Tuesday, January 18, 2005
The Flipside
Honestly, who the hell am I kidding? Having a girlfriend who loves sports is like having a Red Ryder BB gun, you can waste years wishing for it, but if you do actually get it, you are almost guaranteed to shoot your eye out. While I previously teased you with notions of game nights as date nights and World Series Sex, let's examine the dull truth behind the shiny veneer--sports are a man's one true escape.
Not even Romeo and Juliet could have survived spending every single waking moment with each other. Sure, it's easy for them to say when they're family ties ensure it will never be more than a hypothetical, but let's see how star-crossed those lovers stay if they are not torn apart by hatred and violence and actually never have to leave each other's side. They wouldn't last any longer than Brad and Jenn. While a relationship is a union of two people that become their own separate entity, the two people must still maintain some level of individuality in order to keep the relationship fresh. If you have no experiences outside of the relationship, then you have no opportunity to bring in anything new or interesting and you might as well be dating yourself. I'm not saying we all need to be taking pottery classes on the side or anything. That would certainly work, but we don't even need to go that far. All we need is to spend an occasional pair of hours apart. Women need to go shopping with their friends and men, here comes the connection, need to watch sports with their buddies. We need to roll out of bed on a Sunday morning unshowered and unshaven and stumble into Hooters at 10 a.m. to drink beer and watch football--with our guys and only our guys. If women loved sports, this would never happen. If women were coming along, we couldn't get out the door looking (and smelling) like we often do when we're going to watch sports.
"Honey?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Is that what you're gonna wear?"
"Yeah, why?"
"You wore that jersey last Sunday."
"So what. We won. It's lucky."
"Is not showering lucky too?"
"Maybe."
(cue The Look)
Man stomps back upstairs to shower and change.
And this before we would even get out the door! Can you imagine the lockdown that would occur once we actually got to Hooters? Do you really think you're gonna sit there and consume five pitchers of beer and a pound and a half of buffalo wings while she high-fives you and says "Let's go, team?" Peyton Manning will beat the Patriots in Foxboro before that ever happens, I assure you. If it's just you and the guys, you face no consequences, no Look. If you're just watching the game with the guys, you are being challenged to eat and drink more. (Except my buddies who are more inclined to sharing a Zima at their favorite outdoor bistro) Men need this escape. It is essential to the lifeforce of any man and any relationship.
Also, the whole premise of World Series Sex and everything that it encompasses is really quite presumptuous. Just because a woman loves sports, who's to say she's gonna side with the same teams as her lover? Isn't it more likely that she'll find out which teams you love and join up with their archrivals just out of playful spite? Women live for such opportunities. You've seen how they relish any instance where they're right and you're wrong. What do you think she's going to do when her Red Sox come back from an 0-3 deficit to knock your Yankees out of the playoffs? It's tough enough to eat crow from a male buddy, but to have to take it from a girlfriend could drive a man to make wifebeaters the definitive piece of his wardrobe. When a man has just had his soul crushed by a hail mary, a buzzer beater or a walk-off homerun, he needs a safe place to run to; he needs a girlfriend whom he can trust has no idea how the game turned out and stands little chance of even mentioning it. Sure, if you're girlfriend shared in your sporting triumphs, it could make for some serious lovin', but is that really worth the anguish that would result if her own triumphs came only at the expense of your defeats? This is a Pandora's box that needs to be locked up tighter than a Patriots' pass defense, my friends.
Doesn't our love for sports somewhat define us as men? Aside from obvious anatomical disparities, aren't sports a way to separate ourselves from our female counterparts? If our girlfriends start enjoying sports as much as we do, don't we stand to lose the essence of our male friendships? If she's coming to Hooters every Sunday, when will we get to be goofballs with our buddies? When will we get to drink Bass, be crass, and laugh for the two hundredth time about a trip we took five years ago? The line will be blurred and one side will bleed into the other like the chalk of a hopscotch court when the sprinklers come on. I implore you, men, embrace her distaste for sports. While it might mean you miss a few more games a year and be denied what, in theory, could be the greatest sex in the universe, aren't we all a lot safer getting Tivo and a gift certificate to the Hustler store?
Combining our love of sports and our love of women, on the surface, seems like a concept that can't lose. But like DeNiro told Pacino, remember, "there's a flipside to that coin."
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Not even Romeo and Juliet could have survived spending every single waking moment with each other. Sure, it's easy for them to say when they're family ties ensure it will never be more than a hypothetical, but let's see how star-crossed those lovers stay if they are not torn apart by hatred and violence and actually never have to leave each other's side. They wouldn't last any longer than Brad and Jenn. While a relationship is a union of two people that become their own separate entity, the two people must still maintain some level of individuality in order to keep the relationship fresh. If you have no experiences outside of the relationship, then you have no opportunity to bring in anything new or interesting and you might as well be dating yourself. I'm not saying we all need to be taking pottery classes on the side or anything. That would certainly work, but we don't even need to go that far. All we need is to spend an occasional pair of hours apart. Women need to go shopping with their friends and men, here comes the connection, need to watch sports with their buddies. We need to roll out of bed on a Sunday morning unshowered and unshaven and stumble into Hooters at 10 a.m. to drink beer and watch football--with our guys and only our guys. If women loved sports, this would never happen. If women were coming along, we couldn't get out the door looking (and smelling) like we often do when we're going to watch sports.
"Honey?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Is that what you're gonna wear?"
"Yeah, why?"
"You wore that jersey last Sunday."
"So what. We won. It's lucky."
"Is not showering lucky too?"
"Maybe."
(cue The Look)
Man stomps back upstairs to shower and change.
And this before we would even get out the door! Can you imagine the lockdown that would occur once we actually got to Hooters? Do you really think you're gonna sit there and consume five pitchers of beer and a pound and a half of buffalo wings while she high-fives you and says "Let's go, team?" Peyton Manning will beat the Patriots in Foxboro before that ever happens, I assure you. If it's just you and the guys, you face no consequences, no Look. If you're just watching the game with the guys, you are being challenged to eat and drink more. (Except my buddies who are more inclined to sharing a Zima at their favorite outdoor bistro) Men need this escape. It is essential to the lifeforce of any man and any relationship.
Also, the whole premise of World Series Sex and everything that it encompasses is really quite presumptuous. Just because a woman loves sports, who's to say she's gonna side with the same teams as her lover? Isn't it more likely that she'll find out which teams you love and join up with their archrivals just out of playful spite? Women live for such opportunities. You've seen how they relish any instance where they're right and you're wrong. What do you think she's going to do when her Red Sox come back from an 0-3 deficit to knock your Yankees out of the playoffs? It's tough enough to eat crow from a male buddy, but to have to take it from a girlfriend could drive a man to make wifebeaters the definitive piece of his wardrobe. When a man has just had his soul crushed by a hail mary, a buzzer beater or a walk-off homerun, he needs a safe place to run to; he needs a girlfriend whom he can trust has no idea how the game turned out and stands little chance of even mentioning it. Sure, if you're girlfriend shared in your sporting triumphs, it could make for some serious lovin', but is that really worth the anguish that would result if her own triumphs came only at the expense of your defeats? This is a Pandora's box that needs to be locked up tighter than a Patriots' pass defense, my friends.
Doesn't our love for sports somewhat define us as men? Aside from obvious anatomical disparities, aren't sports a way to separate ourselves from our female counterparts? If our girlfriends start enjoying sports as much as we do, don't we stand to lose the essence of our male friendships? If she's coming to Hooters every Sunday, when will we get to be goofballs with our buddies? When will we get to drink Bass, be crass, and laugh for the two hundredth time about a trip we took five years ago? The line will be blurred and one side will bleed into the other like the chalk of a hopscotch court when the sprinklers come on. I implore you, men, embrace her distaste for sports. While it might mean you miss a few more games a year and be denied what, in theory, could be the greatest sex in the universe, aren't we all a lot safer getting Tivo and a gift certificate to the Hustler store?
Combining our love of sports and our love of women, on the surface, seems like a concept that can't lose. But like DeNiro told Pacino, remember, "there's a flipside to that coin."
# posted by j.h.k. @ 1:53 PM 
