Wednesday and Thursday: Things heating up

So after I wrote on Wednesday (now more than a week ago! but gimme a break, I was gettin' hitched and drivin' home), we played around with some big sticks in the backyard but ultimately decided that constructing a thing would be too much work. Instead, we drove out to Stryker Vineyards and bought some wine to give to the people who stood up with us at the wedding. The guy in the tasting room there gave us the stinkeye when we told him our name plans, which was a little disappointing, but we soldiered on and stopped in at Murphy-Goode to taste some more wine and bought a bottle for ourselves. The guy in there was super nice and gave us a 10% discount - I'm not sure why - but we were grateful for it and enjoyed the winery's cat, a large male rivaled only in size by Loki.

I kind of can't remember what else we did on Wednesday. Oh yeah, I made Mexican wedding cookies (for the wedding, duh) and hemmed my sister's dress. Dan got some paint at the hardware store and he made the directional signs. We wanted to take Sara and Ron out to dinner but they weren't up for it, so instead we hung out some more with my mom and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in town.

On Thursday, we got up and packed a few things that we knew we'd need for the parties on Thursday night in the city (and for sleeping over at other people's places). We picked some of the flowers from my mom's yard (tulips, daffodils, Dutch irises, and freesias) to see how they'd do overnight in water, then drove down to Santa Rosa followed by my mom and picked up my dress. We had lunch with my mom's cousin who came into town from Beijing, China (no lie!) at his hotel and then drove to the wholesale flower place where we found most of what we were looking for (dark purple asters, a variety of mums and poms, a couple of sunflowers, a bunch of delphiniums, ranunculus, more irises, um, I can't remember what else). A whole ton of flowers, for about $45. Then we went to Trader Joe's to try to find the yellow roses Dan wanted for the men's bouts, but they didn't have them. Instead, they had a bunch of other stuff that looked cool, so we got more flowers. We put them all in buckets of water in the back of my mom's van and she drove the dress and flowers back to her house while we made our way down to the Bay Area.

Our first stop was in Berkeley, where I sought out a scarf or wrap from one of the Indian stores that sells saris and the like. Nobody really had what I was looking for, but I finally found a plain green one that I thought would go OK with my dress for $6. And then we went to H&M in Emeryville (well, I went to H&M and Dan wandered around in some other stores) and I found a blouse to wear to the afterparty but no skirt, so I just decided to wear a skirt I'd brought with me. We headed over to the city because by that time it was time to get the parties started, and Dan drove while I poured over the paltry map we had of downtown SF, trying to figure out how to get him where he needed to go (North Beach), switch places, and then drive myself over to my cousin's house in the outer Richmond. We finally figured it out after a lot of hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth. I made it to Scarlett's by around six and relaxed in her living room with cheese, fruit, and wine and waited to find out who might be coming to the bachelorette party and what we'd be doing.

Oh, you didn't know? The bachelor/ette parties were secrets. The people involved all planned them, but Dan and I didn't have any idea what we'd be doing. I gave a list of requested invitees to Oldest Friend, but she never told me who was coming. I knew Monkey wasn't coming because she sent me her flight itinerary (she didn't fly up until Friday) but other than that? No idea. At about seven, Leah showed up, bags in tow. Scarlett used my cell phone to make a super secret call and determined that she, Leah, and I would take a cab to the Secret Undisclosed Location as everyone else would be joining us there. So I put on my partying clothes (was told "wear something you'd wear to go out in" um...OK.), troweled some spackle over my red bumps (yes, I still have them, even now), and we all piled into a cab which drove recklessly through the city (as they are wont to do) and dumped us out at 9th and Howard. We wandered around for a little while as we were far earlier than our reservation would allow, and ended up stumbling into a gay bar. What an apropos place to end up being the first stop of the night! The bartenders and many of the patrons were topless, and there were nekkid men grappling with each other and flexing/showing off their nekkid bodies on the teevees. I gulped down a vodka with cranberry juice and Scarlett and Leah and I chatted, while I wondered just what I'd gotten myself into.

Eventually, it was time to take our leave of the gay guys, who were probably not that excited about having three girls in their midst calmly deconstructing the anatomy of the men on the television, and we walked back to our destination - AsiaSF. Now, having once lived in the Bay Area I was familiar with the restaurant's reputation but had never been there. A year ago, waaaay back when we first got engaged Oldest Friend asked me what I wanted to do for my bachelorette party. I insisted on no fake penis paraphenalia (straws, hats, etc.) but other than that, I told her I'd be up for about anything. I also think I mentioned (jokingly) that there was a restaurant in the city at which the servers were (primarily) Asian drag queens. I never thought she'd get it in her head to have the party there, but I guess everyone was up for it, because little by little, everyone showed up - my sis-in-law and EEK, Julie, and finally my sisters with Oldest Friend - who had had to change her flight in order to make the party, and flew in to the other airport. This explained the harried call from my sister asking for her phone number at 5:45 PM. QIR had intended to attend but ended up sleeping after her big work week, which I understood completely.

So we were all there, and treated to quite a show by a variety of ladyboys (complete with implants, but not sure if they were completely changed down there), got really expensive drinks, and had a meal of asian tapas which was both yummy and haphazard. At one point I was ordered to take a blow job shot off the chest of one of the ladies, which I managed to do with no hands, thankyouverymuch. After we were finished eating and drinking, we were led downstairs for the "VIP" tour, during which time I danced on a pole a little and then got my very own lap dance from a large lady named Simone. We were escorted from AsiaSF to the Cat Club, where it was 80s night, and we all drank some more and danced a lot, both with the plebs and in a cage, and I only had one awkward moment, which was that I ran into an old acquaintance from high school/college (she was the girlfriend of my college boyfriend's brother) who has been dating another college friend for years and she was all dressed up and trussed up and I hadn't seen her since new year's eve of 1999-2000, probably. But other than that, everything was great. They made me wear a veil and people congratulated me all night long. After we'd finished, we ended up traipsing drunkenly to a series of other clubs all full of small Asian people.

The party broke up around 1 AM I think, when my sisters and Julie got a ride from my sister's fiance, who had attended the dinner portion of the bachelor party and then returned home to study for a midterm. EEK and the lovely Katherine had returned to the East Bay via BART a short while before, and so the remaining partygoers poured ourselves into a cab back to Scarlett's place. She made it out of the cab just in time and took herself up to bed (and was sick the entire next day, poor thing), while Oldest Friend told me she had another quick adventure to go on and jumped into the departing cab. Leah and I looked at each other and shrugged, got ready for bed, and waited to hear from her so we could let her in to the building when she returned. Then Simon called Leah to let her know about the mugging, and we worried some and talked some, and never heard from Oldest Friend. Being a trooper, she stayed up with me until about 4 AM at which time I was too exhausted to stay awake any longer. I woke up at 6:45 feeling like poo (some from the drinking, but mostly from the lack of sleep) and Oldest Friend knocked on the door at around seven. She'd taken the cab to a coworker's house to retrieve something and ended up falling asleep, and her phone died. So she came back in the morning when she woke up, safe and sound.

Leah has kindly posted her photos from the evening here, since I didn't once pull out my camera.