Man Play Date

Newsletter 2024-01-21

Normalize man play dates. I mean “man play date” in the sense that it involves men, not that it involves anything manly. This is me we’re talking about. I’m nerdy to my core. Normally, my wife Lola and I hang out with other couples rather than branching out to hang out with friends individually. We’re so deeply in love that we can’t bear to be apart. Not really. Most people can only tolerate me if Lola is there to act as a buffer. It’s practically a full-time job shielding the world from the real me. Friday, however, I was unleashed solo. I was off work, and so were our board game friends, Peter and Delilah. (I used to call her “Lila” in this newsletter, but I’m giving her a new fake name because that’s too close to “Lola.” Amazingly, I didn’t notice that when I came up with these pseudonyms. My ability to overlook basic details might be the most manly thing about me.) Normally, we hang out as a foursome for all of the above reasons, which I guess was really only one reason: namely, that I’m the worst. This time, Lola couldn’t make it because she had to do her other full time job, which is her actual job. That’s what she said, anyway. It’s equally possible that she simply needed a break from me. Seizing the opportunity, Peter put together a day of Axis and Allies for just the two of us. Our dude play date was good to go. The only thing standing in our way was the judgment of the entire world.

I almost never hang out with anyone one-on-one anymore. Marriage made me part of a package deal. When I seek out new board game friends, I usually look for people who also come in a pair. Conversation dynamics work out better that way. The guys can talk about sports and the ladies can talk about their families. Just kidding. The guys talk about World War II and the ladies talk about office politics or gross science-related stories I can’t repeat for fear of doxing or making someone throw up. To all the young, single people out there, carefully consider all the consequences before you partner for life with a scientist. Inviting over another couple is also convenient since almost every game works better with four players than three. Then again, the board games were merely an excuse for me to get other human beings in my proximity and maybe have a few beers on a week night without seeming like I have a problem. The downside of this arrangement is it requires Lola’s enthusiastic consent. When inviting over other people, it’s best to avoid putting your spouse in a quasi-hostage situation. That’s Hosting 101.

I’m much more eager to have people over than Lola is. I used to think she felt bad about the state of our house. We have four kids. On a good day, our home looks like it was hit by an earthquake; on a bad one, it looks more like a nuclear missile strike. There is no greater sin than letting people see how you really live. Back when we hardly ever had anyone over, hosting anything was a huge ordeal. We’d scrub the house top to bottom before allowing guests through our front door. That was exhausting and made us never want to see people again. As we’ve begun to hang out with a core group of friends more regularly, though, our standards have shifted. There’s no point in trying to impress Peter and Delilah. Their opinions of us are already at rock bottom so we don’t need to worry about making them any lower. It takes the pressure off. If they ever showed up and found our house in pristine condition, they’d be alarmed rather than flattered. It would be a sure sign my entire family had been replaced by body snatchers.

It turns out squalor-related shame is only a secondary reason why Lola is often reluctant to have people over. I recently realized she simply isn’t as eager to see other people as I am. This is hard to notice at first because, in social situations, she seems to be the more outgoing of the two of us. That’s more a matter of necessity than free will. If she doesn’t dominate the conversation, I might open my mouth and humiliate us both. She likes social settings in reasonable doses, but she also likes to be alone. To recharge, she prefers to listen to an audiobook or watch a movie while doing a quiet craft on our bed. At work, she wrangles people all day. At home, she wants the opposite. It’s unfortunate that she let me talk her into building up a household full of children and animals. If there’s a bad idea in her life, you can bet it came for me.

Lola’s concept of the perfect evening is my version of a punishment. As much as I joke about being an introverted extrovert, the truth is I need to be around other people. I don’t necessarily need to interact with them, but I need them to be in the general vicinity. It’s a product of growing up in a house with nine thousand kids. Even if I spent most of my childhood hidden away in my bedroom, it was always comforting to know human chaos was never more than a closed door away. On a board game night, I might not be the life of the party, but I’m at least at the table as the conversation swirls around me. That’s more than enough to recharge my social battery. Unlike Lola, I don’t see people with either of my careers. I work from home for my day job, and I write from home, too. Composing novels isn’t exactly a team sport. Not until the editorial process, anyway, when it’s the entire editorial team against my ego. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to encounter more people through work. That’s one place I never want to be social. Back when I was in an office five days a week, my only desire was to keep my head down and get my job done while encountering as few coworkers as possible. In fact, I didn’t become friends with Peter, who is a former coworker of mine, until he announced he was leaving our old employer. Only then did I decide it was safe to hang out together. Most people I’ve worked with mistakenly think I’m quiet and shy. In reality, I know that drawing attention to myself at work is the surest way to get more work. My superpower is being invisible in plain sight.

Lola’s desire to spend her free time alone and my desire to spend it surrounded by other people strains my ambitions as an amateur party planner. If she isn’t in a mood to people, then it would be rude of me to have people over. It would create an awkward dynamic. “Where’s Lola?” “Oh, she’s hiding in our room because she’d rather do literally anything other than see you.” There are two obvious workarounds to that. One is to get invited to other people’s houses so I can go without her, which depends on the other person not having an antisocial spouse of their own. The other is to meet at a neutral location. I recently attempted to start up one such gathering with my runner friends in my suburb. I picked a brewery within walking distance of our homes on a weeknight after our kids had gone to bed. I invited three guys, and two showed up. The brewery closed at 9 p.m., so we had all of an hour to hang out. Still, the night was a success. I had time with people, and Lola had time at home alone, unbothered by friends or me. Who knows? We might even make it a recurring thing—in six to eight months when my runner friends get permission to leave the house again.

That brings me back to Friday. Peter’s invitation was to his house, not to a neutral location, to play Axis and Allies. He was eager to have me over not because of anything to do with me, but because of the game itself. I buy a lot of different games. My eternal quest to trick people into being my friend requires a wide variety of bait. Normally, Peter couldn’t care less about the abundance of colorful boxes I bring into my house, but when Axis and Allies showed up, he reacted like Golem stumbling upon the One Ring. Naive as ever, I asked zero follow-up questions. Predictably, I was blindsided the first time we played and he revealed himself as the world’s greatest Axis and Allies player. That might be a slight stretch, but it was the foundational game of his college years. In his entire life, he’s only lost three or four times. I, meanwhile, like to make tank sounds when my armies move around. It didn’t end well. The first time, we played the Pacific Theater. It should have taken three hours, but he crushed me in under one. It’s always fun to set new records in ineptitude. I’m the best at being the worst. Friday, we played a combo game of Europe and the Pacific. It required two separate game boxes and hundreds of pieces. Peter spent two hours putting all the plastic planes and tanks in place the night before. I vowed to make it longer than the setup time before I got knocked out. Losing faster would cost me the war and the friendship, the worst possible way for a man play date to end. I brought backup games to fill the time just in case.

I did better than the first time we played. We’ve been practicing together on the electronic version of the game. At first, we played against each other, but he beat me so badly so often that we switched to being on the same team. Only then, with him winning most of the war by himself, did I start to make progress as his lesser, weaker ally. I rewarded his kindness by using every trick in the book to try to beat him Friday. I was the Axis, and he was the Allies. Five hours in, the entire game hinged on my armored thrust deep in the Soviet Union. Peter annihilated my entire advancing force while barely losing a man. The game was effectively over after that, but we still played for another two hours. Man play date time is not to be wasted.

Playing the whole-world version of Axis and Allies in person is very different than doing it on a computer. Every time I tried to move something, my large, offish fingers toppled armies and sent fleets scattering in the wrong direction. But the physical version of the game had something the electronic version lacked: friendship. It hits different hanging out with a buddy all afternoon. The point is to coexist in the same space, not to war game by the most efficient means possible. Lola even joined us at the end after she got off work. She and Delilah had dinner and drinks with us as we bored them to tears with epic retellings of our completely inconsequential game. I’m sure we’ll attempt the physical version again, if only to give Peter and I an excuse to hang out. That’s what man play dates are all about. Well, that and defeating Germany all over again.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James