RECENTLY, I JOINED a few other guys for a night of controlled--or is that oxymoronic?--debauchery. Debauchery lite: less alcohol, but same great time. A friend from work was getting married, but his wedding was taking place out of state. Most of us couldn't make it to the ceremony, but we still wanted to send him off properly, with an ad hoc and peripatetic bachelor party. Really more of a roving bachelor party/pub crawl hybrid. None of the tawdry and stereotypical features of the cliched bachelor party had been planned: no strippers, no limos sloshing with liquor; an implicit gentleman's agreement to avoid hurling. Our little outing was to be nothing more than some old-fashioned male-bonding--a few beers, some off-color jokes (which according to ancient guys'-night protocols were to be loudly howled at, funny or not), an excuse to speak in staccato, profane bursts about women, work, and whatnot. (We wanted to be moderate, not genteel.) Had any of the bars we patronized allowed smoking, I'm pretty sure big, smelly cigars would have been involved as well (thereby rendering the emesis clause--see above--null and void). In any case, that kind of evening.
Now it's an odd component of humanity that serious occasions, particularly holy ones, are often preceded by revel and excess. Think Mardi Gras: a giant blowout followed by (at least traditionally) sackcloth and ashes, fasting, and penance. Or consider how a riotous Saturday night leads inevitably to a headachy, churchy Sunday morning. So, similarly, the guys and I were out for a little fun before our friend joined his betrothed in holy wedlock. Now please don't misunderstand me. I don't mean to imply that matrimony is the sackcloth and ashes follow-up to bachelor party hijinks, but there is something disquieting about a supposedly joyous word created by conjoining the benign "wed" to the life-sentence clank of "lock."
