On Tuesday, one of my best friends, a buddy I’ve know since high school, went to college with and also lived with for a year in NYC, got engaged to his long-time girlfriend.  He proposed in the middle of Boston Common on a cold and rainy night – on his birthday.  Actually, a pretty suave move on his part.  They’d been dating for a while so his girlfriend knew it was eventually coming, but never expected it to happen on his birthday.

My friend John, who has a plan similar to mine, and I were emailing about this recently and he suggested I get married right away.  His logic is that since I’m going to get divorced anyway, I should get one marriage under my belt right now, so that when I remarry at 30, I’ll have some experience.  In the meantime, the wedding would be a huge fucking party for myself and my friends.  John has a pretty good point here, but I’m kinda hurting for prospects right now.  But if you are a girl and your parents are rich and can pay for an elaborate wedding, please email me asap.  The good news is that I can pretty much fall in love with anyone.  The bad news is that very few people can fall in love with me.  But hey, it’s only for a couple of months anyway, and my family will surely make the wedding interesting, especially when my Uncle Joey and/or Uncle Eddie grabs the microphone from the band (by force if necessary) and serenades you and I with Foreigner’s “Feels Like the First Time.”  Now that is romance.

On the surface, throwing a bachelor party doesn’t seem like a big deal.  Get some buddies together, get drunk, see some titties, do some shots, and make sure the groom-to-be has a hangover until Wednesday.  But when you actually have to get it together, it gets a bit more complicated.

Moms are generally good at this type of thing.  The bar I could handle, but the food element was something I’d never had to deal with (what the hell do I know about catering?).  So I called my mom and laid out my plan.  She said she’d have to call me back later.  Less than two hours later, she had arranged the bar, the two hours of open bar at the bar, and the food for those two hours (I think chicken, roast beef, and ziti).  This would have taken me approximately six weeks to work out, and the food would have been Whoppers and pizza.  So thank you, Mom.

I knew about how many guys were coming on the party (around 18).  I also know that mid-May is prom season, so I booked the limo weeks ago to ensure that we had one.  It was not a limo actually, but rather a party bus.  This was taken care of by mid-April.  I was totally on top of it and feeling pretty good about myself.  Now that the limo was booked, I could focus on more important things, like getting a blowjob in said limo (read: masturbating in said limo).

Fortunately, by the grace of God, after spending about six solid hours calling limo places, I was able to procure a limo.  I thank God again, because He really helped me out with this one – I got a better limo (a Hummer instead of the party bus) at a better rate.   So score.  The proprietor at this limo company offered me some insight into why the other limo company canceled on me.  Limo companies make more money on proms and weddings than they do on nights out.  Disreputable companies will take a reservation for a limo, but if they later get a request for a prom or wedding, they will break the previous reservation for the more lucrative one.  Fucking assholes.  That’s like dating a girl and then breaking up with her when someone hotter comes along. 

The only thing left has proved to be the most difficult: the strip club.

I should explain first that I do not like strip clubs because they objectify women or anything like that.  OF COURSE they objectify women.  But they also make it possible for these women/objects to make $1000 a night in cash to buy shoes and hairspray and Valtrex and whatever else strippers buy.  So don’t give me that crap.  Strip clubs are one thing, Thai sex villages are another (I imagine the food is better in the Thai sex villages). 

(Of course, I write all this now, when my blood-alcohol level is only .07.  At the club, when it’s hovering around “batting title”, I have no problem telling the strippers my bank account and routing numbers.)

So to find the perfect strip club, I turned to my old friend: the internet.  I’ve spent the last week and a half pouring over strip club websites, strip club directories, and strip club reviews.  I’m amazed at what I’ve absorbed.  I can tell you how much a lap dance costs at three different establishments in Mays Landing, NJ.  I can tell you the bachelor party specials at a half-dozen Philly clubs.  I’ve spoken or emailed with some clubs managers to such lengths that if I were getting married this weekend, I’d probably invite them to my wedding (though that may be more of an indictment of how few friends I have than how close I’ve come with these guys).

I turned to you, dear readers, to help me out.  And the emails came in by the boatload.  (I really think that I should move to Philly next year, because I may even be able to drop the “Internet Quasi-” from my title down there, but I digress.)  Y’all offered lots of different opinions, but the problem was that they were so inconsistent.  One email would sing the praises of Daydreams, the next would tell a story about one Daydreams dancer’s ass acne.  

But then, intervention.  A buddy of mine, whose future father in law runs a strip club, called me and offered to help.  He got in touch with his connection, called me back, and soon we had a discount deal at a very respected Philadelphia area strip club.  Not only that, as a HUGE added bonus, the night we’re going to the strip club the porn star Jesse Jane (safe for work) will be there.  I would have put an exclamation point at the end of that sentence, but since learning that Jesse would be there, I’ve been beating off incessantly, resulting in a freak injury that has rendered my left pinkie useless.  So no exclamation point.

As I write this, the only thing I have left to do is pick up the booze for the limo on Saturday.  The food, the bar, the limo, the strip club, and the post-strip club bars are all taken care of.  Of course, as best man it is my duty to keep the best man and the rest of the group in line and away from trouble.  This might be problem.  Because I am going to lose my shit in that strip club (especially if I meet a nice 20 year old).