Another one of my friends has recently gotten married. This means, of course, that another one of my friends has recently had a bachelor party. Historically, I've viewed bachelor parties as something of an unnecessary oddity. The generic image that comes to mind when I consider a bachelor party is a toned down version of the Tom Hanks film of the same name: Bachelor Party. Must see stuff, if you're into shitty 80s movies.
In that movie, Tom Hanks and his buddies party, nudity happens, someone drugs a mule (and blows it), and there's a crazy guy with a cross bow. This movie is similar to the recent Hangover films, I guess, though I've only ever seen bits and pieces of them because I don't like anyone in them. Digression.
The Bachelor Party (capital 'B', capital 'P') involves a group of men getting shit-faced, surrounding themselves with random naked women, and generally pursuing hi-jinks. For my bachelor party, I was very earnest in that there should be no naked women, because truth be told, I am a prude and feminism and blah, blah, blah.
My bachelor party involved getting up at 6:30 AM on a freezing ass cold day in March and playing paintball with a large group of friends and family. Afterwards, there was supposed to be much drinking and hi-jinks. I wanted to play stupid drinking games one last time. But alas, at 10:30, all of my friends went to bed. Assholes.
And that has more or less been the pattern with all of my friends' bachelor parties except for one. That one, in New Orleans, definitely involved hi-jinks. And there were many naked women. And at least one hilariously unintentional encounter with a prostitute, which could be a story unto itself (and not mine to tell). Moving on.
Other than that, all of my friends' bachelor parties have been the opposite of the Bachelor Party. Tame. Guys drinking. Video games. Dinner. Then me going home and passing out while watching Bachelor Party. Oh man, I wish that were true. But really I've passed out to The Burbs.
This most recent bachelor party, however, finally involved nudity again. But unlike New Orleans, or any typical chauvinistic wet dream Bachelor Party, this one didn't involve anonymous women getting naked for money. This time, the bachelor and all of his friends paid someone money so that we could get naked together.
Yes, I'm talking about the King Spa. My wife has previously tried to get me to go with her to the King Spa, but: (1) the notion of going to a spa seems strange to me, and (2) her description of what the experience involved did not seem like a good time.
"Well, first of all, there's a men's area and a women's area."
"So I'm not going to be with you?"
"Well at first. Yes."
"Then why would I go? I don't want to relax with strangers."
"Well, it's just for a bit. You go, and you get naked. And there are these amazing pools. Hot pools, cold pools. Steam rooms."
"But I'm naked?"
"Yeah, it's a spa. It's great. You'll love it."
"Are there other people?"
"Yes."
"So I'm naked with a bunch of dudes, and we get into a pool together?"
"Yes, and then there are--"
"I'm out."
"But you didn't let me fin--"
"I'm out."
So here I am months and months later. One of my closest friends, who I've known since we were six is getting married, and he wants to go to King Spa. Everyone is backing out. They're all going to meet up later for dinner. I feel like I have to go. I suck up my body image issues and decide to go get naked with my friend and four or five others.
It's an interesting thing being naked in a room full of strange men. I've not often found myself in this scenario, so I don't really know what the rules of engagement are. What is etiquette? I ask this of myself early and often.
First, before I go, I bathe thoroughly. I do not want to be the turd in the punch bowl. Upon arriving, all members of our group assert that they all have done the same. "Yes, yes, I washed first. Don't want to be turd in the punch bowl," says John. "Wouldn't want to carry a stink into the sink," Steve tells us all.
We've all bathed vigorously. And affirmed our cleanliness to the group. We make a couple of tittering jokes about how we're at a bachelor party, how we're not women, and that none of us is too eager for this experience. We're all playing it cautious.
When we get into the locker room, there is dong everywhere. First rule of public nudity, eyes up. This immediately reminds me of conversations I've had with girls in year's past where some female or another has asked me what my friend's penis looks like, because I showered with them in sports.
Ladies, it doesn't work that way. The first thing naked men do when being naked together is not examine each other's cock and balls. It's just not professional. Also, where do you get off asking about my friend's junk, high school girlfriend? That's like me asking my wife, "Hey, so your new friend Margaret, she's kind of cute. Is she seeing anybody? What's her vulva like?" Wrong, wrong, wrong.
All right. So eyes up. What's next? Time to disrobe. There's no backing down now.
Now, when you find yourself within a group of guys who are all getting naked together for the first time in a Korean bathhouse surrounded by 20-30 naked men of all ages, you have to make sure you disrobe properly. Too fast, and you're looking a little too eager. Too slow, and you're looking for a show. Or that's what I'm thinking to myself as I start to undress.
But while I've been thinking, I've unconsciously gotten fully naked while all of my friends are still untying their shoes.
What do you do when you're naked and no one else is? You wait. So there I stand, awkwardly fat and naked, eyes up, waiting for my friends to also be naked. When it's time, we all shower in separate stalls. Each of us has previously bathed, so we're mostly going through the motions. But clearly there are some people here who are making a show of it.
A 50-something bald man in one corner has been soaping and scrubbing his genitals for five minutes. An older Korean gentleman stands by a communal blow-dryer, whisking it back and forth over his pubic region.
This is once in a lifetime behavior. It never would have occurred to me to do that. I am seeing a world I never knew existed, and for which I have no concept of what society deems appropriate. Maybe the genital scrubbing is par for the course. Maybe the weirdos are the ones who don't blow dry their undercarriage. I don't know.
What I do know is that it's strange to me that father-son pairings are coming here. And that I'm extra hard avoiding looking at the 10-, 12-, and 15-year old boys that are in the great big room of naked with me. I definitely notice one man who is not sharing my conceit. Gross.
Regardless, the whole experience is an anthropological wet dream. Not because of the shapes, sizes, etc. of penises and bodies, but because of the human behavior. It's all quite fascinating. And I'll tell you, a hot pool followed by a frigid pool? Quite nice.
After the pools, we each get massages and then head off to a restaurant for BBQ. We eat an entire pig shoulder. And we shun everyone who came just for dinner.
"No food until you show us your weenis!"
We go back to my place, where I have kicked my wife and son out of the house for the evening. Once there, we play board games. Carcassonne. Blokus. Settlers of Catan. We drink beer until 11:30 and the bachelor ducks out.
By midnight, everyone is gone. My wife and child could have stayed home for this one. But hey, I've got a fridge full of beer, had a wicked massage, and found my encounter with public nudity strangely compelling. I will go back, King Spa. I will go back.
But first, Turner and Hooch.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
A Trip to the Doctor
I took my son to the doctor the other day for his one year checkup. As an aside, when you tell people you're taking your son to the doctor, they become very concerned. This is odd to me, because there are mandatory checkups every three months for all humans for the first year (or two?) of their lives.
"I'm taking Little Man to the Doctor, I'll be back in two hours."
"Oh no, I hope nothing's wrong."
"Thanks for the concern, but I'm really just going to be told I'm a bad parent."
And that's the second thing that is odd to me about these mandatory young person checkups. My wife came back from Rudy's nine-month checkup convinced we were failing as parents.
"They gave me a questionnaire to fill out about his development, and he's behind!"
"Oh my God. Really?! What? Where? How?"
"There were just a bunch of things that he's supposed to be able to do, but he can't do them." She hands me a three page document with a series of yes or no questions.
Question 1: If you ask your child how big he is, does he raise his arms to show you "Sooooo big"?
Answer: No.
Here's the thing though, no one told us he would be graded on this ability. I had no idea I was supposed to be teaching him this. For the first nine months of his life, I was trying to get my son to sit up, crawl, and walk. I didn't even know "Soooooo big" was a thing.
The questions go on.
Question 27: Does your child call you 'mama' or 'dada'?
Answer: No.
"That can't be indicative of a problem," I say. We've got three nephews, all older than our son, and none of them said shit when they were nine months old. And they're all smart as whips now.
Since I hadn't been at the six- or nine-month appointments, I couldn't really gauge how much my wife was reading into the doctor's tone. Maybe something was just being lost in translation. "For the one-year checkup, I'm going," I decide. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this."
So I go. And it's really hard not to feel like a terrible parent when your doctor is asking you questions where you would be a terrible parent if the answer was no.
"Do you have electrical outlets covered in your home?"
"Do you have smoke alarms?"
"Do you feed your child breakfast?"
Do you have to ask? Jesus. I think the Doctor's office is mostly about making you feel like a bad parent and telling you that your child has an enormous head. Those seem to be the prevailing themes.
"So your son's weight remains in the 90th percentile, while his height remains in the 10th percentile. That's mildly concerning. Also, his head remains off the charts. It is really huge. There's just no science behind the size of this boy's head."
I blame my father.
As the shaming is wrapping up, the doctor starts running through our vaccination options. She's throwing all kinds of shit out there. Hepatitis this. Influenza that. This one we do because of this reason, even though it's not really likely he'll get it, and it's probably not needed.
Call me neglectful, but I don't care. Give him everything. I'm all for being an informed consumer. And I'm pretty cynical of the relationship between doctor's and drug companies. And I think it's more than ridiculous that healthcare is an industry rather than a right. But I also pretty much think that doctors, like teachers, should do what's best in their professional opinions. If he shouldn't get a vaccine, the doctor wouldn't ask.
"Yup," I tell the doctor. And like that, I've signed my son up for four shots.
This is where the doctor's visit becomes really interesting to me. Because as I'm holding down my son while a strange woman sticks a sharp needle an inch into his three-inch thick legs, the ridiculousness of this situation dawns on me. His face goes from oblivious smiling to red-faced full force screaming in an instant. His calm body becomes one giant muscle, contracting and writhing to get away.
Get away from what? He doesn't even know. He has no idea what's going on. All he knows is that something that hurt just happened, with no ability to comprehend why.
And he trusts me. He loves me. He needs me. He is fully dependent on me and my wife, and has been since that first terrifying day when he came out of total warmth and darkness into a bright cold world. Total shock to the senses. And since then, we've fed him. We've clothed him. We've wiped poo off of his ass and genitalia. We've put ointments on his asshole. Not his ass cheeks. Literally, his asshole. We've plugged electrical outlets, provided smoke alarms, AND we feed him breakfast.
He completely trusts us.
And we did this to him.
Trying to understand what this would be like, all I can imagine is a scenario where my dad tells me we're going to go golfing, but then before we get to the golf course, my dad says we've got to make a side stop.
He pulls the car over next to an office building, and tells me in an excited voice that we're going to stop and see one of his old friends.
"Oh, okay," I think. "That's strange. But it seems harmless. I'm actually intrigued by the whole thing. Who is this friend? What is this office building? Why are we stopping right now? Seems like a mild adventure."
We go into the office and are greeted by a receptionist. She tells us to wait. After a few minutes, they call us into a back room.
My dad and I talk about the Blackhawks, the golf we're going to play, and what it's like raising a child. Eventually, a stranger enters the room.
My dad greets the stranger like a friend. He introduces us. The two of them banter back and forth for five or ten minutes. I can hear and understand the words that they're saying, but a lot of the meaning is lost. They're talking about events and places that I don't know. They use people's names as shorthand for whole paragraphs.
"That's a typical Jack McDonald move." One of them says.
"Yes, very Jack McDonald." The other responds.
They laugh. And I smile and kind of laugh with them. I don't know what they're saying, but I'm laughing along because it's uncomfortable not to. Then I start to think about how people do that: laugh when others are laughing. It occurs to me that this is funny as well. And now I'm genuinely laughing about this odd human behavior.
And that's when I am blind-sided with total searing pain. Searing pain and a loud pop.
I clutch my leg, and scream out. "Ah! Jesus, shit. What the fuck!" My eyes are closed tightly shut.
"It's okay. It's okay." My father is telling me calmly, as he rubs my shoulders. I start to open my eyes.
I look down and realize that my father's friend had pulled out a gun and shot me in the leg. I now know what it's like to be shot. It hurts like hell. Just as I'm starting to process this, I register the old friend looking at the barrel of the gun, held up right in his right hand. He's inspecting it kind of. The tip of the barrel.
"Once more," he says matter of factly. Then he points the barrel back at me and--
BANG!
Now the pain is in my other leg. "AHHHHHHHHH!!! What the fuck! You MOTHERFUCKER!!!"
"It's okay. You're okay, little man." My dad continues.
"You motherfucker! Why did you let him do this to me? What do you mean 'you're okay'? I trusted you!"
"Awwww, poor guy. I know. I know."
"You know? You know my ass."
BANG!
"JESUS! He did it again!"
"It's almost over," says the stranger. "You're being so brave."
"Why did it even begin? Why isn't it over already?!"
"Last one..."
BANG
"AAARRRGH!!!"
"Oh, buddy," my dad tells me.
"I'm taking Little Man to the Doctor, I'll be back in two hours."
"Oh no, I hope nothing's wrong."
"Thanks for the concern, but I'm really just going to be told I'm a bad parent."
And that's the second thing that is odd to me about these mandatory young person checkups. My wife came back from Rudy's nine-month checkup convinced we were failing as parents.
"They gave me a questionnaire to fill out about his development, and he's behind!"
"Oh my God. Really?! What? Where? How?"
"There were just a bunch of things that he's supposed to be able to do, but he can't do them." She hands me a three page document with a series of yes or no questions.
Question 1: If you ask your child how big he is, does he raise his arms to show you "Sooooo big"?
Answer: No.
Here's the thing though, no one told us he would be graded on this ability. I had no idea I was supposed to be teaching him this. For the first nine months of his life, I was trying to get my son to sit up, crawl, and walk. I didn't even know "Soooooo big" was a thing.
The questions go on.
Question 27: Does your child call you 'mama' or 'dada'?
Answer: No.
"That can't be indicative of a problem," I say. We've got three nephews, all older than our son, and none of them said shit when they were nine months old. And they're all smart as whips now.
Since I hadn't been at the six- or nine-month appointments, I couldn't really gauge how much my wife was reading into the doctor's tone. Maybe something was just being lost in translation. "For the one-year checkup, I'm going," I decide. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this."
So I go. And it's really hard not to feel like a terrible parent when your doctor is asking you questions where you would be a terrible parent if the answer was no.
"Do you have electrical outlets covered in your home?"
"Do you have smoke alarms?"
"Do you feed your child breakfast?"
Do you have to ask? Jesus. I think the Doctor's office is mostly about making you feel like a bad parent and telling you that your child has an enormous head. Those seem to be the prevailing themes.
"So your son's weight remains in the 90th percentile, while his height remains in the 10th percentile. That's mildly concerning. Also, his head remains off the charts. It is really huge. There's just no science behind the size of this boy's head."
I blame my father.
As the shaming is wrapping up, the doctor starts running through our vaccination options. She's throwing all kinds of shit out there. Hepatitis this. Influenza that. This one we do because of this reason, even though it's not really likely he'll get it, and it's probably not needed.
Call me neglectful, but I don't care. Give him everything. I'm all for being an informed consumer. And I'm pretty cynical of the relationship between doctor's and drug companies. And I think it's more than ridiculous that healthcare is an industry rather than a right. But I also pretty much think that doctors, like teachers, should do what's best in their professional opinions. If he shouldn't get a vaccine, the doctor wouldn't ask.
"Yup," I tell the doctor. And like that, I've signed my son up for four shots.
This is where the doctor's visit becomes really interesting to me. Because as I'm holding down my son while a strange woman sticks a sharp needle an inch into his three-inch thick legs, the ridiculousness of this situation dawns on me. His face goes from oblivious smiling to red-faced full force screaming in an instant. His calm body becomes one giant muscle, contracting and writhing to get away.
Get away from what? He doesn't even know. He has no idea what's going on. All he knows is that something that hurt just happened, with no ability to comprehend why.
And he trusts me. He loves me. He needs me. He is fully dependent on me and my wife, and has been since that first terrifying day when he came out of total warmth and darkness into a bright cold world. Total shock to the senses. And since then, we've fed him. We've clothed him. We've wiped poo off of his ass and genitalia. We've put ointments on his asshole. Not his ass cheeks. Literally, his asshole. We've plugged electrical outlets, provided smoke alarms, AND we feed him breakfast.
He completely trusts us.
And we did this to him.
Trying to understand what this would be like, all I can imagine is a scenario where my dad tells me we're going to go golfing, but then before we get to the golf course, my dad says we've got to make a side stop.
He pulls the car over next to an office building, and tells me in an excited voice that we're going to stop and see one of his old friends.
"Oh, okay," I think. "That's strange. But it seems harmless. I'm actually intrigued by the whole thing. Who is this friend? What is this office building? Why are we stopping right now? Seems like a mild adventure."
We go into the office and are greeted by a receptionist. She tells us to wait. After a few minutes, they call us into a back room.
My dad and I talk about the Blackhawks, the golf we're going to play, and what it's like raising a child. Eventually, a stranger enters the room.
My dad greets the stranger like a friend. He introduces us. The two of them banter back and forth for five or ten minutes. I can hear and understand the words that they're saying, but a lot of the meaning is lost. They're talking about events and places that I don't know. They use people's names as shorthand for whole paragraphs.
"That's a typical Jack McDonald move." One of them says.
"Yes, very Jack McDonald." The other responds.
They laugh. And I smile and kind of laugh with them. I don't know what they're saying, but I'm laughing along because it's uncomfortable not to. Then I start to think about how people do that: laugh when others are laughing. It occurs to me that this is funny as well. And now I'm genuinely laughing about this odd human behavior.
And that's when I am blind-sided with total searing pain. Searing pain and a loud pop.
I clutch my leg, and scream out. "Ah! Jesus, shit. What the fuck!" My eyes are closed tightly shut.
"It's okay. It's okay." My father is telling me calmly, as he rubs my shoulders. I start to open my eyes.
I look down and realize that my father's friend had pulled out a gun and shot me in the leg. I now know what it's like to be shot. It hurts like hell. Just as I'm starting to process this, I register the old friend looking at the barrel of the gun, held up right in his right hand. He's inspecting it kind of. The tip of the barrel.
"Once more," he says matter of factly. Then he points the barrel back at me and--
BANG!
Now the pain is in my other leg. "AHHHHHHHHH!!! What the fuck! You MOTHERFUCKER!!!"
"It's okay. You're okay, little man." My dad continues.
"You motherfucker! Why did you let him do this to me? What do you mean 'you're okay'? I trusted you!"
"Awwww, poor guy. I know. I know."
"You know? You know my ass."
BANG!
"JESUS! He did it again!"
"It's almost over," says the stranger. "You're being so brave."
"Why did it even begin? Why isn't it over already?!"
"Last one..."
BANG
"AAARRRGH!!!"
"Oh, buddy," my dad tells me.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Who Needs Teeth
My four month old son used to be a friendly, happy baby. In the past two weeks he has become a complete asshole. How? Why? What could have brought on this terrible transformation from Happy Angel to Spawn of Satan, you ask? He's teething. After four consecutive nights of three or less total hours of sleep, sleep that is further subdivided by bouts of wild infant screams, I have come to the conclusion that fuck teeth.
Fuck teeth.
That's right, teeth are bullshit. The kid has been totally fine without teeth for four months. His body weight has nearly doubled, so it's not like you need teeth to eat. The doctor keeps telling us he's healthy. She even discouraged us from starting him on solid food. So clearly, there's nothing super important about solid food. Nutrients? Comes in the milk.
"Everything he needs is right there in your breast milk," our doctor told my wife. Then why does he need teeth?! He doesn't. Teeth accomplish nothing.
"Lou, "you may say, "he can't just drink milk his whole life. Besides, if your wife didn't have teeth, the milk wouldn't have very many nutrients."
Bullshit. Adults don't need teeth either. What do spaghetti, peanut butter and jelly, scallops, and raspberries all have in common? You can gum the shit out of any of those foods!
You basically only need teeth for nuts, meat, and raw vegetables. What do nuts, meat, and raw vegetables all have in common? I would gladly not eat any of them ever again if I could get some goddamn sleep!
A couple hundred years ago everybody lost all their teeth anyway and they managed to stay alive long enough for me to know that George Washington had wooden implants. People lived without teeth just fine. And there were no blenders in pre-colonial times. Nowadays, imagine the possibilities. Who doesn't love a good smoothie?
Besides the fact that we as a species don't need teeth to survive, if we didn't have teeth, we wouldn't have to go to the dentist. I've given up on brushing completely in pursuit of this goal. When I lose all my teeth I will never again have to get a cavity drilled and filled.
Braces? Spare everyone the pubescent embarrassment. Just don't have teeth. No one will care if they're not lined up.
Teeth are just so much maintenance. Floss every day. Brush twice a day. Whiten to strengthen your image. You do these things every day for your teeth for 60, 70 years. What do they do for you? You can bite an apple. Whoopity-fucking-doo.
And guess what you have to do after you bite into that apple. Brush because apples have lots of sugar. Floss because the little piece of the apple's skin got caught between two of your teeth and you can't get it out. Mouthwash because there was a little bit of blood on the apple when you bit into it, and it turns out you've got gingivitis. We are slaves to our teeth.
And just when you think you've got it under control. Just when you've got your routine down. You've gotten the braces off. You've had several years of the perfect smile. Just at that moment, those dirty bastards decide to drop a few more on you way in the back. Only there's no more room at the inn. So now your "wisdom" teeth are driving into your molars, which are driving into your incisors, which are now a jangled mess of disaster, criss-crossing the front teeth you tried so hard to remove the gap between. And you drink coffee because your baby keeps waking up because his teeth are coming in, and you can't stay awake without pouring cup after cup of black coffee down your throat, and it stains your teeth, so now they're darker than they were, and you haven't slept for days, and it's all so you can eat a fucking apple and a handful of peanuts?
Fuck. Teeth.
Fuck teeth.
That's right, teeth are bullshit. The kid has been totally fine without teeth for four months. His body weight has nearly doubled, so it's not like you need teeth to eat. The doctor keeps telling us he's healthy. She even discouraged us from starting him on solid food. So clearly, there's nothing super important about solid food. Nutrients? Comes in the milk.
"Everything he needs is right there in your breast milk," our doctor told my wife. Then why does he need teeth?! He doesn't. Teeth accomplish nothing.
"Lou, "you may say, "he can't just drink milk his whole life. Besides, if your wife didn't have teeth, the milk wouldn't have very many nutrients."
Bullshit. Adults don't need teeth either. What do spaghetti, peanut butter and jelly, scallops, and raspberries all have in common? You can gum the shit out of any of those foods!
You basically only need teeth for nuts, meat, and raw vegetables. What do nuts, meat, and raw vegetables all have in common? I would gladly not eat any of them ever again if I could get some goddamn sleep!
A couple hundred years ago everybody lost all their teeth anyway and they managed to stay alive long enough for me to know that George Washington had wooden implants. People lived without teeth just fine. And there were no blenders in pre-colonial times. Nowadays, imagine the possibilities. Who doesn't love a good smoothie?
Besides the fact that we as a species don't need teeth to survive, if we didn't have teeth, we wouldn't have to go to the dentist. I've given up on brushing completely in pursuit of this goal. When I lose all my teeth I will never again have to get a cavity drilled and filled.
Braces? Spare everyone the pubescent embarrassment. Just don't have teeth. No one will care if they're not lined up.
Teeth are just so much maintenance. Floss every day. Brush twice a day. Whiten to strengthen your image. You do these things every day for your teeth for 60, 70 years. What do they do for you? You can bite an apple. Whoopity-fucking-doo.
And guess what you have to do after you bite into that apple. Brush because apples have lots of sugar. Floss because the little piece of the apple's skin got caught between two of your teeth and you can't get it out. Mouthwash because there was a little bit of blood on the apple when you bit into it, and it turns out you've got gingivitis. We are slaves to our teeth.
And just when you think you've got it under control. Just when you've got your routine down. You've gotten the braces off. You've had several years of the perfect smile. Just at that moment, those dirty bastards decide to drop a few more on you way in the back. Only there's no more room at the inn. So now your "wisdom" teeth are driving into your molars, which are driving into your incisors, which are now a jangled mess of disaster, criss-crossing the front teeth you tried so hard to remove the gap between. And you drink coffee because your baby keeps waking up because his teeth are coming in, and you can't stay awake without pouring cup after cup of black coffee down your throat, and it stains your teeth, so now they're darker than they were, and you haven't slept for days, and it's all so you can eat a fucking apple and a handful of peanuts?
Fuck. Teeth.
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