The slow approach begins with a phone call. “I know this is a little weird, but we have to go somewhere,” Matthew Spicer, 25, said, recalling a conversation he had in class with his former Williams College classmate John Putman, 28. “We went out,” Spicer, who once led an art history class, said as they spoke. Think of a man’s day, a meeting between two straight men, and more dangerously. A meeting between two men, a kind of meeting. A straight man would be okay with a woman. A sit-down meal together without watching TV is a man’s day for eating, not a woman’s day for eating. A walk in the park together is a man’s day for running, not a woman’s day for running. Watching Friday Night Lights might be a guy’s day, but going to a Jets game certainly isn’t.
Travel stories in the wine country of Central California.
That’s Mr. Spicer, now a graduate student at the University of Virginia, remembers the day he set up a date with another man at a fancy Italian restaurant in a Charlottesville strip mall. Meeting his roommate, attorney Thomas King, seemed like an easy choice, but when they walked through the door, they were greeted by cello music, beautiful amber lights, white tablecloths and wine labels. “That’s interesting,” Mr. Spicer said. “We just realized we can’t do this.” Minutes later, they were eating chicken in a “filthy, squalid” place down the street. Kim, 28, who is now married, was furious to see someone she knew at an Italian restaurant. “I’m a little worried about this getting out,” he said. “It’s weird, there might be witnesses now.”
Men who avoid dating men are often surprised by suggestions that they might want to spend time with their male friends. “If you’re good friends with someone, there shouldn’t be any work for you to do,” says Mr. Harlow, of San Francisco. That’s why many men say a good relationship starts with a man showing his partner that he cares without making it obvious. “The cost of grooming others is directly related to scarcity,” says Mr. McArdle, of Washington. Mr. Myers, a New Yorker, recalls inviting his roommate Jonathan Freeman to dinner alone. But Mr. Freeman instinctively goes ahead and invites them. Dinner feels “fun again.” (The two had dinner together in San Diego last week.)
For Mr. Myers, Jeffrey Toohig, 27, is a better choice. As Toohig says, “The conversations at bars are deeper.” So they often have dinner together, talking about women, business and other topics that interest them. The two groups: “One group of good friends, with whom I can go out alone; the other group, men who go out for beers and chicken wings. And, with Mr. Myers, the advantage of dinner together is that it won’t make his girlfriend jealous like it would if he had dinner with a female friend. The rule is that a man’s time is inviolable: If a woman interferes with his view, he can leave his male friends there. No question.
