Jackson G. Tickle Enterprises Presents…Panama’s Propositions

[***This is some certified-gangsta Panama-length shit right here. Be aware, be very aware. Also, I could end up leaving some stuff out...to protect the innocent (me) and probably because I forgot. The spirits were calling this weekend. What I'm saying is that I can neither confirm nor deny that I'm telling the whole story. *wink**wink***]

“Mawaige…mawaige is what bwings us togeva today. Dat bwessed institution…” ~ Bishop in The Princess Bride

I love the movie, The Princess Bride. It makes me chuckle profusely.

This past weekend, one of my best friends in life wed the love of his life in Richmond, Virginia. In what was coined early on as The Summer of Love, the wedding season couldn’t have gone out on a better note.

As me and my people love to get up with the get down, much ignorance, enjoyment, love, happiness, debate, discourse, stupidity, fun, liquor, and late night creep moves occurred. I mean, hell, when Panama The Most Muhfuckin’ is involved you know how it’s going down (and in the offchance that you don’t, you really should invite me to your wedding). In fact, there was so much shit involved in the two day affair that I have to break this into two different parts.

I’m cool like that.

Yo, have you seen the Geico commercial with the caveman walking through the airport and he sees the “It’s so easy a caveman can do it” advertisement? That commercial kills me everytime. I’m telling you, the marketing execs at Geico are really worth their weight in gold.

So, I shall begin at the beginning as it’s a lovely place to start, especially considering that if I began at the end you’d probably not know what in the shit I was talking about. Plus, it’s difficult to write stories backwards. Or so they say…

…hmmm…

In the beginning, there was light.

Oops…wrong story.

Anybody who knows me knows that I despise the state of Virginia outside of the Capital Beltway. It’s a dastardly villain of a state. I hate it for one reason: traffic. It has taken me upwards of 4 hours to go 90 miles between Richmond and Washington. There’s never a good reason for it, but it’s as predictable as death. If you must drive between Washington, DC, and Richmond, VA, you will indeed be sitting in traffic. I don’t care if it’s at 3am or 3pm. If it’s purple or green. Shucks, it don’t matter if you’re black or white. Spaghetti spaghetti everywhere, up to my elbows, up to my hair.

Oh, and I’ll be throwing out all kinds of names pretty soon.

We had to be in Richmond by 4pm (well according to an original letter sent…I forgot this whole shebang involved nothing but Black people). So what time were me and two of my compadres, Frank White and Cool Breeze, on the road and raring to go?

1130am.

Mind you, it’s about 120 miles at most between Richmond and DC. That should take, what, 2 hours, tops???

Not in VA. So I like to have a cushion. We probably left more like at noon. Now, apparently, the more I get worried about traffic, the less traffic occurs. So we made it to Richmond in 2.5 hours. And checked ourselves into our lush pseudo-luxury suite at the Richmond Omni.

We’re there early. It’s a wedding. What to do? What to do? Aha!!!!

Liquor. Consumption.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I brought a bunch of liquor from my house with me. Two bottles of Jose Cuervo, one bottle of Goldschlagger, and a big ass bottle of Bacardi Limon. Amazingly, if you mix the Limon with some free Lemonade (well we kind of jacked the Lemonade…like a cool gallon of it) from the Richmond Omni, you can make yourself Mike’s Hard Lemonade. At least that’s what it tasted like.

You know, this is the boring shit, but were a little, um, “lit” by 330pm. Let’s get to the very important stuff.

If you are a groomsmen…fuck it, if you’re in the wedding party period, and you’re a male, what’s the most important part?

The female half of the wedding party. You pray, plead, and hope beyond hope that they will be hot. As in really hot.

As in like, their knees are hot.

You’d also like them all to be a lot of fun, which in this wedding proved to be important since all the dudes involved were pretty much hellbent on having a damn good time.

And yes, they were hot. There was at least one certified 10. The bridesmaids looked good, the hostess lookeded good. Things were falling in order. The young lady that I had to escort down the aisle was hands down cool as a fan too. Bigups!!!!

Further, being as the bride went to Spelman, we knew all the hostesses (save one) ahead of time and they’re beaucoup fun. And a few of us have history with a few of them and there are strange connections between some of us yada yada yada.

I’m boring myself right now.

Let’s skip around a little. Ah…the rehearsal dinner.

Now right before the rehearsal, two more of my boys had shown up, The Doc and Maverick.

Maverick isn’t a drinker…but me, Doc, and Frank White are something like some drunks. So what did we do in the short twenty minute span between getting back to the hotel for the rehearsal dinner and the actual rehearsal dinner?

Shots.

We murdered the bottle of Goldschlagger. Three shots each. Mandatory sentence.

Now the problem with taking shots is that people notice that you return that much happier than you left. And we’re already a happy bunch so a person or two was slightly ‘spicious.

Now I’ve heard that the cure for a hangover is more liquor. Well do you know what the key to throwing people off or your drunk tail is? Drinking so they can see you. That way, they think you’re doing it all right there. Much wine was had.

The problem with doing all this drinking is that…it tends to make everything seem a little bit funnier than it just might be. For instance…the fellow who came into sing during the rehearsal dinner sounded a whole damn lot like Randy Watson, lead singer of the group Sexual Chocolate.

So much so that Frank White made sure to yell Sexual Chocolate when he finished drinking. So loud so that folks at another table (the hostesses and bridesmaids) looked over and had to stifle a chuckle or two. So much so that it was hard for me to stop laughing…so much so that we had to leave again…

…and take another shot.

Don’t you see how that made logical sense?

So we got hot chicks, liquor, a wedding, and we’re in a new city. We simply MUST find something to get into for the night. There was a hospitality suite sectioned off for us as well. And do you know what they had in there…all pristine and sexxy (back) like?

Lots of liquor. Now, my boy Cool Breeze got a little more lit than the rest of us during the day. I mean, he just kept drinking so by the time it came to take the shots of Schlagger he took 2 and then declined from then on out. We get to the hospitality suite, and he’s making a Henny and Coke. Then he looked up, looked left and realized there was no way in shit he was about to drink it and handed it off to me. I was happy.

Let me say here, the chicks were bullshittin’. Well not all of them, the homey J.House was down for the cause to go out…but I’ll get to that in a second.

So let’s see…me and the homey Frank White started tossing back Henny and Cokes, then took a shot of Cuervo. And THEN we went to find the groom to make sure he would take at least one shot of Grey Goose with us.

He did. He was required too…I told him that earlier. In fact, I think it should be mandated that before any groom gets married, he is required to take at least two shots: 1) for his bride-to-be; and 2) for his boys.

It was written.

Apparently, the more drunk I get, the more ignant I get. And being as Richmond sucks ass and everything shuts down at 2am, at about 130am, I decided to make a phone call to information to see if I could find us some entertainment. Here’s the transcript of the conversation with 411:

Operator: What city please?

Panama: Richmond, VA.

Operator: What listing?

Panama: Hoes.

Operator: Excuse me????

Panama: Oh, sorry. Prostitutes. I’m bored.

Operator: *click*

Apparently, I didn’t tell anybody I was making that phone call ahead of time because two of the other groomsmen fell the fuck out in amazement at the conversation I was having.

At like, 145am, we make it out of the hotel. Not to get hoes…you see how helpful the operator was…so we ventured outside of the hotel on our own to find some entertainment. At this point its me, Frank White, Cool Breeze, The Doc, J.House, and our homegirl Sweet Candy of the World. That, my friends, is a funny name.

Remember how I said Richmond sucks ass? Well, I was trying to find something to do and I asked well over 10 people, from cab drivers to people letting out clubs what else there was to do in Richmond.

In fact, earlier in the day, two of the groomsmen went to the mall and asked a woman they met what they should do to have a good time in Richmond. She asked where they were from.

“Atlanta.”

“Go back.”

Damn.

While all of this is going on, our party buddies are dropping off like flies. First Sweet Candy of the World drops off. Then J. House. Then the Doc. Which was probably a good thing. For one, it was cold outside.

But mostly because while I’m out polling Richmond’s boring ass party crowds, my boy Frank White has begun breaking up a fight. You see, apparently, when you are drunk, the best thing for you to do, is get in the middle of other people’s bullshit.

It’s always safer that way.

So I go to help and when it looks like it calmed down, I trudge looking for more people to poll. And I think I yelled, “Richmond fuckin’ sucks” a good 4 times.

Well, on my way to more pollation, I walk into a fight between two other people. And since Frank White had just broken up a fight, I was felling like a follower so I jumped into their shit and broke it up.

I find that the key to breaking up any fight where people seem to have any inkling of soberness is to remind people, while pushing them back up against a wall, that if they go to jail tonight, the just might not be going anywhere until Monday. And spending the weekend in jail would blow.

Count so far? Two fights.

I walk back around the corner, and the two dudes who started the original fight, are at it again!!! So me and Frank White, feeling all Officer Friendly-ish, go and break up that shit and send one of the dudes on his merry way.

Oh, and can I just mention that we have YET to actually leave the sidewalk in front of the hotel.

However…Frank White, in his drunken splendor, started yelling to me and Cool Breeze, who was being the watchdog making sure that us idiots didn’t die while getting involved in other people’s shit, “YO…HOW ARE WE GONNA GET HOME??? HOW ARE WE GONNA GET HOME???”

Remember, we are standing in front of our hotel.

Oy vey.

So, we’ve broken up some fights, lost some of our friends who just said, fuck it, and went back inside, and have nowhere to go. Me…I go look for more people to talk too.

Frank White? Finds the ONLY BLACK WOMAN in the vicinity and immediatly goes to rap to her. At this point, Cool Breeze peaces us out.

Oh yeah, final count: three fights.

Because we believe in public safety and have been policing the streets of Richmond, the two safety minded inviduals do what anybody would do in our position. Convince the chick to take us out to eat.

At 3am.

In a city we know nothing about.

With a woman we just met.

Who didn’t seem to mind.

Smells like a setup to me.

Luckily, it smelled like teen spirit to her because she sure did take us to get some vittles at some placed called Aladdin’s.

Hmm…am I racist if I point out that the fellows working their were of Arab descent.

And it was named Aladdin’s? I mean, it was probably one of the fellow’s names…right?!??

Me…I’m trying not to say anything crazy as to make sure that the young lady would actually return us to the hotel. Frank White? Not so much…having to be the sensible one while being drunk at the same time is much more difficult than it might seem.

I promise.

But she took us home at like 4am. And we trudged up to our room. At 4am.

And went to sleep at about 410am.

Only to wake up at …

Tune in tomorrow for Part II of the epic tale of A September Wedding, where Falls Church isn’t only a city a Virginia, horrible game and headwraps take center stage, receptions turn into Soul Train, no Open bar at a wedding doesn’t stop two of us from procuring free bottles of wine from the bar, and oh yeah…a wedding takes place!!!

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