Empty Calories & Male Curiosity, #29 🥃

Friends: To Hug or Not to Hug

QUICK HITTERS:

1. During a round of golf this week, a buddy of mine mentioned he was doing pretty well on TikTok. To the tune of 16,000 followers and earning a few grand each month. My initial thought and comment of, “dude, that is amazing,” quickly morphed into feeling bad about myself and this puny little newsletter.

   .

   And then I checked myself.

   .

   I am truly enjoying doing this. And I have absolutely loved getting to know new people that I consider friends. Online friends, but friends nonetheless. I’ve never had an online friend prior to Substack.

   .

   To the new friends I’ve made, and the old ones I’ve reconnected with:

   THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE.

2. This week’s book rec is We Need To Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends by Billy Baker. I read this a few years ago after I retired from coaching and realized I had spent a heck of a lot of time working and building a family, and not nearly enough developing friendships.

   It was delightful, and I’d venture to guess some of you reading this wish you had more friends too.

   (Travis, I’m looking in your direction.)

   

   Maverick is totally gazing off into the distance, contemplating how lucky he is to live with us and that he was never sold off for animal testing like he was bred for. No way is he staring intently at a treat I am holding in order to get his crazy-ass to sit still.

3. This poll is completely anonymous, and this is a judgment-free zone. I periodically watch videos on Instagram (mostly golf instruction - because I suck), but haven’t really done TikTok. I’m interested to hear from you:

GOING DEEP:

Friends: To Hug or Not to Hug

Last weekend we had a couple of friends over for wine and pizza and general merriment. Nothing fancy, just a reason to get together. Like so many, we are busy and don’t often take the time to be with the people we genuinely enjoy being with. 

Hugging was involved. Some hugs were wonderful, some were fine, some were a little weird. It got me thinking: what do other, more well adjusted, humanoids think of this cultural activity?

So, I asked my Substack friends what they thought:

Can you find this kind of content on TikTok? Survey says no, bit*h.

Of the people that responded, most answered A. But coming to any conclusions based off of that is impossible. In my experience people that would truly answer C kind of feel bad about that fact. Not sure why.

Men: for clarification purposes, I am not talking about bro hugs. You totally know when a bro hug is coming: you see a bro, they lean in, they extend their right hand. 

This is the closest picture I could find to the beginnings of a bro hug. Fun fact: the article it was in talks about the origins of the bro hug. Apparently, they started with African American soldiers in the Vietnam War (link here).

The picture above is how an effective bro hug is initiated. Some men try to initiate the process by using a handshake. This is poor form. It is confusing.

Like, OK cool, we are shaking hands. Ope, nope, he’s getting closer. We’re hugging now I guess.

This is what happened when I asked A1 for a picture of Honest Abe and GW giving each other a bro hug. Looks more like they are getting ready to sneak off to the cloak room together, if you know what I mean.

Women: If you are an A or a B in the chart above, I implore you to initiate hugs with your male friends.

And if you are an anti-hugger, I totally understand. It’s cool. You just need to make sure people are aware.

Lean into it.

Own it.

I have female friends that don’t want hugs. But not all of them tell people they don’t want hugs.

There is nothing worse than hugging someone that doesn’t want to be hugged.

Trust me I know, I have a teenage daughter.

And be demonstrative about it. I’m not talking ass grabbing or anything, I just mean leave no doubt that a hug is imminent. 

There is nothing worse than a half-hearted hug.

Trust me I know, I was raised catholic.

I don’t know what’s worse: eternal damnation or feeling like Mike’s wife Sara is so grossed out by hugging me that she has to crane her neck ninety degrees to keep it as far away from me as humanly possible.

If you are leaving enough room for Jesus than it is not a real hug. Butts out hugs are no bueno.

I’m telling you to initiate because men cannot. Or, maybe a better way to put it is we should not.

For whatever reason women friends, and even women that I am not particularly close with, tend to be very forthright with me. I’d like to think it is because I project a very empathetic aura.

Realistically it’s probably because everything about my aura projects non-threatening. Like, “I can tell this guy anything. I bet if I asked nicely I could even get him to clean my gutters.”

More times than I can count I’ve heard of men grossing them out by hugging them. 

“Eww, he’s always sweaty.”

“Ugh, his breath.”

“Oh my god that beard.”

“I just cringe when I see him.”

(But enough about Travis 😂)

So I err on the side of being distant. Lest I come off as gross. Or making a woman feel uncomfortable. 

One argument for demonstrative male initiated hugs would be for elderly Jewish doctors. We had a close family friend that was one and would give the biggest, most aggressive hugs.

He’d even grab your tuchus or pinch your butt. I can’t say that I liked it when he did that, but I sure as heck knew he was happy to see me. 

_______________________

In dissecting the bro hug earlier in this piece it dawned on me that maybe I should do the same with friend hugs. As a former football coach things like the alignment of bodies and positioning of body parts is something that I got particularly good at¹.

(Ladies, next time you are watching football and you wanna impress someone with your knowledge of the sport, just mention how incredible the hand placement of one of the offensive lineman is).

Anyway, in describing this type of hug I used the phrase cross-nipple action. Think about it: when you are hugging someone both of your shoulders need to dip in opposite directions. Thus, if you drew a line through each of your nipples it would create an X.

So, I figured maybe A1² could help. Apparently not:

So, rather than that I’ll just say this:

• Women: hug your friends

• Men: don’t be creepers

That’s about as solid of advice as you’re gonna get here at SilentPunt. Nothing as good as Jimmy Dugan’s, but still….

WHAT SAY YOU ON HUGGING? Share your thoughts in the comments.

1. Get your mind out of the gutter, heathen.

2. Hopefully you are getting the A1/AI joke. Sometimes the only thing keeping you from ripping your hair out in response to the insanity in this country is humor. Yes, I know I am bald already but you get my point.