Dear Mr. Man Points,
My buddy and I have been close friends for over twenty years, we’re both happily married, and we’re both very heterosexual. Well, something funny, or I should say disturbing, happened a couple of weeks ago. We were both sitting inside a restaurant, one of those steak houses with a reassuring “all-you-can-eat” feel to it. We had eaten a ton of prime rib, lobster, and garlic mashed potatoes, well over three thousand calories a piece, and feeling very proud of ourselves, when the cute waitress persuaded us to finish things off with dessert. But we were so stuffed. At the same time, our foxy waitress has been such a good server, we couldn’t say no to her insistence that we get the chocolate cheesecake. So we talked about it and decided that because we were so damned full we’d just share a piece. As the cheesecake sat between us and as we dug our forks into it, I got this creepy feeling like something bad was going to happen. My premonition proved to be correct. First, the restaurant’s opera singer came over and started singing to us, you know, one of those god-awful serenades, like we were a couple or something. Then some street vendor walked in and asked if I wanted to buy my buddy some roses. Holy shit! One shared dessert and it’s like we lost all our heterosexual credibility. We were so humiliated we walked out of separate exits and swore never to discuss the shared dessert again. The problem is buzz got around town and now our wives suspect we’re gay. You’ve gotta help me!
Let us first establish that absolutely under no circumstances can a man share dessert with another guy at a restaurant. All those years of embracing a clearly defined heterosexual lifestyle and now in the blink of an eye you’ve destroyed your reputation by poking your forks into the same cheesecake and creating a scene of intimacy that is completely obscene.
As far as damage control goes, there’s only one option: Kill the friendship. No fraternizing with each other again. No phone calls. No going to football games. No fishing trips. Nothing that would make the community suspect you’re creating a diversion from the fact that you’re keeping things on the “down low.” If after, say, five years the rumors regarding your “close friendship” have subsided, you can visit one another on the condition that your wives are present and even then you can’t shake hands or get closer than five feet from one another. See all the crap you’ve got to do now that you’ve gone and shared a crappy slice of cheesecake with a dude at a restaurant? Let’s this be a lesson to you.
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