural outgrowth of the drunk-dial, the drunk-text allows all the joy of a drunken voicemail, without the slim chance of the other person picking up because they think it “might be important.” Anyhow, my drunken-texting habit comes and goes, but at its worst includes sexual provocative content to people I haven’t seen in ages or, perhaps worse, too much information about things people don’t need to know. In this case, neither of those two things had happened, and whatever the text was about it did not contain an angry retort. Instead it was a message from Muffin asking if I was golfing that morning with the groomsmen. In lieu of replying, I decided to get out of bed and give Muffin a quick call. It turned out that he was out wandering the golf course. When I queried why, he merely replied that he found solace on hung-over mornings by walking outside. I accepted the answer and, for the moment, the issue of morning golf was forgotten.

Now that I was awake, I decided I might as well shave for the wedding. While doing so, I started day dreaming about two things above all else: a nice mid-morning, post-shower nap, and eggs. I happen to love breakfast, and this particular half-hungover, half-still-drunk day, I seriously wanted some eggs. Probably over easy with wheat toast, but I was not feeling all that picky – as long as it was greasy and egg-based, I would be all right. Anyways, after a somewhat lengthy stop in the bathroom, I returned to my bed, turned on SportsCenter, and looked forward to napping for the better part of the morning. Right about then, the phone rang. Though I wanted to ignore the call, and was close to doing just that, it was from the one person I could not ignore – the groom. One of the groomsmen had bailed on their nine o’clock tee-time, and I was suddenly invited to join the fun. Though I said I would be down to the lobby in fifteen minutes to meet up, I actually has zero intention of doing so; I still wanted my eggs and nap.

After ten minutes of lying in bed – perhaps still drunk and definitely still naked – I stood up out of bed, put on some shorts, a shirt, and a well-placed baseball cap, and headed down. While I am quite bad at golf, I decided that it was Critter’s day and if he wanted me to play some utterly horrendous golf, I would go play some utterly horrendous golf. (Note: The fact that I will be expected to play nine the morning of Brad’s wedding, for which I will be reprising the role of Best Man that I first occupied at Cory’s wedding, may have played into it. I mean, I could use the practice.)

The golf was, as predicted, abysmal. But the time that was had was anything but. I ended up being paired with Muffin, who has been a big part of my life ever since he started dating my twice-ex-girlfriend (they are now married), and Dietel, a member of my old fraternity who I know, but not well. The three of us decided to play best-ball, which was an especially good choice because Muffin had never actually played golf before. And so, we duffed the ball around for next few hours, making a lot of bad shots and a few blessedly beautiful shots (Dietel had better drives, my short game was pretty decent) on what turned out to be a beautiful day. A completely atypical October day for Michigan – too warm, too sunny, no blizzard – but a beautiful day nonetheless.

While we were on the sixth hole, we got a call from Jason. Seems our activities and high-level of boozing from the night before had left him a little bit worse for wear, but he was now out of bed and ready to get moving. I informed him of our location and that we were parched; it was Sunday and the golf course could not serve beers before noon. (Note: Don’t judge me. You would have wanted a beer at eleven a.m. too that day.) As we finished the seventh hole, a simple pitch and putt where all three of us, along with Critter, made nice approach shots from the tee, we saw Jason pull up in a golf cart with a backpack full of beer. As we sipped our first, delicious Keystone Light of the day, I asked Jason how he had acquired the cart. His response was simply “hey, I’m a salesman, I get shit done.”

The rest of golf went off without a hitch, though I did make a note of the excellent water hazard on the ninth hole. As we got off the course, having spent the morning riding three to a cart (which meant having someone hold on for dear life from the back or side of said cart each time we moved), several negative things transpired in quick succession. First, Muffin had a relapse of his hangover that left him horribly nauseous. (We later heard from his wife that she found him standing naked in the bathroom doing his best to try and pull the trigger about thirty minutes after the round ended.) Secondly, we discovered that Critter, and more importantly Critter’s Bride, expected all of the boys to be on the “early bus” which left at one-fifty p.m. for a three-thirty wedding. And third, and perhaps worst, we discovered the kitchen was no longer serving eggs. In the course of an hour, I had gone from enjoying life and riding haphazardly around a mediocre golf course to being deprived of my hoped-for nap and my desperately needed eggs. I was not a happy camper.

After an unhappily cold lunch and the quickest shower-and-dress myself routine ever, I headed up to Critter’s room to join the rest of the guys. Upstairs, where I did my part to save the wedding by switching my black wingtips for the brown pair of shoes that one of the groomsman had accidentally brought, Critter was handing out gifts to members of the wedding party. What he had purchased for everyone was a set of matching whiskey glasses – one with the initials of the guy in question and one with his initials. The idea behind this gift, which I think is kind of cool, is that Critter keeps all of the glasses with the various guys’ initials on them, and we each take one of the glasses with his initials. This way, whenever we are at his house we have our own glass to drink out of, and vice versa. Before we could even make it out the room to catch the dreaded early bus, however, another mini-disaster struck. The Captain, whom you may remember from the high-kicking incident the previous night, had sat down on the one chair in the room without looking, and had inadvertently knocked someone’s glass on the floor, where it promptly shattered. Even worse, it was not even his glass. Oh, and the reason he was sitting down? He needed to put on the black wingtips I had brought – it was not shaping up to be his weekend. (Note: To those females out there who might worry that the shoe-switch, which once again may have saved the wedding, left me with a mismatched outfit – fear not. I was sporting a grey suit that day along with a reversible belt; I still looked pretty good.)

Once we embarked on the bus to head to the wedding, a dismal scene took hold, as more than half of the groomsmen had to lay out across entire rows of seats in order to avoid getting sick and to catch a quick nap before the church. We were a pretty beaten bunch for two o’clock.

At the church, the boys milled out without a whole lot to do – which was not all that surprising as we are guys, and inherently out of our element when it comes to planning/executing/not f-ing up a wedding. One image from the hour or so directly before the wedding is one of Jason, Muffin, and me sitting in the last few rows of pews. I was alternately lying down and slamming back bottles of water, Muffin was sitting in the row in front of me wearing dark glasses and trying not to move too much, and Jason was taking shots of whiskey straight from the bottle (the boy gets a touch nervous at weddings – everybody’s weddings).

Right before the wedding started, Muffin vomited in the basement of the church. Everyone decided that this was a good omen, even the guilty party, who quickly felt better. The wedding itself was a decided un-pompous affair, with the older brother of the bride presiding (it was his first wedding), Jason and I both doing readings, and the bride and groom playful teasing each other and speaking at random times during the ceremony. Needless to say, it was my type of wedding. The enduring moment, I believe, came when Jason stood up to speak. Instead of sticking to the script and reading what was in front of him, he decided to ad lib a little. He first turned to the bride and groom and said “Hey, Meg. Hey, Critter.” (Yes, he really called the groom Critter while he was at the alter. My friends are really quite classy.) He then turned to the assembled crowd, raised his arms and said “Hey, Guests.” The image of Jason, standing in front of the podium with arms raised quickly earned him his latest nickname – The Wizard.

The reception was going to be a multi-part affair, and that is before you even consider the multiple impending after-parties. It was going to take a big effort by the boys to bounce back from the night before and make sure that we made this reception an affair to remember. For my part, I had perked up during the wedding when I got up to do my reading. Being in front of the crowd in a small church – so small that the groom’s two younger sisters were standing less than three feet from me looking up at me from a step down – got my adrenaline running to say the least. The party started with a one-hour cocktail hour. The cocktail hour was, as cocktail hours often are, a bit odd. No one was yet lubricated enough to unabashedly approach strangers, and yet there were plenty of twenty somethings that did not know each other at all, but might want to know each other biblically by the end of the night. The solution for this was, perhaps obviously, to begin drinking heavily; it was not uncommon to see a Phi grab a drink and then promptly rejoin the line at the open bar, all while flagging down appetizer girls and snagging some tasty eats. By the end of the hour, we had almost turned it into an art form.

After Cocktail Hour, as seems to be the standard progression with weddings this year, came Dinner Hour. It turned out that during dinner the open bar was going to be closed. Though initially aghast at this prospect, a little investigative work revealed that this is a way to make sure people stay seated during the speeches and cake cutting, and not the booze-limiter that we at first suspected. Regardless of the reasoning, word of the impending closed spigot had leaked during cocktail hour, and each person at my table arrived armed with a full beer and a whiskey on the rocks to help them last through mealtime. With these rations and some champagne to tide us over, we survived through a few rambling speeches until the band started playing and the mixed drinks started flowing once more.

Once the dance floor opened up, it became clear that everyone was ready to get after it. Most of the younger guys were more than happy to dance with whomever was available, including dancing with some of the post-cougar females who were there, though of course those dances were really just done to try to impress any available females that might be near. The convivial atmosphere saw most all of the Phis take to the floor and start swinging, bumping, grinding, and doing whatever else the girl of their fancy was up for. All kidding aside, it might have gotten a little dirty by the end. The band played until almost midnight, during which time there were a few songs with the bride and groom brought on stage for fun and one killer conga-line led by the Captain. The fact that he got it moving at all bears some mentioning, as when the requisite song started playing (i.e., Feeling Hot Hot Hot), it was already pretty late, and people on the dance floor looked like they were not going to have any part in bouncing around the room holding onto a stranger’s ass. Then, about thirty seconds into the song, I noticed the Captain holding a tambourine that he had quietly lifted from percussion section. Or rather, I noticed him rallying people to his side for the conga line by whacking the tambourine so hard that a few of the cymbals flew off and landed on the dance floor. The conga soon commenced, wound itself around the reception hall, and included almost everyone left at the party. It was strong work.

After the main reception, the first of the after parties began. It seems that the groom’s father had decided that he wanted to have a blues band play, so he created an after party in a different room of the hotel just so it would happen. As the main band ended, and most of the Detroit-based wedding guests began to filter out, those that remained were beckoned to an adjoining room by the sounds of the blues and a female vocalist. This after party included not only tons of pizza, a continued open bar, and a dance floor, but also all the candy one could ever want at midnight during a wedding, laid out like a candy store at the back of the room. We were suitably impressed. The dancing at this after party, unsurprisingly, was even more sexual and rowdy than at the reception, but everyone who was there was eating it up, including the families of the bride and the groom.

This is perhaps a good time to point out that when Phis from my year and the years around me get together for a party with a substantial amount of dancing, it has a tendency to get “interesting.” And by interesting, I mean homoerotic. You see, most of the boys are pretty comfortable with their sexuality, and many of them not living in New York are already married, so we have no issue pushing the girls out of the way – as attractive as they may be – and bumping and grinding with each other. I believe this somewhat odd fact was pointed out to me on this night by Muffin after a group of five Phis and one female had formed a mass of front-to-back, front-to-front, and on-the-side grinding. I’d feel odd about this whole thing, except that I don’t, and haven’t since at least my junior year of college. While some of our brothers were openly gay in college, and others were undoubtedly in the closet, homophobia never played a large role in our house, and we never saw a problem with having fun with just the boys, even on the dance floor.

Regardless, after an hour of the blues band, which a rumor floating around the party claimed was the best in the upper Midwest (though I might have drunkenly started said rumor), the party shed a few more people and transitioned first to the hotel bar, and then up to people’s hotel rooms. That’s right, this party had no fewer than three after-parties, and that is if you count all of the room parties as one event. The spirit of the event cannot really be overstated, considering the fun that was had by all involved, the dancing, laughter, and free-flowing drinks, and the fact that even the mother of the groom hosted a room party after the bar closed. (Her daughters eventually kicked everyone out and made her go to bed. Sadly.) While details for the end of the night are a bit foggy, I can clearly remember the post two a.m. festivities included breaking into a room where one couple was half-sleeping, half-arguing in order to snag a bottle of Jack once the beer was gone, as well as one Jason (last name redacted) leaving the party with one of the bride’s maids, only to return alone forty-five minutes later telling us somewhat cryptically that he “got the job done.” In addition, multiple Phis made out with new and interesting female acquaintances, and, perhaps amazingly, no one was seriously injured or escorted out of the premises. By any account, it was a great, great party.

The evening finally ended around four in the morning, as a few Phis made a ceremonial trek over the water trap next to the ninth green that I had spied earlier. As has become custom at Phi weddings over the last few years, a couple of the brothers took a plunge to celebrate the loss of bachelorhood for another good man. In this, the Captain and Jason managed to navigate the placid waters of the man-made hole in the ground while Muffin and I stood on the shore and broke down the night, the weekend, and – in an admittedly cursory way – the last five years. As we stood there, with few cares in the world and a weekend full of memories, rekindled friendships, and great stories behind us, I thought to myself that life, for all its peaks, valleys, and foibles, certain is good to me. I also thought to myself, and said to Muffin, “damn I hope these fools don’t start to drown.”

Flash Flood - Part 1

This past Saturday, after a Friday night of boozing, watching hockey, boozing, almost being rejected from a bar because I was wearing a hockey jersey (note: never a good way to earn my repeated patronage), boozing, and a late night feast of automat food and pomme frites, I woke up and dragged my arse out of bed with the knowledge that I would soon be hopping on a plane to Detroit. Why Detroit? Because I had a Sunday wedding that I kind of, sort of, needed to be at in Grosse Point. One of my favorite fraternity brothers was finally marrying his long-term girlfriend – we’re talking the better part of a decade here – and I was not about to miss it.

Before I caught my flight, however, I had an errand to run. I had been convinced by my drinking compatriots the night before that if I wanted to help make sure the wedding weekend started off with a bang, there was one thing I absolutely HAD to do – have some t-shirts made up. With my flight not scheduled to depart until a leisurely two-thirty p.m., I had plenty of time to make this happen. More important than time, however, I needed to have an idea of what the hell to put on these shirts! With a catch phrase in mind from the wedding that kicked off the summer – or more accurately from the impromptu wine tour that took place the day after the wedding – I set off for the t-shirt store. The store was just opening when I arrived, so I got some much needed Gatorade and then returned to discuss what I thought should go on the shirts with the store’s sole Saturday morning employee. After discussing the best way to apply my message to shirts (turns out you can’t screen print in under an hour – who knew?), we selected a few ringer t-shirts in the appropriate sizes and colors, and then she set to work setting the letters and gluing them to the shirts. When I came back a little under an hour later, the shirts were ready and I was set to head to Michigan. I’d even had enough time to rebuild a couple bridges that I had done my best to burn down the night before – not bad for a Saturday morning. Regardless, thanks the bored... err... dedicated t-shirt girl, I had in my hands four shirts emblazoned with a simple, but powerful term: Rain Maker.

Rain making, or more specifically “making it rain”, is a term that had developed among my friends out of a throwaway line from the touch-football scene in Wedding Crashers. (“I was first team all-state. I can put the ball anywhere I want to. I’ll make it rain out here.”) What it has come to mean to a small (but growing) subset of my friends is doing something – anything really – well, especially if that anything happens to be drinking. People can make it rain on the dance floor, during a presentation at work, or in bed, but most often the term means that we are gonna go out carousing, live it up, and probably make some ill-advised choices. Basically, live life the way it was meant to be lived. (I'm not totally sure, but I'm pretty sure the Platonic ideal of living on a Friday night is drinking one's self into oblivion. Look it up.) As with any term that is created, used, and abused by a group of people (which seems to happen a lot with my friends), variations on Making It Rain have quickly developed. Rain Maker was my own (totally obvious) modification, but some other variants this summer have included “can we make it drizzle a bit tonight?,” and “I’ve been practicing my rain dance all week to get ready.” Clearly the phrase has become a contagious monster that we can’t contain, but at least most of us know it means that we are going to go out and party like we meant it. Ya know, like we aren’t just practicing anymore (which is apparently what we do most nights that we get wasted and say dumb shit). But I digress.

After landing in scenic (ish) Detroit and being bent over by a cabbie to the tune of $60, I arrived at the rehearsal dinner a stylish hour or so late. I immediately pulled my co-conspirators aside to show them the shirts. Okay, so I may have greeted a few friends and mainlined a few vodka tonics first, but still. As I brought two of the three shirt recipients, Jason and the Captain, upstairs to unleash my totally awesome purchase, I must admit I was a little worried. I mean, the three of us had really been the ones to break in the term during the early part of June, but what if I had made a mistake and the shirts weren’t cool? To put it another way, what if I had been too friggin’ hung-over that morning to actually use my brain when I purchased the shirts. To my relief, the boys were ecstatic. We decided that we would try to stay classy for the majority of the rehearsal dinner – always a bit of a challenge for a group of guys who could serve as a cover story for Modern Drunkard – and then bust them out right before the roast of the bride and groom that the Captain was set to lead after dinner. With that, we were off to do some damage at the open bar that had been set up in the living room (complete with quarter keg), and to put the hurt on the shrimp cocktail.

When the sit-down dinner had been finished and it was almost time for the Captain to start the story-telling festivities, the three of us excused ourselves and returned sporting our Rain Maker shirts with sport coats. (Hey, we’re classy like that.) To our surprise the groom immediately put on his shirt as well, and they were an instant hit. It should be noted at this point that the Captain was a bit nervous to start the roast/story-hour, and had downed a fair number of drinks before rising to speak. (Spoiler Alert: This wasn’t the best plan ever.) As different people spoke about the almost-marrieds, a constant theme among many of the bawdier speakers was the sheer decrepitude of the personal hygiene habits exhibited by the groom. While Critter’s little sisters harped first on the state in which he keeps his car (short answer: disgusting), and one mentioned how he had first told his bride-to-be that he loved her a crisp one week after they started dating based on some bad advice from the other sister (she was 13 at the time), the most telling story was related by Muffin, another of the Phis in attendance. He had shared an apartment with Critter one summer during college, and, aside from discussing the impressive, photo-documented weight gain that summer by the man of the hour (both before and after pictures show Critter, sans shirt, with his current weight written on his gut), he decided to share the details of the cleaning bill they received from the landlord after they moved out. Apparently the professional cleaner had made comments about such interesting items as “bloody buggers attached to wall” and “closet used as a dumpster.” As you stop to process this amazing streak of uncleanliness, I should perhaps mention the profession of the groom – he’s a student in an MD, Ph. D program and one of the smartest people I know. Yeah, I’m pretty scared by that too.

For my part, I closed the story hour with an anecdote about the groom centering around the time he dressed up as a meteor and jumped off a rotten tree into the campus pond in order to help one brother finish a required video project. While I threw in the fact that Critter was one of the few people in history to join a fraternity in order to drink less (note: it worked – the liver problems went away in no time), my main point was that Critter would always do whatever needed to be done in order to help his friends. I’ll save you the sappiness of my ending comments and instead point out that after the roast ended, it was time for us to pile into the bus and return to the hotel (and hotel bar) for the night. As the masses – who were already pretty drunk – streamed towards the bus, a few of us realized that the forty-five minute ride might get very boring, and perhaps we should make a few drinks for the trip. Knowing that the rest of the twenty-somethings would undoubtedly be stricken with brutal thirst as well, we decided to grab all of the empty plastic mixer bottles that we could find, and fill them with beer and mixed drinks. We even defied the odds and grabbed a fair number of cups to distribute our bounty on the bus.

On the bus, the old college crowd set ourselves up in the bus because that’s what the cool kids do. I kept much of the booze with me at my seat, and used the conveniently placed reading light to both see to pour and to make it clear that I had the booze (and thus was going to be everyone’s favorite person on the ride). A few minutes after we got underway, one of the members of the wedding party turned around to compliment me on the nice bouquet of the beer that I had poured for him out of the two-liter Sprite bottle, but was cut short by a surprise Roman Incident. The Captain, who was seated across the aisle from me and was about six feet away, had taken a sip of his drink and promptly cough-vomited on me. Seriously, he tasted the whiskey he was holding, and then projectile booted across the bus, conveniently hitting nothing but me. Needless to say, I was not impressed. Luckily, the rest of the back of the bus had seen it happen as well, and immediately laid into him about his apparent lack of manners (and tolerance), and the fact that it was only ten p.m. Though he tried to blow off the incident as “no big deal” (easy for him to say – there was no vomit on HIS shirt, after all), the Captain seemed appropriately chastised. It would soon turn out that everyone had underestimated just how much the man had consumed at the house.

Back at the hotel, we quickly invaded the bar for the after party. The bar was happy to have us, and had a nice mix of indoor and outdoor space, including a few gas powered fire pits outside – a pretty sweet touch. As we first arrived, a guy with a guitar act was just finishing up. The Captain promptly grabbed a drink and ran outside to perform an air guitar solo in front of said performing act. While the reaction to the solo was hard to gauge, we were all impressed (or was that worried?) by the exuberance with which the Captain had attacked the song on his non-existent guitar. Soon after, the Captain – who was clearly gunning for Rehearsal Dinner MVP honors – declared that he could high-kick the top of the doorjamb at the entrance to the patio. Despite serveral suggestions that this might not be the best idea ever, he attempted to do just that. (Note: what you should be envisioning at this point is a six foot three inch white man wildly contorting his slightly overweight body as fast as he could in an attempt to reach maximum kicking height. It was not a sight I ever need to see again.) After a first attempt that was marginally close to connecting (note: very marginally), his second resulted in the Captain crashing quickly – and loudly – onto the floor, ass-first. The bartender, who had previously pointed out that attempting the high-kick would be good for absolutely no one, promptly send the Captain packing. Though a bit of a downer, this allowed the rest of us to enjoy the remainder of the evening and get our drink on in relative piece (and really was probably the best for all involved).

When the bar closed at two, I assumed that it was time to turn in. It turns out I was wrong, and I found the After-After Party in the room of my female roommate R and Jason. This party was anything but a tame, late-night affair, as the seven people I discovered hanging out in the room were taking turns jumping around from bed to bed, including taking running leaps onto one bed and trying to hang on while the mattress dislodged. I had my misgivings about this new found sport – and in retrospect the chance of injury to one or more participants was probably around a hundred and fifty percent – but nevertheless decided to grab a beer, enjoy the music being lovingly selected by Lee (a known playlist control freak dating back to the first time we let him near the stereo during a basement party), and take part in some light jumping around. (Note: Turns out that people who weigh under a hundred and twenty or so pounds are easy, and fun, to throw around.) Eventually around three I decided I’d had enough and it was time to hit the sack. What I couldn’t fathom was that we still had a friggin' wedding to pull off the next day! It would no doubt be difficult to replicate the absurd drunkenness of the night that had just ended, but I was pretty sure that we would somehow need to step up and make it a big time rain-making event.

(to be continued…)