The Boys.

Help me understand something.

Three years ago, I met a bunch of guys. Nice guys. Different personalities but essentially the same. They had grown up together, ran in pretty much the same circles and –as disturbing as this might sound- even swapped girlfriends in high school. It was a ‘brotherly’ thing to do, it seemed. Right. Anyway, these guys became my friends. And I admit they were a pretty fun bunch to be with. Always good for a laugh, did the whole ‘shoulder to cry on’ thing…Usual Hallmark moments. And slowly, they started to get into relationships. One after another. John would hook up and few months later, Jack would introduce his girlfriend, Jim would follow suit. You get the pic. Soon, we were one big happy family. Everyone started talking about having steady careers, stable relationships and how their ‘chick searching days’ were supposedly over. And then John dumped his girlfriend. And then so did Jack a couple of months later and even Jim started to have relationship problems. These guys literally went through EVERYthing together.

Today, these guys are all on the single market again. Which means they’re out on the prowl for fresh meat, bored with their whiny exes and figuring out who still has his mojo goin’ on. I’ve been out with them on several occasions and listened to their talks of how great it was to be single again. My oh my, how they celebrated. Together, of course. Saturday nights were reserved for Shenanigan’s (KK's meat market, haha), their usual hunting ground. They’d come in, all smiles, flashing bottles and nudging each other as each skirt passes by. Eyes glued to the entrance as each piece of ‘meat’ (as one of them tells me without batting an eyelid) comes through. Too short. Too tall. Boobs to small. Too Chinese (coming from a bunch of Chinese guys, this has got to be the most amusing kind of racism around). And the best part is, after all that criticism, the night progresses into hitting on any female with a pulse. “I just need to get laid. It doesn’t matter at this point. It doesn’t mean anything anyway,” one of them told me.

Now, being my friends, I figured boys will be boys. But as time passed by and word got around (KK can be too small), I began to see their predatory game in a different light. They became the kind of men that you stayed away from in clubs and pubs. The ones who leered and rubbed up against you on the dance floor. The ones they themselves used to protect us from. The irony of it all. One day, one of them told me that women were just pieces of meat to him at this point. He had gotten out of a relationship and was anything but ready to get into a new one. “I don’t need a female companion in that sense. It’s just too much for me. I just need to have sex but once emotions get in the away, I’m gonna dump her,” he said.

Mother Teresa once said that if you judge people, you don’t have time to love them. But I’ll bet that even Mother Teresa, bless her soul, would agree that this friend of mine needed to be bitch-slapped. As non-judgmental as I wanted to be, something just wasn’t right with his statement. I knew exactly what it was. His utter disrespect for women. Yes, I’ll agree he’ll probably find a slut to suit his needs but I hate to imagine how many more hearts he’s gonna trample on the way to his bedroom.

But I'm in a dilemma. These are my friends and in some perverse way I miss them. Still, I cannot spend any more Saturday nights watching them on the prowl and Sunday mornings listening to them brag about who has the highest score. What happened to the guys who went clubbing for the simple idea of having a few drinks and a good laugh? Or the ones who enjoyed a good movie or a weekend road trip? I miss the friends whom I could talk to and share stories with. Can you still like your friends but lose respect for them? When I hear or see how they treat women,I can't help but feel perhaps they view me with the same lack of respect - simply because I am a woman. And it seems to me, a female bonk is far more important to them right now than a female friend.

I hope it's a phase. Until then, thank God for girlfriends.