The Bachelor Party Part 2

Friday

I had no idea where I was when I woke up. Then I remembered it was Vegas, and a euphoric adrenalin coursed through me. I was feeling good until I actually tried to stand up. At which point the room started to spin. I stumbled over to our case of water and downed two bottles in about 10 seconds and decided to get cleaned up for the day. After showering I realized that I was now red. Apparently the Pepcid/Zyrtec combo wore off at some point and the alcohol still in my system turned me red. After Lefty and CHP woke up we met with The Russian and The Robot for breakfast. They asked me if I had been drinking already since I was red. It had been at least 7 hours since my last drink, so clearly I had had a lot. At this point, The Robot tells me I got lost coming back from the bathroom at Lavo last night and he had to drag me back to the table or I may have never made it back. I smiled and pretended like I remembered. I didn’t.

Groom showed up with his messed up cigar and asked where he got it from. We laughed at the fact that he couldn’t remember. Clearly I am a hypocrite. I attempted to choke down my grilled cheese sandwich but could not. Breakfast or lunch or whatever it was, was over. We headed back to our respective rooms to catch a little more rest before the rest of the bachelor party participants flew in later that day. On the way back to our room, CHP got a phone call from a number he did not recognize:

CHP: Who is this?

Caller:…………..

CHP: From last night?

Caller:……………..

CHP: WHY WOULD I WANT TO GO TO THE GYM?! DON’T EVER CALL THIS NUMBER AGAIN.

Lefty and I just about died laughing. We were in tears. CHP had no idea what was going on. Remember how I talked about functioning blackouts? Yeah, he had one last night. We filled him in on the events the prior evening, or at least the parts we could remember. He only really wanted to know one thing:

CHP: Was she hot?

Lefty: Definitely not.

CHP: Fuck.

Lefty: Neither were the other ones.

CHP: There were other ones? Fuck.

CHP was so disgusted by what we told him that he went back to bed and refused to get up until it was time to go out for the evening. It was at about this time that we got a call from Groom. The others had arrived. They wanted me and Lefty to come over. And to bring the alcohol. Now it was our turn to say “fuck”. We carried/dragged the alcohol out of our room and somehow managed to make it to Groom’s room and waiting for us was the 5th groomsman, whom we’ll call “Slappy” (for reasons to be seen later); Stockton and Malone (the inseparable point guard and power forward of our basketball team, and also two guys who have partied more than Stockton and Malone combined); Macbook (our former teammate who now works for Apple up North); and two indistinguishable co-workers of the groom who will now be known as Toe Jam and Earl (since I never know which one is which).

Our arrival was cheered, though I think the greeting was more about the alcohol and less about us. Drinking ensued. Shots of Grey Goose seemed to be the drink of choice. Groom started hesitating again, and with no CHP around, he thought he could get away with it. Malone had other ideas though and approached groom with a couple of shot glasses in hand. Groom, in his infinite wisdom, thought the best way to ward off Malone was to throw chips at him. $100 chips. One smacks into Malone’s arm, leaving a small welt. After examining the damage, Malone downs a shot, retrieves the chip and fires it back at groom. The impact literally makes a cracking sound when it hits Groom’s leg. A perfect, chip sized, circle appears on Groom’s leg. Malone grabs another chip and throws it, this one hitting Groom’s arm with the same result. Before Malone can throw a third chip, Groom agrees to take many more shots. I decide that between Malone, CHP, and The Russian if we get into any fights during the rest of the trip, we’ll probably be okay.

After drinking we decide to gamble before heading to dinner. Six of us sit at a table and the evil Chinese dealer proceeds to beat the shit out of us. One after another, guys are dropping out. First it’s the Robot, then The Russian. Groom is hanging in but loses three or four hands in a row and gives up down $500 for the trip. Finally, Macbook bows out as well. It’s just me and Malone now, and we are fighting valiantly. I’m “only” down $100 and he’s about even for the table, but informs everyone that he lost over a grand before we all met up. Malone and the dealer are trying to teach me Chinese as we are playing. I am fucking up words left and right but they think it’s hilarious so I guess its okay. Suddenly, Malone catches a hot run of cards. He starts playing two hands at $50 or $100 per hand and he’s winning every hand. I’m still getting killed and am now down $200. I’m worried that if I get up, Malone’s hot streak will end, but if I sit there I’ll end up blowing through half my bankroll. I decide to stick it out, but when I lose another $100 I apologize to Malone and get up. This is fine with Malone who has rallied back to almost even for his trip. Chinese bastard.

We head back upstairs for one more round of drinks, but when we get to Groom’s room, there is no alcohol. Groom had snuck back up while we were gambling and put the alcohol in the room safe. I thought it was a bitch move to say the least, but I was also secretly pleased by this. At the start of the day, my one goal was to not be drunk at the strip club. Buzzed was fine. Drunk was not. With CHP still unavailable, no one could convince Groom to unlock the safe, so we decided to call off the drinking and head to dinner.

Dinner was at Emeril’s flagship restaurant: Delmonico’s Steakhouse. While we were eating we noticed at least 10 to 15 smoking hot women seemed to be entering and leaving a back dining area. No one knew why, and it’s Vegas so there doesn’t really have to be a reason, but we all enjoyed the sights. Later we found out that Larry Flynt was eating dinner back there and everything made sense. Overall, the meal was good but wasn’t worth the $100 I spent. From there it was off to Sapphire, the self-proclaimed World’s Largest Strip Club. Malone (who would go on to become our defacto leader for the evening) thought we should take a limo. Taking a limo to a strip club! Classy! Cramming that many guys in a limo was not easy, but we somehow managed. At this point I should mention that I read a Bill Simmons article about his Vegas trips and he said it always seemed like everywhere in Vegas there was one song constantly being played. In his article it was “Lose Somebody” by Kings of Leon. Well I noticed on my trip it was definitely the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”. It seemed fitting at the time, since this was Groom's favorite song when we are all hanging out due to the fact that The Russian and The Robot are both Jewish, and there is a section of lyrics that refers to their heritage. So when the song came on during the ride to the strip club, he could barely contain his excitement, and when the verse "Fill up my cup/ Mazel tov (La Chaim)" came, he yelled it out as loud as he could. This for some reason annoys The Russian and The Robot. Of course, because the rest of the party is buzzed we all catch on fairly quickly and as the song continues on, the anticipation builds as we wait for the verse to come back around again:

Black Eyed Peas: I gotta a feeling/tonight's the night/let's live it up/I got my money/Let's spend it up/Go out and Smash it/ Like oh my God/Jump off that sofa/Let's kick it off

Black Eyed Peas plus 10 drunk guys: FILL UP MY CUP! MAZEL TOV! La CHAIM!

We all found this to be uproariously funny, though in hindsight it wasn't as funny as I thought it was at the time. Either way I heard that damn song at least 15 other times during my trip. In fact, due to the fact that I was drunk, buzzed, or hung over nearly the entire bachelor party, every time I hear the song now I feel like I need a drink.

After being downright molested by a bouncer at the club, we eventually headed down a long hallway that led into a lowered open area surrounded by two bars, a hallway that heads to the champagne room and a back wall that faces three stages. As was the theme for this Vegas trip, we decide to get a table and bottle service. Total charge, $50 a person. Not bad. The drink of choice, as it had been for the entire trip so far was Grey Goose and Red Bull, which it turns out is an evil evil drink, but oh so good. Things are going as one would imagine they usually would at a strip club, guys are getting approached by random strippers who are walking the floor, the strippers sit down on laps and try and talk their way into letting them give you a lap dance. Lefty and I bought a couple of dances for each other. One of the dances was pretty unspirited but the other one very nearly knocked the wind out of me. Literally. Let’s just say that because there were wheels on the chair, a few of the stripper’s thrusts left me several feet away from the rest of the group. She was hot and aggressive, so it was enjoyable—as much as these kinds of things can be enjoyable. Everyone bought dances for Groom, and a couple of times some strippers double teamed him and basically proceeded to have sex with each other on top of him. It was pretty funny to watch his reactions.

On a quick side note, I am always a little unsure about how I feel at strip clubs. I mean, hot naked girls are good. A hot naked girl dancing on top of you is even better. Two of them at once is spectacular. But doing it all in front of your friends seems a little awkward. I guess that’s where the alcohol comes in. Remember though, buzzed not drunk.

So things continued to play out along the same lines (stripper sits on lap, talks to you for 5 minutes, you buy a lap dance for yourself, for your buddy, or dismiss her), but with each lap dance going for $20 I was glad that I stayed sober enough to not throw away some semblance of common sense. After a couple of hours, I thought things were wrapping up when all of a sudden a bouncer shows up and grabs Groom and leads him away. Me, Lefty, Macbook, and a couple of other guys are concerned. We start asking the rest of the guys if they knew what was going on. When we ask Malone, he just smiles and tells us to wait. Then, over the loudspeaker, the patrons are told to direct their attention to the main stage (which is raised up 15 feet over the center of the floor) where Groom is standing flanked by three strippers. As his friends we are instructed by some strippers to stand underneath the stage, because the floor of the stage was clear so that we could see all of the action. We declined. What happens next is a cross between a rape and an orgy. I’ll leave all of the details out except to say this: When it was over, Groom had his boxers ripped off of him despite the fact that he was still wearing jeans.

After that “interesting” ordeal, things devolved into near disaster. Slappy was drunk out of his mind, and anytime one of the guys was getting a lap dance, he would proceed to slap the ass of the stripper (hence his name). This didn’t just occur with the strippers adjacent to him, this happened EVERY time anyone in our group got a dance. Some strippers thought it was funny, others didn’t like it, and one started to scream at him telling him that he owed her money for that slap and that she was being violated. Groom tried to intervene but she wouldn’t listen, and I left for the restroom deciding that I didn’t want to deal with all of that. When I got back, Slappy seemed distraught so I (stupidly) bought him a lap dance from a cute Asian chick. Half way through she stopped and hopped on my lap and danced for me. I gave her a questioning look and she simply said, “your friend is too horny for me, I can’t deal with him. You can touch me many places, but you can’t touch me where he did”. Um, yikes. So Slappy was having a bad night. Not only had he been drinking so much that every time I looked up he was coming back from the bar with two or three drinks for himself (a lot for a 130 lb Chinese guy), but he also had gotten bitched out by one stripper and rejected by another. By the time “my” lap dance was over, Slappy looked completely dejected. He had his elbows on his knees and his head down while grasping his drink with both hands. I should mention at this time that I had only met Slappy twice before this so I had no idea what to make of his behavior. Stockton and Malone seemed concerned, but they knew him even less than I did so they didn’t want to say anything to him. By this time CHP and Groom had each separately been talked into going to the champagne room (where combined they would drop more than a grand, and I would later be informed that it is true, there really is no sex in the champagne room. As for other stuff….no comment), and Toe Jam and Earl were off doing Toe Jam and Earl type things, so everyone who knew Slappy well enough to say anything was nowhere to be found. So we did what any group of guys would do in this situation: We ignored him until circumstances dictated otherwise.

Of course, in any good story those circumstances would not be far off, and sure enough within 20 minutes, Slappy had our undivided attention. A group of us were sitting in a circle, with Lefty and Slappy to my left and Malone, Stockton, and Macbook to my right. A couple of strippers came over and someone bought Lefty a dance. During the course of the dance, Lefty ended up facing Slappy (stupid rolling chairs). The stripper was facing Lefty and straddling him with her knees on the chair and her feet extended outwards behind her. Her ass was basically in Slappy’s face which everyone realized was not a good idea, but as Slappy looked up and we all began to fear the inevitable, something far worse than a simple ass slap happened—Slappy threw up. It turned out that the stripper’s positioning actually saved us. The vomit missed her entirely, splitting the uprights essentially, and she was none the wiser. Lefty was not as lucky as it ended up on his feet. He gave me a panic stricken look, but stayed cool and maneuvered his chair away from Slappy (THANK YOU ROLLING CHAIRS). Stockton, Malone and I attempted to cover up the mess with our own seats but then Slappy lost it again. Malone had seen enough and decided we had to get out of there before the bouncers kicked us out—but not before roughing up Slappy a little bit first (this is Vegas after all).

Lefty ushered Slappy out of the building. Stockton, Malone, and I attempted to round up our group. The Robot and The Russian who had been suspiciously absent from the ordeal turned up and told me they were gathering everyone as well, so I should head outside and make sure Slappy was ok. I exited the building, and there were guys everywhere, but no sign of Slappy or Lefty. I was just about to call Lefty when something on the ground of the far right side of the building caught my eye. I walked over and found Slappy puking his guts out while Lefty washed it away with some water bottles he found. Lefty is a good guy. I may have just left Slappy there. Finally, Slappy said that he would feel better if he laid down, and then proceeded to lay down face first on the concrete parking lot of the strip club right next to a tricked out Escalade. Wonderful.

Most of our party (CHP, Stockton, Malone, The Robot, The Russian, and Macbook) made it out of the club and we began to assess our options. Macbook wanted to know if it would be considered amoral to take a picture of Slappy in his current state. We decided that it was not, but even if it was, considering the weekend we had had so far, it’s not like morals were a big concern at that point in time. So everyone busted out their phones and started taking pictures of poor Slappy lying on the ground in a puddle of vomit/water mix. We are great friends—and typical Asians with our camera phones. With that dilemma solved, we now had to figure out how to get back to The Venetian and what to do about the remainder of the party (we decided to leave them). As we debated, the owner of the Escalade appeared and told us that he was actually a cab driver, that the Escalade was his cab, and that we could all squeeze in and ride back to The Venetian for $50. It seemed that fate was with us at that moment.

Slappy mumbled incoherent things when we tried to get him to sit in one of the seats, and then he flat out refused to sit up. I suggested putting him in the trunk, so Malone and CHP lifted him up and placed him in the trunk of the Escalade. We all piled in and the Escalade headed out. The guys in the back seat kept talking to Slappy with the hopes of distracting him from thoughts of throwing up. Malone, who was in the front seat, and the guys in the middle seat, tried to engage the driver in conversation with the hopes of distracting him from the potential disaster he had in his trunk. We made it back to The Venetian successfully I thought, until we opened the trunk. Slappy had thrown up again. Now the driver wanted $100 extra. CHP slung Slappy’s arm around his shoulder and escorted him back up to the room while the rest of us tried to convince the driver it wasn’t $100 worth of bad. We were unsuccessful, so our $50 cab ride home ended up costing $150. Everyone chipped in a few extra dollars meaning the strip club experience probably cost me $250. Coupled with dinner and the gambling losses, meant I was fast approaching the limit of what I wanted to spend in Vegas. As Lefty and I walked through the casino towards our room at 5 AM on Saturday morning, I could hear in the background, "I gotta feeling....that tonight's gonna be a good night! That tonight's gonna be a good night! That tonight's gonna be a good good night!". I couldn't help but laugh and hope that the coming night would not be any more traumatic and costly than Friday night had been.