INSIDE A BROMANCE BOOK CLUB
ANDRÉ, the Curious One
NOLAN, the Idealist
JASON, the Founder
MIKE, the Skeptic
ALEJANDRO, the Thrill Seeker
SHAY, the Enthusiast
“GUYS, FINALLY, A NIPPLE!”
We all lean closer to our laptop screens, eager to hear what Alejandro’s going to say next. The 36-year-old start-up founder is six-foot-four, with broad shoulders and thick black hair cropped short into something like a quarantine buzz cut. “WHY DID IT TAKE THIS LONG,” he asks, gripping a thick stack of pages in a dog-eared paperback, “TO GET TO THE REAL SEX?”
The half dozen of us on the video call howl with laughter, our heads bobbing up and down in the Zoom gallery like the teleconference version of an all-guy Brady Bunch. After more than 30 minutes on the call, I finally sigh with relief and take a deep swig of my IPA. Most of these guys hadn’t met before, and our whole encounter was starting to feel more like a LinkedIn networking event than the strange but necessary beast I’d envisioned: a bunch of beer-swilling, mostly straight dudes committed to exploring the steamy world of bodice-ripping novels with the same intensity we give to discussing politics or sports.
We’d represent the opposite of terrible locker-room talk, using the books as a springboard to (hopefully) share more about what was bothering us in our own lives. For me, it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’d noticed that when life stressed me out, I would often dodge my wife’s hugs and ignore her advice. Once, when she asked me what else I wanted to do in the bedroom, I simply responded, “The normal stuff,” in a way that made it seem as if I didn’t care at all.
Being too closed off was causing problems in my marriage, and at least a couple of the friends I’d invited into this group had hinted at their own troubles. Part of the problem is that culturally our entire view of what makes men strong feels outdated. Men—at least
