As Friends of the Blog already know, I like to have a look at Craigslist a couple times a day, to keep my hand on the twitching groin—er, pulse of Metro Boston.  I like to look at missed connections (of course), the furniture listings (both pageants of bad taste, potential disease, and insect and rodent infestation), and the roommate ads are always a good way to quell the urge to run away from The Orphanage (which comes about once every two weeks nowadays)*.

Yesterday I was perusing the roommate ads and came upon this one:

Basement penthouse

Reply to: hous-cu782-1181103070@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-05-20, 8:09PM

Are you tired of people telling you what high school they went to? We don’t give a shit if you went to a douche-bag private all boys school.

Looking for a 20-something roommate, preferably from a large university or college. If you wear cranberry pants with salmon embroidering this ad is not for you.

Be in grad school or employed. Intermediate to advanced drinking skillz are a plus.

Must be able to appreciate and contribute to creative use of foreign accents Please attach a wav of your best: asian, Indian and Jersey thug accents (after 5 beers).

Please tell us about your latest “I’m never drinking again story”

About us: We’re not gay, dudes, ageless, awesome. Live in a subterranean paradise in the heart of the back bay. Rent is cheap and you will collect stories to tell your grandkids. Drop us an email.

beacon at charlesgate

I gotta tell you:  I don't think the Neanderthals really did go extinct after all. And talk about barbarians at the gate: it's Beacon and Charlesgate, to be exact.   

They're still among us, if you can believe what some sod told National Geographic recently:  that he thought the generations-long overlap between modern humans and Neanderthals meant some of us may have cooperated, partnered, even bred with them! 

It would actually explain a lot.  Still, I think it's more likely proto-modern humans shunned their hillbilly cousins.  I picture us as sort of the mean girls of the Stone Age, don't you?  I think what we have here at Beacon and Charlesgate is probably a case of Neanderthal wannabes.  Because no way didn't we wipe these feckers out.

I know it's become fashionable among evolutionary psychologists to class cooperation as an evolutionary advantage, where in the past they were all "survival of the fittest" all the time, but let's not get carried away.  Remember: we're talking about the species that can't coexist peacefully with members of its own or any other species, without caging them or putting them on a leash.  We can't even get along with members of our own species who look and talk just like us but wear cranberry pants with salmon embroidering. 

Like we lived happily ever after with Neanderthals.  Give me a break.  Enslaved them?  Maybe.  Interbred?  Have you ever seen a Neanderthal?...


Not exactly People's Sexiest Man Alive, even circa 30,000 BC. 

I'm absolutely certain early man didn't shed a tear when the last Neanderthal bit the dust.  In fact, our early ancestors probably divvied him up and ate him.  I wouldn't be too sentimental about ol' Homo neanderthalensis.  I'm sure he would gladly have returned the favor if we hadn't outfoxed him on every front first.

Yes, our ancestors were clever, but no kinder than their contemporaries or descendants, I'm afraid.  Which brings up the question: why do we insist on thinking of ourselves in a good light, when all evidence contradicts us?  I mean, where do we get this bizarre notion that compassion for those unlike us is anything but an aberration?  Homo sapiens have mastered the art of self-flattery, that's for sure. It must confer some evolutionary advantage to name your species "wise man". 

I don't know, I've argued before that it seems a pretty good time to branch off again.  Not only have Homo sapiens not lived up to their name, but they may be backsliding.  I've been hearing a lot about pussy-whipped primitives retreating to their suburban "man caves".  This may be a sign that devolution is actually underway.  In advance of a DIY network series, Boston.com is even offering this man caves gallery.



Please tell me that all the curdled straight guy cliches on display here aren't for real.  A garage tricked-out to look like a Bennigans?  A basement room full of La-Z-Boys in front of a big screen TV so your bros can come over and watch the big game?  Big yawn.

Aside from the insistent emasculation and the rigorously desexualized atmosphere, I guess it's not so-o-o-o different from what gay guys do when we get together — just tack a -tini onto the end of any drink, and switch out ESPN for Bravo.  What straight guys sublimate we just go ahead and do.  Watching ridiculous caricatures of hypermasculinity in tight pants chasing after each other, grappling on the ground, and grabbing each other's balls?  We don't need football for that.  Or practicing our poker faces?  We don't need poker for that. 

But no, there are subtler differences. When gay guys get together we gab about all the tail we're getting. As opposed to straight guys, who talk about all the tail they’re not getting. Gay guys talk about the pretty flowers in our English gardens. Straight guys talk about their new riding mowers and turbo-powered edgers. Gay guys camp it up. Straight guys just camp.  (Pitching a pup-tent has a whole different meaning for us.)

There are loads of fun things gay guys can do together that straight guys can only do totally wasted.  Dancing together (and, no, the chest-slam is not a dance move), saying "I love you" (not the same thing at all as "I love you, man"), wrestling in our jockstraps, bukkake. The list goes on and on.

A facial won't make you gay, by the way. How many times do we have to go over this? You don't have to be gay to have sex with other men anymore.  Look at Larry Craig, for chrissakes!  I mean, this is why health clinics and research facilities dealing with STDs nowadays use "men who have sex with men" where once they may have used "homosexual" or "gay". 

I wouldn't say "gay" is a slur, exactly, but it's come to connote a cultural identity and a set of behaviors apart from the strictly sexual.  And you will never hear even hardened homophobes shouting "Men who have sex with men!" from a passing car at men who have sex with men, or hate crimes legislation that covers "Men-who-have-sex-with-men bashing". 

It may sound like semantics, but what we call a thing, Shakepeare's storied rose aside, matters. All you have to do is look at prop 8 in California, where Chief Justice Ronald M. George insisted a civil union "enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage.” So what's the big deal in calling it "marriage" if it's really the same thing as marriage? 

The Montreal Neurological Institute and Department of Psychology conducted an interesting study a couple of years ago that found "significant overall effects of odor names on perceived pleasantness, intensity, and arousal."

Pleasantness showed the most robust effect of odor names: the same odors were perceived as more pleasant when presented with positive than with neutral and negative names and when presented with neutral than with negative names. In addition, odorants were rated as more intense when presented with negative than with neutral and positive names and as more arousing when presented with positive than with neutral names.

Still, I understand how even "men who have sex with men" would not necessarily want to go there with men they know, much less their friends, although the lengths straight guys go to find out who's a top and who's a bottom are truly baffling, given that there's a really easy way to sort it out. 

You know, guys, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.  Man-on-man sex has been going on ever since we evolved penises and orifices to stick them in.  It's just a fact.  And back in the day when all sex was nasty, brutish and short, it was an easy enough way to establish a pecking order, more or less literally.  We've civilized it up a good deal, but sex still serves its purposes, not all of which are to bind you to your immortal beloved. 

And speaking of, if you think you know what the penis is for, think again. There is some evolutionary evidence that the human penis evolved as a mechanism to displace sperm. As one source reports:

By using the coronal ridge to create a suction mechanism, the penis is able to remove sperm already deposited in the female’s reproductive tract. This is significant because it would imply that females are not monogamous, otherwise sperm displacement would be useless, because only one male’s sperm would be present. Humans are culturally socialized to believe that women do not seek out sex. If the penis did evolve as an instrument to displace sperm, which there is much evidence to suggest, Western culture may have to reassess the way they categorize women sexually.

In other words, while you're hiding away in your little pussy-boy cave, your female is probably out getting her sperm quotient, which, if you're lucky, you'll be displacing later on tonight, after the big game, that is if you're not too drunk by then to get it up. 

It's a vicious cycle, compared to which — as your wife and I both know — sex with the boys is much more fun and far less stressful.  What you guys obviously need is a fuck-pad, not a man-cave.

I've gone through a sex phase with all my best friends — it's like, pardon the crudity of the metaphor, dogs sniffing each other — and I can tell you, once everything is revealed, you can move on, without the awkwardness of that question hanging in the air.  In fact, all those questions that straight guys have to sublimate — "Is he a top or a bottom?" (Trust me: you can't always tell at first glance.) "A show-er or a grower?" (Again, you'd be surprised.) "Is he any good in bed?" (Ditto.) "Does he really love me, man?" — I'm just saying: we've already evolved a way of answering these burning questions and moving on, fellas.  Get with the program!

I'll be the first to admit: Homo sapiens has intimacy issues.  But the answer is not to regress.  The idea of the Man Cave is, ostensibly at least, to create an escape from the demands of heterosexual married life.  How?  By returning to a presexual, proto-verbal stage of development roughly equivalent to that of a four year old.  Doesn't the fact that the whole miserable enterprise is kid-friendly and mom-approved make you the teensiest little bit suspicious?

Wake up!  Evolve a little!  It's not a man cave, it's a man CAGE!
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*Seriously, I'm open to roommate scenarios in Boston, if anyone is interested, or knows anyone who is.