Bloglette: Men Talk

Guy Talk

Where have I been? Stupid work leaves me no time to write an authentic Daily Affirmation, which means I've profoundly misplaced my life priorities. Still NO TIME to write the usual insightful harangue, err, analysis.

So instead I want to just toss out something I intended to leave as a comment on the excellent She's Come Undone blog. Ultimately it proved too off topic and rambling for that purpose. Shocking, I know. But that just means its right at home here.

Talk amongst yourselves: a woman has to listen to men's conversations every day, and their topics surprise her. I don't know for sure, see below, but I'm just guessing this overheard male conversation isn't all relationship talk or what's the meaning of life talk or feelings talk or is little Johnny experiencing a self-actualized childhood at home talk or do I have a sufficiently contemporary hairstyle talk or what happened on the Bachelor last night talk or do these suede shoes go with these skinny jeans talk. Just a guess. I don't know.

Reactionary Guy stuck in the '70s Reaction:

Well, I have been a man for roughly 49 years (probs more like 35 years, with a 14 year apprenticeship). I've never thought men actually have conversations with other men. At least, I've never encountered one. Maybe I don't know enough "millennial" or whatever young hipster d-bags are called now. But as far as I've ever seen, men only have conversations with women. That's why you have woman friends, right? And to hope she'll introduce you to her hot friends...I've heard. Men will also have conversations with their fathers. Or brothers. But no one else.

Men will talk to other men, of course, but only to top one another's stories ("oh, dude, that's lame, listen to what I did LAST weekend!), quotes from the right movies ("So I jump ship in Hong Kong, and make my way over to Tibet...."), predict future game scores or election results, outdo each other's jokes, run down someone's favorite candidate or sports team, bag on some other guy ("listen to what that a-hole did now"), or have an object judging contest (who has the best BBQ grill, car, lawnmower, girlfriend, etc.).

Or we'll talk in great detail about one mundane thing (the ball game) to avoid talking about something else you probably should talk about but don't want to (like why are you cheating on your wife).

Basically, male "conversations" are just verbal competition.

Attempts at actual conversation inevitably turn into problem solving: "Oh, I know, buy her TWO dozen roses." Things you will never hear most men say to each other: (1) "So how did that make you feel?" (2) "How's your relationship with [insert wife/girlfriend name here].

City Slickers was generally a lame movie (oh, sorry for the bad transition), but one passage really illustrates how this works. On the cattle drive, the guys frequently talk about baseball. This irritates jilted Helen Slater (BTW, what idiot would ditch her?) so she asks why they talk so much about baseball. She has this really incredible exchange with the now sadly deceased Bruno Kirby :

Ed: What do you and your friends talk about?
Bonnie: Real life. Relationships...are they working, are they not? Who's she seeing, is that working?
Ed: Its no contest. We win.
Bonnie: Why?
Ed: Honey, if that were as interesting as baseball, they'd have cards for it and sell it with gum.

Exactly.

So, there are no "men's conversations." Thank God.

NEXT-if I can ever get to it, the Daily Affirmations 2013 Year In Review