All bullets & no beer - my weirdest stag do yet

How to lose £350 in 20 minutes

#9. Sober Stag Do

‘Nice outfit, twat.’

Said Dave, one of my oldest and most cherished friends. He’s stuffed his six-foot-five frame into a mauve charity shop dress. I have not. My jeans and hoodie make me the target of derision from him and the entire gang of hairy, thirty-something-year-old men in drag, just outside the security gate at Luton airport.

I’m on my way to an old friend’s stag do. It’s not my first, but it certainly is my first sober. You see, most of my adult life has basically been a non-stop stag do (don’t ask) and now I’ve been off the sauce entirely for two years (don’t ask). I’m excited, but a bit nervous, to be a sort of outside observer. I feel like I should have been wearing a high-vis jacket emblazoned with ‘PRESS’.

Chad, the groom-to-be, does not look happy. He was expecting a romantic getaway, and instead got a dozen rugby lads. I ask if he’s packed for a romantic trip. ‘Yeah, I packed a suitcase full of bondage gear and dildos,’ he retorts. Perhaps he’d been expecting rugby lads after all.

Nonetheless, we board our flight, wigs and all, to post-Soviet wasteland Gdansk.

Stag! Stag! Stag!

The first item on the itinerary is a gun range. Still, we have about half an hour to spare after checking into our rooms (them, shared dorms; me, a hotel room). Half an hour is a long time in Gdansk. A swift pint? The lads concur, just the one. Well, the gun range’s website does very explicitly demand that all patrons are sober – but what could it hurt to have just one or two or three pints?

It does hurt. When we get to the gun range, the owner unholsters a breathalyser. Our rowdy groups’ faces drop. We collectively hold our breath. After an uncomfortable few seconds, Chad volunteers himself. He’s a big lad, he’ll probably be fine, we think. He isn’t. No one is. The entire group fails the breathalyser – except, of course, for me.

Well, I have a great time. I fire a tommy gun, an Uzi, an AK47, an AR15, and a pump-action shotgun, like what Arnie had in Terminator 2.

I regroup with the lads in a little pub in Gdansk’s old town. They’ve been busy in my absence. The table is littered with empty glasses and pizza crusts; the groom is sitting shirtless on someone’s lap being burped with a rolling pin, to raucous cheers. An elderly couple are nibbling their afternoon supper in the corner. The group turn their faces towards me, eager to know how the shooting went.

‘It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in Gdansk,’ I tell them, and it’s true.

After a few more beers (them) and tap waters (me), we all head to their shared apartments to get ready for the night of drinking. By ‘get ready’, I of course mean drink.

In the years I’ve been teetotal, I’ve come to notice there is an early stage of drunkenness which is quite pleasant to be around. Everyone’s relaxed and the conversation and laughter flow freely. But the pleasant phase has a finite end, usually around the point talking turns to chanting (Down it! Down it! Down it!).

My friend John puts LMFAO onto the Bluetooth speakers (I’m sexy and I know it) and boosts the volume to full, gyrating his hips at the bewildered tourists walking along the picturesque river below. The early stage of drunkenness has passed. I leave Casa Bantz and head back to my suite for a nap. It seems my friend Percy, also a new parent, has joined me (N.B. Not in my bed I mean, but in napping. In separate beds. Separate buildings in fact. Let me be clear, it is in no way a sexual liaison between us. Not that there is an ‘us’. It’s just two friends, more like mates really, taking a nap in different locations but coincidentally at the same time.), much to John’s chagrin: ‘Fucking liability mate. Grow up. You can’t sleep on a stag do. I’m a parent too, so what.’

After my sleep, I awake to texts in the group chat – ‘Fagan where are you twat’ – including a barrage of images: the groom in a leather bondage outfit, two penises touching, a man spreading his cheeks to reveal the horrors within. I don’t look long enough to work out who owns what. I feel grateful to be sober.

I get dressed and meet the gang for dinner. I poke around a rather uninspiring pork schnitzel with potato salad, while Dave orders an entire rack of ribs. ‘There’s no way I’ll eat all this,’ he says. He does.

John, at the other end of the table and gnawing on a bone like a gorilla, is rather worse for wear. I suggest to Dave that he won’t last much longer. Dave throws a potato at his head. He doesn’t notice. Soon after, he sneaks away and goes to sleep.