Sequestered in Memphis: Part 3

The door to our hotel room sucked. Something was wrong with the latch, such that when you stuck your keycard in and turned the handle, the lock didn't always pop. Thus, it was not rare for it to take ten or fifteen tries before the door would open. Most attempts were accompanied by a shoulder banging into the door and unimaginative cursing.

Around 9 a.m. Saturday, I awoke to someone fervently turning the door handle and a shoulder repeatedly slamming against our door. Seven tries later, Butch Rifle walks in the door with bloodshot eyes and a shit-eating grin, plops down in the desk chair, and asks how we're doing. Greg and I were each sleeping in our own queen bed, so we were doing pretty fucking great.

It turns out that Butch brought his lady back to the hotel after leaving Raiford's. But being a nice temporary roommate (and realizing that this girl probably didn't want Greg and me intently watching her get plowed while we barked out commands and clapped or hissed, depending on what the situation called for), Butch got another room at our hotel -- since dubbed Butch Rifle's Champagne Room. Butch had just seen his lady off into the Memphis morning. For some reason, he then plugged in his iPod and asked if we were up. I thought it was pretty obvious that neither of us were up, since we were both asleep when he walked in, so I politely asked him to turn his iPod off because I was going back to sleep. He obliged and said that he was going to see what everyone else was up to. Then he left the room singing "In bar light, she looked alright / In daylight, she looked desperate," or at least that would have been both awesome and apropos.

I re-awoke around 12:45, feeling pretty good about myself. Soon thereafter, everyone met up in the lobby. When Butch attempted to check out of his Champagne Room earlier that morning, the front desk clerk explained that, due to the time he checked in (sometime after 6 a.m.), his night had technically not yet come (even if he had), and he had the room until Sunday. Bonus!

Several people were visibly or audibly struggling on Saturday -- most notably, the bachelor. We headed over to Beale Street to get some food, deciding on a place called Dyer's that was rumored to serve good burgers.

Dyer's was founded in 1912, and it has used the same grease since then, which means that the grease has never seen the Cubs win a World Series. The burgers were good, as were the fries. I did wish I would have gotten the chicken tender, which Greg got. I had a chunk of a tender, and it was phenomenal. They do good things with fried food down there. As the song goes, "Everything's fried here in Memphis," which I found to be true, both literally and figuratively.

I forgot to eat for the rest of the day.

After Dyer's, we walked down Beale Street, saw some kids doing backflips down the block, and hit up a couple stores. A stranger took this picture of us using Butch Rifle's daguerreotype. We had to hold that pose for eighteen minutes, which wasn't nearly as hard as convincing the people in the background to do the same. Adam was in rough shape, internally, at least. On the outside, he looked like a hundred dollars. He claimed to have fallen victim to "food poisoning," not unlike one of my roommates senior year who got "food poisoning" at Bamba's after drinking 15 beers. It was especially odd, considering he had eaten pretty much the same thing everyone else had eaten, and drank the same drinks as everyone else as well. I blame the Russkies.

While we were in the gift shop next to B.B. King's, Ryan made some horrible reference to Tombstone, so bad, in fact, that I can't even remember the quote. Out of all of the great quotes in that movie, he picked something that kind of made sense in the context of the situation (i.e., waiting for Adam to buy something), but not as much sense as "Your friends might get me in a rush, but not before I make your head into a canoe, you understand me?," which Ryan quietly told every group of women we walked past.

Anyway, after we returned to the hotel and got our wits about us, we headed in two cars down Highway 61 (aka, The Blues Highway) towards Tunica, Mississippi. When we crossed into Mississippi, I crossed state number 44 off my list. Only the Dakotas, Alabama, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont are left. Residents of those state, be warned. I'm coming for you.

As you may or may not know, Tunica (or, more properly, the area around Tunica, which is commonly referred to as "Tunica" by the outside world) is home to eight casinos and is now the third-largest gaming region in the U.S., behind Vegas and Atlantic City. In addition to casinos, Tunica is home to cotton fields, despair, and little else.

Greg, Dave, Mike, and I (I think that was the group) were in one car, while the rest were in another. The other car hit a couple of snags, namely the several stops they had to make to allow Adam to vomit on Mississippi.

On the first stop, we see Adam staring at his shadow through some sort of futuristic 3-D eyeglasses. The self-hatred is captured quite nicely.

Uncomfortable with his silhouetted likeness, Adam grabs a concrete post for physical and emotional support.

Despite his fragile and unstable emotional state, Adam agreed to continue south. "Fuck this state, and fuck you guys," he might have said. No more than ten minutes later, Adam unleashed his fury just off Highway 61. And by "fury," I mean "cheeseburger."

Dylan did not approve. He just sat there scowling, rambling about "putting some bleachers in the sun," while Waldo chilled in the back with his camera.

Special thanks go out to Butch and JD for the action shots. Adam, I'm sorry I forced myself to publish these photos, but I think they serve an important purpose. People must remember that the purpose of a bachelor party is the amusement of everyone but the bachelor. Let this also be a lesson for you future bachelors: don't let your friends bring camera or camera phones or Nineteenth Century photographic devices to your bachelor party. Also, don't get food poisoning. Also, strap on a pair. I'm just sayin'.

We decided to go to Gold Strike Casino because we're idiots.

After what seemed like days there, we left. While none of us won all that much, it is fair to say that none of us left Memphis with a tattoo of Adam's face on any part of our bodies. After a brief jaunt down the wrong road, we revisited Highway 61 and headed back up to Memphis.

Back at the hotel, everyone was getting ready for the evening. No lizards were harmed this time around. However, we only had five warm beers and one small ice bucket at our disposal, since people were using the sink. Thus, I ably cooled each beer one at a time using the tried and true "spin the can in ice" method. The ratio of people to beer was too many, so I refused to give a surprisingly cold beer to any of the naysayers. I also didn't give one to Adam, since he still looked like he was one whiff of anything away from shuking.

We decided to head out anyway. Here's the part of the story where I don't tell you that, on the way to a club, we took two cabs, and one of the cabbies was admittedly drinking Miller High Life out of an Arizona Iced Tea tall boy can while driving, and appeared to be extremely high as well. Luckily, I was not in that cab. Instead, my cabbie was 350 pounds and had no qualms with exceeding the speed limit while cranking "Cross Eyed Mary" by Jethro Tull.

That's about all I can tell you about the several hours that occurred from when we left the hotel to when we returned, also via cab, but without an openly intoxicated driver or Ian Anderson's presence.

Upon our return from the club, it was about 3 in the a.m. Butch Rifle went back to his Champagne Room because his horse back to Chicago left about seven hours later, and he was running on zero hours of sleep. Everyone else but Greg and me was driving back to Chicago in the morning. Ergo, Greg and I were the only ones who decided to get a late-night drink. We headed to Beale Street to Alfred's, which was open until 5. While sitting on the patio and enjoying several Newcastles, I continued to get devoured by mosquitoes. To reiterate, I hate mosquitoes. When leaving, the bouncer said that there was a nearby bar open until 7 a.m. That seemed unnecessary at the time, so we headed back to the hotel for the second night in a row without the help of James. Upon entering the hotel, we bee-lined to the front desk, since an 11 a.m. checkout seemed unreasonable. The clerk was able to give us until 12:30, which was nice of him. "Be safe," he said, as we strolled towards the elevator bank.

In the next and final installment: More ribs, guitars, and walking out of Memphis.