If you’ve been a long-time reader of Lady or Not, Here I Come, you may be familiar with my previous posts in this series, Bro Seeks Bro (Parts I & II). Well, yours truly now finds himself home alone for Thanksgiving. It’s a perfect storm of circumstances: divorce, living across the country from my family back in Georgia, the few friends I have all being out of town for the holiday… yeah.

Becca being Becca, she wanted to cheer me up on this depressing day. So she suggested I write her post for today. I’m sure she meant it to be a privilege to post on the one day when her American audience is least likely to read. She either thinks I have strong international appeal, or I’m like the last kid picked for kickball.

So what’s a lonely, single guy to do? I think Thanksgiving could be my perfect opportunity to find a new bro friend. There are a couple of options here…

Option A: Married guys I could lure away. I know we all love to spend so much time with family, especially if they’re the in-laws. This option will require you to feign illness– to call in sick to the family celebration. Then you can come over here and have a way better time hanging out with me.

I know you don’t really like turkey that much anyway. No way am I going to cook, but I’ve already done some recon and know the drive-thrus that will be open, as long you’re buying. I won’t even upsize my drink. Speaking of drinks, being a bachelor living alone, you know my booze cabinet is fully stocked.

I also have an HDTV which isn’t ginormous but hey, my living room is small, so as close as you have to sit, you’ll feel like it’s a movie theater screen. We can watch football all frickin’ day. (I think there is some conspiracy because both teams from Texas are playing on T-Day, which would be giving Becca the chance to be doing more “research” while she downs vodka shots). I won’t hassle you, I won’t make you cook or clean up anything, and really, we don’t need to talk at all.

Option B: Plan B is, you’re also a single guy, but you’re conscripted to attend your own family function. So invite me along. This way, I get to eat (I do enjoy all the traditional T-Day dishes, I must admit) and you get the company of yours truly rather than your weird uncle and your bratty nieces. We all know how much you hate that they put you at the kids table every year because you’re not in a couple. If I come, this isn’t a problem. They would never make a guest sit by themselves or at the kids table. For added kicks, I can pretend to be your date. The humor potential of this will be in direct proportion to your family’s overall homophobia. I’ll even hold your hand if you like.

Since it would be rude to leave your guest (me) alone, you will have to excuse yourself from the general chitchat and, moreover, the horror of cleanup detail, so that you and I… can go watch football. We’ll be sure to secure the loveseat– not to be weird, but just to be sure no one else will be sitting with us. Soon enough will be passing out, sinking into our triptophan-induced coma…

We feel the glee of all the womenfolk cleaning up around us while we lounge there. After several hours you become mildly hungry again and call to the nearest female, “Hey, make me a sammich!” and to your wondering eyes, she does! And it is delicious! And you grin, but suddenly…

You hear a loud voice, and see that the clock reads 4:34 a.m. You push on my shoulder to wake me up and, after I try to distract you from the drool spot I left on your shoulder, we see female members of your family standing over us with obvious looks of disapproval. You swear this was the same person who demurely, even joyfully, just served you a scrumptious turkey-breast-and-cranberry-sauce sandwich. Did you just dream that? And why does your cheek hurt?

“Get up and go with us!” we both hear. We both continue to blink uncomprehendingly as we catch some background chatter about Black Friday sales. When we say in unison that there is no effing way we are putting on pants at such a godforsaken hour, they reply, “Fine.” But before a smug smile can form on either of our lips, you see fingers pointing in the direction of the kitchen. Oh damn. They left all of it for us to clean up.

Sorry dude. It was a good plan. I’ll do better coordinating Christmas parties, I swear. Can we still be bros?