I am Man; Hear Me Belch

All things considered, I am a single male. This, of course, does not mean that I am not in a relationship, which just so happens to mean that I am not hitched. Therefore, on all forms asking of my relational status, I have to say “Single.”

            This brings about two different phenomena to me; first, that no matter how committed I am in my non marital relationship (which is monogamous), I cannot be recognized as such, and secondly, that I am, by all stretches of the imagination, a bachelor. This term, while having many different pronunciations, depending on where you were raised (in the Midwest, we say Batch-lore, some in other regions of the country say Back-e-lore, etc. I never found the speakers of the latter to be all that intelligent), means the same thing: an unhitched male, and for the most part, on the prowl for a one night stand (and presumably sports memorabilia).

            The male is, for whatever reason, quite fond of being the alpha individual, that is, the one that men look up to and women for whom they tear off their clothes. I have yet to meet an individual for whom this is the case, a sort of Johnny Bravo man, like Matthew McConaughey but less douchey. (I have always envisioned Matt as sort of a Sigma Chi fellow, a man who hasn’t ever sustained a relationship, though has a child [or many, I’m not sure] and spends all his free time trying to “better” himself, which inevitably means working out lifting weights or surfing. I sometimes think that he is really only concerned with sleeping with women and being typecast). And while I wouldn’t know what to say to this individual if we ever were to meet, I think that the conversation that would be had would be an interesting one, or at least very self centered one (and we all know that my favorite subject of conversation is me).

            One of the key elements to the bachelor is, without question, his living quarters; his habitat if you will. It’s safe to say that bachelor pad is not only a widely used phrase, but also a commercially used tag, as in “This (insert object) would look great in the garage or your bachelor pad!” I have never understood the appeal of a bachelor pad until recently. I went to a friend of my father’s house, and his garage had been converted into a bachelor pad (the man is happily married, but I suppose that the married man desires a space away from the wife from time to time, as I am sure wives desire time away from their hubbies). There was a full functioning bar, a pool table, and assorted décor that made the garage look like the inside of a Hooter’s restaurant, minus the busty servers (he was working on this part, but he wouldn’t ever tell his wife for obvious reasons). The only hint of woman was a 1986 Sports Illustrated calendar; to him, this was the magazine’s peak year, to which I argued saying that women have only gotten better. I suppose he had a thing for Paulina Porizkova. I asked Tim (his name is Tim) how he felt about his pad, or rather, why he had one, and he told me the following: (note: I give you a direct quotation, though it should be noted that it is a reconstruction of scribble that was on a cocktail napkin, with water marks from the Mint Julep that I was drinking)

Well, Thomas, I think that I have a bachelor pad because I never had one when I was a bachelor. The allure of having a man space, and I don’t mean that in a gay way, is so powerful that one can’t help but want one, especially being a male. A space that it free of the woman’s so-called “touch” in which he can stretch out his legs and watch the game while suckling down a Budweiser and scratching himself without judgment. Also, I can’t fit my car in here; the garage is as goddamn small as it is, might as well make use of the sad excuse for the space. Why the hell are you asking me these questions?

Of course, it cannot be assumed that the entirety of a man’s, or at least a single man’s existence s spent in the confines of this specific room, which is more or less a shrine to all things masculine. However, in many cases, especially that involving an otherwise wealthy bachelor, this shrinedom bleeds over into many other parts of the house. The kitchen, for example, is an oft “masculinized” area of the home.

            While I don’t like talking about him, I feel that we must always come back to Matthew McConaughey, as he is the quintessential example of a bachelor, and his grand example is useable even now. In all the movies I have seen with Matt (probably two ish, not to mention any movie that he happens to be in that the play reruns of on TBS) he lives by himself (except in the case of Failure to Launch in which he lives with his parents) and has an otherwise douchey, masculine-with-a-feminine-friendly vibe; it’s a trap, quite literally speaking. The women he brings home are victim to his wit, southern accent, and his home, which is always well kept (an anomaly for bachelors) with a stunning kitchen. (Now that I describe his living arrangements, I feel that perhaps Matt in the movies is not necessarily the example of the point I’m trying to get across to you, dear reader. I suppose the point I am trying to make is that a bachelor’s decorating influence often bleeds into the kitchen area; McConaughey escapes this phenomenon, though I am still unclear as to why…) 

          (I do realize that he has since married, thus making my already spotty point even more spotty, but i'll continue on as if this essay is going really well.)

            A bachelor’s kitchen is much like the rest of his pad; while not host to a wide variety of foods, the kitchen houses many reminders of one’s gender, or at least that the homeowner is a male. Trophy bottles adorn the top of the fridge (or cabinet, the location really isn’t as important as the fact that there are trophy bottles) and banners of his favorite liquor often graces that empty space on the wall. Perhaps there is also a kegorator, or a refrigerator specifically designed for a keg of one’s favorite beverage. (Not surprisingly, I found instructions on how to make such a device, and it turns out they’re not as uncommon as one would think; many have them in their bachelor pads as part of their mini bar. But then again, how many people have a working bar in their house?) Tim may or may not have had one of these devices; if he did, the tap lever was missing. When you open the fridge at a bachelor’s abode, be prepared to not see too many exotic foods, unless of course you count mold as exotic. The staples of any single man’s food supply are the following items, which are listed in no specific order:

• Gatorade – not only for when you hit the gym to meet the ladies, but also to help cure the hangover from last night. It should be noted that most men will drink the traditional orange, red, and yellow varieties; however some variation may occur (Gatorade One, for example).
• Ranch/Blue Cheese Dressing – gone are the days of single use condiments; not only can you use the dressing to coat those four pieces of Iceberg lettuce you call a salad, but it’s also good for dunking one of your 50 hot wings before and during the big game. Or pizza. Or carrot sticks (a rarity of course).
• A can of Redi-Whip/ Hersey’s Syrup – This is for those days that he feels like being adventurous in the bedroom, or when he wants to relive his youthful days of squirting copious amounts of whipped topping directly into his mouth while saying “Fluffy Bunnies.”
• Left-overs – These vary with the “exotic” tastes that the man has. Sometimes the left-overs are Chinese food from that one date that didn’t go so well; sometimes it’s a third of a pizza that was too much (after having eaten the first two thirds, breadsticks, and hot wings); sometimes it’s Olive Garden, for that day he wanted to feel fancy (but not pay a whole bunch of money).
• Bread – what house would be complete without bread (bonus points if the bread isn’t moldy yet)?
• Milk – this is used in the morning three bowls of cereal. It can also be used as an additive to the many protein shakes that one has during the day.
• Cereal – ironically, it won’t be something sugary, but in fact something like Cheerios or Raisin Bran. Why this is I will never know. Nor do I know why it’s in the fridge.
• Moldy Fruit – who eats this shit anyway?
• Coffee creamer – this actually gets used on a daily basis, and not in a binging way like the Red-Whip or beer (see below).
• Ice Cream – everyone has their vices.
• Maraschino Cherries – I have yet to visit a house that didn’t have a jar of these suckers sitting around, not being eaten. I wonder what compels people to buy them, considering they will only ever eat one or two of them.
• Mustard – This yellow staining agent goes well on almost every sandwich.
• Beer – This goes without saying; any bachelor who is anybody has at least one full case of beer in his fridge. The beer type is unimportant at this point; there needs to always be a drink on hand if there is ever a need for one. I know that many men will opt for Bud Light or Coors Light, as they are both cheap and “light,” but the classier of men will drink imports, such as Heineken or Corona (which, oddly enough, is distributed out of Chicago).
• Beer – because he always has more than one choice of beer…

I understand that this is not a comprehensive list, as there are probably many individual bachelor’s that have their own particular food purchases; I once had a roommate (who, I’m guessing, will always remain a bachelor due to the nature of his infidelity) who, in addition to purchasing organic foods (which is not necessarily a bad thing, because it’s not) and fancy, 6 dollar a jar honey, liked to purchase artisan olive oil, which never ended up being used. This confused me on many levels; first, why would an individual, a college individual, purchase artisan olive oil? I would understand this if he were, say, a culinary arts major or at least really into cooking. He had a meal plan, however, and seldom spent meals at home cooking, and so the oil just sat their in its decorative cardboard tube on our counter for the entire year. Secondly, this olive oil confused me because when I finally did open the bottle (unbeknownst to him) the oil tasted exactly like every other extra virgin olive oil that I have ever tasted (well, perhaps this one tasted a bit pompous and full of itself, but I digress). I like to think that I consumed enough food in my lifetime to know what a good olive oil and what a bad olive oil tastes like; there was no difference. Only the price, which never seemed to bother him. For him, it was all about impressing the ladies, whether it was with his limited knowledge of local wines (which there weren’t any) or his ability to purchase expensive foods (fresh organic capers anyone?) or his desire to own fancy bottles of oil; for this, he will forever be a bachelor to me.

            (I’m sure that if this essay ever gets published [highly unlikely] that there will be one food elitist that will read this and say, “Well, Thomas, this is just not true. There is a clear distinction between Fancy grade A and fancy grade B olive oil, and there is a clear benefit to purchasing organic foods and if you had done any research at all, you would have learned this!” For those individuals, I want to know why you are reading this essay, and more importantly, you are missing the point…)

            Another area in which the single male seems to thrive in is that of vacationing, or more specifically, not working. I’m not saying that they don’t work, because that’s very far from the truth. Some of the most famous bachelors are so BECAUSE they work so much, negating any free time for a wife let alone a family. (There is the occasional bachelor who is so because he refuses to work, but these men tend to live in the basement of their childhood home, and still depend on mommy to wash their batman sheets. We’re not talking about them.) But in their free time, or the limited amount that they have, they vacation. And boy do they vacation.

            This all starts in college (or right out of high school if you have the money); during spring break, a group of friends, some in relationships some not, decide to go somewhere warm and get away from their school’s “Podunk” towns, Florida or the like. (It often amazes me that this is still the trend even when the location of the school is in Florida or Arizona or somewhere warm. It’s as if their regular lives aren’t filled with enough sunshine that they have to go somewhere else to get the same effect that we are all seeking. I wonder what college students who go to school in Cozumel do for spring break…) Once in the all inclusive resort- including drink wrist bands- the party starts. And it doesn’t end for seven days, literally. I often hear stories of colleagues who go somewhere exotic for spring break and the stories involve three main items: tans, excessive drinking, and regrettable hook-ups. At one point I was jealous, but then I realized that I would be better off with out the STD’s. However, there are those guys, and generally speaking it is the guys, who absolutely LOVE being smashed for a week straight with nothing to do but bang hot chicks. (I realized almost instantaneously that this last sentence may be perceived as sexist, and it is. But that is not my intention, nor am I saying that I am a sexist, but as I channel the friends I have who are bros – who are most undoubtedly sexist – I realize that this is the exact statement that they would say in regards to why they love spring break.) After the week is over, many guys go back to their regular, self indulgent, beer consuming lives for the remainder of college. Once they leave, their lives (well, majority of them anyways) change for the better, and they only get hammered a couple times a week, at most. They get civilized jobs and end up in the shackles of wedlock before too long.

            On the other hand, there are those guys who never grow up, the guys that the rest of this essay has been describing. Our happy bachelors end up working during the day and drinking at night (perhaps because of the job) and even more so on the weekend. When that week of vacation rolls around, I bet you good money that it is spent somewhere warm, somewhere where skin is the dress code and somewhere where the women are loose. (Fun fact: I once had a professor who told us that in her college days she was a “loose woman.” At the time, I thought this was a very hilarious and bold statement to make, but in my aged state, I realize how incredibly disturbing this string of words is.) Their main objective is to relive their college glory days, where they could be the alpha male and hold a keg stand for a minute and a half.

            (It should be noted that many guys go right to this stage straight out of high school. Often they opt out of going to college because “learning is not for them” and they end up working at the local Boston Market. These guys were the one who thought they were the shit in high school, dated cheerleaders [who are now in college dating other guys], and beat up nerd [who will eventually become their boss]. Whenever homecoming for my high school rolls around, I like to go home and visit the old place, only to see over weight classmates still wearing their letterman jackets and picking on the scrawny [though infinitely smarter] nerds in the class before they head over to Brad’s [made up name] house for a rowdy game of beer pong. Really, guys? Don’t you have to be changing oil at Jiffy Lube in the morning?)

            You would think the parents of these individuals would have kicked these otherwise slackers out of their house by this time; I know when I graduated high school, it was either I go to college or I go to the military. Either way, I wasn’t going to be staying at home, eating their food and such. Not that I didn’t want to go to college (or the marines, I suppose) because I did. But I also didn’t want to stay at home; at the ripe young age of 18 years old I was done with chores, not swearing in the house, and curfews. There was nothing that was going to stand in the way of my “freedom.”

            And you think that this would be the mentality of most men when they get out of school. I was shocked to discover that many are happy to stay at home; I guess the prospect of having to do their own laundry scares them much like the boogie monster did when they were six years old. All things considered, this is actually, quite sad; though this means that there are more available spots in the local college or even the big schools, this means that there are parents that are breeding children that won’t amount to much.

(Obviously there are always exceptions to a hard and fast rule; for example, one could become a professional video game player. I watched an episode of MTV: True Life where the topic of the day was “I’m a gamer.” It showcased a bunch of individuals who were making their way through this rat race we call life by sitting on their asses all day playing Halo or some other mind numbing game for half of the day – literally 8 or 9 hours – and spending the other half working at Best Buy [for god knows what reason]. This wasn’t my favorite episode of this show, as my favorite remains “I’m a competitive eater.” I mean, who could argue with the title of that show? The whole episode consisted of people eating food in large quantities super fast. Fucking amazing, but I digress…)

The worst part of being a bachelor at home with your parents after graduation – if this isn’t bad enough already – would be, I imagine, dating. Regardless of your sexual orientation, no one – and I mean no one – likes a messy house. Even worse, though, is a house with other occupants who tell you to make your bed and when to be home at night. While the bachelor with his own place can contract as many STD’s as he pleases (which, hopefully, is none), he can do so in the privacy of his own walls. This is not the case for the man who still lives with his parents. (This is of course if you have parents who are of the mindset that “love should be free and expressed as such” and walk around nude kissing and touching each other at all hours of the day, but I have yet to meet a family such as this [nor do I think I would ever want to]). Just think about the unfortunate situation that would occur. I think it might go something like this:

(After several drinks, the female is intending to go home with the man. Unlikely, I know, but bear with me.)

“So, whose place are we going to?”

“Mmmm…I like the smell of a man’s sheets. Let’s go to your place.”

“Umm, alright. We have to be quiet though because my parents are asleep and they hate when I come home late and make a bunch of noise when I come home. I live in the basement though…”

“Wait, you live with your parents?”

“…so we could probably slip past unnoticed. Yeah, I live with the ‘rents. Is something wrong with that?”

“No of course not. And in the morning, mommy can make us Mickey Mouse pancakes!”

“Hey Yeah! That sounds great!

“Sarcasm, idiot. Go home to mommy, loser.”

You can clearly see that the female (the meaner one in this situation) is clearly not a fan of the man, and will sacrifice a potentially satisfying one night stand for the sole reason that he lives with his parents (I suppose this situation could also be applied to a gay man as well). This is not only embarrassing for the man in the situation, but I feel that we as the audience are a little embarrassed for this fellow. I can’t be sad for too long, though, as he is (1) a bachelor and (2) living with his parents, two situation that are entirely his own fault. (I find it interesting that I am now emotionally invested in the future of this poor guy, even though I just made him up.)

            As a college student, I found myself surrounded by some of the brightest and most talented people I have ever met. I graduated and then began to pursue my life’s ambitions, whatever they were. I do, however, intend on getting hitched at one point in my life. I know that this isn’t necessarily the life for everyone (and some might say that I have a death wish); relationships are hard and full of – get this – sharing, a skill I never mastered as a young tike. I am, however, prepared to tackle this problem when it arises. The same cannot be said for some of the bachelors with whom I graduated. I predict that many of them have become workalcoholics, or alchoworkaholics, devoting their lives to the grind, and subsequently, drinking and feeling good. They’ll sleep with a bunch of “hot chicks” (or guys, I don’t discriminate) and they’ll live somewhat fruitful lives, and hopefully not in their childhood basement. 

          All of this to say that in the grand sceme of things, we need these bachelors; if it weren’t for them, spring break wouldn’t be notorious as it is, and Matthew McConaughey would be just another shitty actor.

-t.