Scurrying to my local Quick Check some mornings, I happen to pass by my local bakery on the trip down and back. In the afternoons, as I jump around Allwood, I sometimes have occasion to stop by one of the near Dunkins in my neighborhood (do you think maybe I spend too much money on take-out coffee and munchables?). In these two specific spots, but so many others I also have happen by, I find clutches of men sitting over coffee, having a good old jaw, no matter the time of day. And, in fact, these gaggles of men, keep to these hangs pretty much the same time every day.
As always, I’m not speaking for any other species than the hetero, American male. I can’t tell you what women do or how they do it. What gay guys or gals might like. What the various forms of gender fluid people enjoy or transgender folks get into when they socialize with each other or others (and if any of what I just wrote offended you because I didn’t use the correct pronoun or show what you feel is the proper respect….fuck off). And I am only speaking really for myself, as I always only ever try to do with these writings. But I know for sure this guy, me, Ralph Greco, Jr. surely likes him a hang with other guys, and it seems as much, other guys like their hangs just as much.
From ‘back in the day’ hanging at the park at the end of my street, in the summer especially, from what will remain the seminal hangs of my life, come Friday nights in the basement of my parent’s house during the 80s, to the occasional breakfast I’ll enjoy with an older buddy who has become a good friend I have made later here in my life, to my Thursday early dinners with my buddy Bill (he one of those 80’s basemen hangers with me and somebody I have known since kindergarten), to continuing that Friday night 80s tradition with my buddy Bob that even COVID could not kill (fuck COVID by the way), to a semi-regular card game my buddy Tom hosts at his house, as well as the times he and I will manage an occasional diner run then hang in his basement, to my early 2000’s Starbucks’ hangs with some younger folks I befriended, to so many seemingly fleeting moments of meet-ups that prove the very building blocks of who I am, I def take to what Babs sang about so long ago, “People who need people,” which I amend to “Men who need men,” in this regard.
Even in the face of texting, Zooming, staying in to stream/binge instead of going out to…well, to do just about anything, the male hang has always been and will forever be an ever so important part of my social world. As it seems to be to so many other guys.
Thank you to all my friends who have hung and continue to hang with me.
