Men shake hands - what to do if not a man?

Why do men shake hands?
Well, they shake other things as well, but I don't want to think or write about that. I want to know about handshakes.

On my side of the planet, when you're introduced to someone new for the first time, male or female, you shake hands. More oldfashioned gentlemen, not necessarily old, stick to the handkissing of ladies as well, but I have a girlfriend that disagrees with this custom so I won't go into that. At least, not now. I'll save it for later.

Now, many things can be said from a handshake. There has to be a difference in meaning between a limpy wet flaccid handshake of some sticky obnoxious person, and a strong vigurous over-enthusiastic endless shake of a groupie, and all the other varieties that come in between. But again, that's a whole different chapter and thousands of pages have been already written on the topic.

What I wanted to know is why do men shake hands when they meet, again and again? Even old friends or co-workers that see eachother every day. There is this stupid convention, if a men approaches a mixt group, he says hi and shakes hands with all the men in the group, ignoring the females.
And I am not sure, but I tend to believe that close friends, when they meet, they give eachother a strong hearty handshake, just to say 'I'm glad to see you again-reality check completed-now let's gobble down that beer.'

The first time it struck me, the awkardness, was in a rather semi-professional semi-casual environment, in one of the English classes I was teaching to a really nice group of people, all my age or about. One of the guys came late, and as he entered the class, half-way through a sentence of mine, he smiled, apologized, shook hands with the other two guys in the group and sat down. Me and the other three or four girls in the group were left hanging, rather hoping for a handshake or something ourselves. But of course, there is no convention saying what to do between men and women who know eachother well, but aren't close enough to kiss on the cheek or hug.

I know that sometimes, girlfriends kiss eachother on the cheek or throw those fake noisy air kisses over eachother's shoulder, but I try not to stick to that rule. I only kiss and hug my girls when I haven't seen them in a while and miss them dearly.

The next time it struck me, the weirdness of men shaking hands, was in a very close group of friends. There were two guys, some of my best friends, me and another female. We were saying goodbye for the holidays, the guys shook hands, I hugged the girl and ... it's gone...Hugging or kissing the boys felt awkard although we all felt that there was something missing, a touch, a gesture of some kind, one of those stupid pats on the back that men sometime give eachother. 

And then, there's tonight, which is another level of weird-how-did-it-get-to-this-fuck-i-screwed-everything-up-again-I-can-never-touch-him-again moment.

Which takes me to the real point of this post:

I've always been a no-kissing-my-hugs-are-expensive kind of girl and I need a bloody convention to tell me what kind of gesture is appropiate between me and my male friends, when saying hi or goodbye, if I cannot do any of the following:

- Cannot shake hands, cause that's what men do
- Cannot hug cause that's too - just too - too much - and sticky. I keep hugs for birthdays.
- Cannot pat on the back cause we're not beer buddies or team-mates, plus if they pat back, it would be really weird
- Cannot high-five, or bro-fist or who-knows-what-other-stupid choreography, cause I'm a lady goddammit

- And, starting tonight, cannot kiss on cheek every time we meet and say goodbye, cause it doesn't really mean anything anymore, plus it wasn't my thing from the very beginning, it was just something I did, since there is no other bloody thing to do.