Par. Tay.
My friend Crispin Hijanx selected three women to stand up with him at his wedding. He also selected a woman to marry, cause that’s just what our state is like these days! His best friendships really are with women, and he tends to loathe rigid gender boundaries, so it makes perfect sense for him to have groomschicks. Of course, in terms of the bachelor party I’m not sure if his selection was unfortunate or ingenious.
We groomschicks are determined to throw one hell of a party, but we’re a little handicapped by the fact that none of us has ever been invited to a bachelor party before, so while we know the movie-style ideas of what bachelor parties are “supposed” to be, we don’t have vast libraries of experience to draw from. And Crispin isn’t even interested in “hired strippers”, he says, so we have to get creative from scratch: no strip clubs, no boozing, nothing stereotypical. Did I mention that Crispin hates being stereotypical?
So I’ve been running around like an energy-impaired chicken with its head cut off lately trying to help plan this shindig. It threatens to be pretty fun, too. We’ve had lots of good ideas that reek of Crispin, but there’s one that makes me especially nervous. See, not too long ago, one of Crispin’s friends was getting married and he, along with a few other male friends, agreed to strip for her bachelorette party. I don’t think it’s mere happenstance that Crispin has mentioned this factoid about three thousand and six times since his engagement.
When you get to the point where you realize that one of your oldest close friends is asking you to take your clothes off in honor of his impending nuptials, what do you do, punk? In light of the fact that I’m terribly naked shy, my solution is to start with many clothes and end up with significantly fewer, but still some.
In stripping, is it still the thought that counts?


