In which I party myself into the ground! (Eh, like THAT’S news.)

This morning I emailed a bunch of cell phone pics to my Flickr account, only discover that one cannot send an email to Flickr with more than one image attached. Ergo, each of the six images that actually made it to the target web site represents four to six more that did not make it. What a pain in the arse it is, to get one’s photos off of one’s cell phone!

The party was fun. A bunch of women stood around in the high school parking lot introducing themselves to one another until the bus arrived. (AmmZon had to speak with the driver three times before he found us. Eek.)

We all piled onto the bus, decorated it with blown-up copies of the bride’s yearbook pictures, and started drinking immediately. (The hostess had put mixed drinks into water bottles, and brought coolers full of them. Brilliant!)

We picked the bride up at her house, then went on a tour of her life. Some of the girls put on wigs and did skits at various locations — one skit involved the bride’s sister in the role of the bride and Amazon Blonde [the original one, not my roommate] as herself, reenacting their meeting, which apparently occurred while the bride lay on the sidewalk in front of Wolfgang’s place, drunk, and said to the approaching Amazon, “Hey, I know you! We fucked the same guy.” After that vignette we piled back on the bus. We stopped at the hotel bar and more women joined us. We visited various landmarks important in the bride’s formative years, including: a couple of fields, Wal*Mart, the golf club, that huge ugly mansion with the bowling lanes downstairs and the caves over the pool, and the street in front of a few houses her boyfriends used to live in. The bride got properly shit faced. A fabulous time was had by all, and I remember remarking several times that the bride has KILLER friends, and also that there were a lot of really nice boobs on the bus. (Seriously. The majority of her friends have remarkable racks. Go figure — her own are freakin’ gravity-proof themselves.)

We ended up at the Dead Cock. By then I was quite nicely drunk, thank you, and NLW was concerned that she wasn’t because she’d matched me drink for drink. (She didn’t realize that I’d already been awake for 22 hours at that point, and I was too tired and drunk to point it out to her.) (Nobody really knows how totally, utterly incorrect my lifestyle has become. My sleep schedule is totally whack. It’s so awesome!) Soon after we stormed the bar, the bridal party broke up. AmmZon left, and then NLW left. I transferred my allegiance to a new group of people — Rockstar, Gorgeous, MH, Coho, Princess — and went to afterhours at the bride’s house. After the bride puked, we left and went to Coho’s house for after-afterhours. Baby Girl and Core showed up, and I left with them around five. We stopped briefly at their place so BG could change her shoes (I took a power nap on the living room floor) and I was home by six.

I slept all goddamned day, and most of the night. I ate Taco Bell burritos and drank a couple of Cokes. I read. I went back to bed repeatedly ’cause that’s just how I roll.

The Wedding Of The Decade is tonight at five o’clock. I’ll be wearing the only cool thing I have, which is my velvet coat. AmmZon, on the other hand, has made herself a dress from a pattern from the late 40’s and will probably be one of the most decked out people at this shindig, including the bride herself.

Nearly everyone I know will be at this wedding, and at the party afterwards. I’ve been awake since two o’clock this morning, though, so I’ll be nodding off about two hours after the ceremony… Sheesh. It would be so very like me, to miss the biggest party of the decade!

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Now. Indulge me.

I realize that I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I desperately do not understand bachelor/ette parties. I grok that some of the difficulty of marrying is transformative; it brings the couple together in the face of adversity. Nothing like a common enemy to bring people together. But this go-out-and-be-disgusting-just-a-few-days-before-we-marry thing just seems plain ol’ stupid.

This particular wedding’s groom went Thursday night. His ‘friends’ took him to Coralville, decorated the hotel room with condom-covered phallic vegetables, fed him liquor, hired a clown, and bought him strippers he didn’t want. Most of the group, I hear, was less than perfectly comfortable with the whole thing.

Much of the bride’s bus tour included places of historical interest, read: the homes of her ex-boyfriends.

I’ve heard that the bride was upset about some aspect of the bachelor party, and I’ve heard that the groom was upset about some aspect of the bachelorette party.

This is all pretty gross, if you ask me. Every friend I’ve seen married was hurt somehow by this stupid ritual. If there were some cleansing involved, perhaps, some acknowledgment, some release… but no. All that happens as a result of these parties is stress and hurt.

I’m a trifle jaded, of course, but I suggest that people not get married. Just shack up, for chrissakes, and save yourselves the fucking heartache and trouble.