I saw a commercial today for an amusement park, or with people in it
at an amusement park, or for something being sold using an amusement
park. I don’t remember. There were too many roller coaster shots.
Yep, put those on my “scared” list. Old fashioned coasters without
loops or corkscrews or tall, tight banking are fine, especially if they
are wooden. But these spinning, twisted, diving coasters? No. You go.
Tonight I learned about something called “lint flies”. Apparently,
these nasty little things fly around during the day, land on you, and
look like dryer lint. One of my friends thinks they are cute. I’m adding
them to the list of things that I will swat if they get too close,
unless I am too busy flailing and running away from a swarm.
I have been known to fly across the room and cringe against a wall
when I see a moth. They won’t hurt me, but I own a goodly amount of good
wool yarn, and while my left-brain knows that not all moths are
wool-killers, my right brain is screaming, “Kill kill kill before it
murders my yarn.”
Let me just lay it out. If it flies and might get in my nose, mouth,
or hair, or bite or sting me, I want to be as far from it as possible.
My partner and I have several animals—2 dogs, 2 cats, 3 guinea pigs, a
hamster and a fish. So my “ick” at cleaning up animal messes is a point
of contention. I will do it, but eeewww.
Not manly in the least, I know.
Also not manly—I am seriously “icked” by raw fish. I’ve been fishing.
Once. A few years ago, we went fishing in a friend’s pond. I boldly
baited the hook with a piece of cheap hotdog and flung out my line
(fishing line and cane pole). Within a few moments, I had a fish. No one
prepares you for that. It was dangling and wriggling and its mouth was
gaping open and close, open and close. I pretty much turned my head
away while my partner detached the fish and threw it back. He offered to
let me do the honors. Not happening, y’all.
I’m completely terrified of any spider that is not a cute-and-fuzzy
tarantula. I’ve finally come to a point where is no one else is around,
or if I don’t want to embarrass myself, I can squish one. With my shoe
stuck way out or a wad of paper. Timidly.
Right up there is something that I KNOW a lot of men are lying about
when they say it’s…”wonderful, natural, beautiful”. Childbirth. Thanks
to my friends and Facebook, which allows postings of pictures without
warning labels, I have seen more about this subject than I ever, ever
cared to. Please folks, give those of us who are a wee bit squeamish
some warning. I have already told our dear girlfriend that if she ever
decides to have a baby, I will be by her head.
Along with childbirth goes part of the inevitable
after-effect–diapers. Don’t do them. Won’t. I’ve made this abundantly
clear to my friends with babies of diapering age. I have changed a
diaper. Once. There are some sights and smells that can never, ever, be
bleached from your brain. Ick.
And let me tell you about the stupidest fear imaginable, and how the
dumb things we do as children can stick with us forever. I cannot touch
mirrors in the dark. If that is not “unmanly”, I don’t know what is. Too
many games of Bloody Mary and too many bloody horror movies at a tender
age.
Some things you never outgrow.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Rubber Duckies, You’re the Ones: How to Freak People Out in 178 Easy Steps
Years ago, I went to a friend’s house in California and saw his
rubber duckie bathroom. There were dozens of ducks, tastefully arranged,
with a rubber duckie shower curtain, rug, cup, toothbrush holder, the
works. I decided that one day, I would have a rubber duckie bathroom.
When my partner and I moved into our house, I turned the hall bathroom into the rubber duckie bathroom of my dreams. Ducks on the walls, ducks on the towels, ducks on the tub, ducks on shelves, ducks on rugs, ducks on ducks. This didn’t last long. Our housekeeper said that that was her least favorite room to clean. Why? Because of all the ducks. Too much to clean. She was cleaning every single one.
The ducks had to go.
My office has a long, long windowsill. Everyone around me knows that I collect duckies, and they they got kicked out of my house. But no one truly understands “the duck thing” until they come into my office.
What do you expect when you walk into a guy’s office? Some geek stuff, maybe some pictures, maybe some sports stuff, some toys and gadgets, a few collectibles. Drawings and paintings by kids, a poster or two.
I doubt you expect to find 178 rubber duckies staring you in the face, plus a giant Darth Tater Mr. Potato Head wearing a pink-and-purple Pretty Pretty Princess tiara, a teddy bear holding a giant peep toy, and a dozen or so mutant potato heads. You’d probably be surprised that there is also a piece of Fight Club fan art over my desk, along with a variety of flying pig sculptures and my emergency knitting bag emblazoned with the numbers of my NASCAR drivers (Mark Martin, Dale Jr.).
Any time a new visitor comes in my office, it’s a 100% certainty that they will stop in their tracks and look at the ducks, look at me, look back at the ducks. The next thing out of their mouths is almost always, “That’s a lot of ducks.” If they look more closely, they’ll see little stories and grouping and dioramas among the ducks. The braver ones will make a closer inspection, or pick up the ducks and start looking at them. Some will tell me stories of their kids and their ducks. The ones that are a little weirded out will try not to look at them and utterly fail, because really, what can you do when 356 eyes are staring at you?
These things are my sanity savers, and much as they deny it, they do the same for other people in the building, because I’ll come in and find ducks rearranged, potato heads with light sabers and tongues sprouting out of their heads, and smeared dust on the shelves. It’s ok. I’ll share my toys.
To quote one of the Doctors, “What’s the use of being a grown-up if you can’t be childish once in a while?”
When my partner and I moved into our house, I turned the hall bathroom into the rubber duckie bathroom of my dreams. Ducks on the walls, ducks on the towels, ducks on the tub, ducks on shelves, ducks on rugs, ducks on ducks. This didn’t last long. Our housekeeper said that that was her least favorite room to clean. Why? Because of all the ducks. Too much to clean. She was cleaning every single one.
The ducks had to go.
My office has a long, long windowsill. Everyone around me knows that I collect duckies, and they they got kicked out of my house. But no one truly understands “the duck thing” until they come into my office.
What do you expect when you walk into a guy’s office? Some geek stuff, maybe some pictures, maybe some sports stuff, some toys and gadgets, a few collectibles. Drawings and paintings by kids, a poster or two.
I doubt you expect to find 178 rubber duckies staring you in the face, plus a giant Darth Tater Mr. Potato Head wearing a pink-and-purple Pretty Pretty Princess tiara, a teddy bear holding a giant peep toy, and a dozen or so mutant potato heads. You’d probably be surprised that there is also a piece of Fight Club fan art over my desk, along with a variety of flying pig sculptures and my emergency knitting bag emblazoned with the numbers of my NASCAR drivers (Mark Martin, Dale Jr.).
Any time a new visitor comes in my office, it’s a 100% certainty that they will stop in their tracks and look at the ducks, look at me, look back at the ducks. The next thing out of their mouths is almost always, “That’s a lot of ducks.” If they look more closely, they’ll see little stories and grouping and dioramas among the ducks. The braver ones will make a closer inspection, or pick up the ducks and start looking at them. Some will tell me stories of their kids and their ducks. The ones that are a little weirded out will try not to look at them and utterly fail, because really, what can you do when 356 eyes are staring at you?
These things are my sanity savers, and much as they deny it, they do the same for other people in the building, because I’ll come in and find ducks rearranged, potato heads with light sabers and tongues sprouting out of their heads, and smeared dust on the shelves. It’s ok. I’ll share my toys.
To quote one of the Doctors, “What’s the use of being a grown-up if you can’t be childish once in a while?”
“Hi, Dad! Nice to See You!” The Ghost of My Father is Very Near.
I lost my dad almost four years ago, in December of 2009. He'd been ill for most of my life, so this was nota surprise. I'd known it was coming. It was just a matter of when. But he is far from gone. My mom swore he would never move to Alabama.
I beg to differ.
#1 I inherited a lot of photography equipment from him when he died. He’d done photography for most of his life and was strongly anti-digital. With his various disabilities, it was one thing that he would do almost until the end of his life. I could not bring myself to sell it, but I wanted it to go to a good home. I was in a fashion show earlier this year and was paired for a runway walk with a teenager. We decided to use cameras as props and I asked if he had an old camera—if not, I would bring bring him one. Turns out he had one, as he shoots in film. Kid with his own SLR. He left for college this week with two bags full of lenses, filters, flashes, and I’m not sure what else. Thanks, Dad.
#2 My mom was working on rearranging her house this past week and found several pieces of new and nearly new stereo equipment. My dad loved music. Most days when he was confined to bed or one of his easy chairs, he would have his headphones on, listening to classical music and opera for hours on end. He always had back up receivers, amps, and tape recorders, just in case. I had tried to sell them after he died, and my mom could not give them away. Now she finds them, I make one phone call, and they are getting a new home this weekend with a group of local musician. Thanks, Dad.
#3 A local theatre (Merrimack Hall) has a dance program for special needs kids, teens, and young adults. The teen/young adult group was invited to perform at a special event in LA, and the theatre did a fast fundraiser. This cause would have spoken to my father, as he, like these kids, spent most of his life being told, “No, you can’t.”, and then finding ways to do it anyway. Money that my father left allowed my mom to make a donation in their names. Thanks, Dad.
#4 My office received promotional items for an upcoming event we are doing. My father wore pocket watches his whole life, first because his father did, and after his father died, just because he liked them. Even as a teenager, he wore one, no matter how uncool anyone said it was. As an adult, medication made his skin so fragile that he could not wear wrist watches. At one point, he had upwards of twenty pocket watches, some of which I inherited. Guess what arrived in the promotional items box? One thing. A pocket watch. It has no connection whatsoever to what is bring promoted. But it landed in my office. I hope whoever it is given to appreciates it, or else my dad may haunt them, too.
#5 Tonight I was out with one of my friends, and asked what his license plate meant. It is his amateur radio license. My dad was a HAM radio operator until he was in his early 30′s, and this made him very valuable to the company he worked for for most of his life. He was very proud of his radio work and esoteric knowledge of all things related. My friend tonight was beaming that someone even knew what he was talking about, thought it was cool, and knew someone else who had done it. Thanks, Dad. Once again, you helped me make someone smile.
My dad was never what you would call a traditional father. He was disabled. He spent more time with music–classical, opera, folk, rock-and-roll—than just about anything else. He loved book about space, about science, about classic cars. He took me and my teenage friends to concerts. He never fussed much about curfews, although he never went to bed until I came home. He mixed argyles and stripes with wild abandon. He tried to teach me to bowl and supported any crazy thing I wanted to try (although I think he often regretted teaching me to play the spoons).
And he loved to find young people who shared his interests and make them smile, especially at Christmas when the Angel Trees went up, and he could give a kid in need something that other givers might overlook.
I’m not sure why he’s chosen now to make himself so known. But he’s definitely here. And I’m grateful that I’m getting all of these chances to make others—and him—smile.
Glitter Toes: Yes, I have them.
I look forward to flip-flop season. In Alabama, this is roughly April
to November. I have casual flips, dress flips, thick squishy lavender
flips I can wear for days. Why do I look forward to this season?
My toes. More specifically, decorating them.
This is one of my not-so-secret secrets. I love having sparkly toenails. I have at least 30 bottles of polish, mostly colored glitter. I’ll wear a base color with 1-3 colors of glitter over it. Green and silver. Black and Red. Orange and Silver and Purple. Yellow and orange. Pink and pinker and pinker. No team colors, because they last thing I want to do is take my accidentally-Auburn toes into Alabama territory.
In most other ways, I blend in. Cargo shorts or jeans. T-shirts or short sleeve buttondowns. Short hair. Black geek glasses. A handful of tattoos, none that can be seen when I wear work clothes. Pierced ears. Somewhat androgynous, but otherwise pretty normal, if much younger than my years.
But I cannot resist the siren song of the sparkly.
I know this is a contradiction. Most of the time, I try to be invisible. My size and stature don’t make me stand out in a crowd. I like this. I can count on less than two hands the number of people who have flirted with me in the last 8 years. I move through holiday stores without being offered a splash of this or a smell of this. I’m rarely accosted by people asking for money or a cigarettes. I don’t read things that will draw undo attention (ok, I dance in public, but that is another post). I try to avoid confrontation, my own or anyone else’s.
But when the weather’s good enough for flips, it’s good enough for polish.
I used to make up excuses when people would ask me about it. “My friend’s little girl wanted to play Beauty Shop,”, I would say. Or, “I lost a bet.” Or, “I was hanging out with some girlfriends and they were painting nails, so I let them do mine.” After doing this for years, I finally stopped. I came out (as my partner calls me) as, “Glitter Boy”.
The only person decorating my toes is me.
Believe me, people notice. Especially kids. They look at your toes, look at you, look at your toes, look away. The adults who notice it don’t usually ask. Occasionally I can see a kid screw up their courage and blurt out, “Why are your toes sparkly?” I answer honestly. “Because I like them that way.”
I do. I like them that way.
This is not a political statement. There is no attempt to subvert the stereotypical male stereotype. I am not trying to get people to question anything about their assumptions. I don’t care if people think I should or should not paint me toes. If they see my toes in the men’s room, well, let me just say you would not go in there unless you had to.
Occasionally, I’ll even go plain. Just color, no flash.
Two Saturdays ago, a cashier I know in a retail shop told me she wanted to see teal, no glitter or glitz, just teal. I went back the next day and showed her teal. I had it on hand, so why not? It made her happy in the midst of back-to-school shopping madness. It made the morning a mad dash, because I was running late for a volleyball game. But what’s a little frantic scrubbing with acetone to make a woman smile?
Before the teal, it was ruby slipper red. As in Dorothy’s ruby slippers.
One weekend, I even matched my gauged earrings (6g) to my toenails. Ruby red glitter arches. Normal for a 39-year-old guy? Nope. Did I care?
Nope. Because I liked it. Did anyone notice. Don’t know. Wasn’t paying attention.
I recently made a friend, a guy named C. We bonded over our toenails. He is purple and black. I am glitter and shine.
You never know how you’ll meet a kindred spirit.
My toes. More specifically, decorating them.
This is one of my not-so-secret secrets. I love having sparkly toenails. I have at least 30 bottles of polish, mostly colored glitter. I’ll wear a base color with 1-3 colors of glitter over it. Green and silver. Black and Red. Orange and Silver and Purple. Yellow and orange. Pink and pinker and pinker. No team colors, because they last thing I want to do is take my accidentally-Auburn toes into Alabama territory.
In most other ways, I blend in. Cargo shorts or jeans. T-shirts or short sleeve buttondowns. Short hair. Black geek glasses. A handful of tattoos, none that can be seen when I wear work clothes. Pierced ears. Somewhat androgynous, but otherwise pretty normal, if much younger than my years.
But I cannot resist the siren song of the sparkly.
I know this is a contradiction. Most of the time, I try to be invisible. My size and stature don’t make me stand out in a crowd. I like this. I can count on less than two hands the number of people who have flirted with me in the last 8 years. I move through holiday stores without being offered a splash of this or a smell of this. I’m rarely accosted by people asking for money or a cigarettes. I don’t read things that will draw undo attention (ok, I dance in public, but that is another post). I try to avoid confrontation, my own or anyone else’s.
But when the weather’s good enough for flips, it’s good enough for polish.
I used to make up excuses when people would ask me about it. “My friend’s little girl wanted to play Beauty Shop,”, I would say. Or, “I lost a bet.” Or, “I was hanging out with some girlfriends and they were painting nails, so I let them do mine.” After doing this for years, I finally stopped. I came out (as my partner calls me) as, “Glitter Boy”.
The only person decorating my toes is me.
Believe me, people notice. Especially kids. They look at your toes, look at you, look at your toes, look away. The adults who notice it don’t usually ask. Occasionally I can see a kid screw up their courage and blurt out, “Why are your toes sparkly?” I answer honestly. “Because I like them that way.”
I do. I like them that way.
This is not a political statement. There is no attempt to subvert the stereotypical male stereotype. I am not trying to get people to question anything about their assumptions. I don’t care if people think I should or should not paint me toes. If they see my toes in the men’s room, well, let me just say you would not go in there unless you had to.
Occasionally, I’ll even go plain. Just color, no flash.
Two Saturdays ago, a cashier I know in a retail shop told me she wanted to see teal, no glitter or glitz, just teal. I went back the next day and showed her teal. I had it on hand, so why not? It made her happy in the midst of back-to-school shopping madness. It made the morning a mad dash, because I was running late for a volleyball game. But what’s a little frantic scrubbing with acetone to make a woman smile?
Before the teal, it was ruby slipper red. As in Dorothy’s ruby slippers.
One weekend, I even matched my gauged earrings (6g) to my toenails. Ruby red glitter arches. Normal for a 39-year-old guy? Nope. Did I care?
Nope. Because I liked it. Did anyone notice. Don’t know. Wasn’t paying attention.
I recently made a friend, a guy named C. We bonded over our toenails. He is purple and black. I am glitter and shine.
You never know how you’ll meet a kindred spirit.
I Don’t Know How to Talk to You: Conversations Among Men
It’s pretty hard to shock me. Your 16-year-old son has admitted to
being a BRONY? Ok. Your year-old son stole-and rode-his 3-year-old
sister’s scooter? Wow. Your brother is my mail carrier? Ok, kind of
weird, because he knows what magazines I get, but ok. That wedding you
were in was for a couple I knew from a completely different circle of
friends, so y’all were talking about the same wedding on Facebook? Your
hubby’s ex is married to WHO? Small world. You are part of a clown
ministry? Seriously?
But this one, THIS ONE, left me utterly speechless. This was years ago.
“My husband doesn’t like to be around you because he doesn’t know how to talk to you.”
Huh?
She elaborated. “You know, he likes hunting and fishing and, you know, you….”
Huh? Um, okay. I told her that I was sorry, but I had no idea how to respond to that.
Yes, I talk about my weekend at the craft show and how crazy the knitters were on Monday night. I get excited that I’m going to have extra sewing time this week. I live with a man. I also have a girlfriend. I flap my hands when I get excited and am prone to rolling my eyes and saying, “Oh, my gawd.” I’ve never shot anything and the one time I went fishing I spent more time being grossed out by the wriggling fish than anything else.
But this is about where the differences end.
We both work in the same industry. We both have dogs. We both like BBQ, steaks, and NASCAR. We both love action movies and have bad knees. We eat at the same restaurants. We’re both fond of sweets and know that forgetting our significant other’s birthdays is a bad idea. We like a lot of the same 70′s rock bands and think bowling and pool are fun. We believe that sitting on the beach is great but seagulls are evil. I know these things about him because his wife and I are friends.
So what’s the problem? She has no idea.
I do.
Like a lot of straight men raised in very conservative areas, I think that he can’t get past “the gay”. He can’t get past the differences, although we have more in common than not. I’m not sure that his world view would allow him to have a whole lot of things in common with a gay man. What would his friends say if they found out he was friends with a gay man? What would it do to his sense of his own masculinity?
I was recently reading an article a friend wrote about how the Green Bay Packers lost their game first pre-season game. This brought me up short, as I realized it is barely the middle of August and there are NFL games. Pre-season games. But still, it’s professional football time in America and I am about to be, shall we say, royally screwed in the realm of male social inclusion. The conversation conundrum just got a little more confusing.
Forgive me, but I am about to make a confession that will cost me my “man card”. I don’t care about football. I don’t dislike it. If it’s on somewhere I may keep half an eye on it. If it’s playing in the background, fine. If a friend invites me to a game party, I might go, more to hang out than anything else, and probably watch the game. But it’s not something I make any effort to follow, and if you asked me to match up a list of teams to cities, the only reason I could is because I’ve listened to enough people talk about it for enough years.
I know enough about the NFL to have a fairly intelligent conversation, or at least follow along reasonably well. I credit my mother for this. I grew up in a household where she ruled the (non-cable) TV, and when there was a game on—baseball, football, tennis, golf, basketball—my dad and I did not DARE change the channel. Period. This was not negotiable. She understood sports, too, and explained what I was seeing. At the time, I nodded when appropriate and made the right noises, but some of it sunk in, and I’m grateful for that.
Not caring about football did not help me fit in at school. Aside from faith (I attended a Christian high school), sports was the default topic of conversation among my peers. College was infinitely better. I found a bunch of friends who probably couldn’t tell you how many points a touchdown was worth and didn’t care. But when I left the cozy nest of classroom conversation and campus jobs, the real world was much like the stereotype that still haunts me. Default conversation topics: Who’s going to win this weekend? What’s your team? Did you see the _______ game? Because the presumption was that this is what men talk about.
Now I live in Alabama, and here, the SEC is more important than the NFL. Stories about my faux pas in that realm will fill several more posts. But in general, there is still the assumption that man=sports=talk-about-sports=not-talk-about-sports=what-the-heck-kind-of-man-are-you-you-fag….
I think many of the men around me around me are set in their ideals of what makes a man, and to them, my lack of traditional male interests puts me in the realm of “other”, “strange”, too “different”. That my partner and I have a girlfriend? Fine, doesn’t phase them. That I am gay? Problem. But that I don’t participate in the most traditional of male-bonding conversations? Get thee away.
But with all the things going on in this world, with all of our various interests, with all of the things to ponder and pontificate and pick apart and discuss and argue and cheer and question, to be excluded because of failure to adhere to one of the most stereotypical of stereotypes? Either they’re lying, or I just really don’t get it.
I would love for someone to magically toss out the rule book on men’s conversations. Not being able to “speak the language” of the general population, and having no desire to learn it just to fakely “fit in” leads to a lot of exclusion. You find out what you didn’t get invited to, because people didn’t want to sit near you and be uncomfortable because there was nothing to say, or they thought you’d be embarrassing, or you’re just “kinda weird”.
And no matter how old you get, that still hurts. Oops, just violated a “man conversation rule”.
But this one, THIS ONE, left me utterly speechless. This was years ago.
“My husband doesn’t like to be around you because he doesn’t know how to talk to you.”
Huh?
She elaborated. “You know, he likes hunting and fishing and, you know, you….”
Huh? Um, okay. I told her that I was sorry, but I had no idea how to respond to that.
Yes, I talk about my weekend at the craft show and how crazy the knitters were on Monday night. I get excited that I’m going to have extra sewing time this week. I live with a man. I also have a girlfriend. I flap my hands when I get excited and am prone to rolling my eyes and saying, “Oh, my gawd.” I’ve never shot anything and the one time I went fishing I spent more time being grossed out by the wriggling fish than anything else.
But this is about where the differences end.
We both work in the same industry. We both have dogs. We both like BBQ, steaks, and NASCAR. We both love action movies and have bad knees. We eat at the same restaurants. We’re both fond of sweets and know that forgetting our significant other’s birthdays is a bad idea. We like a lot of the same 70′s rock bands and think bowling and pool are fun. We believe that sitting on the beach is great but seagulls are evil. I know these things about him because his wife and I are friends.
So what’s the problem? She has no idea.
I do.
Like a lot of straight men raised in very conservative areas, I think that he can’t get past “the gay”. He can’t get past the differences, although we have more in common than not. I’m not sure that his world view would allow him to have a whole lot of things in common with a gay man. What would his friends say if they found out he was friends with a gay man? What would it do to his sense of his own masculinity?
* * *
I was recently reading an article a friend wrote about how the Green Bay Packers lost their game first pre-season game. This brought me up short, as I realized it is barely the middle of August and there are NFL games. Pre-season games. But still, it’s professional football time in America and I am about to be, shall we say, royally screwed in the realm of male social inclusion. The conversation conundrum just got a little more confusing.
Forgive me, but I am about to make a confession that will cost me my “man card”. I don’t care about football. I don’t dislike it. If it’s on somewhere I may keep half an eye on it. If it’s playing in the background, fine. If a friend invites me to a game party, I might go, more to hang out than anything else, and probably watch the game. But it’s not something I make any effort to follow, and if you asked me to match up a list of teams to cities, the only reason I could is because I’ve listened to enough people talk about it for enough years.
I know enough about the NFL to have a fairly intelligent conversation, or at least follow along reasonably well. I credit my mother for this. I grew up in a household where she ruled the (non-cable) TV, and when there was a game on—baseball, football, tennis, golf, basketball—my dad and I did not DARE change the channel. Period. This was not negotiable. She understood sports, too, and explained what I was seeing. At the time, I nodded when appropriate and made the right noises, but some of it sunk in, and I’m grateful for that.
Not caring about football did not help me fit in at school. Aside from faith (I attended a Christian high school), sports was the default topic of conversation among my peers. College was infinitely better. I found a bunch of friends who probably couldn’t tell you how many points a touchdown was worth and didn’t care. But when I left the cozy nest of classroom conversation and campus jobs, the real world was much like the stereotype that still haunts me. Default conversation topics: Who’s going to win this weekend? What’s your team? Did you see the _______ game? Because the presumption was that this is what men talk about.
Now I live in Alabama, and here, the SEC is more important than the NFL. Stories about my faux pas in that realm will fill several more posts. But in general, there is still the assumption that man=sports=talk-about-sports=not-talk-about-sports=what-the-heck-kind-of-man-are-you-you-fag….
I think many of the men around me around me are set in their ideals of what makes a man, and to them, my lack of traditional male interests puts me in the realm of “other”, “strange”, too “different”. That my partner and I have a girlfriend? Fine, doesn’t phase them. That I am gay? Problem. But that I don’t participate in the most traditional of male-bonding conversations? Get thee away.
But with all the things going on in this world, with all of our various interests, with all of the things to ponder and pontificate and pick apart and discuss and argue and cheer and question, to be excluded because of failure to adhere to one of the most stereotypical of stereotypes? Either they’re lying, or I just really don’t get it.
I would love for someone to magically toss out the rule book on men’s conversations. Not being able to “speak the language” of the general population, and having no desire to learn it just to fakely “fit in” leads to a lot of exclusion. You find out what you didn’t get invited to, because people didn’t want to sit near you and be uncomfortable because there was nothing to say, or they thought you’d be embarrassing, or you’re just “kinda weird”.
And no matter how old you get, that still hurts. Oops, just violated a “man conversation rule”.
Don’t Judge a Person by Their Trailer. Or the South by its Stereotypes.
I’ve lived in Alabama for over 8 years. I’m acclimated to pretty much
everything here: the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s beautiful, with
lots of clean air and open space. There are terrible people here, some
who think that slavery never should have ended. Big hair will never go
away. These are facts. I would not have believed these things, and many
more, when I first got here. I thought a lot of jokes about the South
were just that—jokes. I found an awful lot of assumptions and
presumptions about the South that are true, at least superficially. But
once you get below the surface, things are a lot different—and more
interesting—than pop media would have us believe.
During my first visit, my partner and his best friend took me on a “back roads” tour of North Alabama. I was in absolute shock when we drove down several roads with nothing but trailers that had yards full of broken down appliances, kids toys, rusting hulks of cars, trucks on blocks, and bags of trash. The siding was mismatched, the curtains were faded, and in at least one case the flower beds were plastic flowers. I was blown away—I didn’t believe people really lived that way. I thought it was just a stereotype, an overdone sitcom joke, people snobbishly making fun of Southerners. Nope, all real.
You’ve heard the joke, “I hear banjos…keep paddling…”? Not necessary. Because most of those people, with broken down trailers and trashed yards, are the nicest, coolest, most laid-back and fun people you will ever meet. They may not have the brick house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a pretty little cat in the window, but they are not where they live. They are not their situations. They are people, above all. They may not have a new stove and a big screen TV, but they’ll feed you the best tomatoes you’ve ever had.
On that same visit, I learned about the rules governing overalls. The stereotypical image of a farmer in his overalls, wearing a trucker hat and dirty boots all the time? Almost true. In reality, there are dress overalls, town overalls, and work overalls. Dress overalls are usually worn with collared shirts, maybe a bola tie. Town overalls, a clean t-shirt. Work overalls, anything or nothing under them. Hats will tell you where someone’s loyalties lie. John Deere, McCormack, Alabama, Auburn, the NRA, the Confederacy—think a bumper sticker for your head, with the added bonus of keeping your head from freezing or crisping. Country bumpkins, right? Well, they may not be as sophisticated as a big-city dweller, or know a lot of fancy words, but when something needs to be grown, fixed, built, created, arranged, rearranged, they are your guys. And the one covered in dirt, with the blue bandanna handkerchief? He’s probably got more money in the bank than you will make in a lifetime.
Now, listening to and understanding Southern speech takes time. It was months before I could reliably understand what people were saying, and I did a lot of asking people to repeat themselves—I played the “weirdo from California” card for as long as I could. There are plenty of people who think that all southerners sound uneducated and backwards, that a Southern accent is some sort of character flaw, that if you have one, you’re sore sort of ignorant, knot-head redneck. I believe that the doctors, lawyers, engineers, rocket scientists, tradespeople, teachers, scientists, political and social activists, writers, musicians, entrepreneurs, inventors, builders, and every other sort of intelligent person with a twang would beg to differ. There are stupid, thoughtless, narrow-minded mean people with Philly, Brooklyn, Minnesota, and West Coast accents, too. Your voice does not determine your destiny, much as the media would like to make you think it does.
I’m not going to say that some of the darker, more brutal, more unpleasant things you’ve heard about the South don’t exist. We’ve got plenty of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and xenophobia to go around. We’ve got people who behave in the most unchristian-like manner possible but show up to church every Sunday. We’ve got people who would rather eat glass than share a bench with one of “those” people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve flinched when the “n” word gets tossed around in polite conversation. The men-are-men and women-are-women attitude is not dead yet. But while that’s what gets the press, it’s only a tiny piece of the place.
If you look hard enough, you can find dirt anywhere. But give this place a chance, and you’ll see that we’re a lot more than camo pants and rebel flags.
During my first visit, my partner and his best friend took me on a “back roads” tour of North Alabama. I was in absolute shock when we drove down several roads with nothing but trailers that had yards full of broken down appliances, kids toys, rusting hulks of cars, trucks on blocks, and bags of trash. The siding was mismatched, the curtains were faded, and in at least one case the flower beds were plastic flowers. I was blown away—I didn’t believe people really lived that way. I thought it was just a stereotype, an overdone sitcom joke, people snobbishly making fun of Southerners. Nope, all real.
♦◊♦
You’ve heard the joke, “I hear banjos…keep paddling…”? Not necessary. Because most of those people, with broken down trailers and trashed yards, are the nicest, coolest, most laid-back and fun people you will ever meet. They may not have the brick house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a pretty little cat in the window, but they are not where they live. They are not their situations. They are people, above all. They may not have a new stove and a big screen TV, but they’ll feed you the best tomatoes you’ve ever had.
On that same visit, I learned about the rules governing overalls. The stereotypical image of a farmer in his overalls, wearing a trucker hat and dirty boots all the time? Almost true. In reality, there are dress overalls, town overalls, and work overalls. Dress overalls are usually worn with collared shirts, maybe a bola tie. Town overalls, a clean t-shirt. Work overalls, anything or nothing under them. Hats will tell you where someone’s loyalties lie. John Deere, McCormack, Alabama, Auburn, the NRA, the Confederacy—think a bumper sticker for your head, with the added bonus of keeping your head from freezing or crisping. Country bumpkins, right? Well, they may not be as sophisticated as a big-city dweller, or know a lot of fancy words, but when something needs to be grown, fixed, built, created, arranged, rearranged, they are your guys. And the one covered in dirt, with the blue bandanna handkerchief? He’s probably got more money in the bank than you will make in a lifetime.
♦◊♦
Now, listening to and understanding Southern speech takes time. It was months before I could reliably understand what people were saying, and I did a lot of asking people to repeat themselves—I played the “weirdo from California” card for as long as I could. There are plenty of people who think that all southerners sound uneducated and backwards, that a Southern accent is some sort of character flaw, that if you have one, you’re sore sort of ignorant, knot-head redneck. I believe that the doctors, lawyers, engineers, rocket scientists, tradespeople, teachers, scientists, political and social activists, writers, musicians, entrepreneurs, inventors, builders, and every other sort of intelligent person with a twang would beg to differ. There are stupid, thoughtless, narrow-minded mean people with Philly, Brooklyn, Minnesota, and West Coast accents, too. Your voice does not determine your destiny, much as the media would like to make you think it does.
I’m not going to say that some of the darker, more brutal, more unpleasant things you’ve heard about the South don’t exist. We’ve got plenty of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and xenophobia to go around. We’ve got people who behave in the most unchristian-like manner possible but show up to church every Sunday. We’ve got people who would rather eat glass than share a bench with one of “those” people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve flinched when the “n” word gets tossed around in polite conversation. The men-are-men and women-are-women attitude is not dead yet. But while that’s what gets the press, it’s only a tiny piece of the place.
If you look hard enough, you can find dirt anywhere. But give this place a chance, and you’ll see that we’re a lot more than camo pants and rebel flags.
Monday, August 12, 2013
City Boy, Country Boy: When the Creepy Crawlies Invade
I am not traditional. And let's just say that tonight, I'm glad the neighbors weren't watching, and they know that my dog squeals like a little girl. Flatulence is not the only thing that gets blamed on her.
My partner is a country boy. He can look at bugs of all manner and identify them, where they come from, how long they will be around. He can do this calmly and rationally. I am a city boy. I identify them this way: "Honey, there's a crunchy bug. Can you get it?" "J! Get in here! There is a BIG f-ing spider! Kill it NOW!" "Ahhhhh! Like, 10 things just flew in! Bring the cats!" And the infamous, "Bug bug bug there's a bug in my hair! (swat furiously at my head where there is nothing)" and the now-legendary, "Spider! Spiderweb! Getitoff! Ahhhhhhhh!" (throw the platter of cut veggies and ranch dressing ten feet in the air before sprinting down the driveway). We don't discuss the willow-fly-outside-the-restaurant incident. We'll just say a lot of diners got a good laugh.
Tonight, though, my poor, long-suffering darling came home to me having a near meltdown. It involved something that should be harmless, healthy even. Field corn.
Field corn, according to J, is corn that is grown for feed, not for grocery market. His mom got us some from his uncle's farm. It's been on the counter since last evening. This is an important point. He asked me to make him two ears tonight. No problem, I think. Shuck them, desilk them, boil them. Easy, I think. It's corn.
You are nodding in agreement. Let me stop you right there.
Field corn brings hitchhikers. These hitchhikers are sneaky. You peel back several layers of husk and the tassel of silk and there, still very much alive, is a worm. Or a caterpillar. Or both. On the corn. That has been sitting on your counter. If you score high on the Gay Man Scale of Squick[tm][by our girlpartner Z] as I do, you drop the corn and let out a squeal that makes the dog look sideways at you. When you get your breath, you decide that the most sensible thing to do it grab a large knife, go outside, and hack off the offending chunk of the cob with its hitchhikers. You repeat this with the second ear, this time without squealing.
I did this. I am proud. I survived the Invasion of the Corn Worm Things. And I very carefully took the cobs by two fingers, rinsed them well, and dropped them in boiling water. If there was anything else living on them, too bad.
When J got home, he was informed about the aforementioned incident.
And told that in the future, he can clean his own damn corn.
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