April 13, 2005 – The beaver is a proud and noble animal

Weird eyes for straight guys who just want to go out

Tuesday, April 12, 2005
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
THE NEW YORK TIMES

The delicate posturing began with the phone call.

The proposal was that two buddies back in New York City for a holiday break in December meet to visit the Museum of Modern Art after its major renovation. “He explicitly said, 'I know this is kind of weird, but we should probably go,' ” said Matthew Speiser, 25, recalling his conversation with John Putman, 28, a former classmate from Williams College.

The weirdness was apparent once they reached the museum, where they semi-avoided each other as they made their way through the galleries and eschewed any public displays of connoisseurship. “We definitely went out of our way to look at things separately,” recalled Speiser, who has had art-history classes in his time. “We shuffled. We probably both pretended to know less about the art than we did.”

Eager to cut the tension following what they perceived to be a slightly unmanly excursion — two guys looking at art together — they headed directly to a bar. “We couldn't stop talking about the fact that it was ridiculous we had spent the whole day together one on one,” said Speiser, who is straight, as is Putman. “We were purging ourselves of insecurity.”

Anyone who finds a date with a potential romantic partner to be a minefield of unspoken rules should consider the man date, a rendezvous between two straight men that is even more socially perilous.

Simply defined, a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie “Friday Night Lights” is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not.

“Sideways,” the Oscar-winning film about two buddies touring the central California wine country on the eve of the wedding of one of them, is one long and boozy man date. Although “man date” is a coinage invented for this article, appearing nowhere in the literature of male bonding (or of homosexual panic), the 30 to 40 straight men interviewed, from their 20s to their 50s, living in cities across the country, instantly recognized the peculiar ritual even if they had not consciously examined its dos and don'ts. Depending on the activity and on the two men involved, an undercurrent of homoeroticism that may be present determines what feels comfortable or not on a man date, as Speiser and Putman discovered in their squeamishness at the Modern.

Jim O'Donnell, a professor of business and economics at Huntington University in Indiana, who said his life had been changed by a male friend, urges men to get over their discomfort in socializing one on one because they have much to gain from the emotional support of male friendships. (Women understand this instinctively, which is why there is no female equivalent to the awkward man date; straight women have long met for dinner or a movie without a second thought.)

“A lot of quality time is lost as we fritter around with minor stuff like the Final Four scores,” said O'Donnell, who was on the verge of divorce in the mid-1980s before a series of conversations over meals and walks with a friend 20 years his senior changed his thinking. “He was instrumental in turning me around in the vulnerability that he showed,” said O'Donnell, who wrote about the friendship in a book, “Walking With Arthur.” “I can remember times when he wanted to know why I was going to leave my wife. No guy had ever done that before.”

While some men explicitly seek man dates, and others flatly reject them as pointless, most seem to view them as an unavoidable form of socializing in an age when friends can often catch up only by planning in advance. The ritual comes particularly into play for many men after college, as they adjust to a more structured, less spontaneous social life. “You see kids in college talking to each other, bull sessions,” said Peter Nardi, a sociology professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., who edited a book called “Men's Friendships.” “But the opportunities to get close to another man, to share and talk about their feelings, are not available after a certain age.”

The concern about being perceived as gay is one of the major complications of socializing one on one, many straight men acknowledge. That is what Speiser, now a graduate student at the University of Virginia, recalled about another man date he set up at a highly praised Italian restaurant in a strip mall in Charlottesville. It seemed a comfortable choice to meet his roommate, Thomas Kim, a lawyer, but no sooner had they walked in than they were confronted by cello music, amber lights, white tablecloths and a wine list.

“It was funny,” Speiser said. “We just knew we couldn't do it.” Within minutes they were eating fried chicken at a “down and dirty” place down the road.

Kim, 28, who is now married, was flustered in part because he saw someone he knew at the Italian restaurant. “I was kind of worried that word might get out,” he said. “This is weird, and now there is a witness maybe.”

Dinner with a friend has not always been so fraught. Before women were considered men's equals, some gender historians say, men routinely confided in and sought advice from one another in ways they did not do with women, even their wives. Then, these scholars say, two things changed during the past century: an increased public awareness of homosexuality created a stigma around male intimacy, and at the same time women began encroaching on traditionally male spheres, causing men to become more defensive about notions of masculinity.

“If men become too close to other men, then they are always vulnerable to this accusation of, 'Oh, you must be gay,' ” said Gregory Lehne, a medical psychologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who has studied gender issues. At the same time, he added, “When you have women in the same world and seeking equality with men, then all of a sudden issues emerge in the need to maintain the male sex role.”

And thus a simple meal turns into social Stratego. Some men avoid dinner altogether unless the friend is coming from out of town or has a specific problem that he wants advice about. Otherwise, grabbing beers at a bar will do just fine, thank you.

Other men say dinners may be all right, but never brunch, although a post-hangover meal taking place during brunch hours is OK. “The company at that point is purely secondary,” explained Steven Carlson, 29, a public relations executive in Chicago.

Almost all men agree that beer and hard alcohol are acceptable man date beverages, but wine is risky. And sharing a bottle is out of the question. “If a guy wants to get a glass of wine, that's OK,” said Rob Discher, 24, who moved to Washington from Dallas and has dinner regularly with his male roommate. “But there is something kind of odd about splitting a bottle of wine with a guy.”

Other restaurant red flags include coat checks, busboys who ask, “Still or sparkling?” and candles, unless there is a power failure. All of those are fine, however, at a steakhouse. “Your one go-to is if you go and get some kind of meat product,” explained James Halow, 28, who works for a leveraged buyout firm in San Francisco.

Cooking for a friend at home violates the man date comfort zone for almost everyone, with a possible exemption for grilling or deep-frying. “The grilling thing would take away the majority of the stigma because there is a masculine overtone to the grill,” Discher said.

And man dates should always be Dutch treat, men agree. Armen Myers, 28, a lawyer in New York who is an unabashed man dater, remembers when he tried to pay for dinner for a friend. “I just plopped out the money and didn't even think about it,” Myers said. “He said, 'What are you doing?' And I'm like: 'I was going to pay. What's the big deal?' And he said something like, 'Guys don't pay for me,' or 'No one pays for me.' There was a certain slight power issue.”

When attending a movie together — preferably with explosions or heavy special effects, never a romantic comedy — guys prefer to put a nice big seat between each other.

Men who avoid man dates are often puzzled by the suggestion that they might like to spend time with male friends. “If you're buddies with another guy, there shouldn't be any work involved,” Halow of San Francisco said. Which is why many men say that a successful man date requires a guy to demonstrate concern without ever letting on.

When man daters socialize with non-man daters, the activities always fall to the lowest common denominator. Myers, of New York, remembers how he would ask his roommate, Jonathan Freimann, out for dinner by himself. But Freimann would instinctively pre-empt, by asking other guys along.

“If I had known he wanted to spend one-on-one time, I would have,” Freimann explained, adding that group dinners had simply seemed “more fun.” (The two had dinner in San Diego last week.)

Jeffrey Toohig, 27, is a more reliable bet for Myers. They regularly have dinner together to discuss women, jobs and whatever else is on their minds. Toohig, who is looking for a job helping underdeveloped countries, divides his male friends into two groups: “good friends who I go out one on one with, and guys I go out with and we have beers and wings.” And, he pointed out, dinner with Myers doesn't make his girlfriend jealous, the way dinners with his female friends do.

All men, however, agree that one rule of guy-meets-guy time is inviolable: If a woman enters the picture, a man can drop his buddies, last minute, no questions asked.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifestyle/219642_mandates.html

Emphasis mine.

All I was thinking while reading this was “Oh fucking grow up”. And
since when is brunch a gay meal? And sharing a bottle of wine means that you're
gay?

Hey mekez, we must be gay cause we went to an art gallery together, then had dinner *gasp* alone *shocked* at an italian restaurant *the horror* that didn't serve kig honkin' slabs of dead cow *noooo!* and we shared a nice bottle of french Sauvignon blanc *faints*. And you paid for it. Does this mean I'm the bitch?

I must go kill myself now.

It's late, or early, depending on if you believe my internal clock or the one on the wall. I'm dead tired, but I'll update a ibt before going to bed next to my sweetie.

Flight in was ok, if boring. I wanted to sleep but couldn't really get comfy because of the rather voluminous person next to me who smelled of menthol. I wasn't supposed to be in that seat in the first place, but my flight was booked solid and people had to play musical chairs to accommodate families who were separated but wanted to fly together. Meh, was ok in general. We made good time and actually landed early, but then spent the next hour on the tarmac waiting for a gate. In the end, they just rolled a metal ladder to the plane and brought us to the terminal in shuttles. There was traffic to get to the friggin terminal. Baggage carts galore. Heathrow was bustling, not to say bursting.

Immigration control took all of 30 seconds. What a letdown.

For all the pain and suffering I had to go through to get my friggin visa, all I got was a bored official, a rubber stamp and a “have a good day”.

Katy's father and uncle were waiting for me and we drove off to Cambridge to have a look at the apartment. It's nice, big, airy and semi furnished. Ya. Nice. Basically, the rental agent got some wires crossed and the apartment comes with a bed and a sofa. Not good, seeing as I just bought a sofa bed and my bed is currently being shipped acrosss the atlantic. The landlady seems to be a nice woman and said she'd take care of it. She's supposed to call me tomorrow and it seems it shouldn't be a problem to sort it out. I have tons of details on the apartment. My water heater is on a timer. I have a gas meter and a water meter I need to read. I have a huuuuge garden that I need to take care of. People who know me will laugh themselves silly at that one. I might just hire a gardener.

After too much info in too short a time, it was time to call it quits and head off to Leicester. Stupid traffic and gridlock on the highway, we got home at 7pm. Me braindread. That's about it for now. Tomorrow, I'm going to start sorting through all the info then going to go shop for groceries and start organizing details out.

I had my first “what the fuck have I gotten myself into” moment while we were driving through Cambridge. It's beautiful, but completely foreign. I'll write more about it when I'm more lucid.

Day: April 13, 2005

You know you're no longer in Kansas when…

This is a load of bullshit. Read and get mad at your own risk.

Information Overload

Bwahahahahahahaha, um, no!