The Bachelor Dinner

Judgment day and the day of one's marriage don't necessarily occur simultaneously. In fact, for most young men the real crack of doom takes place several nights before the nuptials are celebrated. It happens during the trial by alcohol, that lengthy ceremony sometimes identified as the bachelor dinner.

The bachelor dinner shouldn't be confused with the common stag dinner, an all-male session motivated exclusively by things female. Often, a stag dinner is made up of guests who are perfect strangers to each other but who nevertheless share a common laboratory interest in sex on display. A bachelor dinner is made up of fellows who've been faithful old schoolmates or comrades-in-arms. There may be a few pieces of erotica around, some movies, perhaps, or a girl or two. But more often, sex is dusted off with little or no notice, particularly if the future father-in-law is present. If sex is introduced, it's designed, of course, to inflame the groom while he is still theoretically intacta. It's like dangling a steak before a bloodhound and then snatching it away. A scroll with the names of the bachelor's past love suits is presented to him. Forgotten love letters snatched from an old duffle bag are read aloud. No effort is spared to uncover every bit of jackassery in the amorist's past life.

Bachelor dinners, as anyone might have guessed, originated in that stony suburb, Sparta. After a certain age, the lot of a Spartan bachelor wasn't a happy one. He wasn't permitted to watch the gymnastic exercises of the naked maidens. Plato tells how the Spartan bachelors were rounded up, forced to undress completely and to march around the market place singing a song ridiculing themselves and their spouseless lives. Clearchus, the Spartan general, describes how the married women at a certain festival were permitted to drag bachelors around the altar, thrashing them as an act of humiliation to force them into marriage. Undoubtedly it was the Spartan love of bravery and endurance that gave the bachelor dinner its main purpose: to roast and grill the groom before he goes up for the life stretch.

Each June an uncounted number of Playboy readers leave their life of assumed celibacy and enter matrimony. For the sake of those young men who are about to give up their bachelordom, Playboy is now prompted to offer some straight steers on the last supper.

Invite only your closest friends to your bachelor dinner. Ignore every bit of advice they offer. If, in a moment of trepidation, you should ask one of your old school buddies where to hold the dinner, he'll take up the clue immediately. He'll think sagely for a moment or two and then tell you to engage the balcony overlooking the main dining room of the club. His prime motive in suggesting this location is the fact that there is a twenty foot drop from the balcony to the main dining room below. In the event you or one of your aides happens to blank out with too many Martinis, your fall will naturally attract the attention of the clubmen below and create the kind of opera bouffe every bachelor dinner requires. If you reject the balcony idea, your buddy will then suggest the dignified Board room at the head of the spiral stairway. Any corked-up gent who happens to fall from this point will proceed down three uninterrupted flights of steps to the coat room. If you're still doubtful about the location, your pal will come up with the final popeyed idea. He'll urge you to go to the roof garden of a certain fashionable hotel. There's a small private dining room near the pantry, he'll tell you confidentially. In the room are gorgeous French windows. Without too much calculation you can tumble through the windows and descend thirty-six floors right into the center of Park Avenue.

The best place to hold a bachelor dinner, Playboy suggests, is in a cellar. A rathskeller with a small private dining room is excellent. There is no floor below from which people can send hurried calls to the police to quell the noise. Nor are there light fixtures below to rattle and sway, nor chunks of plaster to come tumbling down. Most important, being as low as you can get, there is no place for you to fall to. Some basement dining rooms are fitted with fine wall panelling and furniture, it is true, but for the most part they are built like heavy duty rumpus rooms. The fact that they can withstand much more destruction than the upper floors means that the damage bill you will eventually receive will be correspondingly smaller.

There are naturally some incidents at a bachelor dinner which every man must be prepared to endure: in spite of all your best precautions, that specie of fauna known as the practical joker will inevitably bring out some of his cleverest stratagems. There is no known armor against such objects as the exploding cigar, the spider box, the joy buzzer and other primitive forms of wit and humor.

Such jejune jesters--when your back is turned--will spike your Manhattans with red pepper, pour curacao into your soup and fill your black homburg with beer. Never turn your back at a bachelor dinner. One must remember the old warrior's custom of drinking a toast, when the assembled gents were handed a huge metal container passed from one guest to the next down the table. As each man rose to drink, sinking his head into the big vessel, an aide at his side stood up at the same time. The aide held the cover of the vessel in one hand, brandished his sword with the other and scanned every face at the table in order to avoid any fatal interruption during the drinking. Every groom at a bachelor dinner needs such an agent at his side constantly.

Usually, a bachelor about to be married arranges his own dinner and foots the bill. Sometimes the bride's father will pick up the tab while the groom does all the planning. In either case, the groom is in a controlling position up to a certain point, usually the fifth or sixth round of Martinis. There are times, however, when the bridegroom's friends--the best man and ushers--in a burst of generosity will make all the arrangements and foot the whole bill. This is the worst crisis of any for a bachelor to survive. The only way to meet this situation is to engage in what is known as antagonistic cooperation. They may call you an impossible old buzzard but you must fight for the place, the time, the menu, the drinks, the table arrangements and all other important details as a matter of sheer survival.

Where To Go

In choosing a place to hold a bachelor dinner, men are always looking for the kind of facilities that can be best described as clubbable. Some of the more exclusive men's clubs have always been inhabited by live corpses. There are other clubs, however, like some of the university clubs in large cities, where the atmosphere is intimate, easy and jovial. The lounge, the library, the backgammon room, the bar and other quarters are cosmopolitan and homespun at the same time. Usually the club employees are friendly and capable. The cuisine, in most of the clubs, is tops. In most of them there are one or two private dining rooms that have weathered many a bachelor party over the years.

Even in some of the small town country clubs you'll occasionally find a chef who can turn out a grand steak dinner. But the number of such smaller clubs is necessarily limited, and you must do some critical investigation before you go ahead and make a reservation.

A bachelor who isn't a member of a particular club can often use the club's facilities by simply asking one of his acquaintances who is a member to sponsor him as a guest. The member makes the reservation for the dinner in his own name, and he is responsible for the payment of the bill, while the guest of the member goes ahead and arranges all the details of the party.

If you're considering a hotel, you'll find banquet facilities varying from the Beverly Hilton to fleabags in the Bowery. Hotels differ from clubs first of all in their appointments. Too many have an institutionalized look. You'll find the same bar stools, the same lounge chairs, the same goblets and the same ash trays you've seen dozens of times before. Too often the front desk bears a remarkable resemblance to a busy air terminal. The shadow of the hotel dick lurks behind every spitoon.

This isn't true of all hotels, of course. If you go to a prominent hostelry, you can usually be sure the food, the drinks and the service will be handled by prosin the business. Hotels include bedroom facilities, while many clubs have no sleeping quarters. Guests at a bachelor dinner who lose all power of locomotion can be quietly transported on the freight elevator to bedrooms and stashed away until their heads have resumed normal size. Groomsmen ossified with too much champagne will be worked over by masseurs, attendants in the Turkish bath and even the house physician, if necessary.

No prominent club or hotel will knowingly permit sex exhibits to be uncorked on the premises. Seedier hotels will allow them, and will, in fact, solicit parties on this basis.

In the better hotels you can usually be fairly sure that the prices will be fair and that you will not be billed for mythical cases of champagne and rounds of Martinis that were passed out among the dishwashers and busboys.

Like hotels, commercial restaurants naturally vary from excellent to trashy. Here again you must either depend on your own first hand experience or do some private eyeing before making your reservation. Rathskellers, countryside restaurants and noted eating places located in former private residences will often provide rooms that are perfect for bachelor dinners. If you're planning the kind of affair that may last the whole night and even flow over to the next day, then the club or hotel is naturally preferable to the commercial restaurant.

What To Eat

There are many bachelor dinners where the guests never get around to the aesthetics of eating. The diners don't dine. Fellows who are normally moderate (continued on page 68)Dinner(continued from page 26) drinkers suddenly become human drain pipes. They start with Martinis, switch to whiskey, turn to champagne, divert themselves with beer and guzzle brandy until their eyes bubble.

Nothing, in Playboy's opinion, could be more off the trail. A bachelor dinner. in spite of all the ribbing and riling, should allow old trenchermen to get together, sit up, recognize each other and enjoy an evening of sociability. One way to divert the drinkers to the dining table is to serve the drinks right at the dining table instead of the small reception room often set aside for cocktails. If necessary, to make the drinkers sit down and eat, become a trifle vigorous. Shove your guests to the table. When they've reached the table, don't tease them with an hors d'oeuvres wagon or a silly fruit surprise. A jumbo shrimp cocktail will invariably make them get down to serious eating. Then you should place in front of them the kind of soup they simply can't ignore -- a deep bowl of velvety black bean soup, a steaming hot petite marmite or a hearty onion soup fragrant with Parmesan cheese.

If you're serving both a fish and meat course, it's wise to avoid such rich offerings as filet of sole marguery or lobster thermidore. Simple broiled fish like boneless shad or swordfish steak or Kennebec salmon will rest well.

Steak, as most men know, is the traditional meat course. If you want to dress it up as a thick planked steak surrounded with vegetables and a potato border, this is all right. Most impressive and most delicious is the thick shell steak, a boneless cut of about six steaks in one which is sliced at the table. As a change from the orthodox steak dinner, there are other magnificent meat courses for a bachelor party -- triple-thick English lamb chop with bacon, mixed grill, roast tenderloin of beef or roast ribs of beef with Yorkshire pudding. For vegetables, no one has ever invented a better combination than a big baked stuffed potato with a generous helping of young green string beans.

To draw the dinner to a close, pass a platter of assorted cheese and salted crackers. If you have a sweet tooth, a warm wedge of apple pie with Cheddar cheese or vanilla ice cream with warm brandied peaches are wonderful finales. Coffee from a big urn should be on tap, and the flow should not stop until the party disbands.

What to Drink

A bachelor party is necessarily a somewhat prodigal affair. But it isn't necessary to blow your entire bankroll on the liquor. In the first place it's a good idea to ask the manager or steward about the size of the drinks. The cocktails should be 31/2 to 4 ounces, and the whiskey should be 11/2 ounces to the jigger. Ask if there is any reduction when drinks are ordered in volume. There are some hotels and clubs where they will make no allowance and will charge you the standard bar price per drink. In some towns, local liquor laws require this practice. Other fine establishments will make definite reductions. Liquor laws may not permit them to sell you liquor by the unopened bottle. But you can order the equivalent number of drinks that you would have in a bottle, and on this basis there should be some allowance.

If you're serving Martinis before the dinner and there are twelve guests, you might order 3 dozen Martinis or three rounds prepared beforehand. The gin and vermouth are merely combined before the dinner and then mixed with ice as served. The headwaiter can notify you inconspicuously when the Martinis are exhausted. This kind of arrangement not only enables you to keep a pretty fair check of your liquor consumption, but helps you in controlling your guests so that they don't become completely anaesthetized before they sit down to eat.

Limit your drinks to the standard popular choices: Martinis or whiskey before the dinner, champagne with the main course or dessert, and highballs after dinner. Avoid pink ladies, sherry with the soup, horse's necks and other esoteric forms of the bartender's art.

You must have a really plush bankroll to afford fine imported champagne with your dinner. No man can be accused of skinflinting or of bad taste when he offers his friends such brands of domestic sparkle as Great Western, Gold Seal or Taylor's New York State champagne.

What to Break

The old custom of toasting the bride by breaking the glass in the fireplace is traced to a number of supposed origins. We break the glass, we are told, after drinking, because it can be used for no worthier purpose. Another explanation is that it symbolizes the eternal love of the bride and groom -- their love will last until the glass is made whole again. Whatever tradition lies behind the custom, there is no doubt as to its consequence. It costs like hell. By all means tell the manager or steward to provide the cheapest possible five-and-dime-store variety of champagne glasses. Or, if you're toasting with cocktail or highball glasses, order the most inexpensive ones available. If there's no fireplace in the room, the waiters can set up an impromptu area by placing two folded banquet tables into a wall corner. Let the toasters aim for his corner, using their best possible marksmanship to avoid hitting chandeliers, oil paintings, mounted sailfish and other appurtenances of a bachelor dining room. If there's a grand piano in the room, move it out. Put in its place an old upright that will serve the needs of any ivory pounder in the party.

The Bill

Most young grooms who receive a bill for their bachelor party go into a state of deep shock. They hold the bill in one hand, the check book in the other, and their fingers turn to butter. They've been rolled and robbed for items they never dreamed of.

The only way to avoid this situation is to ascertain all possible charges before arranging the party. When you're planning the dinner, ask for some sample (concluded on next page) menus. You want such menus not only to help you in making your choice of food but in order to confirm in writing the date, time of the dinner and the room you wish to engage.

On the sample menu, which is a kind of quotation sheet, you want to know not only the cost of the dinner per person but also the following facts: What charges will there be for (a) the room rental, if any; (b) the number of covers (cronies) you must guarantee and when this guarantee must be given; (c) how many additional covers the kitchen can take care of in the event there is an increase in the number of cronies at the last minute; (d) the cost of the liquor in quantity or by the individual drink; (e) the cost of flowers on the table or boutonnieres; (f) the cost of cigars and cigarettes; (g) the cost of glassware for breakage; and (h) any other incidentals. The last item, incidentals, may cover a wide territory. For instance, if one of your guests imbibes too much food and drink and suffers what the physicians call reverse peristalsis (i.e., his stomach can no longer contain the food and drink with which it is gorged), there will be a porter charge for cleaning. Sometimes this porter charge is multiplied eight or ten times depending on the number of incidents in which your guest was involved.

Finally, you must count on the usual ten or fifteen percent tip. This sum should be added to your bill, and you should give it to the manager to distribute as he sees fit among the employees. Even in private clubs where no tipping is permitted for the regular daily service, gratuities are expected on private parties. It's a good idea to slip the headwaiter a five dollar bill before the dinner begins. Tell him that he will receive the main gratuity later. A prepayment of this kind not only encourages the headwaiter to give the best possible service during the dinner but often is an insurance against later highjacking.

By Thomas Marioplayboy's food & drink editor