The Alpha Male Game

Set up a hide in a pub. You know, the kind of hide that you get in bird sanctuaries so that twitchers can perv at the herons without being seen.

You'll probably have to camouflage it with nicotine-yellow wallpaper and "My goodness - my Guinness!" prints in screwed-down frames, to make it properly blend in. Once you've done this and left it in-situ long enough for people to forget it's there, arrive early one evening, secrete yourself within, and wait for the action.

After a while men will appear, at first in ones and twos, then in larger groups, spreading out to fill their natural habitat. There'll probably be women there too, mixed in with the men, but we're not here to watch them tonight. Tonight, as Desmond Morris so camply put it back in the 70s, we're ManWatching.

See that group that arrived a while ago? They're all good, old friends, all laughing and joking. One of them is a bit louder, more animated than the rest. You notice that he's the one that seems more likely to decide the topic of conversation, and less likely to be the butt of any jokes. He's the "Alpha male" of that group. This has been decided long ago, and bar some occasional jockeying for position within the group, he's not going to be challenged.

More interesting is the group of men who don't know each other so well, and are mostly meeting for the first time. Here there's a very subtle game going on: who's going to be the Alpha Male? So subtle that they don't even realise they're playing it.

In more formal situations, the game often starts with the Hand Shake Round: who's got the strongest and most manly? Who can do it in a way that suggests "I'm strong enough that if I wanted to I could grind your knuckles together until you cry 'mercy!'"?

Then comes a long round of Manliness Top Trumps. There are several categories you can try to trump your competitors in, including "What Car Do You Drive?", where top-scoring cards show "something expensive, sporty and impractical, just had to have it", ranging through "something designed to go up mountains, but mainly used for ferrying schoolkids", bottoming out at "something that gets me from A to B, I'm not too bothered about cars, really".

You really don't want to play anything considered a "hairdresser's car", that scores negatively.

Running simultaneously with Top Trumps is the only round that's actually recognised as a round: What's Everyone Drinking? Lots of Man Points for strong lagers or real ales (unless bought in a half-pint, which scores negatively), less points for anything with a mixer, a few for wine, none for soft drinks.

The main point of the game is to make the most of the cards you've been dealt, while simultaneously deriding the choices of others using skills learned and honed back in the playground, where the credo was "anything different is wrong and should be mocked".

After a while the Man Points are mentally totted up by each player, and the winner is decided. This guy is going to be the Alpha Male of the group, he'll get to make most of the group's decisions from then on.

I've played this game many times, and I hate it.

I suspect I'm not alone in this, and would find a lot of even "straight/non-tranny" men who'd agree with me. There are a lot of men for whom masculine posturing just isn't important.

The trouble is, however much I hate this game, I still find myself playing, afraid to forfeit. I should just lay my cards on the table at the start and say "look, I drive a basic car, hate football, and don't spend time at the gym working on a killer handshake, you can play the game if you want to, but I'm off to the bar for a vodka and diet Coke."

But I don't, I end up joining in, drinking pints because that's what everyone else is doing. Or pretending to have a passing interest in Sven's decisions in last night's friendly. I end up not being me and I hate myself for it, and it's at those moments I start to really wish I was out with a bunch of trannies.

That's not to suggest that trannies don't play the game, because basically we're still blokes. It's just when you're out with a bunch of trannies you are all carrying a trump card. The "yes but, you're wearing a dress" card.

"Decided to come in the Maserati tonight, the wife wanted the BMW and the Range Rover's in the garage."

"Yes but, you're wearing a dress."

Is how it's played, do you see? The thing is everyone knows that everyone's got the card, so no-one gets to play it. No-one gets to be the alpha male because everyone forfeits before they started. It's normally a recipe for an evening of conversation that doesn't revolve around cars/football/breasts or whatever the alpha male decides to make it revolve around.

I'm not pretending this is something that's unique to tranny get-togethers, or that tranny get-togethers are always home to enlightened conversations about the arts and sciences, but just that it's the best way I've personally found to get myself into circles where the Alpha Male Game is rarely, if ever, played.