Ohiowa: Man's Country

This Sunday my dear friend Michelle took me to my first Bears game. Some of you might be a wee bit surprised that I even had any interest in seeing the game. Well, I did. Football, like all sports, is wonderful to enjoy in small doses. When it overwhelms a life I start to take issue with it. I have been to college football games, as well as professional baseball and basketball games. There was something distinctly absent from this professional football game, however. Women. The ratio of men to women was about 75:1. The women I did happen to see were a little too dolled up to attend an event where the likelihood of having beer and/or nacho cheese spilled on you is pretty high. I think it is safe to assume that any guy there with a woman was forced into the situation. Be it his girlfriend, wife, daughter or sex slave, she really wasn't the first choice on his list of people he wanted to watch the game with. While the absence of women was a gift from god when it came to the lines for the bathroom, I think it also highlights a theory I am developing. Straight men love football because it provides them an opportunity to vent off any homosexual tendencies they may have. Let's face it. Straight women can give their female friends a massage without being looked at. Gay men can comment on how hot a woman is without anyone batting an eye. Hell, a lesbian can appreciate a tight male behind with no problem. Straight men, however, can't even look at one another without an onslaught of gay jokes. Unless, that is, they are at a football game. I have never in my life seen so much male on straight male action. There was hugging, kissing, dancing, butt slapping, shoulder grabbing, and even simulated oral sex. Half of this was going on between strangers! The stands were full of 200+ pound white bread (with a little rye) men loving each other and their manliness. Actually, it was kind of beautiful. I'm not implying for one minute that I think most of these men are actually gay and just don't cop to it. I'm pretty sure most of them are straight (though I'm sure there are a few fellows who love fellows who caught on to this male lovefest and hoped on for the ride). I think that football, with so many manly men rolling on the ground with each other, is a perfect venue for men to actually act like themselves; drunk morons who love to touch one another. If someone would have told me this a long time ago, I would have been much more tolerant of men watching football. Football as weekly entertainment: highly improbable and mind boggling. Football as a venue for man love: totally understandable. Furthermore, I can understand why they wouldn't want women there. We ruin it. We make them self-conscious. They feel like they have to direct their enthusiasm towards us as we are women and they are heterosexual, when all they really want to be doing is celebrating a hairy-chested, muscle-bound, testosterone filled touch down with someone else who can appreciate the manliness of the moment. I feel like so many questions that plagued me about sports have been answered. What I really wish is that I had a video camera because, frankly, all that man on man action I witnessed would have made a great opening scene for a gay porno.