finding my machismo

after a couple of months of being in the city, confined to museums, theatre, operas, ballets, fine dinning, trips to bed bath & beyond, and even a couple of re-runs of sex in the city, i realized i was missing my machismo, and in dire need of a healthy dose of testosterone. with laurie away for the weekend back home in sf, I called dr. manansala (my cousin joey). he recommended the perfect prescription for my deficiency with a trip to rhode island to visit him and his wife nina. this week's theme song, will be up to you, you can choose from either the theme song from top gun, or eye of the tiger, or any other song that reeks of machismo.

it just so happened that joey's buddy dan, who lives in long island was heading out to ri for the day, so we woke up early saturday morning hopped onto the i-95and headed for the ocean state. zipping along at a rather speedy pace in his sporty sti, we made it from city to country in a little under 3 hours.

we reached their sprawling 3 bedroom, 3,000 square foot house sitting on 25 acres a little before lunch time. the house was impressive, very spacious with a lot of amenities, however in much need of new paint (the aqua green living room and the purple hallways just didn't do it for me). after the grand tour we headed out to east greenwich to say hi to joey’s parents and to meet up with his buddy eric.

quick bio on joey – it’s always fun to visit joey, he and his wife recently finished (or should be finishing within the year) med school and all of the related internships, fellowships and battleships, leaving him and his wife with a ton of disposable income in which to feed his unceasing appetite for toys. boats, cars, bikes, guns, you name it, he’s got it. not only does he let you play with all his toys but he encourages you to, very generously i might add as well. aside from his toys, his humbleness, humor and kindness always makes the trip out to ri worthwhile.

well, enough with the mushy stuff. we were here to shoot. so we loaded up joey’s 4x4 with his 12 gauge, and headed out to the shooting range. we got to the shooting range and i was introduced to clay sporting which is played on a course (kind of like a golf couse). this course consisted of 14 different stations, with 2 clays coming out of ‘clay shooters’ which would fly through the air, in which we’d have to shoot down. each station presenting itself with a different challenge each time. having never fired a gun before, i wasn’t to sure of my ability and didn’t quite know what to expect. but at the end of the day it was fun, even though i wasn't much of a john wayne...

but more of an elmer fudd...

…dan in full form kicking the s*#t out of those damn clays…doesn’t get more machismo then that.

joey with his trusty 12 gauge and me with my official red ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and 'this thing', which tells time. i didn’t shoot my eye out.

…after showing the clays who’s boss, joey handed me the keys to his ‘commute car’. his 2005 awd porsche 911 turbo. with a smile across my face, i took the keys, the porsche, and a sense of wild abandon to the open road. keeping the rpm’s a hair below 7,000, I pushed the car through long straight-aways, wove through the small country roads, and let out the repressed machismo inside of me

and after a long day, what other way to best quench a hunger and thirst but with some steak sandwiches and a couple of cold ones (WOA BEER!)…at last, i had found my machismo…