The Most Sacred of Intoxications

Ah, the sweet return from absentia.  What is it about going out of town anymore that leaves me wondering where, exactly, the time even went?  I was gone for like five days, and it alternately felt like both 200 days and only two days all at once.  I don’t get that.  Of course, it also felt like just a couple of days before that I’d just been up to Ohio before (couple of days…a month…whatever…who needs real time?).  But anyway….I prattle.  There are stories to tell.

Yesterday, my the oldest brother of the clan, Jason, got married.  He’s the first (and at 29, I’ll go ahead and say it took him long enough…..and if I want to beat that, I’m gonna have to hurry….which I won’t), and possibly the last of us to get married, as C.J., Jenny, and myself are all rather ambivalent to the idea of it.  Like I told my mom, it’ll be like a race between a slug, a snail, and a turtle to see who "wins."  Anyway.  Jason and Brittany got married out in nature (quite literally….mosquitos, gnats….the whole nine), at the bank of a large pond tucked away in a forest reserve.  All the appropriate parties showed up for the ceremony (including the infamous Van Wert people ranted about last entry) despite family members taking bets that no one would be able to find the place.  The ceremony was brief, but nice.  And it gave me the proof I needed to see that this was, indeed, for true.  The times I’ve been around them together, Jason and Brittany never seemed like two people about to get married, or even considering it.  Maybe it was just their personalities, or maybe it was just the circumstances, but I was never convinced that this was something that would work.  Now I am.  Seeing my own brother cry at the mere sight of his bride was all the convincing I needed.

My (thankfully) meager part in the proceedings was as an usher.  Since only part of the seating area was shaded, people sat where ever the fuck they wanted, regardless of whose side they were supposed to be on.  So, really, I was just helping hand out programs.  Which was good, because I didn’t want any responsibility….so I could be content with almost none instead.  And, might I add, I clean up really well.  I may not like to do it, but I dress up quite nicely, if I do say so my damn self.  I was actually amazed how good I looked in my shirt and tie.  It’s a sight I’d long forgotten.  But enough narcissism from me…  And let me rewind to Wednesday night, and the bachelor party.

The party was to be an adventrue in bar-hopping at a place called Put-In-Bay….which is an island smack in the middle of Lake Erie, just off the coast of Ohio (that just sounds really, really funny for some reason).  The goal for all eight attendees was to have fun.  For seven of us (since C.J. isn’t 21, nor does he enjoy drinking anyway), the goal was to get sloppy ass drunk.  Which most of us did.  And, of course, it was pouring rain most of the night, so bar-hopping turned into bar-sprinting.  For pretty much the whole night, you could count the number of other people in whatever bar we were in on one hand.  At one point, we were the only people in one of the bars.  Seriously.  There was just the eight of us, and one bartender.  That’s it.  Pitiful.  The fun started after that bar.  As we were on our way back to a previous stop, my already drunk brother got into it with one of the door-guys at a place called Mister Ed’s (yeah, I know…).  The guy wouldn’t let us in because C.J. was underage……..even though we’d already been in there not two hours before.  So Jason is bitching at the guy and making fun of him and his mom (I swear it’s true) for about fifteen minutes from out in the street.  Finally, the door-guy says, "Mother fucker, I’m gonna kick your ass and all your friends’s asses!  You come back here at 2:30!"  Yeah.  Smart.  One on eight.  Um…  Yeah.

After that, though, Jason went nuts.  Like, spastic, too drunk for his own good, no such thing as having too good of a time, nuts.  He started singing loudly, and dancing, and stripping and just generally being hilarious.  I’ve seriously never laughed so hard in my life.  C.J. and others have video of this on their cell phones.  I was laughing too hard to concentrate (being drunk didn’t help, I know) hard enough to do that.  After all this, it’s time to go back to our domicile for the night, which is pretty much a shanty (as C.J. so accurately called it).  But first….Jason went back to visit his Maryland-shorts wearing friend at Mister Ed’s.  He sat across the street hurling insults until the guy went inside and called the cops.  Yep, that’s right.  We threw a bachelor party that attracted the cops.  No one went to jail, and, in fact, I think the door-guy got in more shit than Jason did by egging it all on (a fact we all pointed out to the cops).  Back at the shanty, Jason fell asleep on a picnic table outside…..in the pouring rain.  When the second half of the part returned to the shanty (they wanted to drink more……nevermind it was Jason’s party and he’d asked them all to come back with us), they started giving Jason tons of shit.  Eventually, Jason locked himself in the bathroom and puked his guts out.  The last thing I heard him saying before they left him alone was the dumbfoundingly hilarious, "Guys, just leave me alone so I can lay here and play with myself…"  Then he passed out.

And, of course, he remembered pretty much none of this the next morning.

Fast forward to the reception last night…

Not even three hours into the party, the only sober members of the nine-person wedding party were Jason (!?) and Jill, who is Brittany’s 16 year old sister.  All the groomsmen were absolutely fall-down, piss ass, sloppy ass drunk.  One of them was puking his guts out by 8:30 (the reception started at 6:00pm).  One of them spent about four hours passed out asleep with his head down on a table.  The other two were drunk as shit, but were still (barely) standing when the party ended at midnight.  I myself managed to drink plenty, but not get drunk (which I’m still loathe to do in front of my mother).  Nevermind that I had to be up at, like, six this morning to come back home.

But, all in all, a fun time was had by any who attended.  And probably even by some who didn’t.

Now Playing in Dave’s Mental Jukebox:  "Tension" by Nural, "Quote" by Evans Blue, and "Loveless" by Kittie

The day after the bachelor party, Jason, C.J. and I all went back to one of the bars from the night before to watch the U.S.-Ghana World Cup game.  There was a pretty decent crowd of people in there to watch it (by which I mean maybe 20 people….but this is soccer for fuck’s sake, so you can’t expect much).  The match was a travesty on a couple of fronts.  First and foremost, the US played like shit for almost the entire game.  They didn’t deserve to win.  But they also didn’t deserve to have the game handed to Ghana by the referee.  The penalty kick he awarded was about as bogus a call as I’ve ever seen.  And the diving by Ghana’s players was just shameful.  And painfully obvious to anyone except the one person it needed to be obvious to….the referee.  Dive after dive, faked injury after faked injury….Ghana should be ashamed of their national team, advancing to the knockout stage or not.  I hope Brazil hangs a touchdown on them (y’know, a 7-0 score….which is ridiculous is soccer, in case you were wondering).

I’m going to be so thrilled to sleep in my own bed tonight.  Over the course of this past week, I’ve slept on a couch, in a vinyl recliner (circa. 1972), and on what I called the "window bed," which was essentially a couch cushion put in a short box next to the window.  So a bed will be pretty fucking nice tonight.  It’s only been since…………last Sunday night.  Which reminds me.  Ha-HA!  Last Monday night, I didn’t bother going to sleep.  I had to be at work for inventory at 5:30am afte having worked a 13.5 hour day on Monday.  By the time I finally (and reluctantly) dozed off on my mom’s couch Tuesday night around midnight, I’d been awake for about 43 hours.  A new personal record, if I’m not mistaken.

As for work….I don’t even want to think about it.  Getting to my office door is probably going to be like traversing the Himalayas.  Not to mention the sure-to-follow avalanche of crap that’ll come out when I open the doors.  Yeah…this week is going to suck monkey balls, for sure.  Oh well.  At least there’s a visit to look forward to next weekend.

And with that, I’m out like one of Jason’s groomsmen…

Sayonara.