Infinite Bachelor Party

My oldest friend Andrew visited this week. Last week, my brother and his wife and kids visited, so this is two consecutive weekends of visitors for me. Such a rare thing when you live this far away, and I probably won’t have any more visitors for a long time.

It turns out that one of Andrew’s friends from his days living in D.C. lives just a few miles from me, so the three of us went out to the bar district together. Generally, I have no social life other than my girlfriend, and I’ve been hankering for some manly escapades, some gallivanting with a posse, some debauchery a la days of old.

I’m not going to get too wistful or wordy about it, but I need a blog post and it seems most pertinent, so here goes.

Short of evoking childhood itself, the responsibility-free days of summer vacations spent playing video games, exploring the woods, and reading Calvin and Hobbes, I’d say that the most lighthearted state of mind is that of going on a bachelor party. It’s a rare, fleeting occasion, a cause for living to the fullest without worrying about the free time and money you’ve set aside for it. It’s an urban romp, in styyyyle, with a few good men.

This was not a bachelor party. It was just three dudes romping around the city.

But these days, even such a thing is so rare as to evoke that same debonair level of mindset.

I suppose it’s in part due to the fact that I happened to be in the midst of an Ocean’s 11 12 13 marathon before Andrew visited. David Holmes’ music combined with Brad Pitt’s wardrobe… I mean, come on. I could just as well be at a bachelor party in St. Louis with those rock stars from two years ago.

I take what I can get, and the rest I exaggerate into semi-realization.

I call this mindset “Infinite Bachelor Party,” with capital letters. I don’t know how to describe it other than that. In the moment, I’m holding previous memories of gallivanting around on bachelor parties in my mind, fancying the notion of the Nexus from Star Trek Generations which defies quantum physics. Forget about work, forget about time and money constraints—so much so that you imagine the high times are “infinite.”

Infinite Bachelor Party. Feeling like a million bucks… for as long as the buzz holds out.

Of course, this week it was actually just me being the sober driver for two dudes in Austin. I probably should have saved the concept for this post for events that were actually up to par. Oh, well. These days, I have to take what I can get.

I suppose this is a continuation of the ideas from the following blog posts:

Quantum Friendship
Imaginary Friends
Dress To Kill