Hanging with the boys

Throughout most of my life, most of my friends have been male. My adult career choice (various computer jobs) just facilitated this predilection since the field was highly male-dominated when I entered it, and remains so (if to a lesser degree).

Last night I had a 'date' to meet up with four male former coworkers at a local sports bar. The waitresses wore skin-tight short-skirted dresses with high-heeled boots. After the second round of beer, my buddies started unconsciously tracking the travels of several waitresses around the pool tables. My former boss, Patrick, would occasionally catch his own testosterone-inspired behavior and smile at me and say something like, "Isn't it a pain to hang out with the XY crowd?"

My other former boss, Scott, stopped speaking mid-sentence to watch a well-endowed female patron walk past him. He didn't stop staring until she had gotten a good ten yards past him. Then, he stuttered and yammered for half a minute before he laughed and hit his own social-acceptability reset button.

My buddy Kyle made a few more tolerable comments and smiled.

The youngest guy, Tom, barely noted the comely wait staff or prowling female patrons. He was the most well behaved of the bunch.

Did it irritate me as a woman? ... Not really. The first half dozen or so times I just laughed. I just added it to my mental notebook about why its better to be male than female.

Sex is a wonderful thing. It adds to the complexity and enjoyment of life. I feel sorry for most males who's subconscious (and sometimes conscious) minds seem so obsessed with meeting the demands of their sex drives.

My husband explained it to me once in these terms. In the George Orwell book, "1984", citizens can never turn the television off. They can only ever turn the sound down to a low murmur. Once males hit puberty, the television (aka, sex drive) can only be turned down from concert-volume-loud to riding-in-your-car-alone-music loud. As they age, males gain the ability to turn the sound a bit lower and lower. My husband is in his late 40s. He says that the television sound is down to where he can have a conversation with other people in the room, but the 'televistion' is totally understandable whenever everyone else stops talking.

I threw in the towel after my third beer. The four of them were just getting started. I encouraged them to enjoy their beer and their night out away from their wives. Bless their hearts. (Yes, I will join them the next time they invite me. Mostly, their neanderthal behavior was good natured and humorous.)