Let's Hear It For The Boys

It’s time once again for Wilderness Women to get their backpacks ready, and for single women from around the state to gather in Talkeetna to pull area’s bachelors off the stage.

Saturday’s 27th Annual Bachelor Auction and Ball is a traditional meat market bidding war for women with a purse full of dough, and a heart for a good cause.

For one night only, at the Sheldon Community Arts Hangar in downtown Talkeetna, wild and rowdy ladies 21 and up will bid on the town’s finest male stock, in hopes to inevitably buy a night of dancing, small talk and a couple of drinks with their purchased suitors, ending with the bachelor being released back into the wild early the next morning.

“What happens after that depends on the couple I guess,” said Loudon Wilson, chief organizer of the Bachelor’s Auction.

Loudon Wilson said the Bachelor Auction is a fine Talkeetna tradition that has grown into “quite a show” over the last 27 years.

Wilson along with assistant organizer Marne Gunderson, have been preparing for this event since the beginning of the year with Wilson recruiting guys from the Bachelor’s Society.

Wilson and Gunderson tool over the bachelors last November after longtime chief organizers, Pam Rannals and D.X. Russell, decided to hand the baton to the eager newcomers.

“Pam and D.X. had announced that they wanted to see younger folks running this thing, wanting someone out of the Bachelor’s Society,” Wilson said. “As an onlooker, I heard the announcement and offered to do it as a last resort.”

In the last ten years, $33,000 has been raised from the event and donated to the Talkeetna Bachelor’s Society Women in Crisis Fund, which is administered by the Sunshine Community Health Center to women with children seeking medical restitution and other needs.

Last year, $6000 was raised.

Sunshine Community Health center is the only full-fledged Valley clinic in the Talkeetna and Trapper Creek area.

Funds are also allocated to the adjoining Sunshine Station Childcare Center, KTNA radio station, the Denali Arts Council, the food pantry, local schools, free box and other small businesses.

Loudon said his job is to make sure people are having a really good time throughout the evening, even when things get a little out of hand.

“The women do get rowdy, and alcohol is involved, but the event remains relatively tame,” Loudon said.

Loudon said more than 40 eligible bachelors are signed up to take the stage Saturday night, with one-third being newcomers to the selling block.

“All these guys are very willing and enthusiastic,” Loudon said. “There’s been lots of energy from the bachelors conversing, kind of like locker room mentality. The vets giving the rookies the tips, like buying boxes of chocolates and flowers for the ladies, watching old videos of the past events, a lesson on the mechanics of a crazy room of yelling women. It’s a hoot.”

Tim Buechle, president of the Talkeetna Bachelor’s Society, is in his fifth year as a member, and an auctionee, saying he enjoys being sold, because it’s for a good cause.

“I think it’s a good thing in the community,” Buechle said. “It’s fun, and ultimately I’ve taken my position to make sure to operate this deal smoothly and to work with all the guys.”

The most Buechle has sold for in the past was $500, which he credits to the generosity of the women, not his looks.

“All the ladies have been real nice,” he said.

Buechle is a rugged part-time hunting and fishing guide, but has decided to get out of himself and dazzle the female clientele Saturday night �” by wearing a tuxedo.

He had decided to jump on board with the Bachelor’s Society and the auction after living in Talkeetna for seven years. The only requirement to become a member of the Society is $10 and the stamp of approval that the bachelor is indeed single by the other board members.

“I’ll do the bare minimums Saturday,” Buechle said. “Like weed whack my beard I suppose.”

Buechle said the bachelors should all have a strong stage presence if they’re going to pull in the high-end numbers Saturday. Typically, sex sells.

Three years ago, $1000 was the highest bid given on a gentleman nicknamed “Bald James,” who has since set the high bench mark for the event.

Past auctions have seen sexy in the shape of firemen strippers, moose-men, shirtless men with suspenders, a man wearing a fox tail G-string and nothing else, to the gentlemen-casanova types wearing business suits, tuxedos and metro-sexual class.

“Robert Forget, the Auction’s M.C., always draws in big money, because of his demeanor,” Loudon said. “But it really depends on your shtick. The guy’s act pushes people to the next level. Strip teases are popular, but should never be down to a full strip. Down to their skivvies works well. We generally encourage more style than that though.”

Last year, Su-Valley Middle School teacher and Bachelor’s Society member, Ed O’Connor, found his shtick, even though it was questionable whether it benefited him in the end.

O’Connor played Leone Redbone’s “Seduced,” a slow, jazzy, stripping standard, wearing nothing but a suggestive basket backpack on stage, dancing for the ladies and dropping jaws.

His asking price? Under $100 dollars.

“I really haven’t broken out in the big money yet,” O’Connor laughed. “This year the suit will stay on, cause let’s face it, I’m a teacher. The most I brought in was $110, so maybe I’ll try something else.”

O’Connor, 41, who has been a member of the Bachelor’s Society on and off since 1997 said he rarely needs a reason to sell himself for a charitable cause.

“I’m single and it’s fun,” O’Connor said. “For one night a year there’s a suspension of a lot of inhibitions. People’s estrogen and testosterone levels go wild. It would be hard to justify though if it wasn’t for a good cause.”

O’Connor said as the years go by, technology has helped generate interest and publicity of the small town event, with a new website launched this year promoting the Bachelor’s Auction and Ball (Bachelorsoftalkeetna.org).

“We’ve maintained a strong eclectic composition of guys,” he said. “I guess we’re just as funky as we ever were.”

O’Connor said he becomes a different person when he’s up on the stage being auctioned, that something else takes over.

“I kind of compare it to Star Trek, when Spock went into his mating phase,” O’Connor said. “He’s logical all year long, but then he goes quite irrational, that’s how I feel right on Auction night. It’s amazing stuff.”

The Bachelor’s Auction begins at 7 p.m. Saturday at the VFW Post. Only single women, media and bachelors are allowed at the auction, but all are welcome to the Bachelor Ball, which begins at 10 p.m. at theSheldon Community Arts Hangar.