You arrive just in time to see EMTs rush into the fancy downtown hotel you’re staying at this Saturday night. The men of the wedding party all stand outside the entrance, smoking away their nerves.

“He doesn’t need it now,” one guy barks.

You take this to mean he—whoever he is—has recovered from whatever momentary cardiovascular scare he endured and is up dishing up refills at the punch bowl. So, while the males stare incredulously at you—the neutral third party who has just arrived at the hotel to check in—you navigate in the wake of the first responders, passing through the swiveling doors.

In the lobby is, of course, another story. Tear-stained women in purple dresses with stained mascara are waling: “Oh you’re too late! He’s done for! You’re fucking too laaaaate!!!”

You now know why the gentlemen outside seemed so unbudged by the ambulance’s arrival—not because their compatriot in wedding night keg stands had recovered, but because he hadn’t. In fact, he was down for the count.

You see his bloated, shirt-untucked body face-down on an empty luggage cart rack in the middle of the Holiday Inn lobby. He’s a goner, this much is clear. You look for trademark blue or purple splotches that emerge on a recently deceased pig. Poor fella.

And it’s at this moment, seeing what is possibly the first dead person outside of a casket or CSI Miami in your entire life, that you can make one of two decisions.

Plan A: you can do the honorable thing, give the wedding party some space and come back an hour or so later after the authorities have washed up the mournfulness to exchange your credit card information for two room keys and a number to the local Pizza Hut.

OR Plan B: you can quickly sidestep the fallen groomsmen cuz you’re not willing to waste another moment on your plan to get rip-roaring drunk in downtown Sioux Falls!

Of course, because you’re writing for this blog, you choose plan B.

“Whoops there—excuse me!” You offer to the remaining groomsmen and step around them, heading for the concierge. They should have known, you think to yourself, that if they all decided to put on fancy wedding wear and go into the city for a Saturday night, someone was going to die in his own vomit on a luggage rack.

So anyway, you step up to the concierge’s desk—and she awaits you with a broad smile. Keep smiling while the city burns, you say to yourself. But she’s a consummate professional—taking no heed of the debauched circus literally feet behind you and even taking the time (between wails and pleas for God’s sweet mercy to save the man, “He’s a father!” etc…) to see if you’d like a wake-up call in the morning.

After the transaction is complete, it’s key here that you don’t look back. Never look back at the disturbance. You don’t want to attract their bad karma. Instead, go get your bags from the car, take it to your room, and start downing shots of tequila.

In the end, most rap artists herald the hotel lobby as the locale for party-central. The irony for your Saturday night is that the party is most definitely not in the lobby—just the police sketch artist asking for witnesses and a few sad attendants washing a luggage cart. Fortunately, you circumnavigated that mess. Party on, dude.

– Dunstan McGill wants to stress that based upon Sunday morning newspaper clippings the man on the floor may actually have just suffered from alcohol poisoning and was really okay…that or the South Dakota news media figured this kind of occurrence is so prevalent that it no longer warrants coverage.

Photo courtesy sully213