Stuff Boston

STUFF's Favorite Boozehound Spends a Testosterone-Fueled Week with WFNX's Resident Dick 

Several months ago, STUFF teamed up with 101.7 WFNX to give a makeover to The Sandbox morning show clown (and all around hot, sloppy mess) Special Ed. While the back wax and eyeliner lesson were appreciated, the experience was apparently somewhat emasculating, for Ed jumped at the chance to give us a lesson in how to be the manliest men possible, in honor of our annual Guy issue. Tricky, since STUFF is staffed by girly girls and men who drink White Russians.

Still, I was up for the challenge, as I never pass on an opportunity for Ed to fart in my general direction while he’s staring at my cans. I’m a sucker for suave moves like that. [I call it charm. -Ed]

My challenge: spend one week mucking through an orgy of meat, sports, guns, and boobs, leaving my gender at the door. No whining, no declining, no pulling the “girl card.” Just be all the man I could be.

I survived. I smell, but I survived.

I meet Special Ed at TD Banknorth Garden (100 Legends Way, Boston, 617.624.1050) to kick off our man-tics at a Boston Blazers game. I, of course, am running late, but since Ed is sporting copious hair product and Pumas that match his leather jacket, I feel ok about it.

A Blazers game is a pretty mild induction into the masculine realm — we gulp beer, deep throat hot dogs, and judge the juggly cheerleaders as they jog past. But I had no idea that lacrosse games involve a hard rock soundtrack, close-fisted pummeling, and a creepy spiky-haired mascot. I particularly enjoy it when a scrappy little dude I dub “Tiny” keeps picking fights with other players, presumably to show the big kids that he’s twice as tough at half their size. My puppy does the same thing at the park. Adorable. [SFA is downplaying her irrational fear of foam-headed mascots. -Ed]

MAN POWER? Watching sports is completely androgynous. What was really manly was the way that Ed pretended not to know me when the “Kiss Cam” went up on the Jumbotron, just in case anyone watching got the wrong idea. He’s still single, ladies.

Since — as evidenced by my screaming at Tiny to claw a bitch’s eyes out — I’m clearly into fighting, Ed decides to see what I’m actually made of by bringing me to Wai Kru (236 Brighton Avenue, Allston, 617.254.2222), a mixed martial arts gym that specializes in the Thai fighting style Muay Thai and that’s become the workout locale of choice for several local Ultimate Fighting Challenge (UFC) fighters. Ed says he used to box, but since he tends to spend more time with his hands in a bucket of chicken than in a pair of gloves, I’m not convinced.

We’re late to our workout because Ed had to finish off, then dispose of, a rat that was dying in his driveway.[Hey man, it's Allston! -Ed] 

 
Wai Kru owner John Allan (or Kru John, as he’s known at the gym) has no mercy on us. He assigns UFC fighter John “Doomsday” Howard to warm us up and teach us some basics, starting with 10 minutes of jumping rope. I should give Ed more credit — 90 seconds into it, he’s skipping along like a Double Dutch champion, and I’m awkwardly trying to swing the rope once without catching it on my ponytail. When I finally get a rhythm going, it’s time to move on. Doomsday patiently works with me on a jab-cross-hook-cross boxing combo, while Ed is moved across the gym for a special brand of torture involving squats and kicks and bench pressing, which seems specifically designed to make him puke. I don’t know who’s laughing harder at Ed’s crimson chipmunk cheeks, me or Kru John. [Sadists. Both of them. -Ed] I laughed too soon. Kru John warns me to keep my hands up and my mouth shut, and I’m thrown in the ring to spar with Lisa, a smiley redhead half my size who unceremoniously kicks my ass, flipping and pinning me to the mat before I have time to ask her what “sparring” means.

We limp over to Deep Ellum (477 Cambridge Street, Allston, 617.787.2337) for beers, but we’re so sweaty and stinky that patrons are not-so-subtly scooting their bar stools away. Ed wisely sticks with water. I get halfway through a hefeweizen before my head is spinning.

MAN POWER? The air at Wai Kru definitely reeked of testosterone, but Lisa could have kicked Ed’s ass, too. I wish she had, actually.

The next morning, my calf muscles feel like they’ve been shoved through a meat grinder, stuffed back into my skin, and stitched in place with barbed wire. My trigger finger, though, is primed for an afternoon of abuse. I pick up a wincing Special Ed from the radio station, and we drive up to New Hampshire, where the Second Amendment is the word of a gun-totin’ god. The drive is silent — not for an uncomfortable lack of conversation, but because Ed passes out, drooling, in the backseat. [I was simply resting my eyes so I could focus on the targets. -Ed]

We’re met in the parking lot of the Manchester Firing Line Range (50 Gay Street, Manchester, New Hampshire, 603.668.9015) by Richard Murray, otherwise known as Big Jim’s Dad (BJD), old man of WFNX afternoon guy Big Jim. BJD’s personal arsenal is Ted Nugent’s wet dream: 22s and 45s and a broad spectrum of automatic rifles. He gives us safety tips, eye and ear protection, and a giant shit-eating grin, and in we head to shoot ‘em up, Manch-Vegas style.

I’ve never held a gun before. Never even seen one up close, unless you count the intimate cinematography on Law & Order reruns. But guns are manly, I’ve heard. Like fistfuls of power. The firing range is indoors, and goddamn, is it loud. I’m wearing ear plugs and a set of earmuff things (which I’m sure have a different name), and every time someone fires, I jump. And every time I jump, Ed makes fun of me. BJD clips up some paper targets and hands me a “girl gun,” the 22. It’s small and sleek. Doesn’t look too threatening. That is, until you fire it. I’ve got one eye squinted, trying to aim the barrel somewhere within 12 miles of the target, and every time I squeeze the trigger, the other eye involuntarily closes, and my body tenses — reactions that get exponentially more dramatic as I shoot bigger and bigger guns. Meanwhile, my arms are still so sore from boxing that by the time I get to the Tyrannosaurus-sized rifle that seems to shoot flaming Kryptonite basketballs, I can barely lift the damned thing. Actually, every time I pull the trigger, my body jerks so much that I end up shooting the ceiling. Luckily, as the Swiss cheese ceiling indicates, I’m clearly not the first asshole to have this problem. [Just the only one in our group. -Ed]

MAN POWER? I suspect that shooting a giant gun is, for a man with below-the-belt confidence issues, not unlike driving a long, strong sports car. The bigger the gun, the bigger the bang, baby.

All the punching and shooting things has my stomach trying to eat its way out of my torso. We pack up the ammo and speed down to Inman Square, Ed still drooling, but this time over what he calls “the meat parade.” Nope, gay porn is not involved; he’s talking about Brazilian BBQ at the Midwest Grill (1124 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, 617.354.7536).

Actually, a meat parade is a decent description: an endless stream of waiters comes by the table, wielding skewers of succulent chunks of meat. We cram our little pig snouts with sausage, bacon-wrapped chicken, beef tenderloin, garlic chicken, pork, more sausage, more chicken, more chicken, a little more chicken, and the odd chunk of buttery garlic bread. There’s a salad bar, too, but Ed just snorts at my plate of lettuce in disgust. Silly girl. Why take up room in your stomach with rabbit food when that space could be occupied by more meat?

MAN POWER? Meat = manly. Meat + salad + self-control = more ladylike.

Speaking of meat, and gratuitous pieces of it, Ed suggests that we go see Crank: High Voltage. I don’t even know what this means. Ed explains it as involving “a hot British dude who had to bang all the time in the first movie to keep his adrenaline up. He’ll probably have his shirt off all the time. It’s an action movie.” Sold. Except, of course, it turns out that Ed is a liar. The movie is all tits and ass and bodily fluids and balls. Like, horse balls. [Greatest. Movie. Ever. -Ed]

Essentially, Jason Statham stars as Chev Chelios, a guy who fell out of a helicopter in the first movie and lived, only to have his heart stolen out of his body by some evil dude with a myriad of face piercings. And that’s the last actual plot device there is. The rest of the film goes a little something like this. Fighting! Take your tits out! More fighting! There’s a big, juicy, naked ass! More fighting! Ooh, that dude just peed on that other dude’s face! Tits! A racetrack! Omygodtherearereallyhorseballs! More tits! The end!

I gnaw on Twizzlers and watch in horror. Ed scratches his balls in glee the entire time.[Not the entire time. I attempted to get SFA to fall for the "popcorn trick." -Ed]

MAN POWER? Did I mention the naked breasts, superfluous violence, and continual ball-scratching?

Ninety minutes and eleventy billion sets of naked breasts later, the movie ends. We’re supposed to meet up with some other guys at Centerfolds (12 Lagrange Street, Boston, 617.292.2600), but we’re still sore from boxing and stuffed from the meat parade. And, to my absolute shock, Ed has hit boob capacity. He’s seen enough lady pillows to last him through the weekend. My mind is blown. I didn’t think you could hit boob capacity. Everything in moderation, I suppose.

All week, amid all this “manliness,” I’m subjected to bodily sounds and smells I’ve never experienced before, plus chatter about what girls are hot, what girls talk too much, what girls are likely to give Ed a handie in the backseat of his shitty car [Erroneous! My car is awesome! -Ed], and what girls he’s likely to fall asleep on when he’s finished. I find myself feeling less and less female as the week progresses — not because I start to identify with “the dudes,” but because I realize that, if I’m man enough to listen to this blather, I’m not woman enough for anyone to have to hide it from. It’s certainly true that Special Ed’s idea of what it takes to be “a man” may not ring true with every guy in Boston. (I’m especially certain that many a sophisticated urban male would want to dig his manicured nails into my face for daring to use “beer-guzzling meat-a-holic” as a blanket term for all men. That’s not my point! Please don’t claw me, gentlemen.) But these experiences definitely gave me some insight into the mysterious mind of the heterosexual male: for one, too much is never enough, especially when it comes to boobs or food or full-body contact. When most men talk about their “feelings,” they mean things like “I’m feeling hungry right now” or “I wish I were feeling that girl up.” And, most of the time, it doesn’t take much to hang with the guys, except a strong sense of self and a muted sense of smell. Maybe I am man enough.

[Showing me your tits would have been super manly. -Ed]

Check out the photos from SFA and Special Ed's manly adventures!