Once again, Buffalo whooped my ass. The city that has been such a major part of my partying life since I turned 18 will still not grant me any mercy. Whenever I visit Buffalo it is always an epic time. I always come back with crazy memories, numerous mysterious bruises, a much lighter wallet, and a hangover that lasts 4 days. This most recent trip was no exception. I proved, once again, that 'dignity' is a word not in my vocabulary. I was one of only three people standing up in it. I have stood up in 7 weddings, but being one of Dave's groomsmen was one of the biggest honors of my life! Dave had at least 10 people he could have had stand up in his wedding, yet he chose me. Everyone loved him, for good reason. He was truly the most kind-hearted person I have ever met. I knew him since I was 10. He lived in Old Forge- a small community in the Adirondack Mountains of NY. This is where I spent my summers growing up. I met him playing baseball. We became instant friends, as we were both baseball nuts, and two of the best players in the league. Dave died very unexpectedly March 2010.
I will never fully recover from this tragedy. To read a little about the kind of person he was and the enormous impact he had on my life, read my blog OLD FORGE AND MY FRIEND DAVE.
It didn't take long before I was spending every waking minute during the summer with him. We were inseparable. I would spend the night at his house every night. Not just me, but Dave was notorious for having 4-5 people spend the night at his house every night. It was almost an Old Forge rite of passage; you weren't considered part of the community unless you slept over Dave's house. It was because of all the time I spent around him during the summer that I got to know every other kid in town. I was just as much a local as anyone else. I met so many friends through him; people I still keep in touch with today. For that, I am eternally grateful.
Dave and I stayed close over the years and got together as much as possible. He was always there for me. During the numerous times in my life when I was struggling, he acted as my rock, and gave me unconditional love, support, and encouragement. He believed in me more than I did I think. I was truly honored he asked me to stand up in his wedding. It was finally an opportunity for me to pay him back a little for all he had done for me over the years.
Unfortunately, I ended up making an ass of myself...literally, and gave Dave unneeded stress and tension two days before his wedding. I wanted to pay him back, yet I acted like I wanted revenge; the inverse of payback. This story starts now:
Prince, another groomsman who was also my good friend and I had taken a train to Buffalo from New York City the Thursday before the wedding. We were both broke at the time- so to save money, we decided to stay with one of Prince’s friends in Buffalo rather than in a hotel. We got drunk the night before in Queens, where he lived. I crashed at his place Wednesday night. The next morning we woke up at 8 to catch the train. Most of the way down I crashed, but towards the end of the trip we both started to drink.
We got to Buffalo around 3, then took a cab to Prince’s friend’s house (I don’t remember his name; he was a d-bag; so no need to). We literally walked into this dude’s house, threw our shit down, and then went to the bar across the street. No relaxing at all. After a few drinks here we decided to walk to Thursday in the Square- a summer festival with food and beer where they close down the streets for people. It was like a 30 minute walk. It was definitely worth the wait, though. The three of us pigged out, played carnival games and had about a billion beers. We met up with Dave, the groom for a little bit, too. He couldn’t stay long as he had to do wedding shit.
When this event ended at 8, we walked to the infamous Chippewa Street- the site of so many of my memories (and a few blogs). We were all buzzing pretty good, on the cusp of being drunk. To finish the job, we started doing mass quantities of shots as soon as we got to Chippewa. My buddy Z met me at this one bar where we were doing shots. I remember hanging out with him and his roommate for awhile and then him leaving. I think this was around 10:30. I remember nothing else until 1:00. The following account is pieced together from various sources, as I remember none of it.
Apparently, after Z left the bar, Prince and his friend left as well, leaving me alone. I guess I was so fucked up I was embarrassing them so they ditched me- leaving me stranded with nowhere to go. When I found out I was alone, I called Prince a shitload of times, but his phone was dead. I was starving so I bought a hot dog from a street vendor and shoved the whole thing in my mouth and devoured it. I got relish and mustard all over my shirt. At some point I met up with Z again- he saw me shoving the hot dog down my throat. I was wrecked. As he has done many times before, Z took care of me and made sure I was going to be alright before he left me. He made me call my friend Dave, the groom, for a ride. While waiting to be picked up, I got hungry again and bought a Philly Cheese steak. I ate that whole thing in like 10 seconds. I don’t even think I chewed it. I did, however, get about 8 pounds of grease and catsup all over my face, which went good with the relish and the mustard. Not wanting to waste a napkin, I wiped my face off with my hands. I then wiped my grease covered hands off on my t-shirt. My shirt was now officially ruined. With all the shit I got on it that night it was never the same again. Even now, 3 years later, it still has grease stains.
Dave arrived with his brother-in-law The King to pick me up. He saw what condition I was in and did not want to bring me back to the hotel. Instead, they stayed out and had a few beers waiting for me to sober up. The bars would not even let me in because I was too bombed. Dave had to promise them that I wasn’t going to drink. After chilling for like an hour, Dave finally thought I was sober enough to go back to hotel. On the way back to hotel, we were approached by a homeless guy. He gave us some sob story about how he lost his house. I remember just looking at him pissed off. I looked over at Dave and King and they both looked genuinely concerned. Right when he was finishing his spiel about losing his house, right before the part where he asks us for money, I said to him “Dude, I hope you’re not about to ask us for money, cuz you ain’t getting any.” The dude just looked at me, put his head down, and walked away. Dave was amazed at how rude I was. I don’t care though, I hate homeless people. They are lazy. No reason they can’t get a job. Fuck them! Anyway, I thought Dave had his own hotel room. What I found out when we got there is that my buddy was sharing a room with his mom, his dad, his sister, brother-in-law and his 3-year old niece.
By the time we got to hotel it was past 2. Everyone was sleeping. Dave insisted that I don’t make a peep and go right to bed. I did pretty much pass right out, which is impressive considering I was sleeping on the floor. Normally it would take hours for me to pass out on the floor. Dave slept next to me and I was out before him.
At some point that night I forgot where I was. I woke up a few hours later and thought I was at home. This normally would not be a problem except for the fact that I sleep in the nude at home. I rarely sleep with clothes on, and this time was going to be no exception. I woke up, and stripped off all my clothes, pushed the blanket off me and went back to bed. There I was on the floor, butt naked, with my best friend’s entire family, who I have known for 20 years, in the same room. I wasn’t exactly a quiet sleeper either; my snoring sounded like a Mack truck down shifting. At some point early that morning, King got up to go to the bathroom and saw me laying on the floor, in all my glory. He immediately woke Dave up, who was laying next to me. Now King does not know English that well, so all he knew what to say was
“I see Giant balls and ass”
The poor groom-to-be woke up to see my smelly, wrinkled cock and balls right in front of his face. I am quite sure that’s not the first thing he wanted to see when he woke up. Dave immediately woke me up and yelled at me to put some pants on. He said he didn’t want his 3-year old niece to see me and be scarred for life.
Not comprehending the enormity of my blunder, I simply put my pants back on and went back to bed. I woke up a few hours later and it didn’t hit me what I had done. I saw his whole family and they didn’t say anything to me. “Maybe it wasn’t a big deal”, I thought. Dave gave me a ride to look for where I was sleeping. He mentioned the episode the night before but didn’t dwell on it.
The main objective was finding where the hell Prince was. His phone was still dead and we needed to pick up our tux's that morning and then had the rehearsal dinner later on. Dave and I had both called Prince numerous times. I didn’t know where his buddy lived that we were supposedly staying at either - I was only at his place for about five minutes the night before. We looked around for like 45 minutes. I actually called Z to get the name of the bar we started out at the previous night, as the kid lived right across the street from it. Finally, I saw the bar and told Dave to let me out. We still could not get a hold of Prince but at least we found the general area where he was. I told Dave to leave me there and go take care of wedding shit. I assured him I would keep calling him until he answered. Unfortunately, my cell phone died while in the car - leaving me with no way of communicating. Nevertheless, I insisted to Dave I was going to be ok. Dave reluctantly agreed. Poor guy was getting married in 2 days - the last thing I wanted to give him was added stress. After a few minutes of arguing, he reluctantly agreed. He left me on the sidewalk and drove off to handle some of the other billion issues pressing him before he said "I Do". Once out of the car, I started walking up and down the street aimlessly, knocking on doors, searching for this dude’s house. Finally, about 45 minutes, I saw Prince coming out to the street from the doorway of the house. Very happy to see him, I told him what happened previous night.
We cleaned up then met Dave at Tuxedo Place to get our tuxes. Prince and I got a ride back to his friend’s house to change and then go to rehearsal dinner. Not surprisingly, the apartment door was locked. We had no way of getting our clothes. Everything was in the apartment, our clothes, toothbrushes, deodorants, and cell phone chargers. After trying everything, including climbing in a window, trying to find the super, and asking a neighbor for access, we had no idea what to do. Prince ran across the street to the bar to look up number in the phone book of where his friend worked. We left a message for him to call us. A Good Samaritan let us use her phone to call Dave and tell him what was going on.
Finally, we had to get moving, as rehearsal dinner started in 20 minutes. We had no choice but to go as is, in sweaty clothes we wore the previous night, un-showered and grimy; we hadn’t even brushed our teeth. We both still reeked of alcohol. We walked double-speed to church, with our tuxes slung over our shoulders, wearing the dirty clothes we had on night before. We had no idea where church was, we asked for directions at a convenient store we stopped at. We couldn’t go to rehearsal as we were, so we at least wanted to use deodorant and brush our teeth. I ran into store, bought the two items, and then asked directions to the church. I used deodorant, and then passed it on to Prince. With the toothpaste I bought I went totally ghetto and did the brush your teeth with your index finger trick. I had not done that in years. I felt so dirty.
We did manage to make it to dinner on time. Prince at least had a polo shirt on, as he bought a Yankee polo shirt at the mall when we got our tuxes. Prior to that he had on a dirty tank top he wore night before. I had on a t-shirt. Not wanting to be a dirt bag, I decided to wear my tux shirt at rehearsal dinner. I have never been so nervous; as I was paranoid I was going to spill something. Luckily, the rehearsal dinner went off without a hitch, and we managed not to ruin anything else.
Wedding was great time. My story of previous night’s no-pants episode had spread quickly. That’s all anyone talked about. I was a legend. To this day I can’t look his parents in the eye, but I can honestly say that’s a small price to pay for that story.
I have a long and storied history in Buffalo. Three of the craziest times of my life took place here. Obviously- if you look at title of this post, Buffalo got the best of me each time. As bad as this one was, its not even the most disturbing one. Check out the other 2-
I have a long and storied history in Buffalo. Three of the craziest times of my life took place here. Obviously- if you look at title of this post, Buffalo got the best of me each time. As bad as this one was, its not even the most disturbing one. Check out the other 2-
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