By G. PATRICK PAWLING
Special to Pressplus
You never know about boat trips with strangers, and I knew something was wrong right away on this one. Even before I got on, somebody yelled, Take your pants off! Naturally I found this disturbing. Take my pants off? That was crazy talk. Couldnt they see I was wearing shorts?
Any newspaper can give you a story about a fishing trip. Only On The Water brings you the inside story about what really happens at that most secret of female rites, the bachelorette party. We can do this because this party occurred aboard the Duke OFluke, which is normally a flounder boat out of Somers Point.
Like a lot of fishing boat skippers, Duke OFluke owner Brook Koeneke has been diversifying. He does eco-tours, fun cruises, sightseeing whatever. Or maybe youve got a family reunion or a bunch of people who work together. You go out, watch the sunset, have some beers, listen to music, dance.
Heck, you could probably even fish. Hes even done bachelor parties. But Koeneke had never before done a bachelorette party.
I like to think were flexible, he said. Well try anything.
And so it was that the Duke was boarded one warm summer evening by 14 women, all between the ages of 24 and 27, all appearing in a hurry to drink heavily, some wearing plastic hairpins molded into figures representing various sexual positions.
See this one? a woman asked, thrusting one toward my face. That looks like her head, but really thats her (behind).
The rest of the crew was me, a cross between a father figure and Gilligan; the mate, Frank Obermeyer, who looked happy to be alive; and the skipper, Chalie (No R) McLaughlin, whos been around the sandbar a couple times.
One woman, seeing the Duke and quickly grasping she wasnt walking onto the dance floor of a club, asked tentatively, ummm were not fishing, are we?
Koeneke looked a little worried. He wasnt going on this cruise, but he really did want the boat to come back. On the other hand McLaughlin was looking like a guy with big fish on three different rods at the same time excited and not sure whether he could handle it all but willing to try.
The stress will kill you, he said. And then he smiled. He smiled big.
About 14 seconds after the boat left the dock the women were preparing apple pie shooters, which involve liquor and whip cream that sometimes makes it into the mouth. Right then we sensed it was going to be an interesting three hours. Wasnt that what happened to Gilligan? A three-hour tour? Imagine Gilligan stuck on an island with only Gingers and Maryanns. Hey, I never liked the professor anyway.
The women, all from the West Chester, Pa., area, were there to celebrate the marriage of Courtney Elvanian to Marlen Kaplan. She is a teacher, hes in marketing and sales. And right away it got sentimental.
Courtney and I have just grown closer and closer, said Amy DeMell, a friend, draping her arm around Elvanian. There are a lot of similarities between us. We both like to drink heavily.
Asked when she was getting married, Elvanian said, One week not enough time to get rid of the guilt.
On this particular evening Kaplan was also hosting a party of his own a couple hundred miles away, camping with his buddies in the Poconos. This was the cause of some concern among the women, who wondered how the heck they were going to get a stripper all the way up to some gawdforsaken campground?
One thing I found interesting is that these women were all positive they would find out everything, and I mean everything, that went on at that bachelor party. They were also sure the men would never find out what happened at their party because theyd be too obsessed with keeping things quiet about what they did to even bring up the subject. I dont know what this says about human nature, but I do know that as a member of the male species, it scared me.
Anyway, whatever was going on at the bachelor party didnt keep the women from the business at hand, which was to drink and dance and occasionally to show a few cheering boaters that, yes, there was a moon out several, in fact _sighted just over the railing of the Duke.
After a short cruise in the bay, McLaughlin aimed the boat toward a bayside Somers Point bar and restaurant. On the way there, several more moons were observed hanging over the railing, this time aimed at the condos only a few yards away.
NO, one of the women shouted. There are 15-year-old boys up there! Dont do that to them!
Then the dancer/stripper arrived. He was skinny and covered in the right spots, mostly, though at one point a bill of unobservable denomination was observed stuffed into the crack of his behind. This is the point in a bachelorette party where inhibitions get flung over the railing. But On The Water deals in truth, and the truth is that the women, though amused for a time, ultimately found the dancer unsatisfactory.
I asked for Ricky Martin and I got ... well, what do you call that? asked Janet Moore, the maid of honor.
Im hiding, another woman said as the stripper gyrated like a nun buoy in a northeaster. Im totally hiding.
McLaughlin offered to throw him into the bay. Maritime justice is swift, boys, keep that in mind. The women declined, but they did take him right back to the dock, and aside from that bill in his crack, which he probably installed, its doubtful he took much away from this crowd.
Later the women would find in the boats head (that is what they call the bathroom, honest) a box that had contained, for lack of a better way to explain it, a product that claims to be able to put the air back in a guys bumper. The women reported that it didnt appear to work. I was in the back of the boat, unwilling and unable to look.
After the ejection of the dancer, there was a brief lull. Then the mate, Obermeyer, showed that hes good at more than just baiting hooks. Obermeyer can dance. Soon the boat was rocking again, and the women were shouting, Go Frank. Go Frank!
Note to the groom and others: I am unable to report about any activities after 10 p.m. Thats when the boat docked and the women left to go clubbing. To that point, except for the moons, no clothes came off. One of the participants did report later that she was ejected from the club but could not give a full accounting of why. There were no arrests, which in the old days was the mark of an unsuccessful party, but the ejection of one of the participants from a bar is some consolation.
I dont know how much the stripper and the boat crew made, but I found $23 in tips, stuffed down my shirt by women who obviously know what reporters make. What a kind bunch they were. Good hearts. The Duke itself seemed unshaken by the whole affair, but as for Koeneke, I have to tell you one of the last things he told me was that he was considering going after the senior citizen market.
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