Baby Bear has a negro afro. Miss K has glorious goddess hair. They're perfect for each other. For weeks during sophomore year, Baby Bear psyched himself up to ask out the hottest girl he'd ever seen. On September 10th, he went to bed igniting ambition and amassing courage. Baby Bear burgeoned determination and blue whale balls. Nothing could dissuade him from asking out Miss K the following day. Not even a national tragedy. Their anniversary is September 11, 2001.
Over their two-and-a-half year engagement, my high school friends and I staged stripper coups and impromptu bachelor parties. While in New Zealand, I received their wedding invitation. I debated between flying across the world for the nuptials, or to Australia for one tenth of the price and twice as long. The bride pledged to show me wedding photos and tell me stories. I bought my plane ticket that night.
I arrived in Santa Rosa, CA the day of the wedding after seventeen hours in the air, two layovers, and a two-hour bus ride. It was noon. The wedding started at two-thirty. I commandeered a six-pack of beer and sat my five-dollar ass down on the couch in front of the US/Ghana world cup game. I showered at half-time. I viewed the second half of the game in my towel, binge drinking like I was at a saloon. When overtime ensued, so did my mom's observations that I resembled a street walker and I needed to hurry up. I required make-up, clothes, and shoes. The wedding started in five minutes and I was a fifteen minute drive away.
I walked into the chapel thirty minutes late. In sandals. All other females strutted height. Most were adorned in stilettos and stripper heels. When sober, I fall over in heels. When drinking, heels morph me into a stumbling Quasimodo. Heels are death traps and torture devices. To augment my sandals, I wore a dress I bought in India. Thank god I have tiny tittyboppers, because if they were anything more than nipples, they would have danced out of my dress. My eye makeup looked like a five-year-old's coloring book. When my mom dropped me off, she said, "You should probably look in the mirr... you know what, don't. You're late. You look gorgeous, hunny. Have a great time." She handed me her lipstick.
I witnessed the last fifteen minutes of the ceremony as an intoxicated loner in the last pew behind a row of twelve of my male high school friends. I molested the backs of their heads until they
acknowledged my presence.
The wedding party absconded to take wedding photos. The bar wasn't open and we were expected to socialize with the great-grandparents. We had drinking options. Lemonade or punch. The punch wasn't spiked. The high school crew relocated to the parking lot. We didn't have our first Bacardi Breezers last week. We tailgated with beer and champagne. No glasses. Two of the adults rolling through the parking lot thought we were gods. They were jealous and took photos for us. The other five gawked at us like we were doing beer bongs and
screaming, "Suck Dick!"
Four years ago, my friend Nickle's mom witnessed us in her kitchen in the climax of our beer bong operation. It was Thanksgiving. Dozens of elderly and younger disorderly relatives radiated from the living room to the dining room to the outside pool. The beer bong was named Dick. Her daughter ordered her to suck Dick.
The wedding bar opened its alcoholic appendages to us an hour and a half before dinner. It closed at nine at night. At the time, it distressed me that the bar wasn't open earlier and later. I was also perplexed that the intoxicants were limited to beer and wine. The next morning, I realized this was intelligent and wise.Kat, the high school friend who inspired me to be an au pair without any previous experience with children, was visiting from Berlin. We went drink for drink with wine.
A normal round comprised one of us retrieving glasses from the bar, returning to inhale the wine as rapidly as an Asian conversation, and demanding equal glass drainage. The standard reply upon the wine glass gorge was, "Bitch!"
By the time the wedding party returned from face time with the photographer, I could sense my normally superior pronunciation powers slipping. However, I have a reputation as a girl that can drink. I defend my reputation by shit talking to other females who have guzzled less volume than I. They are usually my best friends. I remember the toasts. This is when I should have stopped drinking.
I don't remember the cigars. I blame the fermented tobacco and Chardonnay smoothie for the rotgut in my blood and the deficiency in my brain.
One of the last things I remember was watching the bride and groom christen the dance floor with their first dance as husband and wife. This was directly after dinner. Photos divulge me in conversation with strangers, my arms around their shoulders. As my mouth is as open as a prostitute's legs in the majority of the pictures, I assume I was talking. I don't know if I was speaking words. I assume I was servicing these unknowns as handrail support.
Nickle and I danced. In photos, my lips are pursed in drunk-failing-to-be-sexy Kara face. Nickle displays the delicious smile of the mindlessly intoxicated. We held hands.
I attained brief consciousness during a conga line. For those of you who don't know, the conga line originated as a Cuban carnival march. Cuba's skills stroke more than just cigars.
The next morning, I awoke at a friend's house in bed with a couple. I was fully clothed. Apparently, hours after I passed out, they fought with T-Rex concerning who got to share the bed with me. The couple won because the female flashed T-Rex.
Through my friends stories, my hippocampus uncurled the night's events as sluggishly as an eighty-year-old with amnesia.
The bride's mother found me passed out in the bathroom. At nine-thirty. Eventually I determined that I wasn't wrapped around a toilet seat and lying spread-eagle on the ground. I was sprawled on the couches inside the women's restroom. I assumed I was that girl at the wedding. However, another girl takes the honors. Her name was Crazy Eyes. She was escorted out. The bride's father drove her home. Crazy Eyes was officially sacked because of her underage status. She was unofficially ousted because she was having dry sex on the dance floor with one of the groomsmen. Their dancing flustered the ancients and the sobers. The same groomsman attempted to dance on one of the tables. This was a bad idea. On stage, groomsmen and friends erected the bride and groom to their shoulders. We weren't supposed to be on the stage.Another groomsman deejayed. He had previously compiled the iPod playlist but isolated himself in what he referred to as the deejay booth to unnecessarily adjust the volume. He stationed himself behind a table.
After the bar shut down, the seniors rolled out, and the venue closed, most of our friends transferred the booze orgy to the afterparty. Someone stole a keg from the bar and awarded it to the charity cases at the afterparty that required it most: my friends. Nickle's brain recovered it's processing powers as all wedding guests bulldozed into cars and bounced to the afterparty. The groom's mom drove her, with the bride and groom in the car. She postponed the consummation of their marriage.Hours later, Nickle, under drunken duress, forced two of our friends to give her a ride home. She stood on the front porch for twenty minutes trying to get in. The key was in her hand, but she couldn't get it in the lock. She called them, and their return comprised a drive-by, because Nickle got the key in the lock as they arrived.
Note to self: when you fly across the world for a wedding, train your liver to college standards.
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