I'm Gay

My wife and children were out of town this weekend, so I decided to invite a few friends over for what is referred to around my house as a "Gentlemen's Smoker." Provisioning this sort of event used to consist of buying a couple of cases of beer, some cigars and a fresh pack of playing cards. Cleaning up in preparation encompassed nothing more than clearing off the dining room table so we'd have a place to play poker.

I'm older now, however, and my doctor has me off beer and cigars and on healthful red wine -- which I do not object to, by the way -- and my friends are all middle-aged men who are more or less under the same strictures that I am. Plus, we've developed more expensive and refined tastes. So this time, arrangements were a little more complicated.

First, I had to clean the house. It's no longer a viable strategy to lock the door to the filthy bathroom and let my friends piss off the back porch. Alas, even my standards have risen. They're still not as high as my wife's, but I brought out the bucket of bathroom cleaning stuff and tried to figure out how to use it. Which was fine: good, manly chemicals with the potential to do great harm, and it wasn't like I put on rubber gloves to protect my manicure or anything. But there was a moment when I was rooting around the linen closet looking for matching hand towels when I thought, "Wait. This isn't right."

Then there was food. I bypassed the potato chip aisle completely, deciding instead on grilled meat. Yeah, good old, manly grilled meat. The butcher was nearly hidden behind huge mounds of beef slabs. My eyes settle on t-bones the size of home plate, but  I forced myself to consider instead food that would not clog our arteries so much: marinated chicken kabobs and teeny little lamb ribs. "Grilled meat," I said, but I knew it wasn't really. It was art gallery finger food, doubly insulting because it sounded so good to me. And while I was waiting for the butcher, I was concocting marinades in my mind: rosemary and lemon with some Dijon mustard, maybe brush some orange juice on the ribs as they cook. And that's what I was thinking there, in front of all that meat, until an alarm went off in my head, an alarm that started ringing just as I started giving the butcher instructions how to properly French the rib rack so it would grill-up into perfect "lamb lollipops." It was a persistent ringing and a voice, saying:

You're fussing like this for three other guys.

Then, just before my friends arrived, I took out the big wine glasses and made sure there were no water spots on them, since the night's main activity was not cards so much as it was drinking different wines. And as I was holding the glasses up to the light the voice was back, saying:

Look at yourself. Your manhood is over.

My friends arrived, thick-necked guys who go to football games and tell dirty jokes. But they arrived at my little summer party freshly scrubbed and wearing colorful polo shirts, each gently toting an impressive bottle of wine. They loved the arrangement of fresh fruit I had out on the table, and we opened all the wine at once and tasted our way through it a sip at a time, commenting and analyzing as we went.

Then, when the food and wine were gone, we repaired to the living room for dessert: a block of stinky bleu cheese and a middle-aged Sauternes. Everyone was impressed nearly to the point of applause, as we forked off tiny bits of cheese and sipped the sweet wine through it. Yes, it was quite an event, and as it came to an end I sat there in utter horror.

"How am I going to tell my wife?" I asked myself. "How am I going to tell my children?"

This is what age does to a man; it turns us into women. I think I need to go out and get into a bar fight.

Comments

[fish]

I dunno...speaking as a guy who would fit nicely into the "thick-necked guys who go to football games and tell dirty jokes" category, I think it sounds like a heck of an evening!

[michelle]

You could have at least managed some swearing. Pthh.

[fish]

FUCK!!!

[Squidley]

I wouldn't call you a fruitcake for this. To reach that level, you'd have to be doing something like watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, both for the fashion tips and for the hunky guys.

As it is, all you are is domesticated. Some might even say civilized.

And old. Definitely old.

[Pursuit]

The other night my older daughter asked me to trim her bangs. Really. I accepted the challenge (the look fantastic!), and while I was doing it, my younger daughter said, "Dad, it's times like these I think you might gay".

[Michael Sanderson]

You sound pretty normal to me. I now drink 10 or 12 beers a YEAR but drink wine 3 - 5 days a week.

I think it is part of growing up. Since I turn 62 next month my wife might ask me why it took so long. I still like to tell dirty jokes though.