Ian's Bachelor Party

Ian and Catherine. Aug 11th 2007.

I’ve known Ian since the first day he beat me up. He and I played Lacrosse against each other in high school. That’s probably when he beat me up, I didn’t know it at the time though. We really met at Skimdore College, once all the bruises had healed and internal hemorrhaging had stopped. Eventually, I ending up living on his back porch in Boston, then down the street from him in Cambridge, then nowhere near him while he was in Raleigh, and then in the room down the hall in Chicago. Then he met Catherine, broke our lease, moved out with me and in with Catherine, and I haven’t seen that same Ian since.

Now, wait a second. I know what you are thinking. “Oh God! This is another one of those, ‘my buddy met a girl and now I never talk to him because she is sucking his free-spirited soul away with a straw made of sledge hammer while tap dancing on his credit rating and holding his balls hostage in a mason jar of formaldehyde.’” No. That is not what I am saying. I know that Catherine is the best thing to ever happen to Ian. She is amazing. She rescued the Man from the Mess and made him a better man. But yes, I do miss the Ian I knew in college and the years beyond; the one that would stay up until 6am drinking lighter-fluid and eating dog food, the one with a scraggly and tangled mess of a beard, with little chunks of breakfast caught in the mustache, the one that would tell endless stories about barfing and farting, the one who could lose any object of any size in his room because the mounds of dirty laundry all over his floor were so deep that they were actually inches above his bed, the one that would sleep til noon and not put on pants til 5pm, the one who received the nickname “SwampThing” due to his odor and cleanliness habbits. I miss that Ian, but that Ian had to die. And had to die brutal gory death. That being said, what death is more brutal and gory than getting your head bashed in with battle hammer of true love and devotion. Catherine wields such a deadly weapon, hell-bent on the gruesome destruction of the dreaded and stinky SwampThing.


Yeah, I miss SwampThing, but now Ian has a job, and uses a razor and wakes up with the sun, which I just can’t seem to ever want to do, and now he has a beautiful and wonderful wife and a bright future full of love and companionship. Way to go, asshole. Look at the examples you’ve set for all your slack ass buddies. You’ve got a house, a dog, a wife, a deck, a back yard, a fucking garage to park your fucking car in so that you don’t get $50 fucking Chicago fucking parking fucking tickets (FUCK!), and you’ve got an all around pleasant odor and demeanor. Fuck off, dude. What’s this douche-baggery? We are not as good at life as you are, fucktard. Slow the fuck down and wait for me to at least get a reason to wake up in the morning, while I still can claim a grasp on youth. You and your fucking happiness.

This is how things went down in the final days of Ian's life as "Swampthing".

We went to Saratoga for the bachelor party, we being Ian (the blushing groom), Brad (a college buddy and fellow trouble maker), Chris (Ian’s brother), Christopher (Catherine’s cousin), Noodle (a 6’6”, 120lb heir to the water noodle fortune), James (a co-leaser with Ian in an abandon building that became known as the Fort) and I (I refuse to submit any details about myself that will be self incriminating). There we partied like idiots, but not before taking an afternoon bachelor party field trip to the local Gelato shop. Do we know how to party or what. After that delicious treat retreat, we swaggered our bachelor-partying-having-selves over to the non-stop madhouse party that is Borders books. I managed to take these quick pictures before things got totally nuts in the periodicals section.

After that exhausting jaunt through an expensive ice cream shop and the whirlwind extravaganza that was the bookstore, some of the boys needed a nap. Holy crap, are we old or what. After emptying out our colostomy bags, pressing our pleated pants, cleaning our dentures and polishing our best penny loafers for a night out on the town, the boys all met up on the porch, where lounge chairs were lounged in, good times were shared, jokes were made at Ian's expense, cigars were smoked...



and Brad was slapped in the face


Then we were off to DA’s for drinks. There, we shot darts, shot pool, shot shots, drank drinks and got all around obliteratedly belligerent. And like all good bachelor parties, things started to get a little homoerotic.









And then Brad got slapped in the face again.

In fact, everyone got slapped.



Christopher seemed to enjoy a bit too much. Look how bright and soft his eyes are. We might have discovered and unleashed the masochist in him.

Rock, the bartender, decided that I needed to be part of my very own wet tee-shirt competition, which I won.


(How bout that sweet mustache, eh?)
I later threw Brad and Noodle over a fence so that they could come in the ‘backdoor’ of the hotel. There was no backdoor to the hotel. Noodle smashed a $150 table with his face, Christopher and I had breakfast at 4am, Brad sucker-punched me in the nose first thing in the morning and I won $15 at the horse track. The hotel has black listed us, as have many of the restaurants, bars and women in Saratoga. What better way to usher out Swampthing and usher in Mr. Merritt than to destroy his reputation, his liver and an expensive hotel room.

And what better woman than Catherine to be his bride. They are amazing together... but I don't think she would have liked us had she met us on Caroline St in Saratoga. What a great fucking party.


Oh yeah, everyone seems to asks if there were strippers or hookers at this bachelor party. Now, we couldn’t let our boy, Ian, join the ranks of the married without getting him his own stripper. At the time, I was told no photography but I managed to shoot one picture during the show. Enjoy.