Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

THE best types of weddings to get invited to, the uninhibited bachelor soon realizes, is one where you’re no longer very close with the person or persons inviting you. Obviously some remnant of affection or intimacy or whatever remains to get you invited in the first place, but if his first response to the invitation is surprise, the enterprising bachelor knows he’s onto something.

When my friend Deidre (not her real name) invited me to her wedding, it was perfect. I was not close enough to be intimately involved with the plans, had met the groom once (and that in a crowded smoky place where I was pretty sure he would never remember me from) and knew only a limited number of her other close friends. The reason this was exciting was simple: weddings are filled with drunken, relaxed women in tight, revealing but uncomfortable clothes who have been whipped up into a mating frenzy by the sheer romance and primal proceative mood of the ceremony. After a few too many glasses of white wine and just the right number of love songs, any man with no perceivable limps or skin diseases starts to look attractive, as long as he seems like marriage-material.

“Marriage Material” is a tricky term which means, basically, that there is no reason the poor slob couldn’t be goaded into exchanging vows should a relationship blossom and the idea of living with him and bearing his children not bring images of prescription drugs dancing into the poor gal’s head. Not all men fall into this category, for a variety of reasons: the limps and skin diseases mentioned above, an existing marriage, baleful personality, halitosis, and an alarmingly long list of character defects that range from a wandering dick to an inability to stand up to her father. The exact prerequisites of “Marriage-Material” vary from girl to girl, and are difficult to pin down, but every lean and hungry bachelor knows that he has to look it to have any chance of being the real Best Man of the reception.

There are two ways to acquire this mysterious veneer.

The first is to do whatever is necessary to appear honestly distressed at your single status, to achieve a delicate balance of machismo and sensitivity, to try and project the sort of manly sadness stemming from your loneliness that will set women’s hearts a-pounding and knees a-melting and make you look like the third-rate Chris O’Donnel sensitive hunk you know you could be.

The other, more attractive to the lazy amongst us bachelors, is simply to show up with a good Trophy Date and not tell anyone she’s your platonic friend or your best friend’s sister or your cousin Ruth. Because the one true law of “Marriage Material” is that if some other woman is willing to appear in public as your girlfriend, you must be it.

I asked my gorgeous friend and confidant Simone [REDACTED] to be my trophy date for this one, for a variety of reasons: she can drink like a sailor, she’s a good choice of people to talk to for hours and hours, and she’s good-looking enough to blind when the mood takes her to wear skintight black evening dresses. Also, since Simone regards my own libido as an amusing if unimportant detail of my existence, there was no chance of me losing sight of my real objectives and getting distracted. She was perfect for Trophy Date status.

I was ready. With the lovely Ms. [REDACTED] on my arm and my own dashing lack of any discernible deformities, I knew I had Marriage-Material stamped on my forehead.

And then, we got lost.

And I mean, lost. We got lost on the way to the ceremony, although not too badly, and managed to sneak in with only a deafening-amount of squeaking hinges and muffled giggles. Then we got lost on the way to the reception, in a big way. Well, in all honesty I should say that I got lost. Simone just sort of sat in the front seat staring out the window in a saintly display of tolerance. But then Simone’s known me for years now and if she hasn’t come to terms with my general incompetence by now then she never will.

Being lost in New Jersey, however, means never being too far away from a major highway, and we did make it to the last half hour of the cocktail hour after being on the road for almost four hours. We were starving, and all the food had been gnawed down to the bones by the other guests, who resembled army-ants or piranhas in their greasy-lipped frenzy. I settled for a stiff cocktail and some sushi, while Simone trembled and wept because all the good foods had been devoured. I held her gently in my arms as she cried, forlorn at the lost hors devours.

At the actual reception, we were both so burned from the ride down that it took many glasses of liquor before we felt relaxed enough to enjoy ourselves, and by then I suppose I had lost my appetite for meaningless romantic entanglements with booze-flushed floozies in the coat room. Besides, my pickings were slim: the women at our table (the official “old friends we don’t know what to do with” table) were vague little sorority moppets more interested in discussing the details of every wedding they’d ever seen, heard of, or imagined in their narrow lives, and none of the other women were drinking enough. So I settled in, talked to Simone, snuck out with her to watch Game 4 of the World Series on the Hotel Lounge TV, and eventually got shit-faced enough to dance.

And there my careful veneer of Marriage-Material vanished, like ice on a July afternoon.

Dancing is not a male activity. Men who dance well are not men (although men who avoid dancing are cowards) and so most of us flail about with an unseemly awkward motion, endangering our friends and dates and ruining our cool exteriors. In self-defense, most sensible men have adopted a sedate white-man’s overbite type of dancing that is neither exciting nor embarrassing, it is simply dull. Not me. In my self-defense, I get as goofy as I can, dancing as if I were in a Bill Murray movie. I make my dancing into a big joke. This is fine if you’re dancing in front of good friends who already don’t respect you, but in front of strangers…sometimes it is a mistake. I am the Elaine Bennis of Male Pattern Dancing.

It didn’t matter, really; we had a good time and made it up to our room after several hours of dancing had sweated all the alcohol out of my body. Luckily, I was too tired to be humiliated and hit the sheets immediately upon entering the room. Simone unfortunately changed into frumpy sweatpants and a T-shirt, and the next day I happily drank coffee, clogged the tub drain, and ate a complimentary breakfast of greasy sausages and buttery eggs…

…and promptly got lost on the way home. Simone, tired of all this bullshit finally took charge and directed me home. As I dropped her off I considered the whole night to have been a rousing success, even if I had wasted a great Trophy Date opportunity. Oh well, one thing I know in this crazy life: there is always another wedding waiting for me.

Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

All I can say is, never attend a wedding as a freewheeling bachelor. Never never never. Families abhor bachelors, and the rutting-fevered atmosphere of the pagan marriage ceremony brings this sentiment out in spades. It gets ugly.

My friend Madge was getting married and had scheduled her wedding very inconveniently for my rent-a-date purposes; every woman who owed me a favor or who might conceivably enjoy dressing up and drinking watery drinks with me for several hours was otherwise engaged, usually with a sudden vacation to some exotic port. If I’d been a less secure individual it might have seemed like all my friends were avoiding my wedding invite, but of course, that couldn’t be. So, in a moment of whimsical affection for my friend Madge I doomed myself by deciding that what the hell, I’ll go alone.

I don’t know what, exactly, I imagined the wedding reception would be like. I guess I had some disco-fueled sex fantasy involving available and drunkenly wanton bridesmaids (forgetting in my fever that Madge had no friends who could accurately be described as drunkenly wanton) and me ending up the evening like Sammy Davis Jr. with the band, tie undone, microphone and cocktail in hand, calling everybody “baby” and singing Barbara Streisand’s People Who Need People while the bride and groom slow danced. This was never, ever going to happen, not even for a second. If you believe in alternate universes, there was never even an alternate universe where that was a slight possibility. Frankly, I didn’t take a lot of different things into consideration: a) the awesome instinct to match-make in the modern Catholic female, b) the sheer horror uncoupled bachelors inspire in the hearts of Catholic matrons, c) how uncomfortable suits make me (so binding).

Still, for whatever reason I somehow convinced myself that attending Madge’s union ceremony as Solamente Jeff was a good idea. I even went out and bought a new suit for the occasion, because I was feeling lucky. Under the fascist-shopping guidance of the infamous and gorgeous Elizabeth [REDACTED], I picked out a dignified dark-green number that artfully accentuated my beer gut and brought out the somber color of the bags under my eyes. In a shopping mood, I also went in search of an odd and unique wedding gift. I didn’t want to give in to conformist tradition and buy Madge something she actually wanted; I’m an artist, after all, and had to find something symbolic and beautiful but patently useless.

I won’t tell you what I bought, though I will say that I succeeded. While Madge will protest her undying affection for my gift because it came from me (and thus will likely be worth money some day), I doubt it has ever seen light of her living room. I should also mention that my choice of gift was ungainly and large, and I packed into an even larger box, wrapped it garishly, and brought it with me to the wedding, I suppose so I could set it on the seat next to me and not feel so lonely.

.o0o.

The wedding itself was normal: the groom had the glassy-eyed stare of muscle relaxants, Madge was a vision in white and guarded by security professionals so no one would have opportunity to smudge her makeup. In the middle of the ceremony, she put the ring on the wrong finger, couldn’t get it off to fix the mistake, and dissolved into giggles while the groom, completely numb from sedatives, stared at her in mute horror. Or something like that; my memory gets a little fuzzy these days. I lurked in the background trying not to absorb any of the holiness going on around me. The two families could sense that I was a wolf among the flock and they steered clear, leaving empty seats around me for a two pew radius.

At the reception, I lugged my absolutely huge present around with me like the Ancient Mariner with his pet albatross until a very Italian woman took pity on me and told me where I could put it down safely. She then had me sit with her family, introducing me to her beautiful daughters with a degree of pity that instantly made me bitter and resentful. I spent a great deal of the cocktail hour smoking cigarettes, muttering to myself.

When we were all seated for the ridiculously intricate introduction and bridal Awards Ceremony, I spent a few quality moments trying to figure out the demographics of my table. Wedding veterans will tell you: every table tells a story, baby. There’s always the Single Friends table, the Obligatory Co-Workers table, the Never-Talked-To Childhood Friends table. I was none of those, and I slowly came to realize, to my horror, that I was seated at that nightmare scenario known as the Dateless table.

Without warning, I’d been bitten by the despised monster and been transformed into one of The Dateless.

I had also been carefully placed next to Madge’s colorful cousin who had a sunny personality, a bountiful bosom, and a complete lack of attraction either to or for yours truly. I’m not saying that Madge was trying to match us up, but I am saying that she figured she’d seat us together and see what happens, because, as I was learning, nature abhors a bachelor and the wise women of our tribes will always try and find you the sort of happiness they have found, the sort of happiness which results in a 113% divorce rate in this country. The sunny and bountiful cousin, however, also had something akin to a attention deficit disorder, resulting in her dashing around the reception like a lemur spooked from the brush, which was doing nothing to attract me.

Defeated, I left the reception at the appropriate time. The bride and groom were liquored up and weary and had no energy to pity me as I exited alone, determined to never attend another wedding dateless. Or to wear that suit ever again.

Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

I showed up at Carla’s around 2:30pm, shaved, showered, and pressed into uncomfortable shoes, which I do not wear for just anybody. I also smelled good, which anyone who knows me well will attest is not such a common occurrence. I was buffed, shined, and ready to boogie. As I stepped into Carla’s apartment it became obvious that she was not: the place was littered with underwear, recently purchased shoes, and trash. Carla was in the throes of typical chick-like lateness, rushing about applying last-minute makeup, brushing her lustrous hair, and vacuuming herself into rubber underwear, all, I presumed, for my benefit (hubba hubba).

I tried to make myself at home, but any time I tried to leave the living room I encountered a pile of underwear and Carla, screeching that I couldn’t go in there. Eventually I found that I was only welcome to sit in an uncomfortable chair in the shadowed area of the living room, and there I stayed.

Carla finally emerged ready to go, and I witnessed the first of many transformations for My Wedding Date, this one from Crazy Girl to Normal Girl. In her nice dress and with her hair combed, she appeared almost normal. We got into her chariot and off we were to pick up her friend Dorothy in Englewood. Here I grew worried as Carla seemed to have little idea where her friend lived, and seemed content to just drive around in circles and hum to herself. Adding to my desperation was the fact that Carla kept one finger mashed on the “lock” button all this time, so I could not give in to my urge to leap from the moving vehicle. We were saved by the sight of Dorothy waving at us from her front porch.

We got out and Dorothy told us to beware of snipers; apparently some local outpatient had been shooting at her trees just moments before. Carla seemed interested in this story, and I began to think her friend would have a calming effect on her, when Carla suddenly noticed that the dress Dorothy was wearing was strikingly similar to her own, and a cat-fight broke out on the front lawn. I was able to save Dorothy only by pointing out to Carla that since the offending dress was now stained green and red with grass and blood it no longer resembled her own. I carried the unconscious Dorothy gently to the car and we were off.

At the wedding, Carla developed an unseemly fascination with the bald head of the man seated in front of us, which was actually a good thing, as it kept her relatively quiet throughout the ceremony, except when she loudly informed me that I would be blasted by lightning for my sins and the several times she asked me if I was interested in any of her girlfriends, all of whom, she asserted, had “big bazooms”. With the aid of several burly ushers I was able to rush her from the church before being identified.

We arrived triumphantly at the hotel for the reception, and Carla lost little time digging into the rum supply, double-fisting it for most of the evening. Her transformation from Normal Girl to Drunk Girl was seamless, as was her almost unnoticed transformation from Drunk Girl to DANCING QUEEN. I’d had no idea I was the official nonthreatening male guest of the DANCING QUEEN, but my education was quick and brutal. She danced the Twist, which is to say she danced the Twist to every song that the band played, often by herself on the dance floor with the hot spotlight following, once with a dozen tuxedoed men clapping time and hooting.

As the hour grew late, I was pulled aside by Wedding Officials and asked to remove her from the dance floor so that the older couples could safely dance without fear of being smacked or trampled by the rampaging DANCING QUEEN. I donned my fatigues (I was “going commando” at the wedding anyway) and hustled her off to the bar, where she loudly berated the bartender for trying to give her her drinks in plastic cups instead of glasses. As he hustled off to take care of this, she leaned over and breathed into my ear.

“My rubber underwear has cut off my circulation,” she said, “I think my feet are numb.”

Around one in the morning we all admitted weariness and retired to the room we had rented for the evening. Here Carla instructed me to strip and lay down in the tub, but I refused, knowing better, and wrapped myself up in a bolt of fabric in order to protect myself from Carla and from the corrosive cold of the air conditioner, which the other denizens of the room had insisted on activating. We implored Carla to change out of her dress and remove her rubber underwear, fearing permanent brain damage from the lack of circulation, but Carla became irrational at this point and seemed to feel threatened by this piece of good advice, curling up defensively on the couch and growling at anyone who came near her, accusing several of her friends of attempted sodomy. In a bizarre moment, her friends made up a taunting song which included the words “finger” and “crack”, and sang it over and over again until poor Carla wept. At this point I fell asleep, and so cannot detail Carla’s undoubtedly agonizing transformation from Drunk Girl to Hungover Girl.

In the morning Carla announced several times that she felt like a “whore” but still refused to change clothes, planning instead to hang around the lobby of the hotel in the hopes of getting into another wedding reception, and at yet another rum supply. I enlisted several of her big-bosomed friends to help me force her into the car, wherein she grew grim and drove me home in silence, complaining that her underwear was up around her neck.