Dear Panel,

Recently a few of my male friends were planning a bachelor party for one of their cohorts.

Let me just say up front that I am no prude when it comes to these types of parties; I understand that the normal male bachelor party experience typically involves an expensive dinner, lots of drinking, the smoking of cigars, and a visit to a strip club with absurd amounts of money for lap dances (I also have friends who would rather spend a weekend camping or golfing with their male friends, but I do not condemn the former approach).

I was very disturbed to learn that this particular bachelor party was being planned in one of their apartments, and that the pair of female "entertainers" were being brought in not only to put on their show, but to "service" the groom and the best man. Additional services would be provided to others attending as the girls agreed.

I was then told that it is par for the course for the groom to be to have sex with the entertainment, the best man typically gets a blow job. Its all really quite "normal" behavior at bachelor parties ("It happens 90% of the time"); the only reason why I had not heard of it happening was because nobody talks about it.

Is this true?

And why on earth in this day in age, when people are getting married later, with more sexual experience under their belts, would getting oral sex from or having sex with a prostitute right before your wedding be considered "normal" or any less of a violation that to receive the same at any other point in your relationship?

Fine - the bachelor party is a rite of passage, one last big night out with the guys, but when did it become a sanctioned night of cheating?

Please explain how to make sense of all of this.

Disappointed