Community

Last night my brother in-law invited me to attend a mens group consisting of a gathering of guys from the housing community at a local restaurant's bar. I had no idea what to expect when I arrived, but I admit I was hoping we'd all sit around a fire cooking game some hunter has killed with nothing but a Bowie knife while drinking numerous pints of stout beer. Afterward we would descend into a basement for some bare knuckle boxing. The winners would engage in an axe throwing contest with scantily clad females with pigtails nursing the wounds of the losers.

The tax bracket of the community I moved into includes the insanely wealthy to middle class. It's a fairly economically diverse place and it has it's charms. Keeping with the medieval theme the streets are named after Anglo-Saxon and Norman royalty. Some are fictional, such as King Aurthur and even Lady of the Lake while others are based around folks that actually existed. The outer walls resemble something out of a middle ages village, but not as battle hardened. Sadly they don't have hot oil stains or heads on pikes.

I go to the bar and introduce myself to the various men sitting around. All seemed like nice professional fellas who just wanted an excuse for guy time. One gent reminded me of a poor man's Peter Gallagher:We made small talk and my brother in-law's friend, Jeff, announced I was from the northern region, otherwise known as Canada in some circles.

Jeff: He's Canadian.
Paul: But he's not Canadian in so much as we refer to other people as Canadian.

For reasons that are unclear to me some folks in Texas refer to black people as Canadian. I'm not kidding. I will get to the bottom of this linguistic mystery so help me.

As I understand it, some people in the area also refer to my neighborhood as Dubai. I'm not sure why as there are no people of Arabic or even Persian descent that occupy our streets, but we do have many Indians. World geography is not their strength I guess. Mumbai would make sense.

It was suggested to me that I do not let my wife join one of the area's womens' club. When I asked why they all just lowered their heads and just asked me to trust them on this. When faced with this I'm compelled to go all super sluethy. Maybe I've been watching too many movies, but I imagine it's some sort of book club that's a gateway to a lesbian cult that worships snakes, which is actually kind of cool. There's something dark going on in this community and I'm going to expose it.

We sat and shared laughs with drinks in hand and nachos on the table. The diversity of the mens' style intrigued me. I showed up as my usual scruffy self as was the guy sitting next to me. My brother in-law was casual, but others looked like they obviously worked in sales with their polo shirts and khaki pants. Still they were all friendly and never pretentious. Personable and fun, the men there made for a good evening. None annoyed me as there was not one in attendance that was skirting the line of a Rogaine overdose nor was there the overpowering smells of too much bad cologne. They were simply good people and I look forward to sharing drinks with them again, and to unravel the mystery of my new home community. I know there's got to be one....

"There have been makeup artists who've asked if my eyebrows are real." - Peter Gallagher.