Man time

Sometimes Steve and I go shopping together. Sometimes we go out to eat together. Sometimes we stay up late and talk about girls. We have matching man-bags, t-shirts, and bath soap. We plan on buying matching shoes and matching pants. You could say we have a close relationship. And that we've possibly been influenced towards a more feminine nature from the lengthy and very close living arrangements we have with eleven females. But you might also be a guy reading this and see something else. You might see our "manship" as more survival mode than unfortunate evolution. Which is the perspective Steve and I like to take. Have you ever felt like an only child adopted into a family of eleven girls? Have you ever felt like you were a girl? If you haven't, you've had nightmares about it...if you're a guy, that is. And upon waking, you've sought out your guy friends, not girl friends, to ease the horrific memories of the night before through root-beer, pizza, and a bad-movie-night (bad acting, I mean. Not bad...you know, stuff). And it's not that you hate girls that you need man time. It's that you're glad you're a guy and not a girl, and the more crowded you are with girls the more you need to remind yourself you're not one. Girls are fantastic. But both genders agree there's a definite need to celebrate gender differences. And that's what Steve and I are doing when we spend time together away from the girly types. This however, does not explain the feminine nature of our manly celebrations. For that I ask, have you ever been to Taiwan? Is there really anything that manly to do in a land where grown men wear pink and giggle like girls when they say "hello" to a passer-by American? Don't get me wrong--I like Taiwanese dudes. They have their gender going for them. But I'm having trouble remaining a manly man in this culture. So we're girly men. But given our living situation, I'm glad we're still at least that.