Bachelor in Paradise

 

I opened my eyes to absolute darkness and it took me a moment to realize where I was.

Ah yes, I'm sleeping in a movie theater in the affluent suburban community of Mercer Island. I have no idea what time it is, it could be 5am or 3 o clock in the afternoon, though I would hope someone wouldn't let me sleep half the day away. I am here for exactly 48 hours and there isn't a second to spare.

See I got in last night at 2am after a brutal Delta delay. Fortunately they decided to open up the flight to free beer and movies, so I got quietly drunk by myself and watched Sing Street (my favorite movie of the year.) Upon landing I was able to grab a quick Uber from SeaTac to MI, and my weekend was underway.

I fished around for my phone and saw that it was 10am, an appropriate time to wake up and have my first beer. I leave my movie theater which has been dubbed my bedroom for the weekend and scale the spiral staircase to grab breakfast up above.

I meet my roommates for the weekend, a group much more impressive than me. Three overachievers and their significant others. Meanwhile I am a 29 year old television assistant who hasn't had a girlfriend in 4 years.

We're all up here for Seafair, which is essentially Seattle's Air and Water show. The hydroplane boat races start at 1030 in the morning and drone on endlessly through the day.  We're all at the childhood home of one of my good friends, a sprawling Colonial with a beautiful water's edge view and a front row seat to all of the weekend's action.

By 11am, the boat is stocked with alcohol and we're on our way to the popular log boom to get a prime spot for the Blue Angels performance. By 11:10am we're given a police escort back to our dock by the Coast Guard on account of our rowdiness. They take extra care to point out the temporary drunk tank they have set up on a local beach. The authorities are clearly not fucking around on Lake Washington today.

We get back to the house and I notice that the party has grown significantly during our doomed jaunt out to sea. Adults arrive bringing plates of ribs, meatballs and dips. Their children have arrived with Coronas and bottles of flavored vodka. Before long I find myself in the hot tub with a Brazilian just casually pulling on a bottle of Hennesey, this is the good life.

As the Blue Angels start their show, I start doing shark attack shots (ingredients: vodka, blue stuff, grenadine, a toy shark) and I notice something curious. All of the girls at the party have gravitated toward me. Now I could chose to think this is because of my winning personality or the fact that I ride a razor thin edge between dad bod and being physically fit, but then I realize it: I am the only single guy here.

My whole life I had been trained to think you needed to lock down a girl early or all the good ones would be taken, but what if the opposite is true? Let me tell you, being the only single guy on a trip puts you in a very powerful position. It would be like going on Bachelor and Paradise and controlling the only rose. Add to that the general thirst associated with day drinking on a lake on a Saturday and I realized that this was going to be a VERY good day.

After the show, the Coast Guard leave the area and madness ensues on Lake Washington. As far as the eye can see there are 20something trust fund kids that came home to take out their parents' hundred thousand dollar boats out with women of questionable morals. I am on one of those boats and someone just shot me with a Super Soaker full of vodka. This is crazy. There might be thirty Searay 450s tied together and I guarantee you not a single person on them has a student loan payment.

Sitting here on the boat, I can't help but be reminded of my childhood. See I grew up in a similar lake community full of trust fund kids driving their parents expensive boats. I of course was the kid that lived a couple blocks inland and didn't own his own boat, but even then I loved nothing more than pretending to be high society, running with all the local Geist socialites, having the adults ask me how my parents were doing. Mercer Island is like that but with $8 million dollar homes instead of $900,000.

After a few hours on the lake we have to take someone home. We boat her there because cars are for poor people. There is a diving board on her dock and before we head back to our place, I challenge two 8 year old girls to a diving competition. Despite my 1.5 front tuck being executed flawlessly, the judges (my friends) give her the win for her cannonball.

Upon returning to the house, the party is in full swing. I realized I have partied like an absolute rockstar today and spent precisely zero dollars. It IS like being on Bachelor in Paradise, women throw themselves at me and it's all free, perhaps life as a reality star wouldn't have been so bad after all.

I go upstairs for a bit and rub shoulders with the adults. They are all super impressed that I work on a television show and I obviously exaggerate all of my responsibilities to make it sound like I'm kind of a big deal. 'Wait you're a television writer?' Well I write and I work on television so....yes?

Meanwhile I'm with Amazon CFO's and Boeing Execs who I tell to look me up if they're ever in LA, I'll take them around town. My wallet is currently overflowing with business cards. I'm a master networker when I'm blacked out. Although I was admonished for dropping too many 'fucks,' I figure some flowers in the morning should get me out of that pickle.

Anyway, cut to later in the evening, we are playing drinking games as one does. Three rounds of Kings, fuck the dealer, Irish Poker and 8 of Mundt, someone asks, 'should we go to a bar or something?'

I quickly go to my reasons for going out in the first place...
1. Get fucked up
2. Hang out with friends
3. Hook up with chicks

I have all three right in front of me as well as a hot tub and a movie theater at my disposal. Why would we go out?

2am I black in (just heard that phrase for the first time this weekend, it's the moment you exit your black out) There are olympic replays playing in my movie theater. My clothes are scattered everywhere. It's been exactly 24 hours since I arrived in Seattle. This time tomorrow I'll be getting packed up and calling an Uber to get me to the airport in time for my 5am flight to LA. Then I'll drive straight to work, it will be absolutely terrible.

But before that...

Ya before that, I'm going to wake up in the morning and do all this shit again. A hearty thanks to everyone that made it possible, I can't wait to come back.