White Wedding Weekend

Two weekends ago (or the weekend of October 5th, for those of you who need it spelled out for you), one of my closest friends got married in Connecticut. This, of course, required a trip to the aforementioned state, so on that Friday I joined my heterosexual lifemate Jabba on the MetroNorth. The two of us were splitting a hotel room for the weekend, something anyone who knows us could tell you would lead to some fun times. The surprisingly sober train ride saw us have some ridiculous conversations ranging from Avengers vs X-Men to Supernatural to Doctor Who (which took up the largest chunk of the conversation, which only makes sense when you consider the wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-ness of it) to my love life (the admittedly shortest part of the conversation; I seriously lost two different dates to this wedding. Who does that happen to??).

We even tried to fix my ridiculously malfunctioning, randomly deleting pictures on it's own phone, but that was beyond even the power of the great technopath I traveled with.

Once we arrived in the land time forgot, we hooked up with Renaldo, the lucky(?) groom, and went to the hotel, where, along with his best friend, we pounded two quick rounds of shots before checking in, dropping our shit off at the room, and heading off to rehearsal; Jabba was one of the groomsman and I, in my capacity as Reverend Jim, was doing a reading, so attendance was mandatory.

For the first time in print, Rev. Jim in da hizzouse!

After rehearsal, we popped back to the room for a few minutes, where I fiddled with my netbook, also known as the only piece of technology I own that is more temperamental than my phone, until I had it hooked up to the hotel wi-fi and had Spotify rocking the tunes. We then headed out to the rehearsal dinner, which was at a BBQ/soul food joint where I filled up on fried chicken, wings, rice, and macaroni and cheese... so this place was basically heaven for me, but with beer and wine instead of vodka and whiskey. So I guess it was more like purgatory. Whatever it was, it was delicious. Apparently the wine wasn't moving as fast as was expected because when the dinner ended, there were quite a few bottles left. Rather than leave poor Renaldo with all these bottles, Jabba and I liberated two of them and brought them back to our room, where they joined the bottle I had brought up with me.

Our own personal Three Wise Men...

There were plans to meet up with whoever was game in the hotel bar a half hour later, so with that time to kill, we decided to have a glass or two of wine in our room while we waited. For me, that involved pouring wine into a glass once or twice. For Jabba, it involved this:

Dionysius incarnated!

We headed down to the hotel bar, joined up with Renaldo and everyone else who felt like drinking and did a bunch of shots and had a few cocktails, including a Red Ice Martini... I can't remember what was in it, but as Ferris Bueller said, "It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up." Or two. Or five.

After a sufficient amount of drinks, the two of us and Renaldo's sister decided to mosey out to the McDonald's we had seen a block away for some literal midnight snackage... but the McDonald's was closed. At midnight. On a Friday night.

Like I said: the land that time forgot.

We ended up with some sandwiches from Subway, which we took back to the room and devoured over wine and more ridiculous conversation. We were up drinking til around 2am, with the alarms set for 7am so we'd have plenty of time before the 10am wedding. Which was fairly stupid of us, because even though we woke up at 7am, we didn't get out of bed until around 8:45am anyway. We suited up, and it was off to the wedding.

Looking that good and being dateless is just a crime, folks.

The ceremony was lovely, and I don't just say that because the reverend doing the reading from Genesis was brilliant. The officiant was spitting some wisdom, especially when he drifted away from all the religious stuff and just got down with some life lessons. My only criticism is that at one point he said something about living together through joys and celebrations, trials and difficulties... it really should have been "joys and celebrations, trials and tribulations," just for the poetry of it all, but that's just the arrogant writer in me sticking his head out.

We were joined at the ceremony by our friend Jose, and later by more friends at the reception, which was just good fun. Some drinking, some eating, some dancing, you know, all the usual. I did see Renaldo cat-daddy, which is a sight I'll never forget. Then we did our trademark typewriter dance to close the show.

As the song goes, after the party was the after-party, as Jose, Jabba, and I grabbed some more vittles at McDonald's, which was actually open. There was also a bit of a confrontation with a guy who swore he was pissing blood and needed to get to a clinic, which actually got a five dollar bill from Jabba. Back in the room again, we ate, had some more wine, and watched the Cosby Show, a show so black that one point Jabba said, "this show is even too black for me." We did see the first appearance of Rudy's friend Kenny, a.k.a. Bud, which is a plot point to remember later.

"My brother says..."

Jabba was tired, but Jose and I were still feeling froggy at this point, so the two of us made our way back down to the hotel bar, where I enjoyed another Red Ice Martini. Seriously, you should get one. Now. After spending awhile down there talking to the cute bartender, I said we should get back up to the room and finish the wine we had; the bartender asked us what kind and when I said we had half a bottle of red and half a bottle of white left, she suggested we make our own sangria.

Which is exactly what we did. And then Jabba drank it out of the room's coffee pot.

It's like a mug in his hand. He's a drinking god.

We watched a bad movie on the SyFy channel (because, despite what Jabba says, there isn't any other kind of movie on the SyFy channel), then watched some other TV and drank sangria til we all fell asleep, first Jose, then Jabba, then me. At some point during the night... or morning, for all I know... Jose left; when we woke up, Jabba asked me when Jose left and my response was that I had no idea he left in the first place left. We shrugged, and proceeded to finish the sangria while Jabba ate a burger and apple pie he had left over from the night before as we googled Kenny from the Cosby Show, looking for memorable quotes and video clips and giggling to ourselves like Asian schoolgirls. And with that, our wedding weekend came to an end. We got dressed, packed, checked out, caught the train, and made our ways home. After a tiring weekend filled with fun and drinking, I was never so happy than to be back home in Maspeth, crashing in my own bed.

That was a happiness I got over fast!