“To be rhizomorphous is to produce stems and filaments that seem to be roots, or better yet connect with them by penetrating the trunk, but put them to strange new uses. We're tired of trees. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They've made us suffer too much. All of arborescent culture is founded on them, from biology to linguistics.” (Deleuze and Guattari; 1000 Plateaus p. 15)
Earth Day 2023
It’s Earth Day. The wonderfully green springtime celebration of Vladimir Lenin’s birthday has us coming together to do mushrooms in the park, going on bike rides, planting trees, and talking about what we can and can’t recycle—all to save our planet. This time last year, it also inspired a question about nearly half our planet’s inhabitants: Are all boys bros?
This question, posed by my roommate,1 launched a thousand really stupid, semi-joking/semi-serious arguments between the Portland boys who attended our Earth Day gathering. The controversy, euphemistically referred to as “Bro Gate” by the boys in question. However, time heals all wounds. A year has passed and these are big boys who can handle it.
It started with a party at my house. We love a themed party. I love hosting, my roommate loves making a special homemade cocktail.2 To honor the planet she concocted a bright green cucumber liquor gin drink that I found was light, airy, and refreshing. Next to complement the drink, together we developed a playlist heavily highlighting Canadian-composer Mort Garson’s Plantasia (1976),3 a controversial Earth Day History powerpoint presentation,4 and an even more controversial fine print request for attendees to come in costume.
An early spring evening, Portland hadn’t quite kicked the cold winter rains in the evening yet, to start the party was entirely inside. Now I’ll admit it. I’m not a saint amidst all this. I may have told my friends5 to show up in costume while actively not wearing one myself, instead opting for an earth toned flannel and paint stained carhartt pants combo.6 Just remember, this is a celebration to honor the earth and life, not my failures. In fact, it was a charming and festive “surprise” when Fire Starter,7 Fire Starter’s Handler, Their Noodly Roommate, and Big Couver, came in dressed as “Litter,” “Compost,” a “Wiggly Worm,” and “Recyclables,” respectively. Their costumes, not complete without actual trash they taped to their shirts! Upon arrival their arrival lines were drawn, in very middle school boy-girl party fashion. The Boys, clearly embarrassed as the only people truly dressing to theme, occupied the dining room/kitchen. The Women and Non-Boys/Non-Women8 sat in the living room on the couches, some reportedly with their shoes off. The cocaine snorters left everybody for my bedroom in the basement to do cocaine without us.
The boys pushed up the rim of their glasses and wiggled their pocket protectors into place before pulling me aside to air all their party grievances:
Shoes off? If people are taking their shoes off this is NOT a party.
Is any music even playing?
Why did you tell some people they didn’t have to wear costumes?
Do you have Rainer in a can?
Can we get a fire going in the backyard? I promise it will be chill and we will not track mud into this house.
Why did [redacted] ask me [redacted straight edge guy] if I know where to get cocaine?
I’m nothing if not a diplomatic host. I allowed the boys to start their fire, even though I saw the premonition. The vision of a party even further divided, more fractured than our nation.9 Nonetheless around 25-30 were milling about across the groups. At around 10pm, my roommate gathered the crowd in the living room to put on the slideshow. All the boys dragged their feet inside, that is except for Fire Starter who stayed behind tending to his craft. I took to the laptop to advance the slides my roommate and I worked on halfheartedly an hour before people arrived,10 while she presented them to the group.11 It took all of five minutes.
The boys returned to the fire and immediately started complaining about how boring the slide show was—how “unparty-like.” The Fire Starter who stayed behind relished in his decision to skip it before cracking open another Vitamin R, “Having planned activities is very millennial.” They returned to their discussion: would you rather spend a night hanging out with Tiger Woods or Johnny Football?
Soon the boys called it a night. They said goodbye to me in the same breath discussing a reconvening at My Father’s Place for a midnight breakfast for dinner. Fire Starter let the last log smolder into an amber, comfortable the fire would settle to ash amidst the light overnight drizzle. Big Couver remembered to grab his camera bag. They wiped as much of the mud as they could off their feet and they joined their costumeless leader12 and his girlfriend13 in the kitchen.
A row of boys dressed as trash walked together single file. Each pace in unison. Lockstep. When the hand of the pack leader in front waved goodbye, each hand followed synchronously behind like the crowd at a baseball game. The party goers in the living room left wondering if they were saints marching in or a barbershop sextet.
As soon as the door shut my roommate got off the couch to tell me what went down.
“The bros all just left at the exact same time,” she said. “It looked like they were about to start doing high kicks together like a big musical number down the stairs. It was so bizarre—and cute.”
The bros. The bros. The bros.
I didn’t think much of the phrase at first, but when I texted the Group Chat recounting my roommate’s read of the exit they all latched onto one thing. The bros, the bros, the bros. The phrase, like water lingering in their ears after getting out of the pool. No matter what else was said it could only be perceived as sound while this name was ringing in their ears: the bros, the bros, the bros. It may only be a slight discomfort, for now, but let a phrase like that fester and it could get infected—couldn’t it? The bros, the bros, the bros. This means tilting the head to the side, and striking the ear that is dry. Force it out. Brute force. The bros, the bros, the bros. A bro caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape. What will you do?
A sample of how the group text may or may not have gone:
Fire Starter: No way dude. Bros?! The “party” was lame and we put in all this work to make it cool. And they call us bros?
Big Couver: Maybe you all are, I’m not.
Me: I think it was mostly a remark on how you guys all walked in unison and that there were two distinct groups.
Small Business Owner: Well. They didn’t make much of an effort to talk to us and include us either.
Me: We made a powerpoint that you stayed inside for.
Fire Starter’s Handler: Boo!
Fire Starter: I saved that little shindig with the fire, and you’re talking about a powerpoint?
Big Couver: And what's with none of you dressing up.
Small Business Owner: I liked the powerpoint
Me: I don’t know, maybe we're bros?
Fire Starter’s Handler: Guys. We watch football every week at a house nicknamed Sport Fort. We play a game where we chug beers and punt the empty cans.14 I don’t think she said it as a compliment, but we’re bros.
Small Business Owner: I had to buy Sleepy a steak dinner at Clyde’s because the Packers had a better record than the Bears last year.
Fire Starer’s Handler: It may be rude, but come on. We’re bros.
Big Couver: Is “Bro” the only acceptable slur left?
Us? Bros? We play Fire Emblem and Dungeon’s & Dragons! We have opinions about whether long Japanese family dramas or long Japanese samurai epics are the best films of all time. If we were wearing a bucket hats it would be candy flipping15 and wiggling at a Dead & Company show not playing Rage Cage at a frat party. We’ve only been drunkenly goaded into racing another grown boy at a bar in Independence, Oregon a few times.
I mulled things over. Sat with discomfort. These were my friends. Sure, I thought they were thin skinned about the whole thing, but they were my friends. If there was a bro-class I am certainly of it. As a host it was my fault too for not more seamlessly blending the party’s crowds together, even if planned group activities typically are shunned in certain bro crowds. And, bro accusations aside, the boys had a point about taking your shoes off and sitting on the couch. Not an inviting space to the unfamiliar. But my roommate had an answer.
“They’re mad about being called bros?” she said. “That’s hilarious. It wasn’t an insult. In 2023, all boys are bros now. There’s no distinction. I don’t even think I know anyone that’s like a ‘high school jock’ anymore. What we once thought of as a bro has propagated like mushrooms into every subculture. Nerds, film, hippies, punks, sports, it’s all masculinity dominated.”
In all subcultures men have carved out a space for themselves to feel comfortable.16 It’s all bros.
Now that may not sit right at first. You just found out you’re a bro and now you’re compared to a fungus?! But it’s Earth Day, so consider the hamfisted metaphor mycology gives us. It’s better than the more traditional, and no less hamfisted, metaphor of plant and animal growth. The Bro used to be a tree, likely invasive, with stubborn roots fucking up our foundations so they can grow tall and stinky. Now that tree may still be standing, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t dead. There are mushrooms germinating in the trunk. They are many colors and shapes. Some might kill you, but some taste like nothing else in this world. I’m sure in the mushroom hunting subculture there are bros to be found. And while we must resist the comfort of not pointing out the toxic mushrooms, the shitty behavior that comes with bros and toxic masculinity. It is still the task of bros to not only challenge their fellow bros to be better, but also to continue chilling. There is something liberating to remove the bro from its roots, embrace the paradigm of the rhizome. Spreading like spores—finding ways to grow in the shell of the old.
Two years ago a mutual friend17 of my roommate and I told me about his garden. He’d just gotten free compost from the city of Portland for Earth Day. After mixing it with his soil he realized that the fruit of some very fancy Chanterelles were starting to sprout. A massive lump of irregular shaped orange and gold beauty grew. Ugly, earthy, and delicious. He’d later make pasta out of the rhizomatic accident for his neighbor and his partner. Any day now the fruit should be rising up again. My roommate owns several shirts displaying different types of mushrooms and the mycology cycle. She has tattoos of mushrooms. She was just talking to me about signing up for a summer reading course on Deleuze and Guattari. I may have never finished A Thousand Plateaus but I’m familiar that they, like my roommate, were fans of fungi.
“Tell the bros, thank you so much for the fire idea and the costumes,” she told me. “It really saved the vibe of the party.”
Also my friend but not a boy.
For holidays from Halloween (A Blood Red Mezcal Situation) to the Ides of March (Et tu Brut, champagne cocktail).
For holidays from Halloween (A Blood Red Mezcal Situation) to the Ides of March (Et tu Brut, champagne cocktail).
The boys.
Yea, it’s a stretch. I know.
Names obviously changed to protect people’s identity.
The queer club.
Yes, there were still some animated transitions!
She is the teacher after all.
The only small business owner amongst the bros, but this title is certainly “in dispute.”
Yes there was a non-boy in the group, but she actually talked to everyone at the party effortlessly bouncing between groups and talking to her former New Season’s co-worker in the couch group.
An anthropological study of Sports Fort is further warranted. The boys also have a celebratory crushed can passed down to whoever’s team had the best finish in the past season of football (between the Eagles, Giants, Ravens, and/or Chargers).
Taking MDMA and Acid at the same time.
And yes, sometimes separate themselves or talk down to others.
A fast food union, communism, and Hegel bro.