Straight People: A Spotter's Guide to the Fascinating World of Heterosexuals (11 page)

Heterosexual Females aren’t the only ones to have a special night like this; Heterosexual Males do it just as often as Females, however, with vastly different intentions and activities. This is called a boys’ night.

Like a girls’ night, a boys’ night is a designated evening for Heterosexual Males to bond and cut loose. Heterosexual Males gather, usually in living rooms but sometimes in sports bars, around television sets broadcasting games such as football, basketball, and baseball. To fully understand a boys’ night, you must first understand the sports around which these evenings are often planned.
**

Of all the sports out there, I probably understand this one the least, unless you count dog fighting as a sport, but if you do then put this book down and turn yourself into the police right now. I do
not
support dog fighting, and I don’t have the time or the energy to try to explain football to someone who does. So
go
! Get out of here. Football is an extremely complex game in which two
teams compete to be in control of a strange-shaped ball made from the skin of a pig. Football players wear helmets, cleats, jerseys, and huge shoulder pads that surpass even the ones worn on such ’80s television programs as
Dynasty
and
Designing Women
.

If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to watch a sports game on TV, I’d (A) be
really
weirded out by the hostility and probably call 9-1-1 and (B) pick baseball. By default, baseball is my favorite sport, by which I mean it’s the only sport I have ever watched with my dad and come close to understanding. It’s pretty easy to comprehend; again, there are two teams (which seems to be a common theme with these sports) and again they are using a ball (another common theme), but this time the ball is smaller and not made of pigskin. However, I’m not sure what material is used in its place. Maybe it’s like a pigeon’s anal glands or something. In baseball, they introduce another prop, which is a bat. These bats are not to be confused with the ones that fly around at night and turn into Robert Pattinson; they are long, heavy shafts used to hit the ball into the air. Then the object of the game is to run to three different bases before the ball is thrown back to the catcher, a man covered in a long pad that looks like a massaging mattress pad from Brookstone and a helmet. When a player is able to pass all three bases before the ball gets back to the catcher, it is called a home run, an achievement that sends Heterosexual fans into the kind of crazy frenzy found at race-related riots and Katy Perry concerts.

This is
not
a team sport, which makes it a great afternoon hobby for wealthy Heterosexual men and unemployed lesbians. In this game, one uses the tiniest ball yet. It is definitely not made from the skin of an animal, but is instead made from a very hard plastic that, if thrown at someone’s head in the middle of the cafeteria during the seventh grade when you’re just minding your own business eating beef stroganoff and sitting all by yourself, can really hurt, but not nearly as much as the names one is called while the ball is flying at one’s head.

Golf is definitely the most elite of all sports, because no one gets dirty and it is played on beautiful green acres of land called courses. Golf consists of 18 holes, and the object of the game is to get the small ball into each hole in as few tries as possible. The player uses an assortment of clubs (a prop that is very similar to baseball’s bat, but is instead swung from the ground in an upward direction). Different clubs are used for different things and, in the case of Tiger Woods, they are used for both the game and by his wife to beat the shit out of him for sleeping around with like four billion other women.

My uncle Bert was a golf pro at the local country club in my hometown and for a very weird summer of my life I decided to get into golf, mainly because I discovered that you got to wear a single glove like Michael Jackson and hang around middle-aged women who were drunk in the middle of the day.

In the game, you are expected to play the full 18 holes, or nine if you’re playing half, or two if you’re playing with the 12-year-old
gay kid that I once was. As with the other sports, someone is declared a winner.

Much to my surprise, this game has nothing to do with hand-woven baskets and literally nothing to do with Easter or the bunny who represents it. The name comes from the fact that the ball is dribbled across the court with the goal of throwing it way up to a net formation called a basket.

Players tend to be extremely tall and always very, very sweaty. The professional game is played indoors and, not to bring it back to Whoopi Goldberg again, but my closest connection to the sport came when she made a movie about it called
Eddie
. It’s an
OK
movie, not bad for a ’90s Whoopi movie. Honestly, it came out during that rough period of like three Whoopi movies a year when you were lucky when even one of them wasn’t completely bat shit insane.

For the more daring and experienced of Heterosexual Watchers, I suggest going undercover in a disguise to one of these boys’ nights or girls’ nights, depending on the gender you’re most interested in observing. For the girls’ night, borrow a basic jumper or wrap skirt from any female friend or from your male friend who performs as Miss Anita Drink on Saturdays at a place called Hamburger Mary’s in West Hollywood. For the boys’ night, throw on any sports-related jersey and baseball cap, but
please remember
to know what team the hat
is for. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been caught in public wearing a New York Yankees hat, only to be asked by a random Heterosexual, “Did you see the game last night?” In this event, the Heterosexual will assume you know what he’s talking about and, frankly, it really is your fault for wearing the hat to begin with. Unless you’re fully prepared to answer team-related questions, I recommend buying a hat with no team logo printed on it. The Gap has some
really
cute pastel-colored hats on sale right now.

Feeling overwhelmed by all this Heterosexual talk? Don’t be. I’m here to help. When I first started Heterosexual Watching, I was just as confused as you. I’d look at these loving creatures and wonder, “Huh?!” By this point in the book, you can probably guess that I obviously didn’t have many friends growing up; as a result, I watched
a lot
of television. Specifically sitcoms. The art of the sitcom has done wonders for Heterosexual Watchers like myself, giving us a direct, intimate glimpse into the Heterosexual Married Couple (
page 38
), the Single Wannabe Carrie Bradshaw Female (
page 31
), and on the popular show
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch
, the Heterosexual Teenage Witch living with two supernatural spinsters and a talking cat.

Here is a direct transcript from my interview with a very nice Heterosexual Female I met at the gym, during which I get to the bottom of whether what I’ve learned about Heterosexuals from television is true or false.

So, in conclusion, yes.
Friends
is a 100 percent accurate depiction of the Heterosexual Lifestyle. Speaking of Jennifer Aniston,
*
did you know that noted Heterosexual John Mayer has dated not only Jennifer, but also Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson, and my own mother? OK. Not the last one but, hey, there’s still time. Right, Mom?

John Mayer has a lot going for him. For one, he’s insanely talented and famous, and two, back in 2009 he was sizzling hot; having been hot in 2009 can really go a long way for Heterosexual Males. Just ask Gerard Butler. It’s unfair to compare the common Heterosexual Male’s mating rituals to that of John Mayer; he’s a special case that should be studied, in depth, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The following, however,
is
how the common Heterosexual Male approaches mating, adopting one of the intriguingly different approaches outlined below.

A practice whereby one Heterosexual asks another of the opposite sex to spend time together, usually alone in a mating- or proto-mating pair. In modern times, initiation of this behavior is no longer a gender-specific phenomenon. The Heterosexual Female can ask out the male, or vice versa. When the male does the asking, these “dates” usually include dinner at a restaurant that “only locals go to,” which he claims to have heard about from a friend but found in the
Zagat Restaurant Guide
he received as a Secret Santa gift at work last Christmas. For other dates, the male often takes the female to see a movie he knows she wants to see, and secretly wants to see himself.
Everybody
can appreciate Ryan Gosling!

Like many other members of the animal kingdom, the Heterosexual Male understands that scent is a medium of attraction. However, most Heterosexual Males don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on high-priced cologne. Instead, Heterosexual Males resort to a substance called Axe Body Spray, a low-cost perfume
marketed specifically to Heterosexual Males through commercials where the body spray transforms women into psychotic nymphomaniacs who seem to somehow have keys to every man in America’s home and use said keys to break in while he’s taking a shower. I don’t know about you, but if six sexed-up ladies burst into my bathroom while I was taking a shower just because of the kind of body wash I had chosen to use, I would (A) call the police and scream like a little girl until they got there, and (B) quickly rethink my body wash products. While the actual result of using Axe Body Spray is never as intense as advertised, the body spray
is
rather attractive to the Heterosexual Female, presumably, at least given her alternatives.

Most Heterosexual Males own something each calls his “good shirt.” The “good shirt” is an attractive and stylish shirt purchased on sale at Express two years earlier (to wear to his cousin Lisa’s wedding or funeral; Lisa had a weird 2011). The Heterosexual Female is impressed by the gesture such self-adornment represents and, as their mating rituals accelerate, she will see more of this shirt, until she finally breaks down and buys him a second “good shirt,” followed quickly by a third.

Even if they didn’t play a high school sport, all Heterosexual Males claim to have been “the best player on the team.” The Heterosexual Male uses his sporting glory days to lure a prospective
female into believing he is some kind of athletic superhuman. The Heterosexual Female can expect to hear phrases like, “People still talk about my throw” or “And everyone started cheering, ‘Charlie! Charlie!’ But I just kept running for the ball” or “They were really serious about my going professional, but I was just too interested in working at my dad’s hardware store.”