I’m alone in a bar, listening to Lee Dorsey’s “Ride Your Pony”: “Get on your pony and ride … Stay in the saddle”; I’m looking around. Like my sample, I had ideas about the women I could love, “types,” and about the type of life I wanted, but didn’t and couldn’t know: Where did those types come from, parents, movie stars, etc.
Oh, man, the psyche is a prison, every one of us his own guard on the top floor of the panopticon. Our living dreams, even them, are so routinized, and can’t we live bigger, and not be delusional?
Being educated levels the economic (and marital) playing field, which is another reason why public education is being destroyed (I think). Stats show that what college you attend determines your future mate.
College-educated men are a lower percentage of the male population than they once were. In general, college dwellers in dorms, in 2010, the Times reported from Census Bureau figures, outnumbered people in adult correctional institutions: 2.3 million to 2.1 million. That’s a positive shift from 2000.
Sick shit, totally.
stories are existential facts
Three of my subjects played in high school bands. One turned pro, plays tenor, but needs a day job since his employed girlfriend split, because he was too caught up in his music, was never there, when he was there. He didn’t listen. He says, “What can I do about that? It’s true.”
Feminist mothers homeschooled, to some extent, couldn’t do it all, may have indulged their sons. Or, hated them?
My subjects suggest or explain that their girlfriends have left them often because of their lack of commitment; or, their straying—or cheating—which doesn’t mean they didn’t love the girlfriend, they just couldn’t commit. Some have used cheating to end it all. Most find “confrontation” near—
impossible. One, whose best friend is a gay woman, has tried “lesbian processing,” talking it through. Lesbians do that, according to her. But he’s lousy at talking about his feelings.
Some note, as they have grown older, playing the field isn’t what it was, since guilt and consequence have entered their minds. They feel more responsible. Again: “owning your shit.”
Also, with age, they know they won’t as easily attract younger females for bed or wed, unless they have money, power, institutional power, or some quality that shows their prowess, intellectual or otherwise. Most want babies—at the least, they want to know their sperm can penetrate an egg and make one. Older, more look for comfort, companionship, from a woman. Comfort means less risk, and some subjects face that moment, a crossroads, and some want to blame females for imposing that—a need for safety.
They’re getting worn down standing, pitching, swinging for the stands. They get old, and it gets old.
(My relationships haven’t worked out. I might always be a single straight white male. I’ve read the stats, those guys are the least happy on the planet, and I know that’s true, because anything straight men believe about themselves needs to be supported by having a woman. The guys I see on the street, unwanted men, become bums, and year by year look crazier. No female wants this male, because he doesn’t offer anything. Their clothes are filthy, they stink, they let their teeth go, they have no money, they’re done. Sometimes, I believe women keep men from becoming bums.
Curious my thoughts, worries. New men, or newish ones, might think women will keep them sane or from losing touch with the world, being human. Like their mothers, when they were caring for them?)
In groups, new men mostly don’t discuss their feelings. Or with the woman they’re dating, until they feel safe. It’s an issue, though I might argue that the new woman doesn’t want to hear about the new man’s feelings, because the “old man” talked all the time.
Subject 3: One big difference between my father and me might be that while I am concerned with my relationship with women, with my wife, with my friends, he is not. I look at him and assume that he is sad, that he is unsatisfied with his relationship with my mom. But hard as it is, I have to realize, sometimes, that he is actually just fine. He is satisfied, even happy. He just isn’t interested in having some of the things that I want. I look at him and think: He’s so sad, so unfulfilled. But when I really look at him, he’s fine, more or less. He has a different set of values, and most of the things I mentioned in my first note—friendships with women, etc.—aren’t that important. It makes his life easier in some ways, more difficult in others. I do sometimes wonder what my kids will think of me, both in terms of my personality, but also in terms of my era, such that it is. They will probably see things that I just don’t, and they may attribute feelings to those things in ways that I do not (fail to?) feel. That’s the way, right? But I think that if I aim for some sort of satisfaction (not always easy for me), that will be enough, and if they are vaguely decent (which I hope they are), they will recognize that too.
There was a discussion of owning guns. In my sample, only one does. But would he use it?
Subject 20: Where I live now, hunting is a big sport for men. Sometimes I feel a little unmasculine when I’m asked if I hunt, and I say, “No, I’m not really into guns.” I mean, come on, what man doesn’t like guns, right? There’s usually not much of a response, maybe a change in subject. In our fathers’ generation, men didn’t get away with not participating in masculine activities, for fear that they would be shunned or beat up or called a sissy or gay, and if they weren’t good at those activities they were forced to do more of them to toughen them up and make them more of a “man.” Although it isn’t as common, that mentality still exists. The funny thing is that even though I know I have no interest in guns, I still catch myself thinking that maybe I should learn to shoot so I can go out with the guys and do “guy” stuff, but it’s really not me and I let the thought pass. It’s nice to not have the pressure of doing something that you don’t really want to do just because it’s what you “should” do to fit into your gender group.
The ex of a friend of mine kept a baseball bat by her bed. She said she’d swing at the head of any man who broke into her apartment. Would she, he wondered, and would she swing it at him? Under what conditions? They broke up before he could find out.
mating rituals: pretty complicated
Subject 3: When I was dating a woman in my early thirties, my dad once told me it was time to make things right, but I was so put off by this; the relationship wasn’t working out, but he had no interest in that, only in the “duty” to marry.
Subject 7: My view of women, a very heterosexual manful perspective, still to some degree, sees women as objects of desire, to be admired, looked at, and at best had. I do that in my head, go through the process of imagining being intimate with them, what that would be like. My father was not—or at least when he taught me and my brothers—I have three—how to look at women for beauty—he was not relaying intimacy as much as the idea of purely fucking them, using them sort of, though he personally needed them for more than their bodies.
Subject 2: I went to [an Ivy League] college, where, at the tender age of nineteen, I once drunkenly said to a girl (woman?) whose company I enjoyed, “You’re a really cool chick.” To which she replied, “Do I look like a fucking bird to you?” It may have been the last time we spoke.
I asked two from my study what they saw as the biggest difference between men and women, in their experience (I insist on “in your experience”).
Subject 22: Take a guy and put him in a room alone, and he will masturbate. I don’t know about women. But don’t imagine that’s the same.
Subject 15: I’m definitely not an expert on feminism. The aim of creating equality between the genders makes a lot of sense, a still-unfinished project. But, in my experience, it seems as if this notion of equality has been taken to a literal extreme, in which to recognize any difference at all between the genders is considered a deep and horrible slight (especially coming from a man). This seems to me an unfortunate turn. It seems to me that the very real, inescapable differences between the genders (even though an
yone now can medically alter their own sex) should be celebrated, if anything. Men are, in fact, fundamentally different than women, and vice versa. I just don’t see any reasonable counter-argument to this. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Fran Lebowitz has said some great stuff on this, and she, of course, can successfully speak about it (as a lesbian and, well, because she’s Fran Lebowitz), whereas if I did I imagine I would be drawn into some regressive sixties-style Norman Mailer shouting match (which I can’t help but secretly think might be healthy). Now that men and women no longer actually need one another to reproduce the species, what does a man see when he looks at a woman? What does a woman see when she looks at a man? Can heterosexuality even any longer claim the status of normal? On the bright side! Thanks to our personal freedom, etc., it’s very important to me that I learn how to become a mature, responsible adult male (still working on it!). I hope to find myself in a loving, mutually respectful mature relationship someday (not there yet!) and I am totally optimistic that I will.
(Subject 15 strongly argues that the use of sperm donors is unethical.)
the natives are restless: new men and recidivism
Behavior changes: men carry their babies on their chests, do the shopping, change diapers. But thousands of years of male behavior and expectations, and the unconscious—these don’t change as fast. Women, they’re caught, also, in mixed messages, they’re seeing images of strong, indie women mixed with nearly naked women shaking their booties. Change isn’t one-sided, never entirely.
Subject 19: I hear women say all the time, “I just want to be taken care of.” I’ve wondered sometimes if women have experienced an existential disappointment, having fought so hard to obtain certain jobs and for professional equality, only to discover corporate America is a soulless, empty wasteland. I wonder if that’s played a part in this nostalgia.
(In this study Mad Men [2007–2015] is regularly cited, Don Draper’s fedora, smart suit, endless smoking and drinking, cavalier treatment of women, his infidelity to his little wife in the suburbs.)
What is independence? Mother talked about her independence from Father, about being “more than a wife and mother,” but she was both of those, and also had a gig outside the house, which she usually brought home. She was the one who made dinner. She said Father came home too late to do it. She did attach a schedule on the refrigerator door, for us kids, our chores. She did try to get it across to us. Still, I saw her doing trad things, not much happening from my father. Now there are couples and marriages who do this mutuality biz better, and a chore can depend upon who’s better at doing it. Some guys like cooking and are better at it.
Subject 3: At one point in my life I would occasionally say “I don’t want to be a man,” which confused some people—they thought I wanted to undergo gender reassignment. Really, I just wanted to be free to LOOK at men and women without so much interference. I still believe in all of this, but as time has gone on I have also realized that I didn’t want to engage in a particular relationship with men, either: I didn’t want to compete. My dad always wants to compete. And the fact that I dodged this has been something of a problem for me. (Freud would probably think so.) I think that men—particularly fathers—benefit from holding on to some of the old tropes of masculinity. Because it’s still part of the world, and if you ignore it too much, then you wind up with your own dissatisfactions. Feminism helped me circumvent tons of bullshit. (For one thing, I’ve found very rewarding friendships with men as well as women—not always an easy thing.) But had I competed with my father, that would have probably cleared more area for me to distance myself from my parents. But it’s a subtlety that some are better at than others.
Subject 20: I think feminism has affected how I relate to myself as a man because it’s blurred the lines of femininity and masculinity. It’s broken down the walls and the boxes of labels and expectations. Because of that people are redefining what it is to be a man or a woman, and identifying as a man or a woman isn’t reduced to just being masculine or feminine.
Freud: “Fantasy is a protective fiction.”
For the older dude, fantasy gets tougher to sustain and support, in all senses; and, mostly it has to be lived in secret, except, say, fantasy football.
The Dude: Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. The adored loser. Everything he did was wrong, but he remained rebellious, an outlier, and his kick-ass diffidence, his never going to give in to The Man, rates high, still. The desire to “drop out of the game,” leave the “rat race,” never ends. A loser who wins by not competing is OK.
Fantasies turn into secrets: adults are expected to leave their fantasies behind or make enough money to buy them (secretly). It’s why watching porn is normative: it’s available, affordable fantasy (there is also sympathy-porn, which encourages do-gooders). Porn is frowned on, always accessible, on the internet, in hotels, accepted practice, not mentioned at the breakfast table unless an all-male group, gay, straight, bi. Some guys tell me they’re addicted; but to an ethnographer, social customs are not addictions. In addiction, chemicals change the body’s functioning, and neural pathways.
I suppose it could be hypothesized that porn—since when excited, blood rushes to the brain, and penis or clitoris—
affects body chemistry, and when frequently indulged might build those neural highways similar to ones for drugs.
Subject 17: Pornography seems like such a standard thing, not usually discussed too much, but just there between the cracks. I imagine it’s changed the way men think of women, but I’m not sure exactly how. On the one hand, there’s the standardized sexual ideal, but in reality, my suspicion is that because of porn’s wide range, there’s actually quite a spectrum of ages, bodies, and activities that men look at and let themselves be curious about. A lot of that is private and not discussed, but I think it’s there. And even more so with men (I’m talking about straight guys here) about ten years younger, in their twenties.
Fantasy is part of daily reality. Some things don’t clock. Some of us humans keep it/our clocks/our cocks closer in our lives. For some, the fantasy IS reality, it’s how they live, what they live for, the illusion.
Like my sample, I had ideas about the types of women I could love, about the type of life I wanted. Typical fantasies. Can’t we DREAM bigger and not be delusional?
Subject 6: It is beautiful to see men being tender with children, with the women in their lives, and with their male friends. A gay male friend of mine recently sent me a video of a bunch of guys having an afternoon sex party in a private park. Dozens of guys sharing a few hired women. Some of the women were tough, laughing, between sucking dicks and getting fucked all over the place, counting their money, etc. The guys heard in the audio of the cameraman’s camera was revealing. Guys made fun of other guys not being able to get off because too many people were around. Men teased each other about the pleasure they were receiving, just received, or were about to. There was a genuine respect for this need, and the willingness on behalf of the participants and the voyeurs to be in the moment without a terrible lot of negative judgment. Particularly interesting too was the lack of misogyny. The guys were partying, drinking beers, smoking pot, and all the while really quite respectful of the women’s professional space. It was intriguing to watch not from a sexual standpoint but more from a sociological standpoint. My friend wrote to me about it saying that he was surprised that heterosexual men could be so free with each other, so uninhibited and celebratory of male sex and pleasure in front of each other very much in the same way that homosexual men can be and do. He remarked how much of the misunderstanding around sexuality came from people holding very limited views of sex, particularly of heterosexual sex from a male perspective. As paradoxical as it may be, the video did reveal a nuanced engagement that men have with each other. This is an extreme example but could be taken into consideration, with a range of coded male behaviors (e.g., the etiquette and conventions observed in male professional sports).
I hav
e questions and thoughts about his perception. But I will leave his response free of my commentary.
daily desire
Existential facts on the ground, going farther out into the field, making street observations: Unusual, even rare, to see unlike males together (or females)—Armani suit with uniformed soldier, say, unless related or having a goal—drugs. Images exceed a frame on the wall or a place in a file. The platforms disseminate what’s seen exponentially; images pile on, views of dailiness (thickening). Life’s thick and shallow.
Street cruising: older gay men once employed overt signals, keys, color of handkerchiefs, now almost extinct, at least in urban sites, because of apps. Younger men, in transgen era, openly flirt.
Heterosexual cruising: “Ass men” have little trouble. She passes, they turn, stare. Breast men cast their eyes down, then lift to her face: large-breasted women know their breasts come first. Many get annoyed, but with cleavage the trend du jour, women expose everything; and, breast men have a field day. “Overwhelming in the summer,” Subject 22 said.
The “first look,” though, is not a distant memory to the New Man, who will, like older men, pursue her on first sight.
That first look, OK, a mirage of transference, and powerful, which is why movie stars still cause pulses to race. She or he represents a lost love, a lost hope.
A typical Friday night, in the field: I decided to watch couples, all kinds, all the varieties. Stood on a corner, at about seven p.m. and then midnight, witching hour, when drunkenness and being high let guards down. Cool observational platform. Beginning of night: heterosexual couples walk a foot from each other, unless they know each other. But “first daters,” those before they’ve had sex, are trying to make an impression on each other. (Have to choose one. Hard call.) Younger women laugh, smile a lot. Kind of annoying, really. The guys, well, they’re waiting. At midnight, they’re walking much closer to each other. Guys flagging cabs. Impatient. The women, they’re harder for me to read.
Men and Apparitions Page 29
