Once a year (if we're lucky), a bunch of my old high school friends get together for an evening of poker, beer, smoking, and expelling highly noxious gases. The poker is low-stakes, with a nickel ante, which means you'll never lose more than $5.00 in a night (unless you're really unlucky).

What began as a cheesy holiday pasttime has now been elevated to the level of myth and ritual. We serve only the most expensive liquor, smoke only the finest cigars, and threaten each other with only the most powerful handguns. For our most recent gathering, Kirk and I even got together beforehand and prepared fresh-baked cookies (which we burned, like real men). I also made a batch of Festive Holiday Alcoholic Gelatin Treats ("I used to call them Jell-O shots," I grunted in a manly fashion, "before I started reading Martha fuckin' Stewart. I love that bitch!")

In our quest to make it the most manly time imaginable, there's often an element of the surreal: one year we all wore giant sombreros, so large that you couldn't see anyone's face. There are usually strange things to smoke, like clove cigarettes or wadded-up newspaper. And for our most recent gathering, we decided not to flush Kirk's toilet for the entire evening.

The brown things are cigar butts,
not cigars from butts.

Ten years ago, I never would have believed that such a stereotypically male thing would have appealed to me, and yet the older I get, the more it does. What is it about Boys' Night Out that satisfies me so deeply? There are no erotic dancers jumping from pastries, no drunken tear-filled singing, not even deep secrets being shared.

I think it's that Boys' Night Out transports me into the past, to a time before the wives and girlfriends, the jobs and responsibilities. We all know things are better now -- I think all of us treasure having our own places, our own money, our own burgeoning families -- but there's a crazy joy in that one timeless night, stuck in the calendar like a snow crystal, when we can let it all go and celebrate the comedy of being men.

This year, I won 50 cents.