I've Got This Round

by Mamrie Hart

  It wasn’t even a question of whether I would go. Not only would I be able to spend time during my favorite season in my home state, I had yet to go to a wedding as a now-single woman. I LOVE weddings: the open bar, the dancing, the rituals. I am in top form at a wedding, but I’d never had the infamous wedding hookup like you see in all the movies and/or the remnants of during brunch the morning after. I was ready to get tipsy at a wedding and not just flirt with the groom’s grandma. I wanted real sparks. Plus, it was Kelly’s wedding, so there were particular targets potential suitors I already had my eye on. . . .

  Allow me to explain. Kelly has three brothers in the Marines, two still single. Though I had never met them in person, I had seen pictures of them on her blog and in her Facebook albums for years. These men looked like Marine Ken dolls. I had never pictured myself with a military man, but they were both hot as hell; plus, there would be the added bonus that, if all went well, I could potentially end up becoming Kelly’s sister. Win all around!

  Let me take this moment to say, with all my heart, family: KOHLRABI! I mean it. Don’t say to yourself, Well, I made it through her first book and was still able to look her in the eyes over Thanksgiving. Close the book, or turn to the next chapter. . . .

  Are they gone?

  GOOD.

  Because this chapter is about the first and only time I’ve ever had a threesome. Stick with me.

  As the wedding drew closer, I was getting giddier and giddier. I had actually stayed put in LA for a month. I had finished my press tour for Dirty 30 and been finishing some other deadlines, which kept me glued to my ancient Mac. Days were spent click-clacking on my keyboard while nights were spent hanging with my Pussy Posse. Oh, what’s this Pussy Posse, you ask?

  Well, in Hollywood it is sometimes the name given to the trio of Leo DiCaprio, David Blaine, and Tobey Maguire because they used to unabashedly go out and get so much pussy. Fuck that, I thought to myself. Pussy is Power. Not some descriptor for these dudes using their celebrity to bed women. When I decided post–Pity Party that I needed to just be surrounded by my women for a minute and not let myself get wrapped up in one dude, I found that my closest girlfriends were feeling the same way. So, I started calling my clique the Pussy Posse. I even got us all rose-gold bangle bracelets with “Pussy Posse 2017” engraved on them as little reminders throughout the day. They felt like Wonder Woman cuffs warding off bullshit.

  Maybe it was something astrological. Maybe some moon was moving into its fifth house . . . or maybe I had just drank too many fifths, but we were over it. We all wanted to focus on our careers, our friendships, and ourselves. Guys were just meant to be a fun, no-strings-attached good time. Ya know, like seizing the opportunity to hang with a couple of hot brothers at a wedding. Pussy power, indeed.

  With that mind-set in place, I couldn’t wait to get away for a minute. Everyone was going to be staying in a little town called Ferguson, which had little to do and zero cell reception. Sure, as soon as the wedding was complete and my phone received a bar of service, work e-mails would rush in like people jamming into a rush hour subway car, but for those few days, all I would have was peace and quiet. I couldn’t wait.

  My cabinmate was going to be Kelly’s friend Maggie, who is a magical creature from Iceland. She and I had hit it off after we spent a day together in LA when Kelly recommended that Maggie take some photos of me. She will always hold a special place in my heart seeing as she took the first picture that I used for that first Raya dating profile.

  Is this pic necessary to the story? Nope. Is it a hot pic of me and this is my book so I’m going to post it anyway? Ya damn right.

  I was excited to catch up with her and chill with some of her friends, the other bunkmates who I had yet to meet. But, wouldn’t ya know it, a week before the wedding I got a super apologetic e-mail from Mags.

  “Mamrie! So sorry, but my travel visa wouldn’t go through!!! However, CC’ed on this e-mail is Dustin. Dustin, this is Mamrie, she’s wonderful. Mamrie, this is Dustin—he’s wonderful and y’all will be staying in the cabin together. Go forth! Be best friends!” Was this ideal? No, but I trusted her recommendation.

  Within five minutes, Dustin had reached out to introduce himself and offer a ride from the airport, since we were landing around the same time. Now, normally I would rather throw a cup of fire ants down my pants than take a ride with a stranger on a road trip, but I was still working out my license fiasco and the only thing that’s worse than a couple of hours in a tiny rental car with a stranger is standing for hours at the DMV. Well, we all know there is something worse, and that’s being fake hit on by a cop only to get a ticket for your expired license that ends up costing you tons of money in fees, but I’m trying to move past that.* So I took Dustin up on his offer and prayed for minimal amounts of awkward silence.

  I landed in North Carolina after a red-eye and met Dustin at the Enterprise line. We immediately hit it off. “Sorry this is your first impression of me,” I said, handing him the chai latte that I had offered to pick up for him from my terminal. “I’m literally on zero sleep. Couldn’t get comfortable on the flight.”

  “I’m in the same boat. I stayed out till five last night and had an eight A.M. flight,” Dustin told me, which explained why he was still wearing sunglasses inside.

  In a rom-com, this moment would be called a “meet-cute,” where a future romantic couple meets in an amusing way. However, there were no sparks between us. This was our meet-cute, new BFFs edition: Dustin and Mamrie! Aren’t they adorbs?!

  We gabbed the whole way up the mountain, whipping around the turns in our Kia Soul. I learned that Dustin and Kelly knew each other from grad school, when she was in the playwriting program and he was an actor. Dustin grew up in Pennsylvania with a big family who owned and ran a local Italian restaurant. I made him regale me with tales of his sisters being waitresses and him and his brothers working the line and being busboys during high school. I was dying to know what their best dish was and just how long they let their marinara simmer.*

  “I’m going to Italy in a few weeks. You should come!” I said, immediately regretting my words. Who does that? The lack of sleep must’ve been making me crazy, because inviting someone on a trip abroad after knowing them an hour is like asking a guy to move in with you on the first date. Luckily, we breezed past it and kept chatting.

  As we drove, I blabbed about how much I love North Carolina in this weather and wouldn’t shut up about how delicious Bojangles’ biscuits are,* making him stop at the nearest one. And wouldn’t you know it? They were out of biscuits. That’s like KFC running out of chicken. But it was all good. We just laughed about it and continued down the road with Bo-Berry Biscuit blue balls.

  We were having such a nice time shooting the shit as our car maneuvered through the mountain roads that I wasn’t even concerned when our final bar of service disappeared, a moment that would normally be a “Pound the alarm! Mayday! Mayday!” moment for me. We stopped to get groceries, and I introduced him to his first Food Lion experience, where he was called out by a local for having trendy sweatpants that were hemmed a little shorter than normal. Honestly, you would’ve thought Dustin was wearing Gaga’s meat dress by the way that old man was staring at his exposed ankles.

  Once we pulled into the grounds, we knew we were in for a treat when we saw the big, gorgeous cabins dotting the mountains. I couldn’t wait to see which one Maggie had reserved for us.

  “Do you care if our cabin is the party house?” I asked Dustin.

  “It better be. I did not break out these revealing, fancy sweatpants to not be the party house.”

  I looked up to a house with a massive wraparound porch. “Get me drinking pumpkin beer up in some fall-ass foliage ASAP!” I exclaimed as our car rounded the corner and revealed the welcome center, stables, and barn. “The barn! That’s where the reception is going to be right after the”—I looked to my left, there it
was—“service under the old oak tree. God, this is perfect.”

  Inside the welcome center, Dustin checked in* as I perused the quaint gift shop. It was like a mini Cracker Barrel! Little wooden games, rock candy, fleeces, and small signs painted with uplifting, and somewhat Christian, quotes lined the store. I ran my hand along the wind chimes when something caught my eye on the top shelf.

  There, shining down on me like a beacon of light from the heavens was a pair of cowboy boots unlike any I had ever seen. These beauties were white with shiny gold-and-silver leather stitching in the shape of a cowboy’s silhouette and cactus, with metallic fringe accenting the sides. They were magnificent. It was like that moment in Wayne’s World when Wayne first sees Cassandra. “Dream Weaver” was playing in my mind, and I uttered, “They will be mine. Oh yes, they will be mine.” This was a lens flare moment.

  “How much do you want for the boots?” I asked, carrying them up to the sweet older woman at the check-in desk. “Those boots?” she asked, her twang in full force. “Well, I don’t even know if those boots are for sale. Patty! Patty, is Debra selling her boots?”

  Patty, another silver-haired honey, slowly made her way to the desk. “Those boots? Debra’s boots?” Patty asked, as I wished there was a meter counting how many times the word “boots” was going to be said in the course of this conversation. Patty continued, “I think those boots were just up there for decoration. I don’t think she’s selling those boots. . . . But how much would you pay for them?”

  Aha! This granny was trying to pull a fast one on me. Trying to sell me poor Debra’s boots for probably way more than they cost because this vision from LA was asking about them. Hell, she might even pocket the money.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said, kicking off my rank tennis shoes. “I’ll try them on, take them for a little spin, and when I come back, you tell me how much you want for them.” I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt that smooth before in my life. As I started to slip them on, I questioned whether I really needed silver-and-gold metallic boots with fringe. But that doubt went out the window as soon as I stood up. They fit perfectly, like they were custom-made for me.

  After a couple of figure eights and the Boot Scootin’ Boogies, I twirled back to Patty. “How much for them?” I asked, squinting my eyes to try to intimidate the old broad.

  She squinted right back. And then finally, “Fifty doll—”

  “SOLD!” I screamed, attempting to fist bump her, to no avail. Dustin grabbed our keys, and I do-si-do’ed right out that front door.

  We got back in our Kia Soul and plugged the address into the GPS, hoping the residual Wi-Fi from the welcome center would direct us to one of the palatial cabins up the mountain. Based on the website, the views overlooking the trees were straight off a postcard.

  “That’s funny—it says it’s within a hundred yards,” Dustin commented.

  We followed the directions to our destination . . . only to reveal that our dream cabin was, no lie, the stable house behind the horse barns. It was a shack.

  “Maybe it won’t be that bad?” I squeaked, not even believing myself.

  We approached it slowly, as if we were walking into a house on Hoarders. When we opened the door, what we found was a time capsule to the early nineties. Hey, I am all about that country-shabby chic, but this was shabby chic’ken house. Rooster art was everywhere: Rooster clock. Rooster dish towels. Rooster pillows. Massive decorative glass roosters. The sofas were overstuffed and brown, like the loaf of bread they serve you when you sit down at Outback Steakhouse that you say you aren’t gonna eat so you can save room for a Bloomin’ Onion, but you always end up eating.

  I opened the closet, which led to a massive laundry room with six washers and dryers. Clearly, this was where all the stable stuff was washed. The screened-in back porch, a selling point in Maggie’s pitch, was full of knickknacks, old furniture, and a weird miniature pool table with the felt so worn it had bald spots. Dustin pointed to what looked to be a rusty kennel for a fifty-plus-pound dog. He looked at me and said in a deadpan tone, “Yes, Mamrie. It’s that bad.”

  He was right. But being the go-with-the-flow people we were, we did what anyone would do. . . . We called the front desk and begged Patty to find us another cabin. But they were all booked. Our dreams of running from room to room and claiming the best one for ourselves, a la the first episode of every Real World season, were crushed. “Well, you know what this means,” I said, breaking into the wine we got from the Food Lion. “We are just going to have to get good and ripped to deal with our digs. Let’s start now.” And that was that.

  A few hours later, we were gathered around the heat lamps at the welcome dinner. But we didn’t just have burning propane to keep us warm; we had an internal heating system. And by that I mean that we had moonshine. Blueberry moonshine and apple pie moonshine, to be specific, which aren’t like the real moonshine that could start a small engine, but they’ll still get your aunt to bump and grind on the dance floor. I was in heaven.

  “Mames, I have something for you,” Kelly said, pulling me aside. She looked gorgeous in her cute dress and denim jacket. Not that she doesn’t always look gorg, but she definitely had that inexplicable bride glow to her.

  “From our local state trooper,” she said, handing me a mason jar of clear liquid out of her tote bag. “It’s the real stuff.” That’s right. The bride handed me a legit jar of white lightning as a thank-you for making it to the wedding. Ladies who are currently Pinterest’ing your perfect day, take note!

  But before I could twist off the lid to make a lightning storm in my mouth, I spotted them. “Dream Weaver” kicked back in, but this time it wasn’t for two boots; it was for two dudes who had been to boot camp . . . aka Kelly’s brothers. They looked as if a witch had been walking through a Grecian statue garden, made two of the carved studs come to life, and then tossed fleece and khakis on them.

  “Not too bad, right?” I whipped my head around and saw two of Kelly’s bridesmaids, whom I’d met once or twice, and who (for the sake of anonymity) we’ll call Ronnie and Bonnie.

  “Get in line, girl,” Ronnie said, holding her hands up to a heat lamp.

  “Oh Jesus. We’re all gunning for a brother, huh?” They nodded. “Well, just so you know. I have zero preference. I’ll take whoever you don’t want.”

  “Yeah, we feel the same way,” Bonnie piped in. “I guess it’s just every woman for herself,” and with that, she strutted away to talk to the youngest one. Sonovabitch. I thought this was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. Not only did I have competition, it was with two total hotties. Goddamnit.

  I beelined it straight to Dustin. “We need more moonshine,” I said, grabbing his arm and forcing him to the bar. Two more shots and I explained the situation. “Oh brother . . . literally,” Dustin said with an eye roll I was already accustomed to from our brief time knowing each other. The rest of the evening got a little blurry, as I was (said like Larry David) pretty, pretty, pretty lit. But I do remember distinctly hanging out on a porch with the two bros and the competition. I don’t remember one damn thing I said to them, though, nor do I remember a bunch of people coming back to our place to attempt to play pool, or eating an entire bag of Spicy Sweet Chili–flavored Doritos. But I do remember how bad my mouth hurt when I woke up. I must’ve dove into those treacherous triangles like I’d been stranded at sea for a week.

  The next afternoon, Dustin and I took the Kia Soul up through the winding mountain roads dotted with mountain mansions we wished we were staying in. We happened upon a swing set a little ways off from a house with no cars in the driveway and decided to grab a seat and pop open some pumpkin beers.

  “I can’t believe everyone is going after the brothers,” I said, gaining some real height as I pumped my legs. I looked down at Dustin, who was throwing me a “bitch, please” look a la Jackée from 227.

  “You know what you gotta
do, right? You gotta wear your lucky boots.”

  “Lucky boots? Why are they lucky?” I asked, stopping my rocking.

  “Because so far, on this trip, you’ve gotten exactly what you wanted.”

  “Not true. I am not currently perched on one of the brothers’ faces.”

  “True, but besides that, you’ve been batting a thousand.” I was caught off guard by Dustin dropping such a seamless baseball reference. “Think about it. You’re drinking seasonal beer with some ‘fall-ass foliage’ as you so eloquently put it. AND we have the party house! Sure, it might just be because it’s the closest place to party without having to drive drunk up a mountain, but still.” I nodded. Our trash cabin was everyone’s getting trashed cabin. I gave a little grin and started swinging again.

  “Now, pound that, and let’s go get ready in our super convenient little shit-shack back down the mountain. I am not driving once it starts getting dark!”

  When it came to the wedding-day, Operation Brother Lover wardrobe, I was pulling no punches. I knew that Ronnie and Bonnie would be in classy yet sexy bridesmaids dresses (Kelly has great taste) and they were probably up in a fancy cabin getting their hair and makeup professionally done while drinking champagne. Meanwhile, Dustin and I got ready in our shack. I had taken for granted that the place would have a blow-dryer, so I roasted my roots over the radiator while pounding Bud Light Lime. I put on a short peach dress, despite it being frigid as hell, and a denim jacket, and I slid on those magical boots, aka my secret weapon. My new metallic kicks were made for walking and . . . I was ready to give Ronnie and Bonnie the boot.