Guy Stuff I Don't Get (Part One)

So, I’m a man. It says so right on my driver’s license. And while maybe being on the tail end of the age group, I am, more specifically, a guy. Being immature for my age helps me stay in this category of men longer than some, as does having no wife, no children, no mortgage, and no desire or ability to play golf. I also haven’t hit that point where I’ve started to wear sport coats over polo shirts, and I don’t wear sandals over a pair of white socks. So I’m still a “guy”. If I stole your wallet, you wouldn’t tell the police “Some man took my roll!”. You’d say, “Some guy took it, yo!”

So still being a guy, this means I partake in, and, one would think, understand, the set of thoughts and behaviors collectively know as “guy stuff”. Or, in the singular, “a guy thing”. If you’re a woman (or if you’re fortunate enough to still be a “chick”), you may have heard the phrase, “Baby, you wouldn’t understand. It’s a guy thing”. There are times, as guys, that we tell you that because we realize you honestly wouldn’t understand. You might have, for example, watched the film “The 13^th Warrior” and scratched your head in confusion. Any “guy” who’s seen the film knows what I’m talking about when I say that, by the end of it, we felt as though we’d been baptized in the waters of primordial manliness, and achieved a spiritual connection to the great ancient conduit of guyness that courses through all of our veins. Confused? That’s because it’s a guy thing.

But we sometimes use that phrase because we, ourselves, don’t even understand what the hell we’re thinking, doing or saying. I am a guy. I like Star Trek. I play fantasy football and talk smack at my buddies as though the collection of accumulated points had anything to do with me at all. I sometimes watch County Music Television with the volume muted just to check out the hot babes without having to put up with the annoying twang of steel guitars and lyrics that seem written by a retarded child with a rhyming dictionary. But there are some “guy things” that I am just at a loss to explain.

Cause in point? The “bad boy”.

What is it about guys that make us refer to things, in an attempt to attach more manliness to them, as “bad boys”? Why does a guy, after hooking up his new barbecue, say “Let’s fire this bad boy up!” Why, when he’s grilled up a few burgers, does he then ask his fellows “You ready for one of these bad boys?”. Why, when he puts his $5000.00 stereo into his $800.00 Honda Civic does he say “Yeah! Check out the bass on that bad boy!”? Why does he catch a large fish, stuff and mount it on his wall, and tell his friends, with much swagger, “I caught this bad boy out at the lake last summer”? Why does he hold up his iPod and brag, “I got 80 gigs of music in this bad boy”?

The “bad boy” designation seems to be used to inject some extra macho into an object, and increase the owner’s pride (or “cred”, in some circles). But my question is this. The whole idea seems to hinge on increased manliness. But doesn’t the phrase “bad boy” kind of imply that a young boy has been “naughty”, and maybe somehow deserves a spanking for his behavior? And by association, doesn’t this visual strike anyone else as being, at its core, kind of…gay? And not just gay, but kind of a creepy gay as well? Isn’t there a basic contradiction there that opposes your whole point in that phrase’s invocation?

I’m at a loss.

There are others I don’t think I’ll ever get, but I’ll get to those later. When I think of one, I’ll be sure to type another one of these bad boys up. HELLZ yeah.