I attended my first bachelor party last weekend. What a disappointment. I was expecting party favors in the shape of breasts! Stag films! Naked ladies jumping out of cakes!
But, instead, what I got was several hours of ESPN at a neighborhood bar and an early bedtime.
'If I wanted to sit in a bar and watch basketball I would have gone out with a bunch of lesbians,' I told the groom, G, and his pathetic friends. 'This is the stupidest bachelor party in the history of the world. No one even threw up!'
It was almost 10 p.m. and the boys were whining that if we didn't leave soon we'd miss the rerun of Saturday Night Live.
I had been looking forward to this party since the day G asked me to be one of his groomsmen. The job of groomsman appealed to me because it seemed much less demanding than that of bridesmaid, which requires endless games of bridal bingo and the ability to walk down the aisle without tripping. As a groomsman, your only job is to show up at church on time and try to avoid making-out with the bride's mom at the reception.
As an added bonus, since I'm a girl, I don't have to rent a tuxedo. G said I could wear whatever I want. 'As long as it's pink chiffon,' his fiancée quickly added. That was almost a deal breaker. But I finally agreed to wear a dress with at least one ruffle after they conceded that I could:
a.) go to the bachelor party
b.) ignore the 'no-making-out-with-the-bride's-mom' rule
I have a lot of straight boyfriends, and most of them—including G—are the worst brand of straight man. They are white, affluent smartasses who know way too much about batting statistics and not enough about America's criminal neglect of Africa. But I like them because they're so easy to please. As long as they're surrounded by big breasts, big dogs, and big cuts of beef, they're happy. I don't know why straight women waste so much time struggling to figure these guys out. After all, it's not like they're gay men and you need a flow chart just to keep track of their ever-changing feelings about Madonna's hairstyle.
The only thing in the straight-man world that is the least bit intriguing is the bachelor party. I've always been fascinated by the notion of cramming every male adolescent fantasy into one drunken evening and still being able to pledge monogamy the next morning without giggling. So, naturally, I was disappointed that we didn't do anything at the party that would require us to take a few generous doses of penicillin before the wedding ceremony.
'I've already had my bachelor party,' G said when I complained bitterly about the absence of naked ladies. 'It was called my late 20s. And you had a front-row seat for the whole event.'
'Yes,' I said, glumly, 'but during all that time we never once saw anyone jump out of a cake.'
'I'll hire a lady to jump out of a cake for your bachelor party,' G said. And, suddenly, the thought of getting married seemed like a pretty good idea to me.