This is the third part of a series that starts with Monogamish--The Courtship. I hope you will enjoy it. If you finish this installment, you know the drill: vote, favorite, and especially comment, please. All the time-wasting BS you hear at the start of every YouTube video. More importantly, please note again that this series will jump from category to category as it goes along. Check back periodically to see if the next installment is up, or simply follow me for updates.
As always, I aspire to make my stories merely plausibly ridiculous, or maybe ridiculously plausible. Either way, this ain't real life, so don't lecture me on realism. I just hope that, given these two highly-improbable characters, you will feel like the ride makes some semblance of sense.
----------
MONOGAMISH -- The Bachelorette Party
----------
Linda and I seated ourselves in First Class. It was both of our first times there.
"Champagne before takeoff, ladies?" inquired the flight attendant as we stashed our bags under the forward seats, which were unfathomably far in front of our own.
"Already? Before take-off?" I asked in surprise.
"Of course."
"Please," we both said. As she stepped back to the galley, we looked at each other. "I knew we got free drinks, I didn't know they started before takeoff," I said quietly.
In moments, the attendant was back with our glasses of bubbly.
"This is wonderful," Linda said to her. "Thank you. Amy gets married next weekend so this is a nice little extra celebration!"
"Congratulations," our booze angel of the sky told me.
"We are on our way to New Orleans for her Hen Do," Linda went on.
"Wise choice," the attendant laughed. "I'm actually based out of Nola. It is a great place to party, and this is a great time of year for it." She swept off to hand out champers to other First Class passengers that deserved it less than me, such as the florid, stressed-faced man right across the aisle with four spreadsheets open on his laptop already.
"How long have you lived over here?" I snarked to Linda. "We've all told you a thousand times, we don't call them Hen Dos in America. It's sexist, girlfriend!"
"Oh, like 'Bachelorette Party' isn't just as sexist."
"True... but it's sexier!"
The six other members of our expedition got on the plane then. They had reserved an entire row across, back in coach.
"Look at you two," grumbled Kerrie as we held up our champagne and smiled at them innocently. "In the hooch already!"
"Get back to steerage, peons," Linda answered airily, taking a delicate sip with her pinky extended.
Various retorts were issued to that sally, but my friends are good citizens, and good citizens do not delay a plane's boarding process to blow raspberries. They deliver them on the fly.
There was the briefest of pauses in the flow of passengers.
"Psst!" I heard, and looked for the sound. The worn-out old guy, who had to be at least forty, and had a balding pate, was leaning over. He wore a sudden, subtle, conspiratorial grin that transformed his whole appearance into something pretty damned sexy. "Girls, we don't let the peons know we call them that up here..."
We giggled and raised our glasses. If we didn't stop toasting, we'd need a refill before takeoff. He turned back to his spreadsheets, and was instantly the frumpy, hunched, suit-wearing non-entity he had been before. You just never knew.
Linda and I were in First Class, with everybody else in (shhh!) peon class, because, well, our jobs made it possible.
Linda had graduated early, and had a much better job in most ways than I did. It had better benefits like more vacation, and involved a lot of international travel, so she had lots of miles to use for the heretofore mythical upgrade to First Class, at least on such a short flight. I also had a good job, just not as fun as hers, or with equivalent benefits. But it paid just as well, and I traveled for mine a lot, too.
Except that while Linda flew to London and Paris regularly. I flew to Lewiston and Paducah. But all those short hops added up as well, and here we were.
There was a delay for a few connecting passengers, and we definitely got a refill before leaving the gate. Then we had to slam them when the Sky Goddess of Booze came to collect the glasses for takeoff.
As the soft acceleration on the runway pressed us gently back, Linda turned to me. "So Amy, really, are you ready for this?"
"Absolutely, girl!" I chirped. "This weekend is going to be a blast!"
"I meant for next weekend. And every weekend after that."
"Absolutely," I said again, serious as a heart attack.
"It's just, you were Team Single 'Til I Die barely a year ago. Less than that," Linda said seriously.
"That was before Team Marriage included Todd."
"You were fucking him, among others, for a year before that," she said tartly. "Hell,
I
was fucking him about the time you started up."
I need you to realize, Linda was not trying to talk me out of anything. She just challenged every belief her friends had to make them stronger. Or make them go away. "Now you, out of all of us, are getting married," she went on in mock skepticism.
"Hey, I was happy with the old situation, until I decided I wasn't much interested in fucking the 'among others' any more, and told Todd. He's the one who escalated things directly to marriage! I was just going to be happy with monogamy." I looked at her from a morally superior plateau.
"An escalation you instantly gave into!"
"I did not. I made him wait all of six and one half hours before I said yes. I was playing hard to get," I informed her.
Linda just shook her head. "So if you two have been all monogamous for the seven months of your engagement, why are you so all fired up about being Amy, the wild woman this weekend?"
"Because I'm not married yet, and this is my last chance to be sexually irresponsible. I'm going to take it."
"And Todd?" she asked. "How will he take it if he finds out? And what if he goes all nuts this weekend, too?"
"First of all, he better go all nuts," I said firmly. "I told him if he didn't fuck at least one stripper, I was going to be pissed. Just now. Back in the terminal."
"Amy!"
"Look, Linda," I explained. "Our monogamy so far, 'til next weekend, has been voluntary. A proof of concept. We definitely never required it of each other. We never got to see each other enough during our last semester of school, and both knew it would be hard for the other. We both made sure our lovey had permission to get some recreational activity in if we had needed it. The fact that neither of us ever did just shows how meant for each other we are! Honestly, even with all the delicious men on our campus, I never was even tempted. I just would look, drool a little, and find myself thinking about how soon I could see Todd again."
"So why...?"
"Look, in Todd's case... I interrogated Tommy pretty hard about his plans for them out in Vegas. He thought I was being suspicious. I was wanting to make sure he wasn't holding back on my account," I said seriously. "From what I gleaned, and Tommy is a lot harder to get things out of these days than back when he and I were occasionally screwing, my darling sex machine was going to have no hope of holding out while it was still allowed. I didn't want him to feel guilty when it happened." I took another drink of our freshly re-filled after takeoff champagne. "And I didn't want him worrying that I was trying to hold out either." I looked at Linda, "I believe we have plans that would make that hard for me?"
She blushed.
The middle-aged guy in the suit across the aisle spilled his whiskey on the rocks. Linda and I exchanged a subtle smile, but took no obvious notice. We wouldn't want to embarrass the guy for listening...
The flight was quick, unfortunately. We estimated that we had barely killed a single bottle of airline bubbly between us before it was time for final approach. How were we expected to get our miles' worth?
Our hotel had a shuttle bus, so we all piled on together. Can you imagine, jet-setters like Linda and I? Traveling with peons? What was the world coming to?
Our hotel was a big one located in the French Quarter itself. Linda and I were sharing an enormous room. The hotel called it a suite, because it was almost a thousand square feet, but it was just one huge room (and a bath of course). It would be plenty big enough Saturday for the room party. Big enough for all eight of us to sit, and big enough for... others to move around freely.
We has actually gotten this far without concrete plans for our first night, however. We gathered in our big room to plot. And fell to bickering.
"This is New Orleans, guys!" Patty exclaimed. "The cradle of good food and fine cocktails in America! We need to show some class!"
"Dive bars! Drive bars! Dive bars," countered a few others.
"Compromise!" Linda shouted, finally doing her job as Maid of Honor by shutting down the debate. "We will all get dressed to the nines and go have a fabulous fucking meal. Then we go have
one
overpriced fancy cocktail at French 75 or Latitude 29, or wherever Patty wants us to go. Then we will come back here, slut up, and go out dive bar-ing until the wee hours. Are we all good with that?"
Like I said. Doing her job at last.
The first part went smoothly, and beautifully. We all flirted, even Melody who is married, with men right and left, but we mostly behaved ourselves. Then we came back to the hotel. Instead of changing immediately, I found us all back in the party room... mine.
"So how do we handle the rest of the evening?" Linda asked, seemingly not sure why this needed discussion any more than I did.
"Dive bars!" Jenn and Melody intoned again.
"
We
have a plan," Paula said swiftly, pointing at herself and Noor, who reached behind the couch and produced a bag. It was full of white fabric. "I got this idea from a friend of mine who went to a hen party herself that got totally wild," Paula went on.
"See? 'Hen party'," Linda said to me triumphantly.
"My friend still lives in England, like you used to, Limey," Paula shot back. "It is always traditional there to do a little token fund-raising--for spending money on the honeymoon. Tonight, Noor and I think Amy needs to do... Suck for a Buck!"
Linda's face clouded, that sparkled as memory hit. "Oh, that is simply brilliant!"
