Two weekends ago, I went to a wedding in a small town outside of Atlanta from which I am still recovering. The groom of honor was Nathan, one of my close friends and roommates from college. I had been looking to this weekend for a long time, because it was an opportunity to see a bunch of friends from college who I hadn’t seen in a long time.

I flew into Atlanta on Friday and met Sarah at the airport. Sarah has had a crazy couple of weeks of globe-trotting adventures. She was in New York for the previous week and a half, then she flew to Atlanta for the wedding, and after that, she flew back to New York for another couple of days.

Our planes got in around 4:30. We picked up our rental car and drove for 2 hours to get to Washington, Georgia, where we had a room at the Hotel Fitzpatrick. Sarah immediately asked the man at the front desk if there were ghosts in the hotel. Sometimes I think she has ghosts on the brain. The man said there were ghosts in the hotel, but as we learned over the course of the weekend, there are ghosts in pretty much every building in Washington, Georgia. The town is off-the-charts with spectral activity.

We threw our stuff in the room and walked around the corner to the rehearsal dinner, which was being held in an old livery. As I strolled up, everyone was already there, and Nathan was on a stage giving a welcome speech. He said something into the microphone that I didn’t understand and looked up in my direction. The rest of the crowd turned around and stared. I waved and smiled, assuming he said something about how I had just arrived and that the party could officially begin. This is the sort of reaction I am used to getting everywhere I go, and I have learned to handle it in stride. As the weekend went on, I pieced together what he had actually said. What he actually said was something to the effect of: “I’m glad everyone could come, especially our friend Yarro, who rode his bike from Michigan to Georgia.” This is Yarro:

Just for the hell of it, Yarro decided to ride his bike from Michigan to the wedding, which makes him a better man than basically anyone I know. And what I did with my wave and smile was acknowledge to everyone in the crowd that I was Yarro. For the rest of the weekend, people kept stopping by to congratulate me on a job well done. Poor Yarro rode 800 miles across the country on his bike and I took the credit. If you are thinking about inviting me to your wedding, please keep this in mind: I will steal the credit from the guy who rode his bike. As you can tell from the picture, Yarro was not very happy with me.

Friday night was spent catching up with everyone and getting drunk. After the rehearsal dinner closed up shop, about 30 of us walked en masse to the bar across the street from the hotel which was getting ready to close. We reopened the bar and then shut it down again. Nathan struck a pose that is all too familiar to those who know him:

Ben Boxer detected some possible spectral activity:

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed for the hotel’s continental breakfast, then spent the next 6 hours trying to recover. Kevbo thought some Superman ice cream was in order:

We took a walk and found a restaurant called China.

They mostly sell Chiese food.

The wedding started at 5. We dressed up in our Sunday finery and loaded onto a shuttle at about 3:30. The shuttle took us to the plantation where the wedding was held. This was an honest-to-god plantation owned by the bride’s family. It was not a functioning plantation, mind you, but if push comes to shove and Emma’s parents need to seal themselves off from the impending zombie invasion, they have the means at their disposal. Here is the main house:

And here are a series of random buildings on the property. There are several more that are not pictured.

Emma’s family is very artistic. The property was adorned with all sorts of interesting hidden art projects, like this cool fence:

And this tree hung with chandeliers:

Here’s what the property looked like from the backyard, although calling it a backyard is like calling Lake Michigan a pond:

Here, a real southern gentleman enjoys an aperitif before the main event:

Somehow, Josh always manages to look like he’s about to lead me on a tour of hell:

One thing I can tell you about Washington, Georgia: it is humid. Having spent the last 2 years in LA, I have become totally unaccustomed to humidity. It did not help that I had chosen to wear a suit that felt like it was made out of lead. I could feel a little scratch in my throat, but I chose to ignore it, what with there being a wedding going on and all. I didn’t think it would be too polite to stop the ceremony and ask for a lozenge.

The ceremony was lovely, meaningful, and totally short, which is pretty much exactly what people are looking for in a wedding. Afterwards, we hung out until late at night, talking and dancing and sweating. Here Jesse is saying something that appears to have upset his companions:

What I love most about Sarah is that she really considers her food:

My college roommates, together again:

As the night wore on, the scratch in my throat got worse. I plowed through the evening as best I could, but come midnight, I couldn’t take it anymore. Sarah and I hitched a ride back to the hotel, where I spent the night feeling like I was swallowing razor blades and not sleeping.

The next morning we left early so I could catch my flight. I did not get a chance to say goodbye to anyone. This is probably for the best, because my throat had begun to swell up to the point where I sounded retarded when I spoke.

The airport is pretty much the last place you want to be when you have a medical condition. Things that are normally irritating become excruciating, and there are plenty of normally irritating things to be found in an airport, especially when your throat is killing you and your plane is 2 hours late. I was popping Halls like they were Pez, to no relief. Halls are totally useless. They carry the taste of relief but none of the satisfaction.

Somehow, I managed to land in LA and drive home. I barely slept that night for fear that I would fall asleep and my throat would close and I would never wake up. First thing the next day I went to the doctor and discovered that I had a weird abscess thing in my throat. An abscess is — and I apologize ahead of time for those who are squeamish — a sack filled with pus. Where does the pus come from? I don’t know. I don’t even really know what pus is. But I do know it is something one does not want in one’s throat.

The first clinic sent me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, who jammed some needles into my throat and sliced my abscess open. Immediately, a garbage scow-scented stench arose into the air. The nurse recoiled in horror. “The smell!” she said. “Yes,” the doctor nodded, nonplussed. He had probably dealt with a lot of foul abscesses in his time. It was truly an odor to behold, and even more incredible because it came from within my body. Multiply the odor times one thousand and turn it into a taste and that’s what I was experiencing inside my throat. The bottom line: if you can avoid getting an abscess in your throat, I would recommend it.

So, in case anyone at the wedding is wondering what happened to me, there’s your answer. Please know that excruciating throat pain is pretty much the only reason I would ever turn down a chance to hang out with all of you and overindulge in free alcohol. Although the weekend ended in tragedy for me, I would like to make it clear that my throat abscess was in no way meant to reflect upon the joys of marriage and/or my support of this particular union, which, incidentally, I do support 100%.