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.”