Ah, frat boys. Consider the plight of young privileged males on the college campuses of America. More boy than man, these sturdy, somewhat elongated young stags are in the grips of what Tom Wolfe memorably called “the season of the rising sap.” Completely housebroken, of course, but pretending otherwise to impress their “Bros.”

Bros should not be confused with dudes. Bros are closer than dudes, but dudes can become Bros after some straight-boy ritual of male bonding like consecutive all-nighters playing Halo 3 and ordering out for Taco Bell or performing any of the American tribal stunts seen in the Jackass films — taking turns riding in a shopping cart, for instance, as it barrels down a hill into traffic, then putting the video up on YouTube or your Facebook page.

It’s the deep basso chuckle of collective Bro-dom that one hears in darkened movie theaters when the notice comes up before the Jackass films warning that the stunts they’re about to see are being performed by “professionals” and should not be attempted by the jackasses in the audience.

In a world where closet doors have swung open, guy-bonding must never be mistaken for gay-bonding. Thus the phenomenon of “the gay seat” — what the Bros call the empty seat that’s left between two friends who go to the movie together but who must never be confused with being together. To double insure this, the Bros are most likely to attend what they call “dick flicks” — movies characterized by car crashes, explosions and boobs — the very polar opposite of the romance-sappy “chick flick,” and peopled almost exclusively by other guys all separated by empty seats.

Homosexuality — serious homosexuality and not the gross-out joke kind — crosses their mind, if at all, at the far infrared reaches of the spectrum, and then in a sort of skittering, hastily receding Doppler effect. Yet, at this stage, they know one thing undeniably. The company of guys is the most fun thing in the world: guys who share their same goofball love for babes, booze and first-person shooters.

Particularly appealing is the crude humor and the joy of grossing each other out with semi-porn poses when the cell phones start snapping away at the drunken frat parties — (a college ritual for which we are beyond delighted, as you can see throughout this piece.)

Somewhere at the back of the Bro mind is the desire for the necessary — but alas, still virtual — girlfriend. But unlike guys, girls his age often seem too damn serious and thoughtful … which comes off as much too premeditated for the free-range Bro-ster on the hoof.

Forethought is not what he’s about; even foreplay stretches his patience. It’s more convenient to think in broad, generic strokes. To think, in short, pornographically:

“Boinkable” girls (that is, ones who are passably cute) are seen as just so many trophies in a fairground shooting arcade. The idea of a dramatic, enriching human connection is still somewhat beyond the boy in him. Like the fox with the forever-out-of-reach grapes, the Bro — somewhat pouting, always puerile — sours on women, all of whom he collectively refers to — especially for the sake of the other Bros — as “ho’s” and “tramps”.

Still, in a world without closet doors, where there are real gay men on campus, completely out and at times romantically, even somewhat publicly, linked, the Bro Meister must adapt — though, of course, never adopt. He knows its uncool to be homophobic but worse to be homosexual. Thus, Bros engage in a mild but pointedly homo-averse form of joshing. A lame idea, for instance, will be called “gay” (“Man, these seats are so gay, I can’t see a thing!”) while a really great notion will be declared “sick” (“That MILF is so sick, Bro! Ouch!”)

Sick is the great term du jour, overarching all the others. In its way, it is much more than simply the Bro update on “cool.” Newer, looser, it is the full equivalent to the unrestrained gay enthusiasm conveyed by “fabulous.” And as such, it’s a sort of post-Stonewall term for straight kids, owing its inverted irony and dizzy intensity to a gay revolution that these speakers never experienced except as distant thunder from a foreign horizon.

It’s important to note here the exaggerated sense of playacting that characterizes the Bro’s homophobic joshing. He does this knowingly: to telegraph to the listener that, homosexuality aside, he’s not a bigot either, just marking the territory in an increasingly orientation-neutral world.

Now the observant reader will have noticed that this is a piece principally about language — more accurately, slanguage. Language is one of the three principle ways a subculture or “status-sphere” (another felicitous phrase from the ingenious Tom Wolfe) creates itself. (The others are dress and rituals.)

Bro Speak, unlike traditional American hipster speech, borrows only minimally from the usual wellsprings of Americana — rock and roll drug culture, say, or urban gansta rap. Its main imagery comes from the internet, particularly social networking; video gaming; comicbook conventions; porncreep — that is, the mainstreaming of certain elements of porn; and dormitory life on campus, with a bright thread of pop TV culture running through it.

The best film to capture this Bro world was last summer’s Knocked Up, a huge hit, justly so, with a gift for nailing the authentic, telling detail that outpaced even Tom Wolfe’s recent take on campus life, the thoroughly entertaining I Am Charlotte Simmons.

Knocked Up — a sort of Escape from The Planet of the Bros — takes place post-college but in a dormitory-style roommate situation, amid bongs and Xboxes, with some very clever twists on the sort of tasteless jokes boys love. It’s the thinking dick’s dick flick.

In this context, Animal House (right) was a pioneer Bro film, way ahead of the curve, while The Big Lebowski is the Citizen Kane of the genre. A cut above the pack are the Simon Pegg-Nick Frost male-bonding comedies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. And the best new TV comedy of the Fall, Chuck, which takes places mostly on the sales end of a Best Buy look-alike store, is loaded with Bro savvy.

Ultimately, the slanguage of a statusphere is best defined by its native speakers. For instance, if I were to define “Bro” I might come up with something like:

In Bro speak, the above would be an example of TMI, too much information. The texting, instant-message generation doesn’t do context, dweeb (dweeb — Bro Speak for “dick with eyebrows.”) My long-winded definition would be a dead give-away for the fatal condition known as “geezer head.”

Yes, I admit it. As far as membership in the iGeneration goes, your humble servant is well past his sell-by date.

Luckily, I have the Urban Dictionary to guide me, an extremely Bro-centric volunteer effort that seems written between World of Warcraft tournaments, by hands still sticky from the last Chalupa Supreme. Some of my favorite Bro-isms follow.

We invite our readers to add to this Bro Glossary, and to tell us about your own Adventures in Bro World.

© 2007, John Calendo. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com