Des #6: Man-Club Meltdown

This is an odd week for me to be publishing a Bachelor blog, as you may notice by how late it is. The first three paragraphs are personal. You don't have to read them, but I had to write them. Things get back to normal after that. So here it is:

This is me with my uncles, my mother's little brothers. The men in my life, growing up. The one with the beard, on my left, is Stewart. I adored him. Stew had a resonant voice and a booming laugh that would fill a house, that made you want to be part of whatever he found so delightful. To my middle-school delight, he would encourage my toddler cousin to belch as loud as he could, then throw his head back laughing while my grandmother pinched her lips together and said, "Oh, Stewart." Mid-mouthful on a bite of family-recipe bean soup or a really great piece of pie he would squeeze his eyes shut as if he was in pain, and say, "God! Why does food have to taste so good?" He was a talented musician, an ardent baseball fan, passionate about politics and education. So passionate, in fact, that his children have grown up to be talented musicians, baseball fans, and teachers. And amazing parents. Their children, now, assumed the spots beside him at Dodger games, on the piano bench, or falling asleep together at storytime. He passed away Monday, suddenly and unexpectedly, and has left a ripped and ragged hole in the fabric of our family.

Stew hated pop culture. He made a point of not knowing what things like "LOL" or "my bad" meant, and would stop conversation to say, "What is that? Why did you say it? Why would you expect me to know that?" Whatever "everybody" was doing, you could be sure he wouldn't. Comedy to him was Sid Caesar and South Park and Jon Stewart. You know--on purpose. No matter how long I took, I don't think I could ever come up with all the ways in which he would've hated The Bachelor. I never even mentioned it to him.

But being a member of this particular family, I wasn't going to go very long without laughing. He might not have understood The Bachelor, but I don't understand fart jokes. Well, since middle school, at least. And as I sat on Tuesday night with a dear friend who pulled me back into watching, I realized that I was doing what he taught me to do--love and laugh with my friends, at whatever delighted me. So I'm back in the saddle.

****

My main fascination during this season of The Bachelorette has turned out to be the formation of a man club, complete with its own rigid ethical code, unwritten and unexplained until some part of it is broken:

Or perhaps it's more like this:

Let's see, it's rather juvenile, its entire reason for existence is a single female throwing the rest of them into turmoil and against each other...yup, that's the one, all right.

It looks a little different, though, when you squeeze them into too-small furniture and insist for the sake of the camera that they sit sitcom-style with an open side in the grouping:

This may be the most unnatural thing I've ever seen on television. In my experience, heterosexual guys will do almost anything to avoid sitting next to each other. In a high school auditorium or movie theater, they will skip chairs. And here they are, four on a three-cushion sofa. And at least two of them rather oversized in the shoulder region. Poor Michael G., arms squished to the sides, nowhere to put his hands. You can almost forgive him for being a confrontational bully when you see him wedged in there like that. My friend Janene, watching with me, called it the battle of the bulge.

Of course, it was made more uncomfortable by the context. James has just reappeared in the suite, after having been ratted out to Des by the other guys for making post-Bachelorette plans, and immediately after a conversation with her that most of the other guys expected to involve his being sent home. Nope, there he is, back again, in his custom-tailored-slim-fit-large-necked pink oxfordcloth. Things are tense, and it ain't just the lack of seating.

But we need to back up to get there. The main storyline events of the episode were a solo date with Drew "One Fluid Motion" (look at the bullets at the end of this linked post if you're not sure what I'm referring to), a group date anchored by a soccer game of narcissistic dudes vs. professional girls, and a solo date with Zak "No-Shirt-No-Pants-No-Problem." But like an illuminated Bible in which all anybody's really paying attention to is the pictures in the margins, the attention-grabbers in this episode were all the events surrounding the outing of James.

The Situation actually arose at the end of the last episode. Drew and Casey, as the story goes, heard James and Mikey T. talking to each other (supposing Drew and Casey were asleep) about the idea of what might be next for them after The Bachelorette. Back in Chicago, James would introduce Mikey T. to women ("tall, beautiful women"; unsaid: "who like men with ginormous necks") and James was pretty sure that a top-four finish would put him in an idea position to be the next Bachelor. And then his future would be set. BUSTED! MAN-CLUB CODE VIOLATION! Drew had plans to tell Des about the dastardly deed at the cocktail party, which she cancelled. This is how he looked when she ignorantly gave James a rose:

Oooh, those are angry eyes.  He must've packed them, just in case.

The speed with which the man-pack turned on James is pretty striking. Just a couple of weeks ago he was very comfortable with them, or as comfortable as you can be sitting very close together in front of votives, talking about how awful Brian "The Cheater" was:

Wolves are all cool with each other, too, until one of them starts to limp. James survived the trip to Barcelona, but they weren't on the ground very long before Casey announced that he'd decided to "confront" James. Uh...to what end? I mean, please, I would like someone to talk him through the logic of what was supposed to come of it. Perhaps subconsciously aware of the problem, I don't think Casey moved forward on his own with that plan, but you wanna know who did kick the whole thing into motion? Michael "the Prosecutor" G.! Yup, the one who was not party to the overheard conversation at all. That one. The one whose confrontation with Ben went so well. That one. Dude can't let a day go by without picking a righteous fight.

Poor James. He didn't say anything a single one of them hadn't thought, but at the first sign of weakness, the power center of the pack shifted away from him and he was out as quick as a middle-school kid who wore the wrong shoes. Following him through the crisis was fascinating. First the frozen look on his face as he realized what had happened and little brain-gates slammed open and shut trying to create a safe explanatory path. Next the denial, next the modification, then diversionary attacks, more modification, anger, victimhood inflation, blame diversion, defiance, pleading, apology, more modification. I'm seeing this episode used as a case study in Psychology 273: Caught Red-Handed. This one day's class would be "Caught Red-Handed Doing Nothing Very Bad That Everybody Else Is Fanatically Crazy About."

In the end, Des let him go. Along with one of his accusers, Casey, and Juan Pablo, who I credit as the only one who recognized that professional women soccer players would be tough to beat. Oh, and the dates? Right. Quickly, then:

Drew said he's "passionate about romance," which I believe translates to "in love with the idea of being in love." We had a lovely television moment on their date where he pulled Des away from the dinner table to dart through the alleys of Barcelona for a private make-out moment. This panicked the camera crew, giving us this:

The happy couple, farthest away. Sound people, one step closer to the foreground. Lighting guy, with his arm up and 10,000 candles of mood-busting alley-illuminating power, is in the nearest part of the picture. Bringing up the rear? The camera guy, who must be out of shape and slower than the others, because you can be darn sure that nobody wanted the camera to catch the whole rest of the crew between us and the tender moment.

Anyway, afterward, Des said she "wants this moment to last forever." But...you're..talking to the camera right now, right? So,...I guess it didn't...then... Agh! Space and time! Such constraints!

Makeout accomplished, rose secured, Drew then got the ball rolling on the James Situation by telling Des about the overheard conversation.

On the group date, uh, nothing happened. More Chris/Des poetry.

Zak got the final solo date. They went to an art studio and drew a heavily clothed Spaniard I expected to disrobe, and then an undernourished model who did disrobe. (Please! Someone! Get a sandwich!) Zak, always quick to spot an opportunity to disrobe, did the same himself. To Des, this is fun, not bizarre. To me it's fun, all right, but I'm on the other side of the TV glass. In person? Yikes. She said, in fact, that Zak "took something as simple as an art class and made it fun." Come on, tell me the truth: Would it have been as much "fun" if he had a pot belly and backne and shoulder hair?

I have no idea how many episodes are left. With the randomness with which numbers of men leave the show, could be anything. Previews seem meant to make us believe that she throws her whole heart into Drew, who breaks her heart. We were shown pictures of Brooks stomping around with angry feet among palm trees, and of Zak, Michael G., Brooks, and Chris in departure limos. They've given us too much. I'm eager to see: Where's the twist?