When you reach 50, everyone begins looking familiar, so it is not unusual to accept a hug from a male whom you may or may not know. Liberals who are brimming over with love and peace, and other passionate instincts have to hug someone or something, even if it’s a stray dog or the family cat, such is their overwhelming need for compassion. Ergo, when I am hugged by a male I’m not sure I know, I just figure he’s a liberal friend, since most of my acquaintances are of that persuasion, or a stranger suddenly stricken by the urge to embrace.
But I’m here today to tell you that I would rather shake hands than hug men. Women, OK, God created them to be hugged, but men are made to be warriors or at least NFL line backers, more content to bump bellies or behinds in displays of affection or triumph.
I don’t hug back when a friend grabs me in his arms. I stand there as cold and unresponsive as an euthanized anaconda and wait until the hug is done to greet the hugger in a more casual manner. I don’t push him away only because I understand the nature of a liberal to be close to his fellow man; it is an expression of his desire to transfer powerful inner rays of fellowship to the huggee as a way of bringing peace to the world one hug at a time.
Sometimes I wonder what became of the simple handshake among men, including warriors and football players, as a means of greeting or friendship. To huggers, the extension of an arm to shake hands becomes a rope to pull you into the embrace, a little off balance and wondering fleetingly whether the man also intends to kiss or grope you.
It isn’t a question of homophobia. In fact, I feel it is more natural for gay men to hug men than for a straight guy to hold you close. Since most of my gay friends are not only liberal but also, well, motherly, the need to hug another man is probably twice as great.
I had a gay proctologist once who after he examined me asked me out for a glass of wine. I declined the invitation and then quit going to him, but couldn’t help wondering whether he came on to all the guys or was it just my behind that attracted him? Either way, I figured that with his job and his sexual orientation he must be in seventh heaven even without me.
I began noticing the liberal hug late in life and wondered what started it. I have a hunch that it emerged from Hollywood, since everything nutty has its roots in the activities of young actors and actresses seeking new ways to express their sexuality. It seems to somehow soothe their libidos for movie heroes to declaim their masculine traits for a hug and occasionally even a kiss on the cheek or on certain festive occasions, God help their perverted souls, on the lips.
Male liberals adopted it as a way of proclaiming the brotherhood of man, ascending over their own masculinity to declare their oneness with humanity. I understand that certain conservatives, mainly Log Cabin Republicans, secretly hug but they otherwise scorn it as a trait of the perverted left.
A friend, Billy Cobalt, a defrocked Jesuit, suggests that male hugging has nothing to do with peace or love or even with bonding but is an assertion of one man’s dominance over another. If he has you in an iron grip, patting your back as though you are a small dog, he is trapping you and you are helpless to wiggle free until he decides to let you go. The male hug is a hostile act, Cobalt believes, intended to crack your ribs and crush the breath out of you.
For those who feel my disinclination to hug manifests a misanthropic nature, I say not so. I will hug a woman, as I said, because their hormones are so constituted to require hugs and domination. And I will also hug my son and my grandson because I have true feelings for them. While I may like and respect my male friends, my feelings toward them are more casual. I would rather just shake hands or, hell, bump behinds if, at my age, I can jump high enough to make the bump memorable.
The others can get their intense desires out of their system by hugging trees or high-backed Louis IX chairs or their potbellied pigs. Just don’t try hugging a grizzly bear. Like me, they’d rather you kept your love of brotherhood confined to the world peace movement and leave their furry bodies alone. Makes sense to me.