Whatever happened to just going out to look at naked chicks?

Seriously, I thought that’s what a bachelor party was supposed to be: a bunch of guys getting drunk while women on stage take their clothes off. It’s a tried and true sendoff into a lifetime of enslavement marital bliss.

I guess that type of thing was acceptable in our twenties if only because our twenty-something brides were willing to put up with it, but I’m learning that a more life-experienced wife two-point-oh is less tolerant of her betrothed engaging in such shenanigans. Middle-aged guys are not to look at genitalia they’re not married to.

We are, however, allowed to shoot each other.

I picked up Stephan – the one who is getting married – early on a Sunday morning along with his soon-to-be brother-in-law for a day of paint-filled projectile violence out in the woods. His fiancé was in a mild state, concerned that he was going to break an ankle or have a large welt right between his eyes for their nuptials five days hence. The fact that I had coined the day “Operation: Shoot Stephan in the Face” did little to alleviate her concerns.

She was fretting and telling him to be careful as I was trying to hustle him out the door. Getting frustrated with female meddling on what was supposed to be a manly day of testosterone-fueled dumbassery I finally said, “Chill out, Bridezilla, I’ll get him back to you in one piece.”

Bridezilla… Probably didn’t score any points with that.

Stephan, Andy and I drove down to our friend Steve’s house and walked into the remnants of a drunken poker game. Don seemed chipper enough, but Steve and Jason looked like they’d spent the night at, well, a bachelor party. I guess they were celebrating in Stephan’s absence while he got a good night’s sleep with his bride-to-be.

I passed a flask of Drambuie to Jason and he said, “Get that shit away from me. It feels like my fucking eyes are bleeding.”

These guys were in for a painful day.

We took two cars off into the sticks of Southern Alberta near some town called Millarville and were met there by Stephan’s much younger brother, Aaron. He was the only one of the group not in the 39-42 age bracket.

As soon as we got out of our vehicles mosquitoes the size hummingbirds started to dive-bomb from all quarters. “Fuck!” Don said. “Did anyone bring bug spray?”

I had, and I was using it first. You other not-planning-in-advance jerk-offs can just wait until I’m done.

The seven of us went through the process of gearing and ammo-ing up and heading to our first battleground. There was another team of six young guys who had just started and the ref wanted us to intermix teams because apparently it helps keep tempers in check by avoiding an “us and them” mentality.

Fuck that, we all said; we want us old farts against the young guys. The ref reluctantly agreed.

It was a straight up capture the flag in the middle of the field and get it back to your fort game. I came up with what I thought was a good plan, even though in hindsight it does seem rather retarded. I said, “Well, since I’m a fast runner, how about I leave my gun behind and just go as fast as I can for that flag and you guys all flank me and provide covering fire?”

Yeah, I said I was going to leave my gun behind and run into a hail of paintballs. Smart, eh?

They all agreed that it was a good plan because it wasn’t them who were doing the valiantly moronic maneuver. The ref counted down and we charged out of the hut and Stephan made it ten feet, tripped, and did a face plant.

“I’m down! I’m down!” he yelled.

“Are you hit?” Don asked.

“No,” he said. “I fell.”

This would not be the last time this exact same scene played out.

Meanwhile, I was charging as fast as I could towards the flag, and a few of my buddies were doing a good job of providing covering fire, but it didn’t stop the enemy from doing their best shoot my ass full of paint. I was running through a hail of paint balls and said, “Fuck this! Abort! Abort!”

I did a 180 turn and started running back to the fort to get my gun. “Bad plan!” I asserted just to make sure everyone knew I’d experienced a change of heart. “Abort!”

I grabbed my gun and went out stalking more carefully, running from cover to cover, and trying to shoot people. I nailed two guys pretty good and didn’t get hit myself, and we ended up capturing the flag anyway and winning the game.

Score one for the old farts.

For the next battle we moved to a city made of plywood. We took up defensive positions to try and protect the flag that the young guys wanted to capture away from us. I took a far forward position in a tower to ward off enemy encroachments while the rest of the team hung back to protect the flag.

Unfortunately, word had not reached my entire team that I was in such a forward position. I was pinned down for most of the fight and unable to move or even get into a firing position without getting blown to shit. I later learned that it was Stephan and Don who were trying to kill me because they thought I was the enemy. Friendly fire indeed.

Anyway, we won that game too. They didn’t get the flag before time ran out. One guy managed to grab it but only made it about five feet before Steve unloaded on him and sent him crying to his mama like a little bitch.

For the next round I was feeling frustrated at having been pinned down for the previous game and really wanted to hurt someone. I was willing to get into some hairy shit just so I could get up close and personal with the enemy to get the opportunity to fuck someone’s shit up.

The blood lust had taken me.

It was our turn to be the attackers on the city and I ran solo headlong into enemy territory to get into a good killing position. I provided my own covering fire as I ran from obstacle to obstacle, and then took a well covered position deep into their territory. They didn’t even know I was there, so I laid low and waited for them to move past me.

The first enemy combatant did just that, taking up a position less than thirty feet away with his back to me. It was a big, shining target, and I knew that getting hit in the back hurt. Hell, getting hit anywhere hurt. I could have just shot him once, but that wasn’t going to satisfy my need to inflict pain. I wanted to hurt someone. The fact that I didn’t know this guy made it easier for me to be such an asshole. The ref’s recommendation of intermixing teams started to make sense.

I fired five rounds in rapid succession, four of which smacked right into his back.

He collapsed onto the ground. “Ah! Fuck! I’m hit! I’m hit! Stop fucking shooting me! I’m fucking hit!”

Hoo-ah! Take that, motherfucker.

Then another bad guy popped into view and he got nailed by one of my teammates and by me at the same time. He also went down writhing and moaning in pain.

Unfortunately, I had given away my position and was now surrounded, pinned down inside a little fort from both sides. The blood lust left me; now I just wanted out of there.

“Uh, guys,” I yelled out. “I could use a little help here. Does someone want to come and rescue me? Please?”

No one came. So much for bachelor party esprit de corps.

I was going to have to get out of this on my own. I knew where one of the enemy was and dove out of my cover to get a bead on him. We were both in a crouch and less than 20 feet from each other and started to unload in each other’s direction. I missed all of my shots, and he got me at least three times. Payback is a bitch.

I went back to the attacker base with my hands in the air to re-life and met up with Don. We hatched a quick plan to leapfrog and provide cover for each other in a flanking maneuver to get behind them. We were just getting the hang of it and moving into a good position when I fucked it up.

Don took up position to cover my run. “Okay,” I said, “I’m going in 3, 2, 1… Ah! Fuck! I’m down! I’m down!”

Just like with Stephan, Don asked, “Are you hit?”

“No,” I whimpered painfully. “I fell down.” I had tripped on a tree root and gone down hard, smashing my right arm on another tree root and sending paintballs spilling out of my gun. I was in so much pain I wondered for a moment if I’d broken my arm, but I’ve fractured enough bones (nine, to be precise) that I was able to quickly ascertain that I’d just bashed it really good and it would eventually be okay. Still, I wasn’t in a hurry to get up, so I just lay there like a pathetic lump and slowly picked up paint balls and put them back into my gun – something that we were told not to do by the owners, but fuck those guys.

Stephan came up and joined Don and they abandoned me to make mayhem among the enemy, and both were promptly shot.

The enemy seemed to forget about me, even though I hadn’t actually been shot.

After a few minutes of writhing and reloading I started to belly crawl forward. I could barely carry my gun (which is significantly heavier than an M-16 assault rifle) in my damaged right arm, but I slowly crept behind enemy lines to get in back of the main defensive force. One lesson I had learned was that killing someone gives away your position, but I found a spot that allowed me some freedom of movement.

I took cover behind one of the enemy. I only had about forty rounds left and needed to conserve ammo, so I only shot him twice and then popped back down. My cover started to take lots of fire amid shouts of “Fuck! One of them motherfucking fuckers is behind us!”

Being shot at causes Tourette’s; there is a lot of profanity in paintball. If there isn’t, then you’re doing it wrong.

The enemy was wasting paint, shooting up a place I had already left. I continued to move in behind them, belly crawling to keep from being seen. I was filthy, but war is a dirty business. I took up another position and then shot another defender. This gave away my position again and the defenders changed their aim to pin me down.

There was no where left for me to go, but I could see that I had provided enough distraction that my teammates were making a move for the flag. To give them a fighting chance I aimlessly unloaded my ammo in the general direction of the enemy to keep their focus on me.

It worked. We got the flag and were up three games to none.

Except for the spastic tripping part, I was Sergeant Slaughter. I was made for this shit. No mercy, assholes. Even with a screwed up arm, James will kill you dead.

That feeling sure didn’t last long.

We went back to the rest area for a break and to re-hydrate and re-ammo. Everyone in our team was feeling the rush of having blown the shit out of the younger competition. Everyone, that is, except for Jason, who was bemoaning the fact that he’d been shot 20 times so far. Ten minutes later he was retelling his tale of woe and it turned out he’d been shot 30 times. As we were about to head off to our next battle he talked of being shot 40-something times.

The next battleground was trench warfare reminiscent of the Somme, although I think the Somme might have sucked just a little bit more. Coming from a guy who has a master’s degree in military history, I have the utmost respect for our troops, and this battle made me realize just how happy I am to have never seen war.

Just before the battle two professionals with their own high-tech weaponry showed up and joined the young guys, so the one-man advantage switched to the enemy’s favor. To compound the sucking, we got stuck in the low ground. They easily surrounded us with withering fire, raised their own flag and held us off so that we couldn’t lower their flag and raise ours. During the 15 minutes of fighting I was shot close to 20 times. I got hit in the fingers of each hand, peppered along my left side, shot in the side of the head, and hit numerous times in the legs and arms. Each time I was shot I cried out in pain and launched into a stream of high-pitched profanity and occasional wailing for my mother.

I think I killed one guy the entire battle. My friends didn’t fare any better. They all got blown to shit as well.

That battle fucked me up.

Then we switched sides where we got the high ground, but it wasn’t as much of a benefit for us because they enemy knew how they’d outflanked us and set up protection to prevent us from doing the same to them. One brave soul on our team managed to get our flag raised and then we just dug in to protect it. I tried to provide some cover but after being shot a couple more times I started to turn chicken. I’d had enough of playing war. I was in pain and didn’t want to get shot anymore. I tried to raise my head above the trench to keep the enemy pinned down, but every time I did the dandelions at the top of the trench would start to snap in half as paintballs whizzed through them. It was like that scene out of so many war movies where the coward hides in the trench, unwilling to fire his weapon. I had become that coward. I’d gotten over my blood lust and the need to kill the enemy, and now I just wanted to get out alive.

My buddies held them off long enough for the clock to run out and we managed to barely win the game, so we were up four games to one. Then we went back for a final rest before the last game. There was the usual chatting and trash talking amongst the combatants, but I sat silently on the picnic table. Then Stephan came up and pointed at me. “That’s the thousand-yard stare, right there!” He chuckled. “Fell has battle fatigue.”

I didn’t even have a comeback. He was right. I was done.

Then it was time for the last battle, and a line from Hamburger Hill popped into my head: “You don’t have to like it, but you have to show up.”

My buddies were going into battle, and I had to be there to back them up. Steve opted not to join in the final fray, and I don’t blame him one bit being that he was hung-over as all shit and had been the repeated victim of friendly fire that day. Besides, he gave me the last of his ammo.

Low on ammo and morale, we dragged our welt-covered asses to the final battleground.

It was a plywood church at the bottom of a hill and we were picked to defend it while the enemy came in from the high ground to take it from us. In order to take it, they had to kill us all.

I looked at the church and said, “That place is a fucking deathtrap. We’re all gonna die.”

“Game over, man” Jason agreed. “We’re doomed. We’re fucking fucked!”

I was waiting for someone on my team to say something inspirational, like: “Eat hearty, boys, for tonight… we dine… in HELL!”

No one did.

Our objective was to hold the church for ten minutes. I think we lasted four.

I knew the two late-coming ninjas were trying to circle around our rear and took a well-protected position to try and keep them pinned down, but it’s really hard to pop your head out enough to shoot someone when his buddy is just waiting for you to show enough of your anatomy so he can inflict high velocity pain upon it.

I did my best to keep them at bay, and mostly succeeded, but then in the space of about ten seconds one of the enemy made it to the outside of the church and pointed just his gun in and around the corner and got Stephan in the guts. At the same time, the rest of my comrades seemed to run out of ammo. They all put their guns in the air and surrendered, walking out of the church.

They didn’t even consult me. They just left. I was alone with about 30 rounds of ammo.

But the enemy didn’t know I was there. Two of them casually strolled in just to look at the inside of the church, thinking the battle was over and they had won. I was crouched down and could have shot both of them multiple times before they even knew what hit them. Of course, I would have been fucked after that by the other half dozen guys. They all would have yelled, “There’s one still in there!” and charged in guns-a-blazing and I would have gone down in a haze of pain-filled paint.

It would have been a hero’s death, but instead I totally bitched out.

“Don’t shoot!” I held my gun in the air. “I give up!”

I’m ashamed of myself. Seriously, I don’t know how real soldiers do their jobs. They’re made of far tougher stuff than I.

We retired back to Steve’s place where he settled in to his usual and much appreciated role of BBQing for the rest of us while we drank beer. Should you wish to engage in a game of paintball, do NOT skip out on the post-battle beer-drinking debrief where everyone tells their war stories. That was the highlight of the entire day.

It was even better than being the guy who inflicted this: