Hi My Name is Stella McBarfy

Disclaimer:  This is not a post soliciting advice about how I should feel about my soon to be husbands choice of pre nuptial male fraterniziation.  Been there done that.  This is merely a rant of my general feelings towards men and their obsession with all things relating to tits and ass.  I also challenge any man (that would be you my dear toddy) who says to me 'boobs in my face aren't my 'sort of thing'.'   I call bullshit.  I've never in my life known a heterosexual penis that would turn down a pair of hooters in his face.  Sorry, but I don't buy it.  I also think the whole 'well my buds set it up, I had nothing to do with it, and therefore since it wasn't my idea...and i don't want to look like a pussy (or god forbid appear pussy-whipped)...' blah blah blah.  I also think is a load of well, spooge.

I might have been better off not hearing this morning's talk show.  Now I'm feeling all barfy. 

So all week my morning radio crew has been hyping up this morning's show about The Real Truth behind Bachelor Parties.  Oh joy.  One of my favorite topics.  They wanted to dispel all the anxiety for lots of women surrounding the shindig by having people call in, primarily strippers, to paint an accurate picture of how it really goes.  The men had expected that the majority of callers would call in to say that most strip club parties, and private parties are harmless.

But the show backfired, when all the calls they received from Atlanta strippers gave them more information than they were prepared to hear.  Apparently the 'real story', about VIP rooms, and hired strippers, was exactly all that 'we' (as in women who aren't comfortable with the idea of their grooms going to strip clubs or having strippers hired for them) had feared.  And then some.  Thank you very FUCKING much.

Call after call.  Even men were calling in and the show hosts would ask them, 'What percentage of bachelor parties that you have been to where there were strippers, did 'the bachelor' or any of the groomsman partake in inappropriate behavior?.'  To be more specific...behavior they would not have dreamed of had their wives/girlfriends/fiances been there as well.  One guy was asked 'Of the last 10 bachelor parties you have been to, how many of them did something 'innapropriate' happen?'.  He said 9.  Sweet!

The strippers were flooding the lines, all saying the exact same thing.  In summary, here is what I learned from the very nice Strippers of Atlanta:

1) the 'main room' of a strip club is relatively harmless.

2) most men like to perpetuate this myth, that bouncers are constantly monitoring VIP rooms.  according to the Strippers of Atlanta...all is fair game in a VIP room.  according to the Strippers of Atlanta...its all about the money.  They will bob on your knob and if you have the right 'many' dollars, you might even get to play 'hide the pickle'!  After all, the bouncers only come in every so....20 minutes...plenty of time to shizzle your nizzle.

3) private parties with strippers are even worse.  there are no 20 minute bouncer pop ins.  Almost every stripper that called in was asked 'Have you ever had sex with someone at the party?'.  Do you wanna guess what the answer was?

Then the men started calling in and telling all.  It wasn't pretty.  More barfiness.

Men.  Do you have ANYTHING to say for yourselves?  I just want to hear one good bachelor party story.   Tell me about how you went golfing and got shit faced at the bar (sans strippers) with your buds.  Tell me about the football game you attended or the horseshoe competition you had??  Tell me about the fun you and the boys had at the day spa?  Please?  I wanna hear about the good clean fun you had to celebrate having found your soul mate that you are getting ready to marry and share the rest of your life with. 

Because honestly.  I'm looking for those rose tinted glasses, and I just can't find them...

Comments

[Edge]

Admittedly I'm not a guy's guy but I've never seen anything inappropriate happen at a bachelor party, although I've never had one of my own which could have altered the statistics. Just kidding. If a man has any kind of sex with another woman during his bachelor party, you're marrying the wrong man.

[stella]

well no shit my dear. unfortuantely not every woman gets the benefit of knowing she is getting ready to marry a man that will cheat on her at his bachelor party.

oh if i only had that esp. or is telekinesis? or telepathy?...foresight??? future vision??? manana ante ojos?

yeah. that would be nice.

[g man]

Most bachelor parties involve golfing and getting drunk and never having any interaction with women. Grooms try and call their soon to be spouse every 90 minutes to let her know how much they love her and are home by 11:30 to give an amazin' foot massage and make cocoa.

That should put your mind at ease.

.....keep on truckin'.....

[David Thorough]

What does Finance say? What does he want to do? Often a lot of the problems with batchelor parties come from "buddies" who want to see if they can get the groom in trouble. The whole idea of a "wild getting smashed for the last time" thing seems strange to me, but then I have a whole set of values that probably make the "average" guy barfy. Mine was a campout with some great friends sharing stories, a few cigars (the last thing I smoked in over ten years now) and some great grilling. But then mine happened in my thirties. If it had happened in my twenties... Oh. My. God!!! I keep forgetting how much stupidity I had to live through to get to the point where I wanted life to be different.

Stripping, gambling, creating a lot of unnatural excitement is the kind of thing I just shake my head at these days. I'm not saying "have no fun" I guess I'm just asking people to look at whether or not they are REALLY having fun... or if they are just distracting themselves from discomfort or pleasing others. Do whatever you want, but try to be honest about whether you are using your valuable life to grow in the direction of not hurting yourself or others... your bride to be, for instance.

[stella]

this doesn't make me barfy because of how it affects me personally, because I am confident that Finance is very clear about how this sort of thing makes me feel. Even if it was something he would be interested in doing, I don't think he'd touch it with a 10ft pole out of consideration for my feelings.

I'm not sure what Finance's bachelor 'gathering' will look like or involve, but I trust that whatever it is, will be 'clean' and appropriate. I have no other choice. Really.

This sort of thing concerns me on a higher level of general anxiety. Goes back to the porn etc etc. I just don't understand it. And it really bothers me that this sort of thing takes place.

I consider myself to have matured enough over the past few years, to be able to AT THE VERY LEAST try to understand things that make me uncomfortable, that there may be some explanation beyond my comprehension that makes sense for someone else. this...just leads me to a dead end wall, over and over again.

ack.

[suebee]

i am SO glad that someone else feels this same way. it upsets me to think abt -- and it's not bec i have a prob w/ sexuality, or men having fun, and it's not as if i want to control anyone or am uptight and mean. i just - i mean - i just do not understand how this is an appropriate, respectful celebration of getting married? you found this person you love, and yet it's ok to have involvement w/ another naked woman? how does this make sense? and what's worse is - it's not as if you can know this stuff before you a) are already in love b) are already engaged. i think you are right in that the answer is trusting your bf/husband to be after letting him know how you feel. it's just a weird phenomenon that this has become acceptable. so disrespectful. i'm w. you sister.

[Amanda B.]

There's no sex in the champagne room.

Awesome masthead.

[Kristen]

From what I've read, it doesn't sound like Finance is the bachelor party type. I sent mine to Vegas for the big 30 - but he's not so much for the boobies in the face kind of thing.

Personally, I think it's idiotic - however, I'm always up for some naked ass smacking of the male stripper kind. I've been married twice and narry a bachelorette party did I have...

There's always the big 30 for me. Hm....

[Todd Elliott]

I think it depends on the guy. Of the three bachelor parties I've been to, none had strippers.

BP 1 - mine. Hung out with some buddies at a friends house, played pin the tail on the centerfold and some other fun games. My wife had her bachelorette party at the same time, and we all met up for Kareoke afterwards. It was a lot of fun.

BP 2 - A bunch of guys, we went out for a nice dinner, made crude jokes, went to someone's house and watched porn and played poker until 5 in the morning. No strippers.

BP 3 - Went down to a river house, went out on a boat, watched some porn and played poker, got him home in time to spend the night with the wife. No strippers.

I think the guys that enjoy strippers aren't ready for a relationship. Think about it, like Kristen said, it's boobs in the face. Strippers are hos out to get your money. It's the kind of thing you should do when you're single, not when you're getting ready for the big commitment.

Strip clubs are dirty, dirty places, with dirty girls. Just make it known it's not cool, or tell him if he wants a stripper, you get one to. That will change his mind. No one wants their wife having someone else's macaronni and cheese in her face.

[stella]

im having the hardest time picturing a bunch of dudes watching porn. is it like playing in the background while your shooting pool...or is it like a bunch of girls watching Sex in the City, and you all are just sitting side by side on the couch with a beer???

hmm. interesting. sounds harmless. but I still don't get it.

i dont know. i think when your single it's a totally different game. i don't think that sexual entertainment (and im not talkin' about a bunch of chippendales swinging their fur covered shlongs around while they dance to WHAM) is appropriate in a commited relationship...or a marriage.

i just don't understand how sex (naked chics etc etc) ever became the hallmark of the 'bachelor party'. wtf?

[Jayne]

A lot of it depends on the best man (who is supposed to arrange it). My husband's best man is very cool. They went on a camping trip and had a bonfire and did some "ritual" of writing down and talking about my husband's ex-girlfriends, then burning the papers, one by one. And they drank a lot of beer. I thought it was a great idea. Strip clubs etc. are SO cheap, shallow and backwards for a bachelor party for modern enlightened couples in my humble opinion.

[stella]

cheap. shallow. and backwards.

can i get an AMEN?

thank you jayne! for the love.

[TC]

In my experience, where most batchelor parties go wrong is with the assholes in attendance who think it is cool to fuck up the groom by:

1. Getting him totally and shitfaced drunk with the purpose of have do something embarrassing and/or put him in an embarrassing position.
e.g. Tying him to a lamp post naked at the end of the night (fucking infantile!)

2. Hire strippers / prostitutes, blah, blah, 'cos it's the groom's "last night of freedom". Halleluyah! What a crock of machismo bullshit!

If you need a "last night of freedom", then you ain't fucking ready to get married. Period.

Where women are involved, my experience is that it was never the groom that initiated it, and ultimately other people who participated.

I have been a Best Man three times and I've made it my job to make sure that the groom gets home safe and sound, and anyone who tried differently had to go through me. If you are the friend you're supposed to be, then act like it, so you can look him in the eye afterwards. I've even stopped the Best Man causing a fight once - 'cause let's face, there's gonna be a lot of alcohol involved.

What's he gonna look like walking down the aisle with a black eye? Cool? I don't think so! What you gonna say when she's giving him shit (rightly so) for embarrassing her, and he looks at you and lamely says "why didn't you stop me?".

As for porn - OK to watch it with your wife/girlfriend, but sat there watching it with a bunch of hairy-arsed guys drinking beer - that's just weird.

About time for a lot of men to grow the fuck up.

(Just make sure someone's covering his back)

BTW - I wish you all the very best!

[Sassy]

I'm glad to see there are guys like TC out there!

Personally, I'm against the BP's. But I'm also a huge chicken shit and didn't have the "balls" to tell the hubby he couldn't have one. He didn't even want one himself...it was the best man that was dead set on having it...and including skank strippers.

The day after - they all sweared that nothing "bad" happend. But there were quite a few lollipop dances. Ew. If you don't already know what those are...trust me...you don't want to!

Good luck with whatever happens!

[Kimmie in Decatur]

Those that have kids know that if you tell them not to do something or worse forbid them ... they will do it. Your disclaimer at the top of the post says it all... like a moth to a flame, guys are drawn to Tizzles and Azzes... 99% pecent are lookers and no more, don't bash him too hard on it else see my first point.

You have enough to worry these days instead to taking this to Defcon 5.

ps. I asked my man to read this post to get his thoughts and his only comment was "Todd needs to turn in his man card."

[Melissa]

Stella, I have had an argument about this topic with at least two of my former boyfriends, and they really don't get it. They think that women are against the strip club bachelor party because we're insecure. They don't seem to understand that we have an instinctual knowledge of the shit that really happens at these things. That's not to say it happens at every single one, but we've all heard enough stories to justify our uncomfortableness and trepidations. In fact, one of my ex's brother's had a bachelor party on a yacht in Fort Lauderdale and they hired a stripper to join them and she ended up giving him a blowjob in front of everyone. Fucking disgusting.

[ainh]

Turn *off* the radio.

Call it denial. Or self preservation. But I totally turn off the radio when they start talking about something that sets off my triggers (i.e. reports on the flu epidemic, or skin cancer, or West Nile, etc). I mean, it's like I wouldn't encourage a recovering alcoholic to join me in a bar, right? I try to deal with my issues, but I don't put myself in situations that are going to set me over the edge, you know?

Just a thought...

[TB]

I have a confession to make. I like strip clubs. I go to strip clubs with my husband. I've been to several in Atlanta, both the front and back rooms. If you want the real story, I can fill you in. It's really not as bad as you think. Maybe I should write a post, but on the other hand, I'm not sure I want to be castigated as an anti-feminist.

[T]

You know my thoughts on the subject, stella - just chill out and re-read what you wrote in the previous post. You love him and trust him and trust that he loves you too? Then you know he won't get involved in something that would cause harm to that bond of trust.

[carla]

Hey, these BP parties should just be outlawed period. I have seen couples getting divorced over what happened at some of these parties. Alcohol is always the problem. One very "innocent" party that did not even involve strippers ended up with the groom in bed with the maid of honor. Of course the bride was kept in the dark about it, but years and two kids later when it did come out the marriage ended. It seems that there are always people out there that are jealous over other people's happiness and they want to destroy it any way they can..enter the BP party. SICK! real men don't need stupid parties, and if they need strippers at all, at any time, they are not ready for marriage. Go and get ready for the most important day of your life by gettting shit faced drunk and having sex with other women...that makes sooo much sense! That is not being in love.