FunctionalAmbivalent

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.

Gives Her Credit For One Thing: She Used the Right Bait

A woman stranded in the Bavarian Alps, injured and immobile, takes off her brassiere and ties it to a cable used to pull logs down the mountain. Lumberjacks see the bra, conclude that there must be a woman somewhere up the mountain with free-ranging breasts, and haul-ass up to look for her, maybe buy her a drink. The woman is rescued and the lumberjacks accept that saving a human life is good, but I'm guessing they feel cheated that they didn't get to see any naked breasts.

Which Is Why Bad "Champagne" In Strip Joints Costs $100 a Bottle, DeBeers Is One of the Richest Companies In the World, and I Have $42 in My Savings Account

Scientists -- who have apparently run out of important, complicated things to study -- have discovered that men are rendered stupid in the presence of nearly naked women.

The researchers showed men sexy pictures of women or invited them to handle lingerie, and then asked the men whether they would like 15 Euros immediately or if they would like to negotiate a higher payment a week in the future.

The sexy imagery did not work on all men all the time, but, as a group, men with sex on their brains settled for a less lucrative bargain, suggesting they were more impulsive and valued immediate gratification more than the controls.

The results of this research come as no surprise to anyone who has ever met a man.

I Think We Deserve Credit For Waking Up At All

A survey by the Sleep Council -- whose meetings just have to be boring -- indicates that women wake up grumpier than men.  According to the survey, a quarter of all men claim never to wake up in a bad mood, but only one in seven women make the same claim.

Before claiming some kind of moral superiority, it's worth noting one of the reasons why women wake up grumpy:

Jessica Alexander of the Sleep Council said women's grumpiness may be worsened because they shoulder most of the household chores in the morning.

"Twenty-eight per cent of women as opposed to only 5 per cent of men do any housekeeping before going twork,"o  she said.

"It also tends to be them that prepares the breakfast, spends time with the children, check their emails and attend to their beauty regime. Women far outweigh men in having a busy and packed morning.

"So what do men do? Apparently just get up and go out: 17 per cent of them spend only 10 minutes on their wake up and get out routine."

Speaking strictly for myself, that's an unfair characterization.  I also read the paper.