penises, trinkets, and tulle! oh my!

we went out with kathryn last saturday for a wild and crazy girls’ night out bachelorette party. no, it did not involve excesses of alcohol (except for julie, who enjoyed herself a wee bit too much) or men paid to remove their clothing (two words: DISGUSTING and EMBARRASSING. okay, three words: DISGUSTING, EMBARRASSING, and CRABS. i’ve got my own crab-free hot guy who will remove his clothes for free at the drop of a hat.)

we had a nice dinner at momo’s italian, then went to a very bizarre and interesting place called pete’s duelling piano bar, which consists of two people on back-to-back pianos on the stage, playing in tandem and taking turns singing popular songs, making fun of people in the crowd, embarrassing bachelorettes, and getting everyone to sing along. kathryn thoroughly enjoyed herself, and got a chance to show off her swingin’ dance moves.

i could barely hear myself think, it was so loud and crowded in there (at least we had reserved tables), so i spent most of my time talking to the girls on either side of me, brittney and dagmar. dagmar is a friend of kathryn’s, and she’s a lot of fun. she’s one of the few women i’ve met that i can see eye level with — and actually she’s got probably four or five inches on me. she’s from frankfurt, and she regaled us with tales of how germans don’t ever talk to each other in public. when she first moved here a few years ago, she panicked in a banana republic when a friendly salesman struck up a casual conversation with her. we asked her how germans met each other, what they did in bars and nightclubs, and she said that they mostly just stood around with arms folded, looking stern.

later, we went back to rachel’s house, ate potato chips and chocolate, and talked for a couple of hours before going to bed. the next morning, we made pancakes with ice cream and a huge platter of bacon, as is tradition.

here is something i fail to understand about bachelorette parties: traditionally, the point is to completely embarrass the bride-to-be by making her wear stupid accessories, most of which involve penises or condoms. i won’t get into the motivations for embarrassing a friend in public on purpose — that is another topic for another day. but why the emphasis on penises, condoms, and sex? realistically speaking, it’s not like most brides-to-be have never seen a penis before. her friends dress her up in sex toys and penis shaped trinkets, as if this is something new. “hey, now that you’re getting married, you’re going to be seeing a lot of penis! and here’s what they look like! oooh, you’re going to be having sex! hee hee hee!” i heard a statistic today that 99% of people who get married do not get married as virgins. so sex is nothing new for these women, either. anyway, it’s just a curious tradition. i wonder how it got started — surely not back in the age when many men and women did NOT have sex before marriage. those times would have been WAY too conservative for it to be acceptable to dress a woman in a penis-shaped hat and take her to a bar.