Bachelorette Weekend, Chapter 4: What happens in Palm Springs...

I'm not at liberty to say much about the night out itself, since we instituted a strict, "What-happens-in-Palm-Springs-stays-in-Palm-Springs" rule for the sake of the boyfriends. It's interesting to note that most of my friends' boyfriends are in fact even more jealous than Lui, and that those of us with husbands/fiances seemed the least worried about what happening in Palm Springs possibly getting leaked in a less arid climate.

Dinner was marked by almost everyone ordering what was written across their chests, my first admirer - a tall, middle-aged African American man who claimed he'd been honking at us as we crossed the street to the restaurant, and Pigeon blaming Barbie for the loss of her innocence. The girls also gave me a card they'd all signed, in which most of them told me how much they love me, which meant a lot - especially coming from a few that I know have vulnerability issues.

The hunt went well; I got to do body shots with some guy that Suzy decided looked like Jake Gyllenhaal (I tend to disagree), but other than that, it was a pretty dry, if totally awesome, event. By the time the two teams reconvened two hours later, upstairs at a bar called the Blue Guitar, everyone was exhausted. And unfortunately sober. Finally Monica grabbed me and said we were going inside to find people to buy us drinks. And this, this is why I love her so much. Because she got that when I said I didn't want to get hammered, I didn't mean I wanted to stay totally sober and go to bed before midnight. I do believe in drinking at least enough so that my shoes don't hurt.

The bartender gave us two-for-one on shots of Patron, and me a free Blue Guitar T-shirt. Then we convinced one of the two ex-military Republicans who'd been flirting with our group outside that his friend had mentioned he'd buy the next round. Somehow, this, three shots of tequila in about two hours, was more than enough for me, and true-to-form, I started flashing everyone. Then we went next door to the karaoke bar, where I drank water, sang along to Backstreet Boys with my friends, told my new Republican friend to stop wearing his old wedding band on his watch (I actually wrote "It's time to move on" backwards on his stomach, in Sharpee, and only later realized that this might have been insensitive), and made out with Monica while Suzy and Pigeon sang "Don't go breaking my heart" on karaoke.

There was a slight mishap getting back to the hotel, as C-List had wandered off with her new Republican friend, who I'm going to call Cornwall, right around the time when we wanted to leave. By this point, my shoes were hurting again, which meant I was damn near sober, and my Republican was obviously annoyed that it meant he couldn't go home either. Eventually, we found all our friends and all our cars, and headed back to the hotel.