Tomorrow, I will be headed back home to Seaside, California for the holidays, but equally important is tomorrow brings me one day closer to New Year’s Eve, when I see two of my best friends getting married.
I’ve talked about this a couple of times, including yesterday’s post, which was largely about how I navigate being a sharefriend to both the Bride and the Groom. There is also, of course, the issue of going date-less, and the gravitas of the occasion being on New Year’s Eve, which is a prime-time holiday for couples already.
Since the post I did about going to the wedding date-less, a couple of women have kindly offered their company on the grand occasion. Some of them I don’t know or have never met, others are good friends of mine. When I began to actually entertain the idea of going with one friend of mine, I found out that because I RSVP’d for myself only, it would be too difficult to accommodate another person at this point in time.
Then, my mom shocked me by suggesting I should take my younger sister with me to the wedding. She claims this was my sister’s idea, and my sister said that it would be a good way for her and I to spend New Year’s together, something we haven’t done in years. And I don’t know what I was more shocked by, the suggestion, or the fact that my mom was giving me the suggestion with no hint of irony in her voice.
Now before everyone starts making the ewww face, a brief story. In high school, there was a classmate of mine who actually took his older sister to prom with him. He was perfectly capable of bringing his own date, but because his sister never got to go to her prom (for reasons I don’t know), my classmate took his older sibling, who was only one or two years our senior. I later found out, taking a cousin or a sibling to prom isn’t as incestuous as one might believe. It’s not as common as say going stag, but I would rank it right up there with same-sex couples who attend prom, though way less controversial.
Weddings, in turn, are just proms for adults, and I didn’t go with my sister then, so I can’t go with my sister now.
When I went to prom my junior year, I went with my girlfriend at the time, so I knew things were going to have a happy ending. My senior year, I went with a girl who I had been friends with since first grade. Some would say she was sister-like, but she wasn’t sister-like-for-real, so there was the possibility anything could happen at the end of the night. And even though nothing happened at all, that wasn’t the point. The point was, even with no date on deck for my senior prom, I still wanted to go with someone who might, just maybe be down for a happy ending.
The wedding date, like the prom date, is what I like to call a sex-date. You either take someone you know you can have sex with, or you take someone you really want to have sex with, but haven’t had the chance to yet. All guys have them, whether it’s tickets to something like a Sade concert, or an open ticket to some trip, every guy has come up or will come up on some great date that presents a grand opportunity to get some from a woman. At the very least, it might increase some chances that might otherwise be slim.
Of course, not all dates are about getting some at the end of the night, but things like a wedding date are. There is a huge difference between being denied after dinner and a movie and being denied in a tuxedo at a wedding with a reception and champagne galore. The fall from grace is a lot greater.
So what do I do? Keep it down to earth and go solo, which might be what a guy like me deserves. Sometimes, when I go for the gold, I come up with nothing but rocks and dirt.
What I am sitting on over here is a golden ticket to my personal light-skinned chocolate factory, and of course it’s a shame I’ll be that one guy who came by himself, but the truth is, sometimes we’re all too picky for our own good and that’s how we end up on these solo missions. As for the suggestion that there will be plenty of single women in the wedding party for me to choose from, trust me, I’ve already asked the Groom to give me a rundown, and it sounded like a Seattle weather report: Cloudy and gloomy because most women will already have dates on their own. Besides, does anyone think a bachelor like me wouldn’t inquire about such a thing before entertaining the idea of taking a date of my own? Let’s not be silly.
But all is not lost. There is still one more opportunity for me to find the perfect wedding date, and that is the bachelor party.
Happy ending indeed.
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