Olds like to say that youth is wasted on the young. Just as bachelor parties, you might have noticed, are wasted on the no-longer bachelor. And because this isn't Mad Men, and your friend technically should've stopped acting single a week after meeting his partner-to-be, he shouldn't be treating the event as “one last weekend of freedom” or some gray-area-flirtatious horseshit like that. That's a good thing! But it leads to an idea I've been considering for a while: Why not shift the bachelor party off of the coupled-up and onto the single—that is, the actual bachelors? They're the ones whose freedom to roam in a bar and make out with someone cute should be egged on and cheered, right? Let me tell a quick story that illustrates at least part of the point I’m making about the version of this whole thing that I, 31 and almost married myself, encounter exclusively now.
I went to a bachelor party a couple months ago that wound up one night on a rooftop bar in the deserted downtown of a mid-size American city. A rooftop populated at night, it turned out, mostly by young people from nearby suburbs or be-lanyared attendees from the convention center next door. All ten members of our party were married or fiancéd, and the evening was consequently raging. Kidding: It was precisely as subdued as you’d expect—as pleasant and breezy (roof!) as any night out when no one is chasing anything, when no one is trying to convince anyone of their funniness or fitness. The obnoxiously good-looking non-bachelor bachelor half-heartedly swatted away advances from middle-aged conventioneers and stragglers in the adjacent bachelorette party, while the sleep-deprived new dads in our party who'd talked a big game during happy hour back at the Airbnb slumped against the railing and transfixedly watched their babies sleep on their Nest apps. The night out lasted as long as we could stand—nobody pushed it, cause nobody had anything or anyone to stay out for—before everyone happily agreed to head back to the house to drink more cheap beer more cheaply, acceptably alone with our spoken-for selves.
Don’t get me wrong: I very much enjoy going to restaurants and bars with friends. But it misses the point of what I think this selfishly once-in-your-life event used to pitch toward: that is, propping one friend up and endeavoring to chase the night on their behalf. If the bachelor in question is still single, it’s more fun for everyone, right? For the dude of honor. For the buddies who just need a weekend away from their Nest apps. For the generous bartenders and friendly single ladies at the honky-tonks in Nashville who just want to dance with someone who’s not gonna be sweating through his guilty almost-married conscience all night. Single life is sometimes hard and sometimes easy, but either way, one day it’s gone. That’s what’s worth marking, sealing off, and celebrating while it lasts.
If you wish to throw yourself and your bachelordom a party, make these three assurances to your friends: (1) This is in lieu of a traditional stag party later; (2) you will not make them pay for your steak; (3) they will have more fun than they will with a bunch of married dudes sitting around a cabin on a mountain.
But they won't need assurances; they will jump at the opportunity to reclaim what this really is—a kick-ass weekend with your closest friends like the sort you used to have more than once every marriage. Remind them: "Bachelor parties are wasted on the non-bachelors: It's time to celebrate me!”