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A guys' night out becomes tasteful

Some talking points take unusual turns

By: Doug Speirs

Posted: 07/2/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Being a guy, every once in a while I enjoy getting together with other guys to do stuff guys enjoy doing when they get together.

When my buddies and I were younger, the stuff we enjoyed doing together involved strapping on protective equipment, heading out to a playing field and, just for fun, giving each other concussions.

Now that we are middle-aged guys who are running low on medically important organs and capable of becoming winded simply by bending over to tie our shoelaces, we try to find less hazardous stuff to enjoy when we get together.

Take the other night, for example. About 40 guys of my gender and age got together in a friend's backyard for his annual Scotch & Cigar Evening, which, for the uninitiated, is an extremely non-hazardous event wherein a group of guys (a) drink scotch and (b) smoke cigars.

As you can imagine, it was a testosterone-intensive evening, with guys of all shapes and sizes standing around in manly clots, blowing cigar smoke in each other's faces and sharing their innermost feelings.

The main innermost feeling we shared was our confusion over the proper method for firing up a cigar, which is a lot like launching a NASA rocket, only it is more complicated and involves more matches.

"Which end am I supposed to cut off?" was a typical question a confused guy would ask as he'd fumble with a pocket-sized guillotine-like device designed to lop off the blunt end of a cigar or, if you've consumed enough scotch, a random fingertip.

Some people -- for the purposes of this column, we'll refer to them as "women" -- assume that when guys get together, the only thing we discuss is professional sports. What nonsense! The truth is, we also discuss college sports. Occasionally, if we are feeling vulnerable, we'll talk about power tools and how many kilometres our cars get on a single tank of gas.

But sometimes, out of the blue, a guy will surprise you with some random topic, which is what happened when I was introduced to a sensitive fellow who, judging by the impressive burr in his voice, was born in Scotland.

"Aren't you the guy who wrote about eating haggis?" he demanded, politely jabbing his cigar in the direction of my face.

I began to sweat profusely. By way of background, I recently offended large portions of the Scottish community in a column wherein, in a "light-hearted manner," I described conducting a taste test on a can of "haggis" -- the nasty bits of a sheep mixed with oatmeal and onions and boiled in a sheep's stomach -- and stated my dogs were the only ones who liked it.

So I was prepared for another brutal tongue-lashing about my lack of cultural sensitivity, but it turned out my new Scottish friend was not a big fan of haggis, especially the canned variety. Nor was the guy standing beside us, who promptly pulled out his smartphone to display shocking photographic evidence of an especially gruesome-looking haggis he'd been forced to confront at a Robbie Burns Dinner.

"Blech!" is what he grunted, scrunching his face.

"Blech!" me and my new Scottish friend politely agreed, grimacing at the photo.

It was, as you have already sensed, a magical moment. There we were, a bunch of scotch-drinking, cigar-smoking guys, standing in the twilight, not talking about sports, but still somehow bonding on an emotional level, becoming brothers of different mothers, if you will.

It was an amazing evening and, while it may just be the scotch talking, I'm pretty sure no one ended up with a concussion.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 2, 2012 A2

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