Originally posted: June 01, 2005
In a couple days I’ll be heading out to St. John USVI for a wedding. I haven’t been there in about 10 years, not since Aye Aye and I headed down to the small island to work at a bar/restaurant and spend the summer drenched in sunburns and cheap rum. As I get closer to the day of my buddy Freaky’s wedding, I’m beginning to reflect on a couple things – the last two bachelor parties we’ve just celebrated, that is. So I figured I’d go ahead and write a little something about my brother Dre’s bachelor party first and get to Freaky’s when I have a chance. And coincedentally, when I sat down at my laptop to bang out the little tale, I noticed a new email in my inbox with a link to all the photos of the event. Ah man, good times and good memories! And to think that I had already forgotten that a bird shit on my shoulder…
So The Knife and I threw a bachelor party for our brother Dre out in Hermosa Beach, CA. Ten or so of us headed out there – a fine group of fellows consisting of rats, skaters, and a punk with a mohawk – to stay in a “cottage” at the end of the end of the pavilion that looked out onto the beach and was a mere stumble to a whole host of bars. It was going to be a weekend of surfing, blasting old school punk rock, and drinking cans of shitty beer on the front porch. We never got around to doing any surfing.
Being that Dre is the older brother of The Knife and me, and has a tad more dignity than the two of us, we decided to respect his wishes and planned to keep the embarrassment, hooliganism, and all-out debauchery to a minimum. Ok fine, so maybe not the debauchery. But we weren’t going to go out of our way to humiliate the guy in public. Except of course, for the one thing he knew he couldn’t escape, and was not looking forward to at all…
The Return of the Leatherman…
As Dre walked into the bachelor party cottage for the first time, we introduced him to the outfit he’d have to wear to accomplish his one task as the guest of honor: a leather Judas Priest cap, a pair of tight black nylon biker shorts, black fake-leather ankle-high boots, a silver snake-shaped band to be worn around a bicep, blue-tinted sunglasses, and a black mesh tank-top emblazoned with the official adjective of The Leatherman – FIERCE.
Dre just shook his head, knowing that sometime before the weekend was over, he’d be wearing all this horrible shit. And he’d be wearing it in public.
This wasn’t going to be the first appearance of The Leatherman, mind you. Nor would it be the last. It was to be the third appearance in what will hopefully be a long and humiliating tradition of bachelor parties to come. The first appearance was our pal Z as Leatherman in Las Vegas, walking through the casinos of the MGM carrying a boom box blasting some club song that exclaimed over and over how it was “Blue, dadda deeda dadda da.” The second appearance was The Knife as Leatherman roller skating through cones on the boardwalk of San Diego. Appearance number 3 was closing in…
So the next couple days were filled with cold beer and warm Grand Marnier shots, Screeching Weasel flowing from the iPod speakers, and a shitload of laughs. I puked for the first time in years, and a bird shit on my shoulder. Not at the same time, though.
Then Saturday arrived, and all ten of us were sitting around the cottage, hungover and lazy, sipping on beers that were going down our throats like daggers. Some of the dudes were laying around on couches staring mindlessly at the Ultimate Fighter Marathon on TV while the rest of us lingered around the front porch smoking cigarettes and brainstorming some of the most unacceptably tasteless and entirely unrepeatable ideas for reality tv shows that we could think of. We could feel ourselves letting the day slip away, and I wouldn’t be suprised if that’s exactly what Dre had in mind. So we pulled ourselves up off our asses, barged into the house, and instructed Dre as to his task.
Dre was to get geared up in the horrid Leatherman attire, hop on a bicycle, and pedal through the Hermosa Beach pavilion with a boom box in the bike’s basket blasting Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and some disgusting song about a milkshake that made “all the boys in the back” do all kinds of weird shit. Freddy Mercury on Wheels, if you will. However, this time The Leatherman needed a friend. Or, a partner, maybe. This “partner” would be named Aaron, and Aaron would be wearing a tight yellow tank top, tight yellow shorts, yellow garden gloves, and a black plastic cowboy hat. Oh, and roller skates. And The Leatherman was going to tow the roller-skating Aaron behind him on his bike.
But who could we get to embarrass himself in the role of Aaron? Well, our pal Freaky was the next in line to have a bachelor party, and would soon be experiencing his own night of humiliation. Why not give him a little taste of what was to come? So it was decided – Freaky would be Aaron.
Dre and Freaky reluctantly began to get dressed in their costumes while the others tied a rope to the back of the bike that Aaron would water-ski behind. As soon as Dre/Leatherman got on the bike for a practice run, the rope got caught up in the tire spokes, and we all stared in defeat at our ruined prop. Hmm, now what? Then The Knife came to the rescue and introduced Plan B: “Freaky, you will roller skate through the pavilion. And Dre, you will ride THIS RAZOR SCOOTER.”
If I could give you all just one piece of advice, it would be this: Always have a Razor Scooter on hand. You just never know when you might need it for laughs.
And so the plan was hatched and the Leatherman and Aaron were ready to roll. We followed them as they headed up to the pavilion and into the main area, dressed in black leather and yellow nylon respectively, and flanked on all sides by bars and restaurants packed with hundreds of Los Angeles patrons enjoying a mid-afternoon drink. Immediately heads began to turn in the direction of our creepy protagonists as the bar-goers heard the familiar tunes of “My milkshake makes all the boys in the back…” Or whatever the fuck that crazy chick is saying.
Nowadays, when he has free time, Dre spends it surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding, and not suprisingly, he took to the Razor Scooter like a pro. I think he was stoked just to be on top of a moving piece of horizontal wood. He zipped up and down the Pavilion, seeming almost oblivious to the cheers and jeers and camera flashes of the strangers around him. Freaky, on the other hand, didn’t bode so well on the skates. He wavered back and forth, not so much skating as he was shuffling around the Pavilion. At one point, Freaky, his black plastic cowboy hat balancing precariously on his head, skated/hobbled over to the middle of the pavilion, and we placed the boom box next to him. Dre zipped by again, smiling, the sunlight beaming off the silver band around his bicep. Some random girl from a bar ran out and began grinding with Freaky. Now, I’ve been on thousands of embarrassing bar adventures with the guy, but it looked like poor Freak was a little humiliated this time. Of course, it may have had more to do with his lackluster roller skating skills.
After the rest of us had laughed ourselves dry at the spectacle our pals were causing, we called them over for one final command. “Leatherman. Aaron. You will now roll over to the nearby bar to enjoy a Pina Colada together.” Freaky, shoulders sagging and ankles buckling in the skates, skated over to the bar. Dre, seeming to enjoy the Razor Scooter way more than he was supposed to, followed suit.
The two slipped into a bar and emerged a few minutes later, each with a big stemmed-glass of Pina Colada in hand. They stood there in the middle of the crowded front deck of the place and sipped their drinks through straws. The rest of us laughed from afar, the delightful sounds of Kylie Minogue as a backdrop. And just when it seemed we’d reached the pinnacle, something quite unexpected happened…
As Freaky stood there, wobbling in his skates, his back turned to the restaurant, some short little girl slipped out through the front door, snaked up behind Freaky, and yanked his yellow shorts down to his fucking ankles. She was back inside the restaurant before we could even get a look at the malicious little pervert’s face.
And that was when I saw one of the most hilarious, and well, disturbing sights of my life. Freaky, my old friend of many years, standing there in a black cowboy hat and yellow tank-top, buck-ass naked from the waist down, trying to balance on his roller skates while bending down to pull up his yellow shorts with one hand and trying not to spill the Pina Colada in the other. Holy shit, man. We all just stood there, mouths agape. As did all the other people on the front porch of the restaurant who had not expected to some yellow-clad jerk’s junk while they ate lunch.
The Knife let out a low “Ooooohhhh maaan”, a sudden rush of sympathy flowing through him. He shut off the boom box and announced, “That’s it. It’s gone too far. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
He felt terrible for the guy. Did I? Nope. I was damn stoked. Accidental public nudity! Awesome!
Anyone who knows me is well aware that nudity is not something I’m terribly bothered by. It’s easy comedy. But more than that, I get a kick out of how we all play the game that we don’t all share the same parts. Well, respectively, of course. We walk around all day, well aware of our own ass, and tell ourselves that everyone around us doesn’t have the same exact thing under their jeans. It’s the same thing as toilets. We refer to them as RESTrooms and POWDERrooms and BATHrooms, and when someone excuses his or herself to use one and doesn’t come back for a few minutes, we tell ourselves that he or she is just fixing their hair. But, we all know… Yep, we all know what’s going on in there… This person is taking a dump.
There. I said it.
Nudity and bathrooms are great, aren’t they? Cause they’re something we all have in common, yet none of us want to admit it. And that, my friends, makes for some easy comedy.
Anyway, hippy philosophies aside, nudity is still not an accepted practice in public circles. And it tends to cause embarrassment, so I’ve been told. But Freaky handled the situation with a style and grace that could only come from a man who’s spent years perfecting his pub-monkey act. He pulled his shorts up, adjusted his cowboy hat, and calmly finished his Pina Colada while the two young hostesses beside him giggled and mouthed to each other “Ooohhh. Myyy. Gaaaawwww.” At that point, I was following The Knife back home. I didn’t share the empathy he did, but I was a little concerned about getting arrested.
We watched from the front porch as Freaky and Dre rolled back towards homebase. Freak took a seat on a chair and began to unlace his skates. He breathed out a sigh of relief that it was finally over. And then a bird flew overhead. And shat on his shoulder.
And thus concluded another appearance of The Leatherman. And for the first time, it seemed The Leatherman had gotten off scott-free. Dre somehow managed to channel all the embarrassment and bad luck over to someone else – Freaky. Aaron. The man in the yellow tank-top, black plastic cowboy hat, and yellow shorts down around his ankles… And unfortunately for him, in the next couple weeks we’d soon be pulling out the infamous leather Judas Priest cap and that mesh FIERCE shirt for another round of embarrassment for poor Freaky on his own bachleor party in the streets of Atlanta…
Anyhow, a round of congrats to Dre on wearing a leather Judas Priest cap and riding a Razor Scooter, and somehow NOT looking like the biggest jerk in Hermosa Beach…
