Functionally ReTodded

Recently I’ve been thinking back about funny events in my life that might translate well into a blog post. GBD suggested I write about my bachelor party. Since not much was bubbling to the surface, I decided that was a good idea.

Enjoy.

The year was 1992.

W.’s daddy was still the president and vomiting on foreign heads of state, Mike Tyson was going to the big house and Amy Fischer was shooting Joey Buttafuoco’s wife. And I, FRT, was getting married in May.

During our one year and two day engagement, the soon to be Mrs. FRT and I had discussed our relative pre-wedding activities. It was decided that there would be three rules:

1. No leaving the state.
2. No sexual contact with anyone EXCEPT your fiancee’.
3. The event was to be completed at least 30 days prior to the scheduled date of our nuptuals.

Now you have to know that this was seventeen years ago and I was twenty three years old. I think I made exactly eighteen thousand dollars that year and we had gone dutch on the engagement ring. This wasn’t gonna be one of those four day guys trips to Vegas types of bachelor parties.

A date was selected, and my groomsmen / only friends either came over to our apartment or came into town and did the same. The plan was to play some poker, drink some beers, hit the titty bar, drink some beers, hit a bar where I could get discounted beers and drink some beers, and then crash at my place.

GBD was staying at her sister’s or her mom’s for the night. I can’t remember which, not that it mattered.

In order to protect the guilty, I’m not using full names. It was Neil, Hoss, Chris, and me, and to a lesser extent my dad. Grant, my fifth groomsman, was busy being a private pilot and flying a Learjet for my former employer and couldn’t join us. He’s probably the only one of us that can run for public office now, so that was a solid decision by him.

The four of us played cards and drank beer for a while until my dad showed up to be our sober driver and hopefully the guy who’d pick up at least a part of the titty tab.

We all piled into the car (five of us total in a 1981 BMW 320i) nd headed for Buckhead, the land of tits and ass.

We were going to the place that pro athletes nationwide had known about and frequented for years:

The Gold Club. (If you’d like to read a little about its history, check out Bill Simmons’ article about the trial ).

The Gold Club was the closest we could get to a dude’s trip to Vegas. It was, at the time, the end all and be all of strip clubs in the southeast, and maybe the entire country. So as we’re headed down to the club, I make a casual "Hey, shouldn’t we turn here?" to dad, who replies "Nah. This way’s faster." I should have known.

We get there, get the car valeted, head inside and get in the line to hand someone our cover charge. Neil pays, Hoss pays, Chris pays, I pay and then the girl at the register says "Floyd, your money’s no good here."

I looked at my boys and did the "wait…what?" Seriously. What the hell was that?

Dad does the smirk and snicker he’s famous for and we all just shook our heads.

We headed to the stand up bar area while we waited for a table, and one of the cocktail waitresses came over, took our order, and then looked at my dad and said "The usual?"

Okay. Wait one God damned minute.

Dad smirks and snickers again and we just stared in wonder.

(A note to clear this up a little. I don’t want to give you the impression that my dad’s a strip club junkie. He worked for almost 30 years for a now defunct brokerage house whose Atlanta branch was in Buckhead. Anytime clients or fellow employees came in from out of town, they’d already read about The Gold Club in the in-flight magazine or heard about it from friends, and they all wanted to go. So of course my dad, the company man always eager to please, would facilitate their trip to and from the Gold Club and back to their hotel).

So now that I / we had been out-cooled by my dad by about a bajillion, the bloom was off the proverbial rose. After throwing away a pile of singles and more (which dad paid for most of), we headed out and back to the bar where I had worked the year before.

Mein papa dropped us off in decent shape (us I mean, he was fine) and we headed in for some non five dollar beers and a good old fashioned drunk.

So we proceed to throw shots of anything down our gullets (mudslides, kamikazes, Jaegermeister, some red thing, etc) and getting completely shit hammered.

(A little creative license as a result of some detective work must be taken here because no one is 100% what happened or how or why from that point on).

Apparently, at some point, Neil and I decided we had had enough and should leave. Thankfully, Neil also decided that I should be the one that drove us home. Since I was ten feet tall and bulletproof and 23, I did just that.

(Kids, this is where I tell you that drinking and driving is the worst thing you can do. Period. I have no recollection of this, but Neil and I both know someone could have been hurt or killed that night, and that still upsets me to this day).

So we arrived safely (somehow) at my apartment and promptly went to bed. Me in the master bedroom and Neil in the second bedroom.

Meanwhile, back at the bar, Hoss and Chris were trying desperately to find us. But since they were blind drunk they weren’t having much luck. Chris went outside and laid down under someone’s car (he was tired) and that’s when Hoss decided it was time for them to cab it back to my house.

Only one problem:

He didn’t really have any idea where I lived, especially from his current location.

He and Chris got in a cab and proceeded to spend over a hundred bucks going six miles while Hoss slurred "Hey HEY! Thish looksh fumilsdfhaer" over and over again.

At this point, the story was over for me. Fast forward to morning where I awoke in my bed, fully dressed (including shoes) and feeling like I should be dead. As I walked out of my bedroom I was concerned with two things:

The enormous amount of light coming from the den and the fact that our front door was on it’s side and leaned neatly against the loveseat in my den.

I look around and see Hoss on my couch, Chris on the loveseat (to be fair, this arrangement was correct in relation to their heights), and my doorframe EXPLODED everywhere. And I am pissed.

I wake everyone up with screaming and cuss words (don’t worry about the neighbors since it was noon at this point) and said "HEY!!! WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?"

And it was then that Chris and Hoss awoke, equally pissed.

Hoss: What the fuck happened to you guys?

Chris: Yeah! Where’d you go? You fucking left us?

Me: What? Neil said we were leaving.

Neil: Fuck you. We both wanted to leave?

Me: But I was hammered! Why’d you make ME drive?

Hoss: None of that matters. You fuckers locked the door.

And that’s what happened. Apparently, they finally got to my apartment around 4am or so, and after ten or fifty or two minutes of knocking and yelling (and screaming at my across the street neighbor to go back in their apartment and shut the fuck up) they decided to kick in the door.

Great apartments, right? Two strangers show up drunk and yelling and screaming at my door, and no one calls the cops? In fact, everyone just obeys these fiends and goes back inside? Jesus Christ.

So as the four of us begin recounting the events as well as trying to formulate some sort of plan / solution to my problem, I notice that my Timberland slip ons, which I removed while sitting on the sofa where Hoss ended up sleeping, were full to the brim of some odd red liquid.

Hoss saw me notice this and said "Guess I had too many of those red ones, huh?"

Fucker.

Neil then pipes up and says, like only Neil can or would, "Let’s call the cops and say someone broke in here."

We literally died laughing.

I think Hoss’ response was the one that stuck. "Really Neil? And what do we tell them? Two people showed up, were seen my neighbors yelling and kicking the door and using FRT’s fucking name, then kicked in the door, threw up in his shoes and immediately spent the night there? Really? Are you completely retarded?"

Thankfully, that exchange knocked the tension out of the place, and that’s when I called GBD and told her what happened.

She was very calm and cool. She said simply "I don’t care what, who, why or how. I’ll be home at 6pm and I want it fixed by then."

Luckily, Chris was handy AND currently had a lot of his work tools in his truck. He and I went to Home Depot and got some stuff and he proceeded to rebuild my doorframe from scratch.

And that’s the story of FRT’s bachelor party. I’m sure Hoss will comment and add some things I’ve forgotten.

Have a great day,

FRT

P.S. In case you weren’t sure, a circular saw running IN YOUR APARTMENT the day after your bachelor party is really REALLY loud.

Next up, a re-telling of GBD’s bachelorette party, or at least the part that happened after she came home.