An old friend of mine who moved a few hours away was in town this week and he stopped by on Thursday to hang out. Him and I were always into music and we used to jam together in our late teens and early twenties- him on guitar and myself on drums. We were both always decent at our respective instruments but not in any way experts. He was better at guitar than I was at drums and I would have fun trying to keep up. We'd smoke a little, crack a few beers and play for hours. Was super fun.

Anyway, the years go by, he gets married, I get married. I get divorced, date around, live with another chick, then catch myself, go "monk mode" and 5 years later I'm here; one of you lucky few. Him? Still married, two kids. Guitar collecting dust. We hadn't played together in years.

Until Thursday.

We talk for a while, smoke a bit, and we're sitting there when he lights up all of a sudden and says "oh, dude, my old guitar is at my parents place....we could jam!"

Fuck yes, right?!

So we grab the shit (they live two streets over, how perfect, right?) head to my basement, set up and start warming up/fucking around. He's rusty as fuck but it's like riding a bike to a degree- he can't do the fancy sweeps anymore and whatnot but he can play.

So we're jamming and we play some of the old standbys and I say "hey remember how we both loved the shit out of x song back in the day but I could never play it? Do you still remember the guitar parts?" "Let's see," he says and starts testing it out. Well, he does.

"Sick, let's try it."

And so he starts and I fucking nail it. The last he knew, that song was a few steps beyond my abilities. Now, it's a warmup for me (it's been years, one would hope I'd have improved).

So now it's on. "Do you know this one?" "How about this?" Now we're hitting shit I know and he doesn't. That NEVER happened back in the day.

"Wait, hold up." He's looking at me like wtf.

"What?"

"How'd you get so good?"

".....Dude, it's been YEARS. I'm not even that good, just better than before."

"Ya, but you're WAY better than before- did you take lessons?"

And this is where it happened. "Nah man, after (name redacted) and I got divorced I decided to start living for me and one of the things I started doing was playing the drums a lot more. You know how it was with her in the house."

"Ya.....(name redacted) doesn't let me play guitar in the house. Too much noise I guess."

There's that word. That fucking word guys in relationships use when it comes to their hobbies. Let. UGH!

"Well, not gonna rant about girls here but I noticed that always happens. It was happening to me ffs. One day i decided fuck that. I want to be as happy and free as I was before puberty. So I decided to live like girls didn't exist. And now I can do this (does a fancy drum fill for effect- one he knew I could never do back in the day).

"Fuck man, I wish. I could never do that." At that point the air got a bit solemn and I knew the jam session was over.

And it was, just like my poor friend's dreams.

Women (and other guys) can't understand mgtow. Well, my drumming is why mgtow. My buddies dust covered guitar, sad face and the word "let" is why mgtow.

Live like you're 12 boys; this is the only life we get* so enjoy it.

*If you're religious and you want to say I don't know that you're right, I don't. I suspect it to be true though. We'll all find out (or not) one day, eh?