As Brett Harvey points out in The Fifties: A Women's Oral History, men and women were getting married earlier and in greater numbers in the 1950s—and for good reason. “For the majority of American women, their sexual initiation took place within the framework of marriage,” she explains. “In fact, marriage was often the only way for a woman to have sex.” Keep in mind: birth-control pills were not introduced in the United States until 1960, and safe abortions were hard to come by. In other words, there was nothing casual about sex. Of course, some men and women were having sex before marriage but in the 1950s, if word got out, the women were branded “bad girls” and were less desirable as wives. That double standard certainly informed Italian-American JOE V.'s thinking as he chose a bride in 1959.

There was no sex before we got married. I had done it, but not with her. Usually when I dated a girl, if I didn't really particularly want to marry her, I would put a move on her. But if I wanted to marry her, I wanted that honeymoon to be exactly what it should be, or at least what I thought it should be.

I met my wife through her brother. He was a buddy of mine. And when I met her, I knew that she was probably gonna be the one. I just knew. And of course this is before I went into the service . So I wrote to her occasionally, and when I came back...That was it.

I had been to a few stags before mine. Like most of the stags I'd been to, I thought that they would have a stripper at mine. My best man was a very, very close friend of mine. He set up the stag. He did a pretty good job: we had a lot of people come. It was in a hotel in New Haven . And there was a dinner. And then there were strippers. And that was it.

Most of the stags I've been to, people didn't get that crazy. Because they had to pay for their own drinks. It's different from going to a wedding where somebody's paying for the booze. Usually you go, you have a drink; at my stag I bought a few of my friends a drink, but that basically was it.

I do remember the stripper. She was not very young. In 1959, the type of a female that stripped was completely different from the strippers that they have lately. Back then it was an older woman. She's not as nice, it's not like a Playboy Bunny. The one that I had was old; I was very disappointed. She looked like shit! [ laughs ] My best man got her; evidently he didn't spend too much money.

What happened? They announced her, my best man put on a record and bingo: she just went around and maybe teased some people. Then it was over; she left. That particular time, she didn't go in another room and, uh, service anybody.

I think stags have changed from that standpoint. As years went on, they got a little crazier. You could have a raffle: in some cases people bought a ticket and if you won, you would go in the backroom with the stripper.

I went to one, it's gotta be at least twenty-five years ago. There was a bunch of Italians at this particular stag. It was in one of these halls, a typical Italian hall. There must have been 150 people. The guy who got married sold the veal in the neighborhood and they had an Italian restaurant—so the food was dynamite.

When the dinner was over, in came the entertainment. My dad's nephew—my cousin—was the one getting married. And actually, my dad was sitting in the front row. He's gotta be in at least his late sixties, maybe early seventies, at that point. And they had two or three girls that came out. This one girl in particular, redhead, started sitting on my dad's lap, and did the teasing bit. And my dad started getting all excited, as well as the groom.

So it comes to the end of the show, and the girl starts taking her clothes off, and she takes her top off. And I'm looking: redhead, nice body, very attractive, but something wasn't right. I mean, I picked up on it . She takes off the bottom, and she's got a shvantz this long!

Wow! The whole place went crazy! These Italians went out of their minds. They felt like they were taken advantage of. They were deceived. Okay? It was pandemonium! Some of these guys were jumping off their chairs and screaming. They had to get “her”—or “it” or “him”—out of there really quick. The best man, who set the thing up, just laughed.

Nobody has ever forgotten that stag. I just had my buddy over who was at that particular stag party and we were talking about it; he remembered the food and that stripper.

I was actually best man for a person who got married in maybe '68 or '69. And I didn't have a stripper. I had like a roast. And I presented the groom with a plaque. “So and so hereby relinquishes his bachelorhood. Dated such and such, witnessed by the best man and all the ushers in the wedding.” And I had other people come up and talk. That was a little different. I wanted him to make as much money as he could. I didn't spend money on strippers and stuff, so whatever I collected, we gave to the groom.

You see, to go to the stag party, usually you had to have a ticket. You paid for it. Because somebody had to pay for the dinner, and you had to guarantee a certain amount of dinners. The ticket could be anywhere from fifteen dollars to about thirty dollars. And if they had gambling, they took a piece of the pot and saved it for the groom. Then sometimes they raffled things off, liquor, things of that nature. It was all to make money for the groom, so that he gets some cash. Because he was going to spend money for his wedding and to buy things for his apartment. It's the same thing for the shower. They do it so that the female will get some gifts.

I actually went to a dance once in New Haven in the '50s and there was a group of women. One of the girls was about to get married and she was out for her last single night, sowing her oats, so to speak. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but that wasn't done back then; those girls were way ahead of their time.

service (n) the armed forces of a nation

service (v) performance of a non-specific sexual act, sometimes for money

shvantz (n) translation: “penis” in Yiddish