Fellowship of the wine:

In a gathering of 3 men and 2 women, we were ready to talk about anything and everything after too much beer and a bottle of wine. Nothing was taboo and no opinions were held back. It was a colorful cross-fire of sharp tongues between future litigants and intimate details between friends. Both being happily taken, my girlfriend and I were shocked and amazed at the men’s revelation of their loves won and lost. Could it be that the romantic emotionalism heretofore attributed exclusively to women is a myth? The men told tales of love at first sight (indeed most of them believe in love at first sight, I don’t) and their belief of a “soul mate”. They spoke of the desire to find that someone they were meant to be with for the rest of their lives, the one they would do anything for. Their tough exteriors were stripped to bare its core, vulnerable, sensitive, hopelessly romantic and entirely absent of what my friend Lisa calls - the “man gene.” Pessimistic about ever finding “the one”, the men expressed their desire to just have lots of sex instead to compensate (shucks, “man gene” is still in their genome after all). So maybe it is true that socio-biology dictates men to be more emotionally and physically promiscuous than women, but perhaps men and women aren’t so different after all. Perhaps deep down, men and women alike are just creatures of this world looking for that one person to come home to, that one person to be their best friend, that one person to understand them the most, that one person to love, serve, and share their lives with. And while women get made fun of when we watch “sappy” love stories branded “chick flicks”, perhaps men are just uncomfortable with how close the subject hits to home as they struggle between their true feelings and the confines of social mores. And while women have come to a place in this world where we can climb the corporate ladder with stilettos, men are still confined by the ancient cages of ill-defined masculinity, forced to compartmentalize their feelings. The winds are changing; the balance of power is shifting. Perhaps the world just needs to be on wine, after this night, it seems clear that we’d all understand each other a lot better with more wine...