The rituals of manhood
Navigating manhood rituals, from embarrassing stag do antics to failed attempts at masculinity.
As a man of a certain age, I've participated in a few of the rituals of manhood: the stag do, the boys' weekend, the silent drinking of beer before a funeral (maybe this is a Merseyside thing?). Here's my take on them.
The stag do
Even the phrase conjures up equal parts fear and excitement. Statistically, at least one attendee is going to end up drunk and humiliated, doing their duty in friendship to become a good anecdote for the wedding day speeches. If you're worried that it might be you, then it's definitely going to be you.
I wasn't worried at Bryn's stag do: I didn't tend to drink much, was a pretty level-headed (perhaps even uptight) 22 year old, and didn't plan on doing anything embarrassing or uncharacteristic. This was before we began playing "the parchment game", though.
The quick version goes thus: there's a bit of paper someone's carrying which contains the rules of the game. You can pass the paper to someone else in the group as long as you don't do it directly (eg. stick it to the bottom of a pint glass and pass it to them). When you lock eyes with them and say "parchment", they become the next bearer of the paper, and must try to get rid of it in similar style. "Whoever's got the parchment when we get to the final pub", the best man told us, "has to do... a forfeit". He looked ominously at the plastic bag he was carrying, and said no more.
Many hours (and beers) later, we were in the obligatory curry house and someone passed me a naan bread. Guess what was stuck to the back of it. Everyone on the stag do saw this happen, so everyone avoided me in the next pub – our penultimate one of the evening. I spent a desperate hour trying to convince my fellow stags to even look me in the eye, and eventually accepted my fate as the best man took me (and the unlucky groom) aside to explain our forfeit.
"Here", he said, giving me the plastic bag. "Go and put these on, then come back here – you're going to dance a jig on that stage". We were in an Irish bar, of course. Dry-throated despite all the beer, I made my way to the pub toilets and opened the bag to discover an elephant-themed posing pouch. Slightly in disbelief, I put it on and returned to the bar, along with the groom who was similarly attired. The two of us got up on stage, someone persuaded the bar staff to put on an Irish jig, and we danced in our novelty underpants in front of all the Saturday night crowd. Someone was filming it because the footage—incredibly—ended up being shown at the wedding.
The manliest of men
A few years later my close friend Sean was getting married, and three of us guys accompanied him on a trip to Scotland for whisky tasting and a day of outdoors-y stag activities.
We were staying in Aberdeen which felt like a sprawling, cosmopolitan centre of urbanity compared to the rural farm track we found our taxi depositing us at for the day of stag activities. The burly Scottish farmer who met us at the gate felt like a real man: he showed us to the archery barn and I singularly failed to launch a single arrow anywhere close to the target (while my friends managed to nail several bullseyes).
Determined to improve upon my weak performance, I vowed to show off my manly prowess on the next activity, which was... quad biking. I couldn't drive. It was probably easy, right?
I was dressed suitably for the occasion: a green cardigan and glasses, ideal for high-speed outdoor activity. I still remember steering the quad bike so far off-track that the burly farmer had to come and slowly push my vehicle back onto the path while I sat in mute embarrassment. Maybe I'd excel at the final activity...?
It wasn't to be: our last manly experience was clay pigeon shooting, and I was doing this with an American. Sean was born and raised on the mean streets of Whitesboro, upstate New York, where everyone carries an assault rifle as soon as they can walk, probably. He was firing birds out of the sky like they were socialised healthcare (sorry Sean) while I could barely work out how to position the barrel. My fellow stags Tse and Chris were equally adept and in the end I think I managed to clip a couple of the "pigeons" (which I was disappointed to discover weren't even bird-shaped).
Fake it till you make it
I don't think either of these tales paints me as the heroic manly stereotype: hard-drinking, unencumbered by nerves and sensitivities, and able to turn his hand to any physical task. But in both cases, the men responsible for these rituals were equally non-alpha: smart, kind, thoughtful and mostly-sober guys who felt the need to have some kind of celebration of masculinity. We approached this stuff with irony and sarcasm, but perhaps deep down there was still some enjoyment at being able to semi-seriously compete with each other in a physical arena in a way we couldn't really do in any other environment, or indeed get drunk and have "permission" to do something ridiculous in a pub that might otherwise have thrown us out.
Men perhaps need these male bonding rituals even when the thing we're doing is itself a carbon copy, a stereotype or a parody of the real thing. It's okay to be masculine, and it's okay to lampoon the stereotype and even pretend to care about for a day or two: there's something healthy about not taking it too seriously, I think. But I don't want to wear the elephant pouch again.
Mini feels this week
The Peep Show Theory of Masculinity
This newsletter is named after a line in the TV series Peep Show where Super Hans introduces his new band as "Man Feelings".
Later in the show, the band change their name to "Danny Dyer's Chocolate Homunculus", which I was reminded of this week when I discovered that Danny Dyer is starring in a TV show called "Danny Dyer: How to Be a Man". I've yet to watch it, but I'm sure the man responsible for the greatest take in history on the 9/11 disaster will have something interesting to say.
And to complete the circle: Robert Webb, who plays Jez in Peep Show, published a book several years ago called How Not To Be A Boy.