Freedom’s Last Beer

After we had foiled an engagement party in February and a Stock the Bar party in July, my family and, therefore, my brother had stopped putting effort into trying to plan anything without our knowledge. So the decision came to me, regarding when and where to have a bachelor party. He would be in charge of rallying the troops to attend, but I would have to set a locale, date, and partial agenda.

For her bachelorette party, Christa’s team had decided on Cincinnati as a geographic and entertainment midpoint. I chose Cincinnati, so I wouldn’t have to plan and drive. We were behind schedule on planning this event. This should have been expected. It was mid-August.

With the assumption that we couldn’t each have our own weekend, due to us needing to be in Bloomington during all other weekends, I had to work out an arrangement for both parties to operate from the same home base but not get in each other’s way. Christa and I also had to figure out how to sleep twelve people in our house, which had only one actual bed.

I was the only one attending my party who had any firsthand knowledge of what Cincinnati had to offer and was, therefore, in charge of finding my own activities. I was not inclined toward the typical stripper. I acknowledged it could happen, but I was not the one who was going to make the call to contract my own stripper. That seemed unhealthy.

We had to straighten the house for the three-minute tour afforded each guest. I nearly died inflating our air mattress manually over about forty minutes. We counted sofas, a futon, a daybed, and a couple of air mattresses as adequate sleeping conditions for our guests. I told Christa that my friends would survive a night on a sofa that wasn’t covered in sheets. She may have been politely trying to protect our sofa, instead of the guests, but I had told the guys to bring sleeping bags for mutual protection. We assigned the ladies to the upstairs and the gentlemen to the downstairs. As you might have guessed, the bed, futon, and daybed are all upstairs. We bought snacks, breakfast food, beer, and some beverage components for the ladies. I showered and dressed, she cleansed and picked out an outfit, and we were ready.

My guests showed up in a single van from Bloomington. Everyone found himself a beer within a couple minutes. Some wanted the tour, and some preferred to sit and drink effortlessly, rather than extend unnecessary courtesy. We had called a van cab and had about forty-five minutes to consume and speak on topics of zero relevance or importance.

During that time, I learned that: “You finally get to stop masturbating. You have sex all the time, once you’re married.” And “Marriage changes your life completely, you live in the same place, with the same person as the day before, but you wear a ring.” Not even a hint of sarcasm there.

So once I was advised, the festivities began. The van cab took us to Margarita’s Mexican in downtown. It offered booze and good Mexican eating, a solid base for an evening of revelry.

Next, the party moved on to the Bengals preseason game. This was an awesome exhibition for the Bengals and for us. The Bengals did everything right and roared to a halftime lead of twenty-eight to three over the Patriots, once again providing false hope to a city paying for two over-budget stadiums with under-performing teams. We spent equal time in the manly activities of making the long trek for overpriced beer and trying to spot the best rack in the neighboring sections of stands. Yes, they can be referred to as “racks” at such a manly gathering.

I also received advice from a husband and wife, sitting a row below and a few seats over from us. Upon learning of my fate, the couple, in unison, saluted me with overpriced beer. “Congratulations. We’ve been married for eight years,” she said, looking towards us.

“Feels like twenty,” he said, laughing. She looked at him scornfully and slapped his thigh. He corrected himself. “Just kidding. Marriage is great.”

She turned back to give us an apologetic smile for her husband’s behavior, and he started vigorously shaking his head no, until she turned back again.

I took a vote to see if we should leave at halftime, seeing as the Bengals couldn’t play any better. The reserves would be in soon, and beer was much bigger and cheaper at the Hofbrauhaus on the other side of the river. The vote was yes, as always, for bigger and cheaper.

We cabbed across the river to the Hofbrauhaus, which was modeled after the beer garden of the same name in Munich and provided booze in the form of liter glasses of Germany’s finest. Liter-sized glasses make fantastic beer goggles. The beer goggles were working so well that one of my friends began speaking with a cute little eighty-four-year-old woman in the group seated next to us. Picture Happy Gilmore’s grandma. He relayed their conversation to us.

I told her, “We’re here because it’s my friend’s bachelor party. It’s his last few days of freedom.”

And then, in his best beer-drinking little eighty-four-year-old voice, he said that her advice was to “Love ’em and leave ’em.”

Nothing inspires a group of bachelor party attendees more than a grandma still making booty calls. We decided against buying her a shot of Jagermeister and inviting her over for strip poker later that night, but we were tempted. The night eventually ended, and my freedom was supposedly gone, but sadly, it didn’t take wedding planning with it.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival