Issue 30

Where No Man Has Gone Before

                Last night I figured out the answer to one of the most troubling questions plaguing men throughout the ages: how to attend a bachelorette party.

                Actually, I discovered two ways for a man to attend without risking having the police called on him: if he is eight months of age (women always love babies) or if he can cook.  Of course, a man can attend such an engagement as a stripper, but I don’t count that because it’s in a professional capacity and any party you attend because you’re getting paid just isn’t quite the same.  As far as being eight months of age, eight years is about the youngest I can regress to, so I had to rely on my cooking skills to sneak in.

                Now the major difference between bachelor and bachelorette parties is that at a bachelor party the men view it as a last fling, a test of endurance.  It’s all about staying up as late as possible, going to as many bars as possible, and drinking as much as possible.  Who cares about food?  Beer and pretzels provide enough fuel to get a man through the weekend. Women, when reduced to desperate circumstances, can also survive on such meager fare but given the choice, they’d rather be pampered.

                This concept is so key that I’ll repeat it for all the men out there:

                Women like to be pampered.

                Look at the facts.  A guy plans a hiking trip, fully prepared to – and even excited about – eating beans out of a can.  A woman, on the other hand, will bring real food and even a pan out of her kitchen in which to cook it.  Guys just don’t understand it; that frying pan takes up the space of another six-pack of beer.  To the women, however, the tradeoff of having a decent meal is worth it.

                Like all important discoveries, I stumbled across this one by accident.  Rebecca offered to throw the bachelorette party for a dear friend of ours, running Friday night through Sunday.  Translation: I would have to find some other place to sleep for two nights.  A year ago, this would have been a golden opportunity for me to raise a little hell of my own.  Not such an opportunity when I have my eight month old son Skylar with me.  It’s just not the same.  He wants to go to bed when all the good bars are just opening their doors.  And who can I stay with?  “My wife is kicking me out of the house for two days. Oh, by the way, I’ll have my son with me and he wakes up crying twice during the night. Can I stay with you?”  It’s the sort of situation where you find out who your true friends really are.

                I told Rebecca I had a place to stay, but about eight o’clock I was getting a little nervous because it was a bold-faced lie. I wasn’t worried about food; I know where there’s an all-night 7-11 where I could pick up the essential beer and pretzels.  My last resort plan was to sleep in the park but it had the glaring hitch that a cop might stop and investigate if he saw a port-a-crib set up on the grass.  My apprehension increased as the ladies began to arrive.

                That’s when the stroke of desperate brilliance struck: “I’ll bet their hungry from their drive,” I said to Rebecca.  And then I took over the kitchen, shooing them all out so I could dig through the cookbooks for some elaborate food that would take hours to prepare.  I wanted everything to be perfect, because that meant that it would take forever to make, it would get late, they would get drunk, and then I could sneak off to sleep in my own bed without anyone noticing.

                Eight hungry women is quite a sight, and I played them ruthlessly.  Having a man around was just wrong at a bachelorette party, but then again I was cooking for them.  And I washed the dishes.  I was going to pour their drinks too, just to leave nothing to chance, but that turned out to be an unnecessary precaution given the dozens of dead soldiers I discovered when I finally served them dinner just after midnight.

                While all that pampering was a lot of work, I think I came out ahead in the end; when it came time to dog the men in their lives – and EVERY guy gets dogged –  none of the ladies could find it in their hearts to remember anything disparaging about the guy who was slaving away in the kitchen on their behalf.

                I do have to make special note about the other guy who attended the party, the one who was eight months old.  He didn’t have to clean any dishes, he got held by ladies all night long, and – I have the pictures to prove it – he had eight women in his bedroom all at the same time, a feat few men in world can lay claim to.

                Makes a father proud.