The Haunted Bachelor Party

Bachelor parties have gotten ridiculous. What used to be one booze-filled evening the night before the wedding has somehow become an excuse for a weekend-long, boys-only, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas level shit show.  The idea is that grooms want one last weekend of childish debauchery before putting on a wedding ring, entering the prison of monogamy and spending the rest of their lives locked up to the old ball and chain. There’s a prevailing sense a Bachelor Party is the man’s last weekend of freedom before his balls go on lockdown and he’s forced to bury his sense of fun, along with an entire repertoire of dick and fart jokes. Essentially, bachelor parties function as funerals for a single man’s life and livelihood, though they are rarely somber occasions. Grief is omnipresent, but because bachelor parties are gatherings of adult humans with penises (I hesitate to call them men), it’s almost never discussed; instead, any negative emotions (besides anger) are drowned out by alcohol and other chemicals. In Delaware, we rented a beach house for a bachelor party that was a few days of intensely competitive Beer Olympics. I went to New Orleans for a bachelor party and drank so many hurricanes I couldn’t stop shaking. I’ve been to Vegas for bachelor parties with enough cocaine to kill everyone who saw The Wolf of Wall Street. Thanks to the communal sense of joy and intoxicants, most of the bachelor parties I’ve attended haven't felt like funerals and there was no room for me to feel sadness or mourning.  But there was one I went to where my albinism played a role in amplifying my sense of grief. 

Like many people who go to college and have fun while there, I spent years after graduation hoping to recapture my collegiate sense of joie de vivre, desperately trying to have as much fun at Happy Hours and on weekends as I’d had in my four years of consequence-free partying at school.  My running buddy through many of these booze-soaked evenings was my friend Dan.  We’d gone to college together, were roommates in a larger house our fourth year and, after college, we’d both moved to New York City.  New York City was an incredible place to be young people in pursuit of fun because it’s open all night, there were lots of cute girls and we could drink just about anywhere.  Dan and I went out together three to seven nights a week, cramming as many good times as possible into bar nights, happy hours, brunches and house parties.  Even after I left NYC, I still made it a tradition to head back every year around New Year’s Eve for a few days of getting shit-faced like old times. Dan even came to visit me in LA for long stretches and we’d go out and get hammered like we were still 22.  When I moved to Chicago at 31, I expected our debauched ways to continue but maturity soon found both of us.  Dan was dating the woman to whom he’s now married; as their relationship blossomed, I was beginning a new career and period of personal challenges which would lead me to therapy.  Good thing, too, because two weeks after I started therapy my Uncle drank himself to death, then four months later my Aunt (his sister) committed suicide and a month after that my Mom (sister to both departed) was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Even as a bystander, it was a brutal year.  I felt nothing but grief and was especially poor company for anybody who was in love.  While Dan and I grew up, we also grew apart.  When it came time for his bachelor party five years later, our lives had grown in separate directions to the extent I was mildly surprised to receive an invitation. 

The trip was also a surprise.  One of Dan’s Chicago friends, a guy who is also my friend but better friends with Dan, had planned the whole thing.  He told Dan to pack a bag, but didn’t say why or where he was going. The plan was for three more of us to surprise them at the train station downtown, then head up to Milwaukee for the day, enjoy the city and its brews, crash at an Airbnb and head back in the morning. I wore a t-shirt, jeans and a hoodie because even though Dan and I were 36, I wanted to pass myself off as still in my 20s. The guys we were going with were all that age and this was a throwback weekend.  I got confirmation I looked young at the doughnut shop by the train station when I stopped for coffee and someone asked me, “So, did you just go white really early?” 

I wasn’t talking to this fella. We hadn’t made eye contact.  We did not know one another.  

Though it may seem an odd salutation from a stranger, I’m often greeted like this. As a rule, I don’t like it when people call attention to my albinism and I especially don’t like it when it’s the first fucking thing they say to me out of the fucking blue.  I tend to feel like I’m on display and I get real defensive, real fast if I feel I’m being teased by someone who doesn’t know me well enough to tease me.  However, this weekend was an occasion for joy, so I looked up and smiled.  The man asking me the question was a light-skinned black man in his 20s.  I wanted to ask him if, as a black man, he appreciated it when people called attention to his skin color.  But I couldn’t tell if that sentiment was racist. So, I just remarked, “I have albinism.  My hair’s been this color since birth.” 

“It’s crazy.  Cuz you look young, but…” he trailed off, perhaps realizing how much of his own foot he was cramming into his own mouth. 

“Thanks,” I smiled and paid for my coffee. I looked young.  Mission: accomplished.  As I was handed my change, I heard another voice behind me. 

“What’s up, Professor DeWitt?”  I turned to see a young man in his early 20s.  As I explained in Context is Everything and You’re Not You, I have a hard time recognizing people out of context.  Well, this young man was about 5’ 9” with brown hair and brown eyes, so from a probability standpoint, there’s like a thousand former students he could potentially be. Maybe I’d have recognized him if I hadn’t just been asked about my albinism, but I was on edge, not caffeinated yet and kind of anxious about the bachelor party, so I just smiled, nodded and shuffled to put sugar in my coffee.   

Because I’m legally blind, it’s not easy for me to meet up with people in public.  I have a particularly difficult time recognizing faces in crowds, especially if I’ve only met those people a handful of times.  A couple years prior to this bachelor party, I was meeting some of these same folks at an outdoor German festival.  At that event, I’d walked right up to the group I was meeting and gawked around, not recognizing any of them.  I just stood there like a blind buffoon until one of them awkwardly said what’s up to me and I realized I had unexpectedly found the group I was seeking.  Given that experience and the doughnut shop interactions, I was hyper-aware of my eyesight and albinism and nervous about finding everybody at a crowded Chicago train station on a Saturday morning. After a panic-stricken walk through the station twice, I eventually found a familiar face.  Slowly but surely the group assembled.  Dan was happy to see everyone and we got on the train. 

The day unfolded like most other days of Drinking. There was a massive rush of energy and excitement at first, then this tapered off by mid-afternoon and everyone needed to stop for coffee and water.  Since I don’t Drink like I used to, I’d been nervous about my ability to hang all day but I was feeling energetic and loose. The interactions and anxiety of the morning were forgotten. After recharging, we found ourselves in a tiki bar and conversation turned to the past. As I listened to the four friends tell stories I wasn’t part of, I began to feel like a fifth wheel. They didn’t intentionally exclude me by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just hard to share in nostalgia for experiences I did not have. By the time we got to dinner, the alcohol had begun to betray its purpose. I was drinking to ignore the sorrow I felt at the end of Dan’s singlehood and, by extension, the death of my own youth and carefree years; instead, the alcohol began to fuel my sadness and grief, increasing my sense of isolation and despair. At the steakhouse, I quickly learned an enormous ribeye doesn’t sit well on a stomach full of booze and coffee. My energy and jubilation faded to nauseated sleepiness as everyone else’s drunken night was approaching a crescendo.  The guys struck up a conversation with the table next to us, two middle-aged Wisconsinites.  They explained we were in town for a bachelor party for our friend Dan.  

 She asked “Who’s Dan?” and he raised his hand and then she remarked to me, “So you must be his father.” 

There are times in my life when I would have reacted differently to this slight, which I recognize now, months later, sitting in my office was not intentional.  In the past, I might have called her a dumb B, I might have “accidentally” spilled my drink or food on her or may I would’ve gone outside, smoked a cigarette then come back inside and tried picked a fight with her husband.  Fortunately, this was not one of those times. I just smiled, rolled my eyes and didn’t answer.  Like I said, I grew up. But ignoring her sucked the last of my energy.  I had the guys drop me off at the Airbnb and I passed out on a couch.  They ended up staying out late at a cigar and whisky bar.  I didn’t envy their hangovers on the train back to Chicago in the morning. 

On the subway back to my place, I beat myself up, feeling weak and old, wondering why I didn’t stay out all night, wondering why I’d let other people bringing up my albinism ruin my good time. The bachelor party was supposed to be an escape from despair; instead, I’d let despair overcome me. When I got home, my fiancee (now my wife) gave me a hug and despair lifted. I felt alive in a way I hadn’t all weekend. My understanding of everything changed. I saw I didn’t “let” the people who commented on my albinism ruin my good time, I wasn’t having that good a time to begin with. This statement is not meant as a slight against Dan and the guys at the bachelor party.  They are fun, awesome, hilarious people and when I was young and single, I would’ve had a blast spending all day and night getting drunk with them. But that’s not who I am anymore. The bachelor party didn’t feel like a funeral to me because Dan’s singlehood was dying, it felt like a funeral because the part of me that enjoys drinking all day, having no real responsibilities and being alone died a long time ago.  I was present at the bachelor party, but only as a vague specter of my former self.  I was there as a ghost.  I felt like Bruce Willis at the end of The Sixth Sense. 

My own bachelor party was about six weeks later.  It was low-key and haunted with ghosts in the sense that it was old friends drinking, our once-vibrant, carefree spirits still visible, though only in glimpses and flickers. We exist on different planes now.  Our marriages aren’t prisons and our wives aren’t wardens, but we do have lives we must maintain.  We have spouses and children, careers, subordinates and mortgages, we have personal and professional responsibilities we must tend to with single-minded, unrelenting, never-ending focus.  We’re whatever one’s spirit becomes after being a ghost.  I guess I’m saying we’re zombies now.