Instead of penis size it was all about the height of your chip pile and length of your cigar. Instead of the thumping of chests and bristling of back hair it was the slamming down of winning hands accompanied by crude comments about your mother. And the closest thing to a woman was some chick singing a duet with Waylon Jennings on the cd player.

Last night's men-only poker tournament was a real-life metaphor for the chapter on attaining alpha male status amongst chimpanzees in that book written by Jane Godall. 15 men packed into a small, poorly ventilated living room with copious amounts of alcohol and a seemingly endless stream of cigars makes my lunch date at McDonald's today the healthiest thing I've done in the last 24 hours.

I will say, though, that I handled myself fairly well. I wasn't the first to fold as I assumed I would be. I even got a bit too into things when, after beating two pairs with three of a kind, I was heard to remark, "Take that fuck face and shove it up your ass and go fuck your mother."

Of course then I felt terrible and apologized profusely. But still!