The name of the band combined with the video addresses something I’ve been contemplating lately: the difficulty of making new dude friends. In the video, the band horses around doing dude bonding stuff like playing football, lifting weights, shooting hoops and drinking beer, but the video takes a turn for the queer when L.A. punk scene mascot, Black Chris, goes from arm wrestling another male to tongue wrestling him. Abe Vigoda’s Juan Vasquez reacts in kind with another male.
That’s really the problem with male bonding (also Male Bonding), it’s always faintly gay. It’s hard to get platonic relationships off the ground because a dude asking another dude to do stuff is always kind of gay. Even when it’s totally not gay, and could never be gay, there’s still a whiff of gay in the air. This was pretty much the entire plot of John Hamburg’s ‘I Love You, Man.’
I think that’s why most males have a disproportionate number of male friends from high school. Somehow that teenage bond preceded, and perhaps heralded, the queerness. It seems the crucial thing is that you have to hang out under the guise of some other objective to obfuscate hanging out for the sake of enjoying each others company. Usually it’s school or sports. It could be work, but hanging out with people from work, while acceptable in a large group, is odd one-on-one.
Dustin and Jonathon were the first friends I made in law school, and they turned out to be the best. And I feel like our relationship has reached the pinnacle of male bonding. I’ve hung out with them individually and communitively many times over the last 3-years and it always feels comfortable. It always feels gratifying in the most genuine and gentlemanly of ways. Eventhough neither of them were from or domiciled in Vermont, they made it feel like home.
Thank you, Jonathon.
Thank you, Dustin.
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