As of 4:55 pm Friday afternoon, your plan for the night was to go have a couple of 5 o'clock beers, eat dinner, and go home for the evening and stay out of trouble. Watch a movie or two. Maybe even a trilogy. I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time. That was your plan, anyway. And we all know that plans were made to be broken.
Flash forward. 6:30 pm. After an hour and a half of casual drinking at an old-man bar, potential plans are being discussed. Some words catch your ear specifically. Words such as "Sandbar" and "The Outhouse" and "party bus." These are important words. Night-altering words. For the first time, the thought enters your brain that this night is about to be turned on its head. Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things.
Flash forward. 7:45 pm. Dinner plans are being bandied about. Do you go next door with Jud and Wing for sushi? Do you to West Coast with Lane and Tucker for chicken wings? Do you go with Shaun and Janelle to Henry T's? No. You go home by yourself, microwave a hot dog and wrap it inside a piece of toasted bread. You take this hour to "sober up and refocus." On your drive home, and during the entire hour off of drinking, you listen to 'Baba O'Reilly' by The Who on repeat, because it's the greatest song in the world right now.
Flash forward. 9:00 pm. You meet everyone back out, at Sandbar now. Your achilles heel. Your archnemesis. Your kryptonite. You start back pocketing beers, a sure sign of trouble. You are talking to moms left and right. You get in an spirited discussion with a 31-year-old, divorced schoolteacher about the proper music to listen to when seducing a woman. This schoolteacher thinks your name is Adam Banks, and that you are part of an investment group, in town from Seattle, looking at purchasing the grounds for The Woodlands in Kansas City and converting it from a dogracing track to a horseracing track. You get your first glimpse of what the end of your night looks like. It looks like a plane crash. There are no survivors.
Flash forward. 11:00 pm. You are leaving for Jonny's, where you will then get on a party bus, put together by Katie. One of your new games while talking to randoms is to speak in song lyrics, verbatim, and see how long it takes them to bust you on it, or at least look at you weird. When you tell your schoolteacher that you are leaving, you tell her "I hope you know...I hope you know...that this has nothing to do with you. It's personal, myself and I, we got some straightening out to do. And I'm gonna miss you like a child misses that blanket, but I've got to get a move on with my life. It's time to be a big girl now, and big girls don't cry." You get all the way to the big girl part before she looks at you weird. You consider that a success. On the drive to Jonny's you listen to 'Police On My Back' by The Clash on repeat, because now this is the greatest song in the world right now.
Flash forward. 11:45 pm. You are now on the party bus. You know Katie, Jud, Wing, Tucker, and Tucker's woman, and everyone else on the bus is a stranger. But there's beer, and that's a plus. The first stop is Abe & Jake's. The last time you were at Abe & Jake's, Skye ended up on crutches after you guys tried to re-enact the lift from Dirty Dancing. So you've got some history there. The alcohol has definitely hit you now, there's no turning back. You're in it to win it, for better....or worse.
Flash forward. Time unknown. Wing has been buying you shots like it's your birthday. It might as well be, because if someone were to ask you right now, you might not remember the actual date. Suddenly, you find yourself talking in a circle of people that includes Travis Releford, Tyshawn Taylor, and Markieff Morris. At least you think it's Markieff, but it very well could be Marcus. It's a 50/50 shot, anyway.
Flash forward. Time still unknown. You are back on the bus. You have made a new friend, but you can't remember her name for the life of you. As the bus pulls out, you realize that of the 5 friends you originally boarded the bus with, zero are on the bus now. You can roll with this, though. It's almost expected on a party bus. You wouldn't have it any other way.
Flash forward. 1:30ish am. You are walking into a bar in a hotel somewhere. You don't know where. You think there is a chance that you're only a few blocks from your apartment, but you may as well be in Topeka, for all you know. Why is this a stop on a party bus, you ask. The bar is closing up, but everyone promises the bartender we'll tip a shitload, so he stays open for you. You and your new friend spot a karoake machine. The two of you go fire it up despite protests from the overwhelmed bartender, and now you're in the little deejay booth, fiddling with knobs and switches like you're Dr. fucking Dre mixin' beats in the studio. This is the first time you feel like you're outside your own body, watching yourself be ridiculous. You hear yourself say "What's that? You wanna do 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door'? Lemme check...yeah I got that. You're third on the list. I'm just gonna adjust the treble a little here, this dude singing 'Sweet Caroline' is coming in a little off-pitch. Grab me a white russian, would you please? That'd be super."
Flash forward. Time unknown. The bus is dropping everyone off at the house of your new friend, since she was one of the organizers. From there everyone is supposed to find their own ways home. You consider asking her to let you crash on her couch, as you think you remember hearing sometime during the evening that her roommate is Jud's girlfriend, so you would have a ride home in the morning. But as she starts walking away, you realize that you still have NO IDEA what her name is. You remember that your schoolteacher thinks that Jimmy Buffett is horrible, so you played 'Cheeseburger In Paradise' two times in a row on the jukebox just to spite her. You remember that the spread in the North Carolina game was 19, and they only won 84-67, so you lost money. You remember that your bill at Sandbar was $22.75. You remember all these things, yet you can't remember the name of basically the only person you've conversed with in the last two hours, and as a result, you have a long walk in front of you. You chuckle at this irony.
Flash forward. 2:30 am. As you cross the Mass Street bridge, you text Noles telling him that you're "crossing the Kansas River by foot." Apparently your night has turned into Oregon Trail. Do you try and ford the river and risk losing valuable oxen?
Flash forward. 3:00 am. You are home safe. You just got done crushing another hot dog/toasted bread delight. Then you throw up. You listen to 'Tyler' by The Toadies on repeat, because it's the "greatest song in the world right now." Before you crawl (literally) into bed, you text Shaun, who smartly decided not to get on the party bus, that "winning that bus ticket was the worst thing that ever happened to me." You are trying to be clever with a quote from Titanic. That is poetically appropriate, because your entire night was like being on a sinking ship.
As you pass out, Leonardo Dicaprio appears in your mind, and makes you promise that you'll never give up, no matter what happens. Promise him, and never let go of that promise. "I'll never let go, Jack" you tell him. "I'll never let go."
