Occasionally some damn fool decides to test the infallible wisdom of ages and for a moment puts his ho before a bro. The result is always tragic.
Just this weekend I saw The Town. Affleck has a perfectly good bank-robbing thing going with his best friends, but he puts it all at risk for a hot bank manager whom he took hostage and falls in love with.
Then there’s Romeo and Mercutio, we all know what happened there once Romeo started making the sweet love to Juliet, in Merchant of Venice, Bassanio makes Antonio put his life on the line for him, which is ultimate bro-ness, just so that he can court Portia – lucky for these bros, Portia is a litigious ho, and saves Antonio from his pound-less fate.
But really, all these fools should have learned from the original cautionary tale: Antony and Cleopatra.
Antony is ridiculously in love with Cleopatra. Who can blame him? She’s hotter than hot and queen of Egypt. Then he hears that his wife has died and his friend Caeser is in trouble because Pompey wants to kick his ass. Antony runs to Caesar’s aid, and like a true bro, marries Caesar’s sister, Octavia, to demonstrate that he’s down. But Cleopatra is way too smokin’ and Antony is on the next ferry back up that Nile. Like he tells her:
You did know
How much you were my conqueror, and that
My sword, made weak by my affection, would
Obey it on all cause. (3:11)
Of course, you can’t do Caeser’s sister thus, so Caesar brings a load of hurt to Antony’s front door. For a quick minute, Antony thinks he was betrayed by Cleopatra, and he has a lucid moment, free from her spell where he realizes he’s so whipped, he can’t even recognize himself anymore:
Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish,
A vapor sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon’t that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,
They are black vesper’s pageants…
That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water in water…
My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body. Here I am Antony,
Yet cannot hold this visible shape. (4:14)
Antony stabs himself out of shame, learns that he wasn’t betrayed, apologizes to Cleopatra, and then dies. Then Cleopatra kills herself by getting bitten by a snake.
I don’t really have a good personal anecdote to bring this whole thing together. Once I waited to date a girl until she had clearly rejected my buddy who was interested in her, but then she got mad at me for moving to Minnesota and slept with some other guy at a Halloween party. The bro code is so ingrained in my sensibilities that I would never, ever allow a lady to undo my male friendships. Although, truth be told, I sort of avoid that whole thing by having lots of female friends. And hos before hos... that doesn’t even make any sense.
But I mean, maybe… maybe for Cleopatra. Maybe for the sexiest woman in the history of the galaxy. Maybe I would think about it. There’s only one way to find out. Sexy ladies, you know where to find me… same place I find you. Here, on the internet.
I’m sure I could pass the test though. You see, unlike these other idiots (Romeo, Antony, Affleck) I listen to the wisdom of the ages. And I’m going to know better. Thanks to my boys Lennon and McCartney.
I should have known better with a girl like you.
That I would love everything that you do,
And I do. Hey, hey, hey. And I do.
Too bad they didn’t stick to the bro code themselves, although Oh, Yoko! is a pretty awesome tune.
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