Guys Night Out

It's been a while since I've actually had any guys'-night-outs -- most of these have been in North America with my buddies from college or from the Canadian crew in the Bay Area, and most of those have been related mainly to clubbing scenes. So the new incarnation of GNO for me has come in the form of the darts bar.

Interesting to me is that I didn't realize how much I missed just hanging out with a bunch of guy friends and shootin' the sh!t. I mean, I don't consider myself -- and a lot of my friends probably would chime in here with more enthusiasm than I would publicly appreciate -- your average macho man's man brimming with testosterone and having to exert my masculinity just to prove I have it.

I do too have it!

But hanging with the guys is good, maybe-not-so-wholesome fun. It's an opportunity to strip away the normal apprehensions of courtesy, to do away with today's strict societal etiquette rules, to connect on a communicate level of grunts, whoops, and primeval gut-trembling laughter. Or, if you prefer the girls' descriptions of a GNO event, it's the chance where guys get to act stupid.

And I'm not arguing against that ... because that's exactly what it is.

All we do is rib each other, make silly high-school-esque comments, intentionally blurt out sexual innuendo and emasculating comments of our peers, trying to outdo each other with how gross we can get. Of course, we don't give each other stupid nicknames that will outlive even the faintest memory of how those names ever came about.

Okay, that's not really true: I'm Uncle Benny.

Because somehow it's always seems there's an Uncle Benny who is the kingpin in the local Chinatown gang, and uses the lavish hidden upstairs of a tackily-decorated Chinese restaurant as his office. And he's old.

And no, no headlocks and nuggies. Though T-Man seems to have a thing about tweaking man-nipples when he's had more than enough alcohol in his veins.