Tribal bonding over milk and grunts

We were heading for Death Valley the other day on the 210 and ended up in a cultural biome called McAlan’s Pub & Grill at a time when a belly-bumping, high-fiving crowd had taken over. God help us, we were in a sports bar.

It’s in Alta Loma, a city that exists someplace between never and forever that we’ve probably passed dozens of times but haven’t had occasion to visit. But the same kind of hunger that caused members of the Donner party to end up eating each other drove Cinelli and me off the freeway to the only place that seemed to have the aroma of something cooking emanating from it.

As it turned out, there was a lull in the social climate as we entered McAlan’s, faking us into believing it was just a quiet neighborhood pub that served food, which was all right with us. We had just seated ourselves when the room suddenly erupted in a crashing mixture of roars and howls intended to indicate both joy and disappointment, depending on the source of the calamity.

We would soon discover that our presence was occurring during an extended happy hour for a special event, which is the moral equivalent of High Mass in the kinds of places where jocks congregate. As you’ve probably guessed, it was the final game in the college basketball playoffs, in which the University of Illinois and the University of North Carolina were going for all of the marbles, making it a particularly emotional time for men.

The game was being viewed on two large and two small screens, capturing the attention of the guys who gathered in groups to drink beer and bond in their own peculiar ways. Their women seemed to exist in psychological isolation, the way they were once banished by ancient tribes to bear babies outside the presence of men. The job of the male was to impregnate them. After that, it was up to the women to tend to the results.

I don’t believe I had ever been in a sports bar during an actual sport, so I was able to observe the attendant species the way Kinsey must have studied a gathering of gall wasps before he discovered sex. It was a microenvironment of men who communicated using grunts and snorts, much as highland gorillas acknowledge each other in the wilds.

There was also a ritual at McAlan’s involving men meeting for the first time. The word “hey” was said, to which the object of the greeting responded “hey” in a slightly lower tone. It instantly established a linkage, to the extent that they seemed to cheer at the same time, moan at the same time, drink at the same time and urinate at the same time.

“How in God’s name do you know if they’re urinating together?” Cinelli wanted to know. I pointed out that they were all drinking beer in the same tribal rhythms and left at the same moment, which would indicate that they were going to the bathroom at the same moment. Under laboratory conditions, I’d have extracted and measured the capacity of their bladders, but this simply was not possible at McAlan’s.

A waitress was the only one taking care of things in the crowded room, both tending bar and servicing tables, and possibly ducking into the kitchen to cook. She too was of a type, an attractive blond in her late 30s, in a tank top with tattoos visible up and down her arms. I would guess she lived with a part-time dry-wall plasterer in a trailer park up the road.

One had to go to the bar to order, because that was her station of business, and it was booming. I ordered a glass of wine, but Cinelli wanted milk. When I said the word, the waitress didn’t seem to understand at first what milk might be, not having served it too often in McAlan’s. I felt like little Oliver Twist asking, “Can I have some more porridge, please,” in the orphanage where he’d been committed. Bar fights begin with lesser catalysts than the mention of milk in a crowded saloon, but everyone was too involved in the basketball game to worry about my order.

We were served sandwiches and French fries in amounts that could have fed a family of four, and, while the bar’s recipes would never make Bon Appetit magazine, they were delicious ... due partially to the fact, I guess, that hunger has a way of deadening taste.

After a while, I joined in with the shouting and moaning, just to be one of the boys, and I could see by their expressions that they were pleased to welcome me into the tribe. A big, head-shaved man in a star-spangled shirt, possibly a tribal leader, indicated his approval by nodding and grunting in my direction.

“You try bumping bellies with me,” Cinelli said as we were leaving, “and you’re sleeping on the floor.” I just frowned and said, “hey.” I’m sure she understood.