A good bachelor party is defined by the quality of the food, women, and company. Clearly, my best man was well aware of this when he took me down to NYC this weekend to hit the town with some of my oldest and closest friends. Our evening began literally right out of work, as I tossed my white coat into my locker and hopped into his car. Traffic was dismal as usual, and we didn’t get into the city until almost 10pm. One of the guys was actually post-call, another had been working all afternoon, and the third.. well, he had been drinking since 4pm. Nevertheless, we resisted our weariness, and satisfied ourselves with large slabs of beef at the Strip House. After my superbly-textured rib-eye, creamed spinach with truffles, and potatoes in goat fat, (which continues to haunt my taste buds to this moment) we went to the Hustler Club, where supposed third-hand accounts claimed to be a mecca of attractive women. We were not disappointed, and enjoyed a few titillating performances for ourselves. We left the club around 3:30am to head back to our hotel suite for our poker marathon. Surrounded by bags of chips and diet coke, we spent nearly 6 hours playing Texas Hold’em, which for me really amounted to a painfully slow way of handing my money to my more-experienced compatriots. By next morning, one of the guys had to run to proctor an SAT exam, and the rest of us tested our spice tolerance with authentic Korean food. With no sleep the previous night, the car ride back to Boston was pretty much a blur. Though steak houses, strip clubs, and poker marathons will no doubt find their ways back into my life in the future, I was happy to be reminded again of genuine friends and good times.