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…)