Lawn Cher'
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From the NY Times, an interesting commentary.
April 10, 2005
The Man Date
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
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 Mr.
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 Mr. Speiser, who is straight, as is Mr. 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
20's to their 50's, 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
Mr. Speiser and Mr. 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 Mr. O'Donnell, who was on the
verge of divorce in the mid-1980's 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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.
The two exchanged a look. "It was funny," Mr. 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.
Mr. 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 last 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 O.K. "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 O.K.,"
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," Mr.
Discher said.
And man dates should always be Dutch treat, men agree. Armen Meyer,
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," Mr. Meyer 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. (This only sounds like an
episode of "Seinfeld.") "Going to the movie with one other guy is
sort of weird, but you can balance it out by having a seat space
between you," explained Ames McArdle, a financial analyst in
Washington.
Men who avoid man dates altogether 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," Mr. Halow of San Francisco said. Which is why many men
say that a successful man dates requires a guy to demonstrate
concern for his friend without ever letting on. "The amount of
preparation that the other guy is making is directly proportional to
how awkward it is," Mr. McArdle of Washington said.
When man daters socialize with non-man daters, the activities always
fall to the lowest common denominator. Mr. Meyer of New York
remembers how he would ask his roommate Jonathan Freimann out for
dinner by himself. But Mr. 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,"
Mr. 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 Mr. Meyer. They
regularly have dinner together to discuss women, jobs and whatever
else is on their minds, because, as Mr. Toohig put it, "the
conversation is more in-depth than you can have at a bar." Mr.
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 Mr. Meyer has the advantage
of not making 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.
A romantic date always trumps a man date.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
April 10, 2005
The Man Date
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
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 Mr.
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 Mr. Speiser, who is straight, as is Mr. 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
20's to their 50's, 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
Mr. Speiser and Mr. 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 Mr. O'Donnell, who was on the
verge of divorce in the mid-1980's 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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.
The two exchanged a look. "It was funny," Mr. 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.
Mr. 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 last 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 O.K. "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 O.K.,"
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," Mr.
Discher said.
And man dates should always be Dutch treat, men agree. Armen Meyer,
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," Mr. Meyer 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. (This only sounds like an
episode of "Seinfeld.") "Going to the movie with one other guy is
sort of weird, but you can balance it out by having a seat space
between you," explained Ames McArdle, a financial analyst in
Washington.
Men who avoid man dates altogether 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," Mr. Halow of San Francisco said. Which is why many men
say that a successful man dates requires a guy to demonstrate
concern for his friend without ever letting on. "The amount of
preparation that the other guy is making is directly proportional to
how awkward it is," Mr. McArdle of Washington said.
When man daters socialize with non-man daters, the activities always
fall to the lowest common denominator. Mr. Meyer of New York
remembers how he would ask his roommate Jonathan Freimann out for
dinner by himself. But Mr. 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,"
Mr. 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 Mr. Meyer. They
regularly have dinner together to discuss women, jobs and whatever
else is on their minds, because, as Mr. Toohig put it, "the
conversation is more in-depth than you can have at a bar." Mr.
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 Mr. Meyer has the advantage
of not making 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.
A romantic date always trumps a man date.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
aperwork 
