One of the best things about bachelorhood is that no one expects hospitality from us. We’re obviously selfish people or we’d be married and holding up our end of the car pool. Furthermore, society is a free market and we are a scarce commodity. Every hostess in America is wracking her Rolodex for unattached dinner guests.
As long as our looks don’t actually gag a cat, we’re invited everywhere. In return, all we have to do is keep our fingers out of wedding rings. Ours is the life of the happy drone. The whole hive of civilization is busy feeding us and keeping us amused.
Nevertheless, there are moments when bachelors are expected to act the host. Sometimes lovers or parents corner us, sometimes we give in to misplaced whims of congeniality, and sometimes twenty old SDS buddies show up on the porch, drugged and armed.
There are three types of entertainment a bachelor is traditionally called on to provide:
1. Love trysts
2. Dinner parties
3. Enormous drunken blowouts
Money is your best weapon. Take all your guests to a restaurant and let the restaurant people clean up the mess. If you get someone stupid on the MasterCard 800 number, maybe you can convince him that your telephone number is your credit limit. If this fails, try postponing the event in hope of atomic war. Atomic war is much overrated as tragedy, compared to what an enormous drunken blowout can do to your house. If atomic war fails, follow the directions below.
The proper love tryst has three elements:
1. Drinks
2. Cozy meal
3. Interesting excuse
The interesting excuse is not actually interesting. It just gives your date an excuse for not saying good-bye when she ought to. Usually it’s a videotape of something highbrow like a Truffaut remake of Francis Joins the Navy. With any luck you won’t see the end of it.
The important thing in a love tryst it to make your home tug at your date’s heartstrings. Women like to think every bachelor is one of the Lost Boys who wandered away from Neverland while Peter and Wendy weren’t looking.
Turn your place into a female’s idea of a mess, which is to say clean it. Women know we can’t take care of ourselves, and they think this is adorable. But that doesn’t keep them from blanching at the sight of soap scum. Now muss your home with boyish clutter. Hang neckties from cute places like the refrigerator-door handle. Stick your ski hat on top of a lampshade. Leave a half-empty wineglass on a table next to a burned-down candle and sheets of stationery covered with crossed-out lines of poetry. (Steal them from Rupert Brooke.) Toss your tuxedo on the floor. And use a wastepaper basket for an ice bucket. This is what women mean when they say, “His place was a fright.” If your place is really a fright, they won’t stay long enough to talk about it.
Be sure all towels and sheets are clean. And make your bed, no matter how strange this seems. Women make their beds each morning and they assume everyone—criminals on the lam, animals in their burrows—does the same. It isn’t hard, once you have the knack. Just keep tucking in the end parts of things until their middle parts get smoothed out and flat. But be sure to move around the bed as you do this. If you stand in one place and tuck, you’ll wind up with all the blankets completely under the mattress.
Now wreck dinner. There are two forms of the intentional dinner muff. Using the first method, have all the ingredients for a good dinner ready but don’t start cooking until your date arrives. Throw meat that’s still wrapped in butcher paper into the oven without a pan. Cram the brown-and-serve rolls into the toaster. As with housecleaning, if you’re really incompetent, your date will feel obliged to take over. This, however, is a mean thing to do to a woman and, believe me, she’ll know it.
The second method is better. Have the dinner under way before your date arrives, and make sure it’s terrifying. Fix baloney soup and pickled beet salad with ouzo and sheep cheese dressing. And make sure all of it, including the salad, catches fire during drinks. Then just when the gruesome slop is supposed to be served, a prearranged pizza delivery boy shows up at the front door.
Why spoil it by showing up? Let people ring your doorbell for a while and go away puzzled but probably relieved. Or be a bully. When you invite your guests, they’ll say, “Is there anything I can bring?” Tell them, “Yes, a salad, a vegetable dish, dessert, and an eight-pound standing rib roast—medium rare.” Voilà, dinner is served.
If this doesn’t work, serve what you can muster and distract like mad. Serve unshucked oysters as hors d’oeuvres. Put the table someplace unusual, like out in the yard in the snow. Dress your dog as a butler. Make guests cook their own live lobsters on weenie forks in the fireplace. If you keep people busy and confused, they’re liable to think they’re having fun.
Here’s an event where bachelor expertise pays off. Bachelors know all about parties. In fact, a good bachelor is a living, breathing party all by himself. At least that is what my girlfriend said when she found the gin bottles under the couch. I believe her exact words were, “You’re a disgusting, drunken mess.” And that’s a good description of a party, if it’s done right.
Every society needs to blow off steam. Classical Greece had its Dionysia. Ancient Rome had its bacchanals. But modern America seems to have gotten off the track. We are the only culture to ever develop a type of festivity where you get cornered by a pipe-smoking psych prof who’s a bug on nuclear winter.
To turn a dumb soiree into a dangerous bash, the first consideration is time. Don’t choose an ordinary time like Saturday night. Have your party at eleven on a weekday morning. The purpose of parties is fun. And anything is fun when you’re supposed to be working. Other good times for a party are during college exams, jury deliberations, hospital stays, and any time during a marriage.
A good excuse for a party is usually not what you think. Birthdays, weddings, family reunions, and other occasions with an atmosphere of obligatory joy are a bore. Some of the best parties are after funerals. Fun and happiness are not synonymous. Happy people don’t need fun. Fun takes your mind off things. If you have a wonderful marriage, beautiful children, a great job, and you’re sure you’ll go to heaven when you die—why would you want to take your mind off that? But the rest of us need lots of fun.
Whatever the occasion, do not neglect alcohol. No other refreshment will do. Yes, alcohol kills brain cells, but it’s very selective. It kills only the brain cells that contain good sense, shame, embarrassment, and restraint. Wield a heavy hand at the bar. Spike the white wine. Forget all the soft drinks and most of the mixers; these contain dangerous amounts of water. Water is no fun unless you’re throwing people into a swimming pool. You don’t want your guests to get half drunk. They might suddenly remember the babysitter, try to drive home, and kill themselves. If a guest is able to make it to the end of your driveway, you’ve unleashed a dangerous maniac on America’s highways.
You also need to have your party in the right kind of place, a place that’s too small. You have to pack people together to make them act silly. Try this experiment with house cats. Observe what five house cats do in a living room. Now observe what they do in a laundry sack. This is why parties on boats and in bathtubs are always successful. But any unusual place, regardless of size, is good. High dangerous places like roofs and bridges are excellent. Caves, abandoned warehouses, and beachfront motels during hurricanes are also great. The party spirit responds to any bizarre locale. A bachelor apartment qualifies.
Lots of noise and lots of people are a must for a good party. Make sure some of these people hate each other. Otherwise there will be no chemistry. What would the universe be like if there were only positively charged protons and no negatively charged electrons? Nothing would happen. The most basic molecules couldn’t exist. The world wouldn’t have hydrogen, let alone cute blond girls in short skirts. Chaos takes organization.
Not every kind of noise will do either. You can’t play RUN-D.M.C. if you’re feting the Capitol Hill set. To pick the right music, determine your party crowd’s median age. Then play hit songs from the most mentally retarded period of their lives—when they were in their teens.
In order to make sure the party gets completely out of hand, you’ll need “party catalysts.” Drugs are okay, but things for the guests to throw at each other are better, also legal. Have plenty of things available to throw, and if no one takes the hint, throw them yourself—Jell-O cubes, snowballs, wet paper towels. Things that squirt are good, too—seltzer bottles, warm champagne. If that doesn’t get things going, bust up the furniture.