Back On California Time

The jetlag has been swept away by one good hangover. Ron's bachelor party was short and sweet, but like the flavor in your favorite gum, explosive and juicy.

By the time I got there Ron, Thomas, Luke (Connie's Brit husband, who sounds surprisingly Australian) and Mark G were doing whiskey shots with soda backs. Jameson's, I think, but who knows.

While I was out smoking, Thomas slipped Ron a doozy of a beverage. "Death Row" he called it. As the bartender explained it, it was Bacardi 151 and that classically bad bottom-shelf tequila, Cuervo Gold, dropped Car Bomb/Boilermaker style into some nameless Lager. Thomas kept insisting that this bar didn't do them right since they didn't have any Tabasco to sprinkle over the top of it. The image of that concoction in Ron's hand made me cringe. I remember thinking, "If I tried to drink one of those things, I'd be blowing it back up before I could make it to the bathroom."

So, I turned to talk more personally with Mark. We sipped our beers and took turns talking about old times. We asked about each other's present and near futures. Within minutes it became clear that both of us were doing better than we had been in quite some time. I couldn't help but smile. It's so nice when people you love are doing well. Our mellow exchange, however, just couldn't last.

The next thing I knew I was being manhandled, poked, shaken and grabbed: it seems I had been nominated (by Thomas, of course) to buy the next round (or two) of shots. "What the hell," I thought smirking to myself, "I'm the new guy, it's just my turn."

Picking the shot, that was the easy part. It had to be something mildy obscure... delicious... creamy and cool... and sort of a palate cleanser. After Ron's 151/Lager/Cuervo drink, I figured the smart move was to take the groom-to-be in mind when choosing our next shot. So, it was Oatmeal Raisin Cookies all around.

The hot and friendly Korean bartender not only knew how to make them, but really put her all into making them perfectly. It was a pleasure talking loudly with her, laughing and watching as she mixed our lovely drinks. They were precisely poured tall shots and elicited audible responses from everyone in our tiny crew, as we hunched over our beers in anticipation.

Time seemed to be accelerate as we sat at the bar and talked and laughed and joked with one another. The next thing I knew, it was 10:30 and the crowd began to fill in quickly.

Soon, it was wall-to-wall jukebox music, punk and pop "alterno" hits from the 80s and 90s, and wall-to-wall beautiful smiling horny kids. Plenty of eager young flesh revealed from low-cut tops and flip-flops and short-short skirts. Plenty of whitened, perfectly aligned smiles. But ogling young chicks was the least and most peripheral reason any of us had for being there on that particular night. Besides, more than half of us were already married or soon to be.

Our primary objective that night it seems, under Thomas' direction, was to get Ron as totally and completely wasted as possible. I mean, who knows how many whiskey and sodas they had thrown back before I got there? And then there were the three back-to-back shots that had happened in the brief time that I had been there. So, of course, the outcome was that Ron was suddenly really, really slurry and swerving slightly.

I briefly checked in with Ron, who seemed to had lost the ability to hold his eyes in focus, then turned back around and there on the bar in front of me was ANOTHER Oatmeal Raisin Cookie shot! I looked up and down the bar and we all had one in front of us. And, the bartender was holding one up in a salute to Ron.

Did I order them? Did Thomas order them? I just didn't have any idea. This was mainly due to the fact that between shots, our lovely and ever-attentive bartender kept "freshening up" our beers: every time we turned away from our "wounded soldiers", she would remove them and swap them out for freshly cracked beers. Her big, friendly smile and the speed with which she swapped our beers left no room for criticism, only drunken compliance. What could we do but keep on smiling and saying, nearly in unison, "Yass! Yass! Yaaasss!!"?

After the mystery of the Oatmeal Cookies was eliminated, Mark told us all that he had to bail to Oakland, to continue work on his new film. He had told me during our previous conversation that this was the first film he had made in several years. It seemed that he and his brother's band, Mono Pause, had been taking up the majority of his time with all the recent recording and planned touring. And that was just fine. "They're a good band", I thought to myself, remembering their show at Bottom of the Hill the previous autumn, which was hilarious and expertly performed. I couldn't help but smile as I swilled my beer.

Damn, I was starting to get tired. Was it time to go home yet? I looked around and couldn't gauge where everybody was at. Of course, by this time Ron was being encouraged by all of us to keep drinking his pint of water. I was feeling like I should probably split too, but I still had a fresh beer-- another new, ice-cold, unrequested beer.

I smiled and raised it in a salute to the bartender. She smiled and raised her glass to me from the other end of the bar by the jukebox.

And, suddenly, the photo booth seemed to be calling us-- how had we missed it before? Singles began flying out of my wallet like there was no tomorrow. Like we had to take pictures in that little booth for the remainder of our time there. Like these pictures would really, really matter some day. Oh, there were pictures. Pictures of all of us, then some of us, then each of us, then all of us again.

I must have been getting drunk by this time, because, out of nowhere, there was Mark again (I thought he had left?!) cramming into the booth with the rest of us! I was sure I had watched him leave. Oh well.

By now the crowd was surging, roiling. Many socially lubricated young bucks were scratching in the dirt and stepping up to the bevy of micro-mini-skirt-and-tanktop-wearing young ladies, all of whom seemed to be smiling, smiling, smiling.

Maybe it was the jukebox music. Maybe it was me encouraging Ron to burst into slurred renditions of Shane MacGowan's Irish classic, "Eff Yuzz All", as he wove in and out of the photobooth.

We all took turns trying to reassure the security guard, who had parked himself outside the photobooth, that despite the increasing regularity of Ron's uneven renditions of "Eff Yuzz All" shouted from behind, or through, the faded blue polyester curtain, all was indeed well and we should be allowed not only to stay but to continue drinking.

It seemed that many more pictures were taken than were in hand. All those flashes, creating burnt out spots in my vision. It was time to switch to pints of water. I just couldn't stop thinking, "Where are all those pictures disappearing to? Are they even being printed? Or are we just posing for a repeating flash? Many things were confusing and slightly out of focus, but one thing was clear: it was beginning to get late.

There were quite a few large glasses of water that I remember from that late part of the evening. And, as I remember, some drive-thru Jack In the Box crud as well.

"So, this is what us older friends do in lieu of a normal young guy bachelor party, eh?" I whispered to myself, during my seventh or eighth trip to the urinals. By this point, I was back to pissing clear and had longs since run out of cigarettes.

Gradually, after more and more photos of varying levels of debauchery and lots and lots of jukebox music, it became clearer that I was going to be the designated driver, particularly since everyone else was still drinking or, in Ron's case, had resumed drinking.

So, after the photobooth money ran out, I rounded everybody up and we filed into my car for the short jaunt to the spot where Ron, Thomas and Luke were crashing. On the drive over I managed to stop for some end-of-night grease, courtesy of Jack In the Box. Within minutes I was delivering the groom-to-be and his drunken pals to the Walnut Creek bungalow, as promised.

Oh whatta night...