I just bid goodbye to my mother, father, brother, and sister in law, who spent an action-packed weekend in New York with me. Their souvenirs are rolls of photos, Carnegie Hall and Blue Man Group ticket stubs, and Big Apple tchotchkes. Mine are a bloated tummy, bags unders my eyes, and a pearl of wisdom from my sister in law.
My sister in law Beau lives with my brother in the wilderness of Wyoming. Our warp-speed tour of Manhattan must have left her with the same dazed feeling I felt when I visited her a few months ago on their ranch. Our lifestyles could not be further from each other, yet we enjoy our visits, always leaving with a smile -- fueled by both the experience and the relief of returning to the familiar. Beau is a sweet, soft-spoken woman a few months my senior whose commentary is sometimes shared only with my brother. At Pipa last night, I witnessed her tugging on my brother’s sleeve and whispering in his ear, and decided to get in on the secret.
“What’s up?” I asked her, hoping she would share her comment with the dinner table.
She looked at me hesitantly, then turned to my brother for guidance.
“She’s asking a… cultural question,” my brother explained.
Since Pipa was a tapas restaurant, and judging by my family’s reaction to the cryptic menu (“Um, order whatever you think we’d like, Gina,”), I offered to be of some help.
“Well…" Beau said, finally mustering the courage, “are all of the men in New York such… girly men?”
It was hardly the question I was expecting, but a legitimate one nonetheless. We were in the sixth restaurant of the weekend in which we were served by a flamboyantly gay man. I was as comfortable in that environment as any, but I quickly realized that Beau, shadowed by my brother’s 6’2” hulking frame, was as perplexed as I had been in the Cody saddle and rifle shop.
When I explained that many of my friends were gay, Beau elaborated. “I don’t just mean gay, I just mean, everyone is so… small.”
She had a point. The small-statured nature of New York men has been the topic of many discussions between my friends and I. At 5’7”, I hardly qualified as tall in the midwest, but once I moved to New York, I found myself my eye to eye with my male companions. Add a pair of two inch heels to the equation, and I’m hovering over them.
My friends and I resolved that although New York is home to people from all over the world, historically there has been a large draw from European countries where men may be a little on the short side. Spanish, Italian, French… these men are not known for their vertical prowess. But when I apply that line of thinking to the west coast, where Asian cultures have immigrated, I am left perplexed. Men in California are just bigger than men in New York. My theory suddenly sounds like a bunch of bullshit.
I suppose that Americans are as a rule large people. A little known fact that we learned on our Circle Line tour yesterday was that when Yankee Stadium recently renovated, they eliminated about 9,000 seats. Why would they do that?, our tourguide asked us. Because over the past 50 years, Americans have become 3 inches wider, on average. Yankee Stadium is now built to accommodate couch potato ass.
This proves that there are still large people, men and women alike, in New York City. If time had allowed, I would have escorted Beau to the Upper East Side to show her an ample display of meathead men. But her point is not lost on me. The fact remains that men in the wild wild west are bigger than their New York counterparts, at least the New York men that I spend most of my time with. Whereas Beau found herself a 280-pound man who can mend a fence and tame a horse, body mass has never been a prerequisite for my ideal man. I admit it, I’m a sucker for the intellects. It doesn’t require much upper body strength to lift a book to one’s nose, and that’s about my only requirement for a male companion. Well, not just being well-read, but funny, well-traveled, passionate about music, and impeccably dressed. Aw hell. I should just face it. The best man for me is a girly man. What that makes me, I have no idea.
Single, I suppose.
