Like an animal sensing a trap about to snap shut, even the calmest, most contented of men can be unnerved by an impending wedding. The bachelor party only makes matters worse by drawing attention to what they are hypothetically giving up. It's only natural that they would vent their last-minute jitters and fleeting second-thoughts during their final fling. But what if all of your friends think you shouldn't go through with it? And what if they wait to mention it until twelve hours before the wedding, at the bachelor party? SPIKE D. was privy to that kind of “clusterfuck” ten years ago in Seattle .

It was one of those classic setups: I didn't know the person getting married very well; I was a good friend of a number of the groomsmen, and they were all friends from high school.

But I would always hear these stories about the groom's relationship with his then-girlfriend. She was ten years older, and it was widely suspected that they were getting married because she had intentionally gotten herself pregnant. Everyone was very concerned: they sort of felt like it was an entrapment thing.

Then I met her, and I started to understand why they suspected it. She was an incredibly needy person, one of those people where it's kind of painful standing near them, because you can feel their neediness—the need for approval and attention. It's overwhelming.

The groom was twenty-three at the time and she was thirty-three—so she was really excited to be pregnant. We were all pretty ambivalent about it, including the groom-to-be. I remember asking him, “So, you're gettin' married?” And there was this storm cloud on his face and he was like, “That's what they tell me.” It was this terribly passive construction, like, “Well, that's what's happening to me.” Like cancer. I wanted to be like, “Dude, you choose your wife. You don't have to get married.”

So that's sort of the prelude to the bachelor party, which was the night before the wedding. We went to these cheesy strip clubs in Seattle , which all have a lot of rules about public touching. And they have rules about distance, and there's certainly no alcohol. So people are drinking Diet Coke, and everyone's unhappy already. Although, someone had brought a bottle of Jägermeister and everyone was doing shots of it illicitly at the clubs or between places. And everyone's getting pretty fucked up.

It was really lining up to be a standard, but boring event. Then, right near the end of the evening, the groom was complaining about the wedding ceremony—specifically that he only has one part in the whole ceremony, where he has to give a reading. And so my friend asks him, “Well, what are you reading?” And he's like, “Well, they're making me read it.” And he then confesses that it's an Emily Dickinson poem. An Emily Dickinson poem that's been chosen for him.

That is the moment when everything turned. My friend was like, “We need to talk.” Then he starts the intervention right there. He doesn't coordinate with the other people, although we all sort of thought, “Maybe somebody should talk to him.” We had been talking about that forever, but no one had ever said, “Maybe we should do it the night before at the strip club.” Once we got to the club, everyone assumed there are no more exit strategies.

So, when our friend said, “We need to talk,” and sort of sidled up to him, everybody else knew; we were like, “Oh my God, he's pulling the trigger.” And so he starts telling the groom, “You don't have to do this. You could leave right now, and we could just drive away.” And we're all nodding, like, “We actually can just drive away.”

At first, the groom was just sullen, listening, and I thought, “Is this actually gonna work? We could be so Thelma and Louise .” It was sort of exciting: maybe this is the ultimate personification of doing the groomsman's job. Like maybe the top job is, if the person is not actually supposed to get married, then the people he's asked to back him up at the wedding should be able to tell him that.

But at some point the groom—who was really drunk—was like, “No! No! What are you talkin' about?” And then it turned ugly, and people were exchanging words, and then people had to intercede to make sure it didn't come to blows. And the groom got very, very angry, because people don't like interventions—especially at their bachelor party. And he's like, “How dare you! You ruined my wedding!”

We're still at the strip club. There are women gyrating, and periodically they would come up to us; and they would see people arguing and then kind of slink away. That was pretty much the end of whatever good mood there was—I mean, there wasn't a good mood to begin with. And the only solution was to drink. Heavily.

I think we kept drinking because no one knew what to say, and no one wanted the evening to end with everyone so angry and talking about their feelings. So it was a very effective strategy. All hail the evolved male of the species! And I'm a great communicator, but it was just not a case where communicating was gonna help. Because the more clearly people communicate, the more clear it would become that tomorrow's a fucked proposition. Get out! Get out!

I was so fucked up when they picked me up the next day to go to the wedding. My friend, who started the intervention, was driving. I was sitting in the front seat looking at road, and I say, “I, uh...I think I'm still drunk.” And I look over at my friend and I know that he must be drunk, too.

There was a lot of talk in the car about the groom: “How upset was he? How much will he remember?” But then we saw him when we arrived; he was in his tux and he looked emotionally vacant. Which was probably the worst thing. We couldn't tell if he was upset or not. When he greeted us, he was like, “Hey, here we are. This is it.” And the conversation was all about the day's events, not about last night or the future.

The capper was when he read the Emily Dickinson poem, which was dreadful. “A spider...walked...” I don't know what it was; I can't remember, probably because I was very busy trying not to laugh or cry.

We didn't stay very long at the reception, not as long as we probably should have. And I think we were in better shape leaving the reception than when we arrived—which is pretty rare for a wedding.

Spike only saw the groom once or twice after that. And nobody ever talked about the bachelor party, until Spike mentioned it a few months ago. “They tried to make it un -happen. In fact, when I brought it up, everyone acted as though I had actually given them permission to talk about it.” In case you're wondering, the couple had the baby and stayed together for eight years. Both are currently single.