A most manly of summer-evening affairs

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/07/2018 (2940 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Like most men my age, I rarely have an opportunity to get together with large groups of other guys and engage in truly manly activities.

For the most part, as a middle-aged, overweight newspaper columnist, my life consists of the following three non-group activities:

• Sitting in front of a computer and staring up at the ceiling tiles while my dogs waddle around at my feet emitting potentially toxic aromas;

• Lying on the couch in the den watching sports highlights on the big-screen TV while the dogs use the canine version of Jedi mind-control powers to persuade me to (a) take them for a walk, or (b) fetch them a snack;

• Standing behind my propane barbecue grilling assorted meats and sipping cold beer while the dogs, enticed by the fragrances emanating from the grill, stare up at me with looks of laser-like concentration in their eyes and chains of drool hanging from their moony little faces.

There is nothing wrong with these activities, but sadly, they can be quite lonely in the sense that they are usually performed solo, unless you count the presence of multiple dogs.

The thing is guys tend to be pack animals and we long to be surrounded by other rugged individualists, so that we can share our inner-most feelings in the hopes that, in so doing, someone will be able to explain to us the importance of hitting left-handed against right-handed pitching.

Which explains why I was so excited the other night to attend the annual Scotch & Cigar Appreciation Evening held in the spacious backyard of my buddy Dave, who, and this is extremely convenient, lives right across the street from my buddy Bob.

For the record, this was the 16th year Dave has held this magical men-only night, in which about 60 guys stand shoulder to shoulder in manly clots and engage in two things folks of our gender love, namely:

• Blowing cigar smoke into each other’s faces;

• Blowing scotch fumes into each other’s faces.

When we are not doing one of these two things — and this next bit may surprise anyone who currently has a person of the extreme male gender living in their home — we openly discuss our views on a wide range of topics, including (and I will try to make this the last list):

• Professional sports;

• College sports;

• Why Donald Trump is such a (bad word) jerk.

As I have explained in the past, this evening is the male equivalent of a baby shower, except instead of lovely gifts for a newborn, every guy brings a bottle of whisky, plops it down on the “sampling table,” then prays his selection will be the most rapidly consumed because that will grant him increased status in the jealous minds of all the other guys whose whiskies were not as popular.

The way a sophisticated guy like me demonstrates his “appreciation” for a fine whisky at an event like this is by taking a healthy swallow, then scrunching his face up like a clenched fist to indicate his throat is on fire, but it is a good sort of burn and reminds him that nothing worthwhile comes without a certain amount of pain.

The thing I really enjoy is wandering around and squeezing into random groups of guys to see what is on their minds. Which is how I found myself in the middle of a conversation about a dangerous trend wherein guys driving expensive cars on the highway have collided with large forms of wildlife. Here is what I recall of this conversation:

First guy: “I was driving a truck and two guys in a sports car in front of me hit the biggest moose I have ever seen.”

Second guy: “Were they killed?”

First guy: “No, but one them took a hoof to the side of the head.”

Second guy: “That will definitely leave a mark.”

As it is every year, the emotional highlight came when three kilt-clad members of the famed Winnipeg Police Pipe Band in the form of two bagpipers and a drummer arrived to serenade us scotch-swilling, cigar-smoking, hotdog-munching modern men with a plethora of heart-tugging Scottish tunes.

As the father of a bagpiper, I am well aware that most pipers hate being asked to play the song Amazing Grace, because it is the most-frequently requested pipe song of all time, and it’s a long, complex tune.

But I begged them to play the song because it can reduce guys like me to a quivering puddle of goo more quickly than being smacked by a puck or a cleated foot in a medically sensitive part of the guy anatomy.

When they fired up the pipes and the strains of Amazing Grace drifted over the yard, as if on cue, most of us guys grew quiet, sipped our scotch and dabbed at our now-misty eyes, which is not easy to do when you are holding a burning cigar.

Speaking of which, I learned a hard lesson — in the dark, both ends of a cigar look identical, especially if the cigar is no longer actively burning, which you discover when, while trying to free up one of your hands, you stick the wrong end in your mouth and experience what must be the sensation of wrapping your lips around a car’s exhaust pipe.

Unfortunately, all good things must end, and eventually my wife, who has the ability to detect smoke of any kind at the molecular level, arrived to drive me home.

Before I was allowed to climb into bed, my wife looked at me and explained there was something magical in the air. Her exact words were: “You smell like a distillery that has just burnt to the ground. Leave your stinky clothes in the hallway!”

So, I did that, and being a sensitive guy of my gender, I wisely kept my inner-most feelings to myself.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca