Headcase - You’re in a bromance

One of my sharpest memories from a trip to Turkey almost 10 years ago occurred on a bus. We were taking one of those 10-hour, overnight trips the Turks seem to regard as ultimate luxury.
Two Bollywood movies were playing on two screens. An attendant walked up and down the aisle distributing little packages of fruitcake with medicine cups of Pepsi. It was suffocatingly hot. I begged the driver to turn on the air conditioning by fanning myself and wrapping my hands around my throat. No deal.

Eventually, I did what I always do when things get too stressful: I fell asleep.

At some point, I stirred awake. We were sitting at the front of the bus and I turned to look at the scene behind me. Most of the passengers were men and it seemed that in nearly every seat they were sleeping with their heads against one another, some holding hands.

It was an astonishing sight. The Turks are not liberal in their view of homosexuality but, obviously, they do not necessarily associate affectionate physical contact between males with sexuality. In America, such a sight would become an election issue.

Or maybe not. The taboo against open expression of platonic love between males seems to be changing. The term “man crush” has become a popular way of expressing one man’s heterosexual affection for or idealization of another man. And “bromance” has emerged as a description of a mutual man crush, according to Simon Dumenico of Details magazine.

In a column online, Dumenico cites the popular Bud Light TV commercials (“I love you, man”) and the “drunken exchange in last year’s Superbad, in which Seth tells his buddy, ‘I just love you. I just wanna go to the rooftops and scream, ‘I love my best friend, Evan!’”

But he also cites Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who inspired a viral YouTube music video, “Tom Brady Mancrush,” by David Hoke, a straight guy who said that his man crush became evident while watching a Pats press conference. When the classically handsome Brady came on camera, says Hoke, “I turned to my wife and was like, ‘You know, listen, I’m not gay. But if I was, this guy would be the guy.’”

But there’s an even more overt expression of the dehomosexualizing of male love. Go to YouTube and search the words “gay chicken.” This will produce at least 200 videos. “Gay chicken” is the term for a game in which two pals approach one another to kiss. Whoever pulls away first is the chicken.

Most of the videos are hilarious. There is nothing homophobic in them. They acknowledge the real phenomenon of love between men while parodying the popular classification of all such love as gay.

It would be easy to dismiss the videos as nothing more than drunken party games but consider this apparently quite sincere question on a Yahoo dating site:

“I play gay chicken with my friend....What we do is start saying hello as if we were gay and hot for each other. We start saying stuff like, “Hi, sexy,” and winking at each other. Then we start grabbing each other’s shoulders ... The first one that cannot take it anymore loses.

“We are not gay! We both have girlfriends, it’s just the way we are. We are good buddies. The problem is that my girlfriend said that we act like kids, and his girlfriend said the same thing to him. Other people always thought we were idiots for playing this game, but we did not care. We were always pretty popular in school. We are 19 now. It’s really bothering us that our gfs think we are childish idiots. Do you think they are right? What should we do? Gay chicken is a part of our friendship.”

Welcome to the 21st century. Of course, the man crush itself is nothing new. Men have long idealized heroes and best friends. But, as Dumencio writes, it’s a “seismic cultural shift” for American men to be expressing this openly.

Cliff Bostock holds a Ph.D. in depth psychology. For information on his private practice, go to www.cliffbostock.com.