I am ridiculously excited, as waiting for me on the DVR, is last night’s season finale of The Bachelorette. Squee! Why didn’t I watch last night, you ask? Well even I, in my zeal for mocking drunken idiocy and over-gelled hair, can not take the forty-five minute re-cap reality shows insist on putting together for their finale, as if the producers think anyone but the schmucks they’ve already sucked into forfeiting hours of their lives are going to jump on the band wagon and, like current viewers, care with inappropriate intensity whether she will choose Kypton, aka The Guy Who Will Be Bald in Ten Minutes, or Reid, the cute smartass with the great sense of humor and, unfortunately, a problem professing his love in front of millions of viewers. Ahem…I’m just saying.
Speaking of drunken idiocy, my beloved Bachelor franchise has been criticized in the past for promoting excessive alcohol consumption in an effort to create drama and that perhaps the removal of mood altering substances might be better for the show. They can not be serious. This is a show about young people trying to find love and from personal experience; nothing helps lubricate the wheels of The Love Machine like a little booze.
Please don’t freak out and start throwing phrases like “beer goggles” and “one night stand” in my face. Yes, I agree, alcohol can cause problems when people make serious decisions under its influence, especially when meeting potential love interests. But in certain circumstances, like when a friendship is progressing toward romance, or either party is on the shy side, a drink can give Cupid the kick in the ass he sorely needs.
I can state with complete confidence, my own marriage exists primarily due to large quantities of Milwaukee’s Best beer. If my campus had been a dry one, I’d probably be married to the wet sock I was dating when I left for college. Hubby, as I have stated before, is not the most verbose or expressive of guys. So when the sparks had begun to fly, I would find myself in my dorm room, tearing my hair out, screeching to my roommate, “He acts like he likes me. So why the hell isn’t he doing anything about it?” It went on like this for weeks, until one fateful Friday night, Homecoming weekend. I can still see so clearly in my mind’s eye, walking up the stairs at the local watering hole with the opening strains of U2’s "Where the Streets Have No Name" blaring, seeing H sitting at a table wearing his Cleveland Indians hat and thinking to myself, “Jesus, I am in love with this asshole. Now what?” Also very clear in my mind’s eye is H, in that college stance - plastic cup in one hand, pitcher full of beer in the other. That, it turned out, was the answer.
Walking home that night, all of us from our dorm, staggering across the filed where the evening’s bonfire was slowly dying, H leaned on me for support, telling me repeatedly, “You schmell good.” Casanova. And as the male members of our party decided to almost burn their things off trying to pee on the glowing embers, and the females stood around laughing at them, H and I were left alone. Tripping over a tree root, H took me down with him like an NFL linebacker and, in the ensuing scuffle, we kissed. He pulled his head back from mine and I thought, “This is it, he’s going to tell me how much he likes me. Yes!” And H opens his drunken eyes, looks at me seriously and says, “Shit, Mare, did I just kiss you?” Aaaarrgghh!
Amazingly enough , I did let him live. And after several other emotionally ambiguous, inebriated, interactions - one night in particular involving a lot of beer on his part, running across a frozen lake on foot, to visit me, studying, in my dorm room, at midnight - he finally, finally, admitted his feelings for me and we became a couple. Now while I do not recommend this course of action for everyone, and as I reread this short synopsis of our beginnings I realize, in the abstract, is reads like a classic He’s Just Not The Into You scenario. But H was into me, he just needed to find the courage to tell me. Or liquid courage. I know people make a lot of bad decisions when they’re drunk, but they also let their guard down and that can make for some relationship altering events. Good or bad.
So I will watch the men on tonight’s show drink their martinis (they’re older, gotta class it up) and laugh as I watch them try to win this girl over with their new-found (in a bottle) emotional freedom. And I will hold H’s hand while I do so, laughing inside knowing that even though it’s been almost twenty years he’s still not immune to a case of the Drunken Lovies. I believe a friend of his has some incriminating pictures from his wedding last October involving H dancing (!) and some inappropriate wife-ass grabbing.
I want that picture, Gault
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