The Morning After the Morning After

(Disclaimer: Names will be used according to my judgment and might be changed situationally to protect the guilty.)

Prologue

I need a remedy.

I spent all last weekend in the company of old friends celebrating the life of the one who brought us all together. Along with all of the laughter, silly teen drama and hook-ups¹ that we shared; we used to drink a lot.

As they say, some things never change. There was a lot of laughing, almost no hurt feelings and not a lot of screwing around². But Jesus tap-dancing Christ do we all remember how to drink.

Thursday

We started on Thursday night, the night before we were scheduled. My old friend Barry drove an RV from Chicago that he parked in front of my house. We walked down to the bar which I thought was a reasonable precaution. Though all we were going to do was sort of map out the rest of the weekend with one or two other folks who blew into town early.

There were already six of us there, including our retired high school history teacher Hutch, sharing a few pitchers of Fat Tire. Nice and casual, I thought as I approached the table. There was this young guy sitting there and I remember thinking, Somebody brought their kid to the bar, weird.

The young guy stood up and looked at me with an awkward smile on his face. I smiled and nodded, equally unsure of the greeting protocols and we walked past each other. Something about him was too familiar.

I sat down at the table and poured a glass of beer. Nice, I thought. "Who's the kid?" I think I asked.

"That's Mark's son." Either Lettie or Stacy told me this. They had flown in separately, but were crashing at a local bed and breakfast.

Whoever it was that told me, a geriatric could have pushed me over with her pinky finger.

I bounced back up and approached him. We shook hands.

"My name is Matt."

"Joby," he said. He had a unique smile, easy and nervous at the same time. "I didn't know who to introduce myself to."

"I know how you feel."

His mother Mary is a member of the group who could not free up the time to come down. But, being as this gathering was being held in Mark's honor (Did I mention that? I'll get to it. The circumstances of the weekend may have subtly impaired my storytelling abilities.) Joby wanted to make the trip down (up) to meet his Dad's old friends. His stepdad Jim brought him³.

We all sat down and somebody had ordered a round of Jaeger shots. Not really my speed, but I didn't want to be a bummer and abstain. After I had successfully washed my mouth out with beer, I started telling Joby stories about his dad and all the stupid fun things we had done together. I didn't hold the floor by any means, everybody had something to contribute and the hours passed agreeably, but too quickly and the pitchers rose and fell like the tide.

Also, there was the tequila. This was also not my drink, but it was definitely Mark's. Given that this was true, I couldn't refuse to take one. I was far enough gone that I didn't even get a twinge.

Somewhere around here, my wife called. She later told me my efforts to sound lucid were very amusing.

I sat back down next to Joby and noticed he had a platter with about five shots sitting there. He was shaking his head.

Naturally, I couldn't let him go through that alone.

We ended the night eating at a local Italian restaurant that makes a pretty fine New York style pizza. Jennifer arranged this. It was absolutely the smartest thing that could've been done. Probably saved some lives.

In fact, it would have been a better place to start rather than to finish, but it is what it is. I ate a fair amount, pausing in the middle to help Stacy back to her car for a little nap.

Clearly, we were all out of shape.

If we ever made a plan for the next day, I don't remember what it was.

Barry and I walked back to my house. I had a giant bottle of Mead that Robby had home brewed. I told him I didn't want to drink it that night because my pallet was already polluted by beer, Jaeger and Tequila, but that left me with the need to make it home with this in hand. I imagine my efforts to make it look inconspicuous were pretty amusing.

¹Apparently, just about everybody was getting a little with most everybody else. Except me, of course. I must have been wearing blinders. How could I not know?

²I guess I don't know why I would trust my observational skills now. I mean seriously, if everything you people were saying is true, I should have had hip waders for negotiating your various bodily fluids. Did I have BO?

³A word about Jim. This guy brought his stepson to a gathering of his stepson's old friends and took approximately .7 seconds to fit right in. I'm estimating, it had already happened by the time I arrived. He had a few great stories about Mark from the time Mark was in the military and told them with style. He is a mensch. More about him as the story progresses.