Guys

Last night, I beat the heat lounging in a cool tub reading Life by Keith Richards. In 1979, he was living in New York City, hanging in tough neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, visiting West Indian restaurants and record stores. He alluded to his friends at that time as "this group of assholes." A blog was born.

Referring to your closest friends as assholes is a guy thing. We do it in a humorous, tongue-in-cheek fashion with affection, even pride. Over the years, I've been blessed with a congregation of kindred spirits. Guys who are there when you need them. In the same breath, they can be satirical, sardonic, and at times, downright mean-spirited. Assholes indeed.

While the opposite sex perplexes me, guys I get. Growing up with three brothers gave the house a locker room atmosphere...much to the chagrin of my sister and mother. I'm sure dad relished in our boisterous brotherhood.  At 13, I entered  the all-boy, Bishop Eustace Prep School. This strengthened the male-bonding aspect of my psyche. Showing affection through insults and jibes, substituting lewd innuendos for compliments, throwing punches and wrestling as physical signs of friendship. Basically acting like assholes.

I used to attribute this aspect of my personality to heavy doses of Hemingway, John Wayne movies and sports at an impressionable age. Grace under pressure, a stoic attitude to pain and heartache, a man has to do what a man has to do. As I get older, I understand that we act this way as a manifestation of our inner man. Something in the Y chromosome's nucleotides trigger the asshole tendency.

So, with pride, affection and esprit de corp, I express a deep appreciation to my "group of assholes". You know who you are - as ever  BB

“It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea” - Dylan Thomas