Manly Men

Men in Spain spend more time doing manly activities together than men do back in the states. At least they spend more time than I did. From my neighbor who keeps trying to get me to go hunting wild boar with him (not likely to happen), to Angels Bar around the corner that is packed each night with an all male crowd, to the guys at the tennis club who are often meeting for dinner in the evenings, men seem to spend a lot of time away from their families hanging out together.

Of course, since I’ve been trying to gain an appreciation for Spanish culture, I’ve force myself to partake in several of these activities. I started with going to the pick up futbol games organized by the fathers of the 3^rd graders at my children’s school. They meet in the school’s gym and play for about 2 hours each Thursday night. The group is very welcoming and good natured, but there also seems to be a fair amount of “breast beating”. The first night that I stopped by, one of the fathers greeted me with “Como estas?”, to which I answered, “Muy bueno”. He responded, “You just responded that you are very sexy, I think you meant muy bien.” I said, “No. No. MUY BUENO”. After that I fit right in with the group.

I’ve also been spending some time with men from the tennis club. After playing a match, one of the guys invited me out to dinner with some of his friends on Wednesday night. After accepting, I found out that we were meeting at the restaurant at 10:30 PM. We had Jamon (of course), potatoes and cheese with a special hot plate in the middle for melting the cheese to pour over everything else. There was also plenty of wine, and for desert we had shots of Jack Daniels in deference to the American in the group. They wanted me to explain how Jack Daniels was made, and were very disappointed with my minimal knowledge about the production of fine whiskey. Only one of the Spanish guys, Pedro, spoke English well, and he was only willing to translate about half of what was said (the rest being too embarrassing). Carlos ended the night struggling through an English toast, but getting confused, he ended with, “Shit to you” when he meant “Cheers to you.” In the spirit of the night I just toasted back, “Shit to you too, Carlos”.