Sometimes (frequently) I feel like a grown up. I am reminded of my adultness several times per day. I see kids on the 16th Street Mall and all I want is for them to pull up their fucking pants. I don’t like to stay up late. I have investments and insurance and warranties and opinions about bourbon and worries about United States economic policy. I carry an umbrella in my briefcase. I am 32 going on 50.
That is…
Until I get to San Diego for my friend Jamie’s bachelor party, and all of a sudden I, along with 8 other fully grown men, spend the afternoon prancing and twirling in the ocean, building sand castles and giving each other temporary tattoos.
I suppose I should ask before posting these photos, but this is way more fun. So here you go, here’s what it’s like to go on a bachelor party with us. This is outside the Coaster station in Solana Beach after we’d filled up on incredible pizza and delicious microbrew at Pizza Port. This is the photo session we had (in public) while waiting for the train to take us back to the hotel.
I told Brian (the one with the tramp stamp) to look back over his shoulder at me and be sexy. This is the best he could come up with. He should adopt the mischievous innocence of Adam on the far left, or the smoldering, mysterious sensuality of Carson, second from left. On the far right, Keith is just happy to be there, and uhhh, Jamie has his tongue out, which is… y’know, happening.
Thankfully, he manages to dial up the sexy here as he shares a tender moment over beards and neck tattoos with Jason.
We wanted the spider to appear to be crawling out of his shirt, and I believe we succeeded marvelously. Having a sparkly cupcake neck tattoo is so hipster, it’s already not cool since I wrote about it here.
At least this relationship looks healthy and tender. As opposed to…
We are clearly in some sort of awful relationship wherein I’m (at the very least) emotionally abusive and totally unavailable and unfeeling. Jamie just wants tenderness and leans in, I simply want to grope his body and show off my SICK BRAH dagger tattoo. He may be the more manly looking of us, but in terms of psychological terrorism, he is so my bottom bitch in this photo. (Quick note: I had this stupid tattoo on my forearm the whole fucking week. I had to scrub the sumbitch off before a blacktie event on Saturday. Temporary tattoo technology has come a long way since I was a kid.)
We talked about sending these photos to his fiancée, and wondered what she might think about them. Jamie’s response was, “I think she’d prefer to see me doing this dumb shit with you idiots than getting lap dances at a strip club.” A fair point.
And while it’s true there were more off-color jokes, crudeness, and general male juvenile disgustingness than is fit to print in a month’s worth of Eks Axis columns, ultimately it’s just fun to goof off and drink beer with your friends for a few days and not worry about your boring adult life for a change.
At one point while sitting on the beach, Carson announced the following, “I’m gonna go dig a giant hole. Who wants to join me?” Keith did, and then Tron. Once they had a pretty damned impressive hole dug, they started in on the castle. Then the kids showed up because of course they did. Adults are better at building shit than kids, so when a group of them undertakes a project, naturally the kids will gravitate to them.
Their parents were understandably wary at first, but after seeing how harmless we all are and staying within eyeshot, I think were just happy to have a few moments peace for a change.
The next morning Tron texted his wife. It read, “I built a sandcastle with Keith and Carson and a bunch of kids.”
I suggested he add this to the end of that text, which would have perfectly (and ironically) encapsulated the goofy spirit of the entire weekend: “You know… guy shit.”
Sometimes I don’t know how we all found each other, but thank God we did.
