It’s amazing how a single comment can turn a night on its head, although that is by and large what happens here. Or at least, it’s an internally combustive turn, setting my mental gears in motion, although outwardly not that obvious. Shoniqua laughs and claps her hands together once and looks at me, half teary eyed, as though considering this the most hilarious, preposterous comment she’s heard all year. Meanwhile, I start wondering about not just this absurd and heavily biased “standards” debate, but the whole purported bros before hoes phenomenon as well.
Neither of us has to mention that the informant here is Joe. But that’s just it, there is a known safeguard in place here, in this specific situation, to where the male friend, who is involved in a serious relationship, is bulletproof. There are a million things I could say to Shoniqua that would surely have her looking for her lower jaw in Triads’ carpet, concerning Joe’s past exploits. Yet it would never occur to me in even the most extreme circumstances to divulge any of this. That’s just not my style. Furthermore, there is something ingrained in here, the whole bro code phenomenon, where even if it did occur to me, it would feel wrong to do so. And perched still a level higher than that, any guy violating this rightly expects a guilt trip laid upon him by not just the friend in question but likely the entire circle of friends, for violating bros before hoes convention.
However, bros before hoes does not flow in the opposite direction. In this specific situation, the male friend who is involved in a serious relationship. Here, he can tell his woman anything he wants about you. And is really all but expected to — or at least up to the point where fact ends and fiction begins.
Which brings me to the second car in this thought train, the whole standards debate. One of the many aspects I might pick apart, if choosing to rat Joe out to Shoniqua, would be the tired old carcass of that topic. If he really wanted to go down that road, Joe has banged way more dogs/heifers than me, both as a number and a percentage. Most of the time, were you to bust him on this, he would surely say something along the lines of eh, fuck it, and cite how blasted he was at the time, and who cares. Not that it would take liquid courage for him to do so anyway, mind you. I feel it’s a fact well-established for years now that if a bunch of us are hanging out drinking late at night, and there’s only one girl in the bunch but she’s a bit gross, Joe is going to be the first guy to say he doesn’t give a shit and nail her anyway.
But even with some of these other fellows, even when their whole shtick is these purported standards, that argument collapses. As previously noted, Dylan is never going to call anyone out on this, for he camps on the same side of this divide as me. But I recall a night years ago, where he and Pete and I were at some bar and this young girl, who was not only butt ugly but enormous and also had a bad acne problem to boot, got on this kick where she kept pressuring us to rent a hotel room with her, insisting she would take on all three of us at once. Throughout this adventure, she was occasionally grabbing my crotch as well and whispering in my ear, when I balked, that we could ditch these two and just enact such a plan ourselves.
Whether she was doing the same to each of them, too, I’m not sure, but Dylan and Pete both were campaigning for this group sex arrangement, continually pressured me to go along with it. I guess maybe just for weirdness’s sake we could have ventured down this road, just to see what happened. However, this did not appeal in the least bit to me. The thought of banging this chick was repulsive, and the idea of sitting around watching them bang her not any less so. Nonetheless, they were completely astounded that I turned this down and, as our driver to the bar, wound up bringing them back to their rides, having never arranged anything with that girl. Dylan later confessed he thought for sure I’d be up for that, though Pete the skinny waif enthusiast has never mentioned it and, I’m sure, might have an entirely different spin to apply upon that incident now.
I don’t just believe that of these closest allies, my dog/heifer numbers and percentages are both the lowest, but am even certain I could prove it if we really want to get down to comparing numbers. Yet the center of this Venn diagram is where all these concepts converge concerning Joe. You expect the bros before hoes exemption does not apply when he has a serious girlfriend. You know that over the years, this dilemma will often rear its head, weighing what is more important to you: arranging a tribunal so everyone can air these matters out and get on the same page, versus just biting your tongue in the interest of remaining close friends with someone. Or that merely giving lip service to having impeccably lofty standards might go a long way toward establishing your image, even when contradictory evidence is lying in plain sight. Yet there’s one additional factor distorting this equation with Joe, in that I sometimes still can’t wrap my mind around where his head is at, despite how long I’ve known him.
Here is a typical sequence of events I have seen play out, in ballpark fashion, countless times. The subject matter doesn’t even have to be women, although this is by far the most common one. In any interaction involving three or more parties, however, you are likely to encounter this sequence with Joe:
Monday — you meet Joe at a bar and he’s asking you what you’ve been up to; you mention some nice looking chick you recently slept with as a major highlight, so he asks you for a blow by blow (ahem) recap, during which he’s sprinkling in his frequently hilarious wisecracks, nodding in approval, commenting like a sports broadcaster on each development you relay, and occasionally doing that whole thing where he raises his eyebrows while nearly choking on his beer, bottle raised to his lips mid swig, as he laughs at something you said.
Tuesday — you’re out with some combination of Dylan, Pete, Phil, possibly a couple other guys as well, and just casually mention that same sexual encounter in passing. These guys typically don’t have as much to say, but will at least nod and give you the thumbs up and remark that sounds cool.
Wednesday — those guys are out with Joe; Joe will say something about you to the effect of, “I don’t think that dude ever gets laid,” and that he can’t remember the last time he saw you with a chick, and even then she was a dog.
Thursday — you’re having lunch with the Tuesday gang and they’re recapping the night before, happen to mention Joe’s slam about you allegedly never getting laid; you furrow your brows in puzzlement and say, “that’s weird, I was just telling him about Stacy…actually, I told him about that before I even told you guys…and what’s the last quote unquote dog he saw me with, anyway?”
Friday — you’re out with those guys and with Joe and your new chick. Someone, most likely Dylan, grins and teases her about sleeping with you, which she confirms. When she’s not around, Joe purses his lips and raises his eyebrows and nods his head in approval, tells you she looks pretty decent and you’ve done alright here. The other guys agree.
Saturday — all of those guys go out without you. Now they compare notes and the others ask Joe if he knew about your new chick, tell him what you said about his knowing before anyone else. He concurs, muttering something along the lines of, “well yeah, I knew about that, I’m just saying, in general…”
Sunday — the rest of us sit around the living room agreeing that we really don’t get Joe sometimes.
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This is where the tongue biting typically comes into play. There are occasions where one or more of us have confronted Joe about these inconsistencies, but that hasn’t gone well, have left us considering it’s best to remain silent sometimes. Longterm friendship often means just glossing over and ignoring things about one another that drive you batty — and I can only imagine what peculiarities of mine have them on the brink of the loony bin.
But it has made me question the nature of what’s really going on here. For years now, our perception (and yet one of those arguments that has ruffled many a feather, the times we’ve suggested such to Joe) is that he’s just forgetful and somewhat of an airhead. However, he doesn’t seem to have any trouble focusing on his job, for example, only personal matters such as these. Therefore I’ve recently begun to suspect that these are intentional occurrences. They all have in common an attempt to make himself look better or you worse by either omission or outright fabrication. Situations where you and some girl you’ve been seeing hook him up with one of her friends, say, and the four of you spend the night back at one of your cribs…yet in the retelling, he met this girl and banged her and there’s no mention of half the other humans who were out that night, or how they were introduced in the first place. I mean, he doesn’t seem to accidentally get a story wrong that makes you look awesome instead, like thinking and telling everyone that you nailed a busload full of cheerleaders, or whatever.
I believe the popular term for this phenomenon might be gaslighting. At times, here lately, I’ve entertained myself wondering if there’s a word for attempting to reverse it. Would that be reflecting gaslight? Yet these thoughts have cropped up during this same stretch where I feel like retreating is more and more the superior strategy. It’s hard to fathom how anyone might pull that off, moving in both directions, becoming much more oblique while concurrently setting the record straight on a bunch of stuff. He is very good, though. Somehow it only recently occurred to me that people seem to have a really warped sense of who I am, and that if you trace back the source, almost all the weird shit anyone ever heard about me, it all came from Joe.
But he is damn entertaining. And our friendship extends backwards an eternity. Grand scheme these blips are minor considerations, as I’d rather just do whatever it takes to remain on good graces. So he finally shows up tonight, and in that instant any ill will evaporates. Human interaction is never anything less than a minefield, however, meaning one mustn’t let his guard down for even a moment, thinking he has arrived in the clear. Maggie is now the more vexing concern, albeit for a whole host of other reasons, each of them confirming that I think it would be a huge mistake to get mixed up with her, unless searching the spice aisle for a pound of aggravation to enhance your daily diet.
“Duuuuude…Tool’s comin to town,” Joe tells me, gripping his beer tightly as he nods and fixes a steely, unwavering gaze at me.
“Yeah, I heard about that! Ol’ girl actually mentioned that to me, she was hinting around I should get us some tickets,” I say, meaning Jenna, “Think we should go?”
“Ah hell na! Did you just say that? Of course we should go!”
“Cool, I’ll look into getting tickets,” I tell him.
“TAKE ME! TAKE ME!” Maggie blurts out, at far greater volume needed in this proximity, even taking into consideration the swell of bar noise. And not only this, she is popping up and down in her chair, clapping her hands together like a seal. “Come on! You guys gotta take me!”
Joe and I, as seasoned veterans well aware of how this generally goes, if stupid enough to buy a concert ticket for a random female, both make queasy, uncertain expressions. Yet Maggie readily picks right up on this, though not the least bit shaken. It’s also not exactly helping our cause that Shoniqua just grins and looks at each of us, saying nothing.
“Guys,” Maggie says, leaning forward and extending an arm in both directions, at a rough right angle, to reach each of our shoulders, “come on. You gotta take me.”
We eventually concede a vague defeat, shrugging and agreeing to see what we can do, a cause that branches outward into Joe cajoling a reluctant Shoniqua now. Now she’s looking uncertain, though this remains how I feel, dubious that any of this will ever come to pass. And we haven’t even been here that long, meaning nobody can attribute this to the usual scourge of overserved bar talk. But at least in her case, it seems that all she really wants to do is steer the conversation in more fruitful directions, or what she conceives as being the true matter at hand.
“Okay, but getting back to what we were just talking about,” Shoniqua says, “are you even seeing anyone?”
I think my reaction to someone like this, where they attempt some boxing ring combo of numerous jabbing disses followed by one hard, serious inquiry, is a bit different than most. Many people would work extra hard trying to win over Shoniqua, convince her of their respectability, that they have impeccable credentials and are not some lowlife fuckup. Whereas instead I tend to casually stroll off in the opposite direction. Because another phenomenon us males are constantly bumping into, not just with types like her but with seemingly nearly every woman we meet, is their smug assurance they have us completely figured out within about the first fifteen minutes we ever meet. And my attitude to all that can be summarized as awesome, you go right ahead with that mindset. Good luck. Hope it works out for you.
“Well, yeah, you know,” I shrug, smirking, as I glance from her to Joe and back again. “A little bit of this and a little bit of that.”
“I guess I just really don’t ever see you settling down,” Joe admits, with the tiniest of sighs, either that or a yawn.
“Yeah,” I offer, an image that popped into my head recently replaying now, “most of the time I feel like everyone else is on the same FM dial, but then I’m way over here.” I demonstrate by moving my hands off to the side. “They can’t even tune me in.”
Joe taps his nose with an index finger repeatedly, as though we are playing charades. Unamused by this lack of specifics, however, Shoniqua grimaces instead and says, “okay, but what does that mean? What does any of that mean?”
Citing a headache, Shoniqua will soon bow out, in which case it’s convenient that she has her own car. Maybe the root cause was pondering what I meant by that non-discriminatory reply earlier, and its implications. As for the remaining three of us, though we have gotten a somewhat late, staggered start, it’s still surprising when closing time approaches, leaving us enough minutes for just one more round. Joe has to some extent lapped us, though, in buying shots to go with at least his last two beer orders. I’m just thankful that he didn’t attempt roping me into that mayhem. All the more so in that, as the house lights come up and they’re telling us we have to leave, it’s clearly caught up to him at least a little bit. He’s finished his final beverage but Maggie and I both are still choking down ours.
“You know what? You two,” he says, extending his index fingers now to point at both of us, “you just need to go somewhere and have some hot, sweaty sex together. Right now. That’s what you both need.” Then shakes his hands and his head, as though dismayed and tired of dealing with us.
“Uh, well, all I know is that I have Captain Morgan waiting back at my place,” I joke, “that’s where I’m going. It’s time to see him.”
“Oh, no, no! Thanks, but no!” Maggie inexplicably says to me, as though this were an invitation, and even chuckling in somewhat condescending fashion. “I can’t. Sorry. But that’s sweet of you. Thanks. I gotta go home.”
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Thanks and have a great week!
