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WHORES, BOOZE, AND TRASHED HOTEL ROOMS. Transvestite strippers, vengeful brides and a battalion of cops. Like most kids who came of age during the Reagan years, that’s how I assumed men celebrated the night before their wedding, thanks to that mildly raunchy Tom Hanks vehicle, Bachelor Party.
When I finally attended one—my older cousin’s in 1988—the movie’s influence was hard to miss: the party was a decadent swirl of chugging, drugging, backslapping, and taunting at a rent-for-the-evening Tribeca loft tricked out with black leather couches and lots of neon. The pot was imported from Maui; the “lesbian” strippers from New Jersey. I had seen my cousin and his friends get messy plenty of times, but this night into morning was different: they seemed desperate to make a statement. But about what?
I didn’t stick around to find out. High as a kite, I excused myself when the floorshow led to a free-for-all during which my cousin’s fraternity pals took turns inserting a glass soda bottle into the talents’ nether regions. Truth be told, I was closeted back then. And while I was scandalized by the bottle trick, I was more worried that my actions at the party—or lack thereof—would betray my secret.
So how and why does a gay guy end up writing a book about bachelor parties?
I’ve always been fascinated by traditions and the revelatory ways different people mark the same occasion. The follow-up to my first book—which was about queers and prom—was supposed to be a kitsch-free look at bar mitzvah traditions around the world. That changed one night at a cocktail party when a friend asked, “What’s next? Bachelor parties...” We both laughed—and then I jotted it down in my Treo.
A few days later I headed to the New York Public Library. Out of the more than twenty-million books in its collection—most no longer in print—there was only one exclusively dedicated to the ritual: a how-to guide courtesy of Playboy.
Why hadn’t somebody already written this book? Then it hit me: like joining a fraternity, a man’s participation in a bachelor party is contingent on sworn secrecy and reservation of judgments. Thus, a straight guy writing a book about what really goes on would be akin to treason. And women, well, they’re not on the guest list. So, perhaps it would take a gay man to get to the heart of the most hetero of hetero traditions.
Any hesitation about spending a couple of years in Guyville was exorcised by what I took as a sign: an invitation to the bachelor party of a close friend from college. How could I say no?
So there we were—two-dozen straight guys from across the country and me—whooping it up at a lake house in the Sierras. For four exhaustingly carefree days, we ate, drank, cooked, played, inhaled, snorted, and snored together amidst the fifty-inch glow of round-the-clock porn. This was a much more enlightened and organized group than my cousin’s posse. In fact, the theme of the main event was “Captain’s Happy Hour,” with everyone in attendance dressed homoerotically in matching sailor suits, including a petite blonde stripper.
I was floored when I found out how much they spent to procure her: $1000 for a couple of hours (my share: a reasonable fifty bucks). Once she shed her Captain’s hat and panties, I understood what all the fuss what about: all eyes were on her vagina; it was as if these guys had never seen one before. For the first time in days, they were largely speechless.
The rest of the weekend, on the other hand, I felt especially connected to these men who, in many cases, I’ve known for over a decade. Career plans, sexual adventures, spiritual awakenings, fucked-up childhoods, pregnant wives—everything was discussed. “Good, clean male bonding,” I scribbled in my journal as I flew back to New York City, “Fun, flirty, macho, sexy bonding.” The all-guys weekend was unexpectedly moving, maybe because it doesn’t happen that often.
While exclusively male gatherings were once the norm, these days men rarely assemble without girlfriends, wives, or female coworkers and friends. The only time we hear or read about male-only get-togethers is when something goes drastically wrong (like the Duke Lacrosse scandal), or when women are trying to gain admission (men’s golf and Annapolis). And as pressure mounts from brides, girlfriends, families, and the media to sanitize the bachelor party and/or include women, the time is right to explore one of the last bastions of male bonding.
AS I TOLD A STRIPPER who I interviewed early on: I don’t have a horse in this race. My agenda is not to protect my brothers nor ruin their fun. I simply hope to present different expressions of a rite of passage that crosses cultural, generational, and geographic lines. In a culture obsessed with celebrity, I set out to hear from everyday people from all walks of life. I wanted to know what the ritual meant to each of them, how it’s affected their relationships and how it’s changed over the years.
And that’s exactly what I did.
I talked with more than one hundred men from around the country and all over the globe. Men from different generations, classes and backgrounds. I also chatted with, among others, two strippers, a dwarf, an S&M clown, a Vegas bouncer and a pair of wedding planners. I spoke with religious grooms, wary brides and the fathers who love them. I interviewed guys that prefer to skip the festivities altogether and ones who never miss the chance.
I offered total anonymity to everyone I approached. In return, they served up a grab bag of painful, poignant, secret, and salacious stories. Stories I sensed that many had been dying to tell for years.
Their personal anecdotes provide a revealing portrait of a ritual that, at first blush, seems at odds with the institution of marriage. At a time when men are pigeonholed as either Metrosexuals or Neanderthals, this is a candid and varied look at what’s going on inside their minds. And, for the first time, it is also an uncensored look at what they do when women aren’t around.
So find a comfy chair, pour yourself a drink and prepare, as they say in the wedding biz, for better or for worse.
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