francis

(boy, it's been a while, readership, so much has happened since last we met.)

(so i guess i am a little late in writing this and i'm not sure how crisply the details of the following events will be remembered, partly as a result of the nature of the events themselves and partly because there have been too many stimuli in my life recently and my detail-remembering dial is set on "economy". in the case of details which are not crisply remembered, they will be completely fabricated.)

dan poppy got married and so did angie salisbury. on the same day no less! thankfully they spared all of their friends the agony of choosing whose wedding to attend by marrying each other. me and nick and seth were the groomsmen, which is the only word i can think of that has the consonants "msm" in a row. so we arranged the bachelor party. 

it was a secret and obviously the first thing to take into consideration when you're arranging a secret bachelor party is to try to make the groom think you are going to make him do something like go to the penn national horse track and al's diamond cabaret in reading, pa. it was not hard to convince dan that we were going to do something super lazy and ironic to honor him. well within the realm of possibility.

the second thing to do is to pick the activities for the weekend. to do this, we had to ask ourselves what does dan love? if you said whiskey, you're right. also long walks on majestic white sand beaches? wild ponies? yep, again. um, 11 dudes in a van with two gallons of chili? well, he likes 6 of the dudes, but he definitely loves both gallons of chili. 

number three is invite people that you think the groom would invite. this is hard, because a) you kind of have to hierarchically rank your friend's friends and also it is easy to project your own thoughts about your mutual friends onto that hierarchy. and b) you will forget people and there will be people on the bubble and some people who can't come. 

the fourth order of business is to contact the friend's boss and arrange to kidnap them from work. dan's boss is josh and he was an excellent accomplice.

lastly, most of the details should be nebulous until the very last minute, because things are way more interesting when they are frantically thrown together at the last minute. bring a whiffle ball and bat, though. 

so we decided on assateague island (off the coast of maryland) as our destination. it is this long amazing barrier island of sand beaches with wild ponies. we were hoping to get 6-8 people, so we invited twelve. eleven accepted. we rented a 12-person van and we bought two gallons of chili from ben's chili bowl for $80. extra for the onions. we got food that would satisfy all of the dietary requirements of the group, because we were a very cosmopolitan lot. 6 liters of whiskey seemed adequate. 

there were some near disasters. marson was going to drive back to new york after delivering water and s'mores materials to the camp. apparently our site was full, and the rangers told a mightily disgruntled marson that he couldn't stay with us. now walking along the beach to meet him after playing some whiskey whiffle ball, i had stumbled upon a fairly large and brightly colored toy boat. it was probably 2 feet long. so it was while holding this treasure that i was told that "this was not one of nate's best ideas", before he turned on his heels and trudged off along the beach. we had given marson vague words of encouragement about coming back out to the site. we promised to at least find him a ride back to the parking lot. no one thought we were going to see him later.

so it was with heavy hearts and a toy boat that we were making our way along the beach back to our site, me and dan and jesse. we played rock paper scissors to decide who was going to talk to the first car to come our way. dan lost. we made him do it even though it was his party; fair is fair. so dan convinced this carload of two couples, either drunk with the satisfaction of a relaxing and fruitful day fishing, or more likely keystone light, to pick brian up where he was walking, 300 yards down the beach. he said something like "our friend really needs a ride up to the ranger station, you guys look pretty full, but is there any chance you could pick him up?" 

"yeah, we're good people"

"oh thanks, i really appre..."

 then the driver's eyes got real wide, like cartoon wide. "TUGGY! HE FOUND TUGGY!" this seemed about right, like it was about time in the bachelor party for the carload of intoxicated marylanders who were about to pick up our sullen friend (so that he could drive four hours home) to grow startlingly excited over a molded plastic tugboat that they had apparently lost and had sailed a few hundred yards down the beach to the point where i had found it washed up next to some horseshoe crabs of almost equal size. one question about the situation and our arrangements comes immediately to mind, and it has to do with age and childrens' toys and mental states and good ideas, but i don't know the answer either, so i won't even ask it. so marson would at least get a ride to the ranger's station.

but he came back. and we had a fire on the beach. and macaroni and cheese (and gluten-free macaroni and cheese) and hot dogs (and not-dogs) and whiskey (and scotch and rye and bourbon). 

(so now for the moral right, 'cause you knew i was gonna do it.) as men we aren't all that accustomed to expressing our love for one another. the fact that 11 people each took the time to travel many hours (from dc and new york, pittsburgh and harrisburg, north carolina and oregon) speaks volumes about how much dan's friends care about him. the fact that everything that almost went wrong didn't and that everything that seemed like a good idea was goes to show that some deity up there knows he deserves it. and i for one am starting to think that it is tuggy...