HOME ALONE

Life Without Family Gets a Little Feral, Three Summer Bachelors Discover

With his wife and kids in Guam for the summer, Chris Stahl, left, has had plenty of time to catch up on movies and baseball. Laundry, however, has taken a back seat. Anticipating such a problem, the wife of Eric Langenbacher, right, put four layers of sheets on their bed before leaving for Japan. He just strips one off and gets back to enjoying his freedom. (Photos By Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post)

This is one in a series of occasional articles on how we spend our summers.

They are the words any self-respecting family man dreams of hearing: The wife announces she's taking the kids on a vacation, to Grandma's place, the mountains or -- does it get any better? -- another continent.

Freedom!

In an instant, the men are gloriously liberated from the usual parental obstacle course. No more changing stinky diapers, no stuffing the kiddies into jammies, no crawling under the sofa to find caps to the Magic Markers, no reciting "Green Eggs and Ham" for the 967th time.

No more cries of Mommieee!

Such is the sweet summer life of three faithful, adoring and otherwise dedicated husbands, Erik Warga, Eric Langenbacher and Chris Stahl, whose wives all flew off with the kids in early June to foreign shores and won't be back any time soon.

They have left the men to revert to what Langenbacher describes as their "inner guy," that blissful state of drinking, cussing, smoking, playing air guitar in their undies, watching the tube whenever and bantering as if they never graduated from bachelorhood, as if they never became mortgage-paying, car seat-owning, credit card-carrying Men of Responsibility.

"It's the guy's vibe," Langenbacher explained between drags of a cigarette as he walked down Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. "When the mothers are around, you can't say, 'Hey! I saw three beautiful girls the other day.' "

His wife and two young sons left June 8 for Japan, where her parents live, and won't return until Aug. 22. He and Warga, who lives around the corner, were musing about the untethered life as they ambled home from the supermarket and liquor store with all the urgency of two sophomores with nothing to do and nowhere to be.

Warga, in shorts and a Nationals cap, was pushing his double stroller -- one seat occupied by a case of beer, two more six-packs stowed underneath.

By 1 p.m. on a steamy Thursday, the men were eating steaks at Warga's kitchen table and popping open the day's first brewskis.

"I'm not getting any work done today," announced Langenbacher, 33, who teaches government at Georgetown University. He did not seem overly concerned.