Doodaddy and Mike are Studmuffins!

And you know, it’s only the manliest of men who can call themselves that.

I can’t understand why pool is so appealing to guys…

Thanks to everyone for voting on how Cry it Out Mike and Doodaddy should spend our next man-date. I was hoping for the manicure, and Mike, clothes horse that he is, suggested that we go shopping. The Internets apparently think that a man-date should be a bit more, I dunno, manly. (One of you suggested building something with power tools. Ha!) So y’all told us to go to a pool hall instead.

After Googling the rules of pool (that’s how you know we’re real men — we use Google as a verb), we went to a pool spot “in the neighborhoods,” which is San Francisco code for the unhip parts of town bordering Golden Gate Park. (“Family Billiards,” it was called, as if one might drop by with one’s grandmother and sister-in-law in tow.)

It was certainly earthier than the downtown neon singles bar/dance club/pool hall would have been.) Shortly after I arrived, our table neighbor blew out both nostrils into a garbage can (nice of him to use the can, at least), and… well, without being too graphic, let’s just say that men en masse seem unable to avoid at least some degree of farting.

Still, it was sort of a quaint spot. A league had many of the tables, and I’ve always enjoyed watching people do something they’re really into. (I used to watch the lawn bowlers in the park for hours on end.) The remainder of the tables were a mix of midnight-basketball-faux-gang-bangers and, interestingly, young couples on dates.

Mike does a studly behind the back shot. He even sank this one!

Oh, and by the way, I suck at pool. Mike and I started keeping score — not points, mind you, but how many times each of us had scratched. The first game (which took about half an hour) saw us each sink the cue ball about half a dozen times. Luckily, once the waitress began to ply us with beer, we got marginally better. Mike even did stuff like behind the back shots, and once or twice he successfully used that long stick holder thingy. (Did I mention that I don’t know much about pool?) I tried it once, too, and nearly broke the lighting fixture.

Mike was really nice about it, though. At one point, he encouraged me thusly:

“That was really close! Except for missing the ball. And then scratching…”

Yeah, Mike beat me. The true star of the evening, though, was the greasy man-food. We had several baskets of cheese so thoroughly fried that every last vitamin screamed and ran for cover, with sodium rushing in to fill the void.

So, despite the glassy-eyed feeling that I was playacting the part of “manly man,” we had a great time, and even planned more possible masculine activities for man-dates to come. Poker night? Maybe. More pub crawls? Almost certainly. Long walks on the beach at sunset? YEA—I mean, um, no way! Not manly! No, no, no!

Hm. We might have to ask your advice yet again next week.