A Better Man Page 10
Dignity allows for humility. If you believe in your own self-worth, it costs you nothing to admit fault, or to turn the other cheek when insulted. Your dignity does not need to defend itself.
Respectful pride can enhance your dignity and lift up the people around you. Taking pride in yourself, your surroundings, and your community can, and should, serve as motivation for yourself and others. By all means, take pride in who you are and the things you have done. After all, you’re the 236th best player of one level of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.
Sometimes I worry that you’re unwilling to put enough of yourself forward to risk failure. When Mom and I got on you about schoolwork, that was the most frustrating thing to me. Not that you might get a bad grade, but that you wouldn’t risk enough of yourself to try to get a good grade. What if you studied hard and failed? What if you worked your ass off on an essay and it kind of sucked? What if you tried as hard as you could and still came up short? It’s one thing to skate through school with so-so grades knowing that you could have done better; it’s another to go through school with so-so grades knowing that you could not.
One of the most humbling things about being a parent is feeling powerless to prevent your kid from making the same mistakes you did. We’ve talked about how I was a middling student and how much I regret it now. Not because I care about grades, but because I know that my bad habits in school ended up becoming bad habits I still have as an adult. Like you, I too often skate by because I can. Even when I try to fight it, I end up falling back into old patterns, patterns of procrastination and generalized blowing-shit-off that I hate about myself and worry that I see in you. And I worry that we do it for the same reason: What if you try so hard to win but still end up losing? What if you give everything you have to something and it still isn’t enough? What if, in loss, you conclude that you are not enough?
You are enough.
I tell it to you and I believe it for you, just as I believe it for everybody. We are given all the gifts we need to make our way through this world. You have a good brain and a healthy body and, on occasion, you even remember to chew with your mouth closed. Unlike many, you also have some extra gifts: your education, background, and relative financial comfort. Your challenge will be to believe in yourself enough to fail, to learn to take pride in the effort instead of the outcome.
As you leave, I want you to find ways to take pride in the small things you do. The little daily stuff. Washing a dish. Folding your laundry. Whatever. It’s a mindfulness practice, a way of giving your attention and care to something that nobody will notice but you. You can’t “win” at folding a shirt, but you can do it well. I hope you find pride in what you do, who you love, and who you are. Allow your pride to stand you up. Don’t let pride stand in your way.
ten
Gunslinger
You Can’t Do It Alone
Now that you’re eighteen, it drives you crazy when somebody tells you what to do or how to do it. When you went to prom this year, I remember the look of resignation on your face as Mom helped you fit the black tuxedo studs into your buttonholes for you. I laughed because you obviously wanted her to buzz off so you could do it yourself, but at the same time, I don’t think you had any idea what you were supposed to do with them. So you grimaced and endured your mother dressing you for what will probably be the last time in your life. I also know you never would have asked for help. Instead you would have gone to prom with your tuxedo shirt buttoned with regular buttons like a goddamned peasant.
It’s been kind of funny seeing how your independence has asserted itself over time, because you’re a man under the law, but a man who still has to be taught how to use a credit card, put gas in the car, fill out a financial aid form. Because of pride, you don’t want to be told how to do anything, yet you have no idea how to do nearly any of the mundane tasks of adulthood.
Every child eventually craves independence, and despite all those nagging moms and dads reminding their kids to use the bathroom before getting in the car, every parent wants their kid to become independent, too. From a parent’s point of view, we’re looking for reassuring clues that our children will be able to take care of themselves when they leave home. From a kid’s point of view, parents are annoying.
I think independence has a special resonance with boys because traditional American masculinity leaves us highly susceptible to the idea of the “self-made man,” he who lifts himself up through toil and talent without the appearance of any assistance at all. He’s Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs. He’s David Blaine levitating from a sidewalk. As with all magic tricks, the “self-made man” is an illusion.
It’s worth a quick historical detour to talk about the origins of the phrase “self-made man.” Kentucky senator Henry Clay is widely credited with first using the term during a speech in 1832 in which he defined self-made men as those “who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor.” It’s a definition with which most of us would probably still agree. What’s interesting about Clay’s speech, though, is its context: a defense of American manufacturing against foreign corporations. The “enterprising and self-made men” to whom he refers are Southern factory owners who, he argues, can compete with the more technologically advanced factories of Great Britain because of two factors: “water-power and labor.” The labor is slave labor. Those budding Kentucky industrialists, men who have acquired wealth through patient and diligent labor, are, in fact, utterly dependent on the sweat of the enslaved.
Despite this inherent contradiction, the phrase gained popularity over the coming decades, and came to represent an American ideal enveloped in our founding credo: independence. The American experiment contained the promise of self-creation. It’s a romantic idea, one that has animated the American spirit for centuries.
The history we teach ourselves is one of rugged individualists blazing new paths, often literally. They are frontiersmen, cowboys, astronauts. Out there—on the dusty Western mesas, on the vast and tumbling sea, or in the endless maw of outer space—every moment is a battle against forces greater than oneself. The Real Man will tame the savage things and make them his own. He is rough and he is ready, and when you break down the idea of the self-made man even for a second, you realize it’s all bullshit.
I really mean that—it’s such pernicious, colossal bullshit. For starters, patriarchal societies have always kept women more tightly bound to men than men to women, making true independence for one half of our species almost impossible. And the whole notion is harmful because it creates a false narrative about who we men are in society, what we do, and who we owe. Nobody goes it alone now, and they never did. The first European colonizers arrived by the shipload with the backing of corporate sponsors and vast militaries, then relied on the Native population to survive. As the nation matured and pushed westward, the famous American frontiersmen went forth under the protection of a new government handing out land like Halloween candy to anybody who wanted it (so long as the people who wanted it were white men). Wagon trains of pioneers set forth, using the safety of numbers—and the safety provided by scattered military outposts—to cross the country.
Is it even possible to go it alone? Is there any of us who, through some alchemical mixture of fortitude, cunning, and luck, forms himself, like Adam, from the dust? Even the American who might have the greatest claim to such a story says no. In 1859, Frederick Douglass gave a speech entitled “Self-Made Men,” in which he said:
“We have all either begged, borrowed or stolen. We have reaped where others have sown, and that which others have strown, we have gathered. It must in truth be said, though it may not accord well with self-conscious individuality and self-conceit, that no possible native force of character, and no depth or wealth of originality, can lift a man into absolute independence of his fellowmen, and no generation of men can be independent of the preceding generation.”
We are who we are because of those who surround us, and those who cam
e before. Our lives are made possible because of the unknown number of people upon whom we lean. We call those people “society.” Any society is just an agreement between people to help each other out. An individual within that larger group may do great things, but it is the larger collective body that supports them. When we take pride in the accomplishments of our neighbors or countrymen, it’s because we have some stake, however small, in their success. None of us travels as far as we might without walking at least some of the road others have laid.
The choices you make will be your choices. I think we’ve given you a good foundation to make something of yourself, but just know that though fortune may favor the bold, it prefers the privileged.
Time and again, we see that the people most likely to succeed are the people with the most resources at their disposal to help them achieve their goals. They have some combination of stable home lives, good schools, mentors, community support, access to finances. Yes, there will always be people who overcome terrible adversity. Those people deserve to be celebrated, but you shouldn’t have to be extraordinary to be successful.
Think about all the people for whom terrible adversity ends up being overwhelming. Were they born with any less promise than you? Do they deserve any less success?
Boys no less smart or talented than you begin their lives in terrible circumstances—maybe poverty, addiction, neglect—and cannot ever find their way free. Are those boys self-made, too? Or do we acknowledge that circumstances contribute to the lives we end up living?
The myth of the self-made man tells us he owes nothing to others for his place in the world. Yet all of us accrue debt, good and bad. Some of it is payment owed to those who helped us along the way. Some of it is reparations due to those we harmed. I don’t know if it’s possible to ever make good on what we owe, but I know those debts are real, and they will suffocate you if you don’t make some effort to pay them down. Those debts are a good thing because they tether us to one another. Ignoring them leaves us defiant, proud, and alone.
It’s funny how acknowledging the simple truth of what we owe to one another threatens to upend traditional masculinity. All debt leaves us vulnerable, but rather than view our debts as a liability, I would argue that debt can be a source of strength and motivation for the erstwhile self-made man. Without those debts, you end up like some bloodless Ayn Rand character, indifferent to others because you can only see their flawed humanity as an impediment to your own achievements. (If you don’t know who Ayn Rand is, you’ll probably find out in college because it seems like every boy devours her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead when they are looking for an excuse to be an asshole. I know I did.)
The best way we pay off the people we owe is to live good and productive lives. It’s what I expect of you and your sister. The things that you make—family, creative projects, money—those will be your things. You will be able to say, and should say, that your triumphs are yours, but they aren’t yours alone.
The best illusions convince us of one thing when the reality is something else. So it is with the self-made man. A constrained masculinity asks us to embrace this illusion because it venerates independence to the exclusion of our shared interdependence, which is viewed as somehow more feminine.
Think about all those movie gunslingers who ride into town to shoot up the baddies. When beleaguered townspeople call upon the services of that lone ranger, they’re asking for the rough help of a masculine force to clean up the messes of their soft and feminized culture. After the dust settles, the gunslinger collects his due, gets a handshake from the hapless sheriff and a tearful embrace from the girl whose brother’s death he avenged. Then he mounts his faithful steed and trots out of town, alone, toward the endless, lonesome sunset.
He is a man who owes nothing and is owed nothing. When he disappears over the horizon, he is gone for good. Ultimately, that’s the promise of the self-made man. He stands alone and he stands apart. And, as I said, he’s a fantasy.
I want you to dream big. I want you to do everything in your power to activate your ideas. You might end up taking them very far. I hope you do. I hope you recognize the people who help you along the way and I especially hope that you don’t trample on others to get to where you want to go. Instead, gather people close. Allow your successes to be theirs; the sunsets you ride into will be a lot more enjoyable with others at your side.
When I told you I was writing a chapter on self-made men, you smirked and pointed at yourself. Then you made yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the ingredients I bought for you at the grocery store. I laughed.
eleven
Lucky Charms
Choose Happiness
It’s my wedding day. I’m alone in a hotel room getting dressed for the ceremony. Your mom and I have a room for a couple nights because we’ve given your grandparents our place while they’re in New York, and we thought it’d be fun to stay someplace special. Mom left hours ago. She’s getting ready at our friend Kerri’s place downtown, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting: Kerri, her friend Romy, Grandma Sue, and Kerri’s mom Sharon.
I lay my new suit out on the bed. Hugo Boss. The most expensive article of clothing I have ever bought. Still a hell of a lot cheaper than Mom’s dress, and at least I’ll wear the suit more than once. Dark gray jacket and pants, periwinkle shirt, striped tie. Uncle Eric and my friend David are going to stand for me at the service. They’ll meet me at the church later. For now, I’m alone.
I get dressed, re-knotting the tie several times until I get the length right. New black shoes. I walk outside into a gorgeous October New York City afternoon. The church is ten or twelve blocks away. We’d gone back and forth about where we would marry. Church, civil service, temple . . . In the end, Mom’s active Catholicism outweighed my unobserved Judaism, and we picked a modern church right across the street from our apartment building. A homeless guy asks me for money. I open my wallet and hand him a twenty-dollar bill.
“Hey, thanks,” he says.
“I’m getting married!” I say.
“Great,” he says, pocketing the money.
My dad was twenty-two or twenty-three when he met my mom, around the same age I was when I started seeing your mom. They met at Indiana University, as far as I know the first romantic relationship for either of them. Dad was a shy and soft-spoken kid from Queens, New York. I wish I knew exactly how they met and how their courtship unfolded. They had some superficial similarities: both second-generation Jews, eldest children, city kids. Beyond that, I don’t know what they shared other than their own loneliness.
The year before, my mom had suffered something like a nervous breakdown. The circumstances remain a little cloudy, but I think I have a good idea of what happened. In high school, she’d developed a friendship with a couple a few years older than her whose children she babysat for. Unhappy at home, Mom spent a lot of time hanging out at their house with the mom while the husband worked. They became close friends. After graduation, my mom went off to college, returning home every now and again to babysit.
One weekend, the couple went away for a couple days, leaving Mom with two little kids to watch. By itself, a weekend alone with two toddlers might be enough to cause most eighteen-year-olds to have a nervous breakdown. I was nearly thirty when you guys came along and, trust me, you guys almost did me in a few times. Something happened with my mom that weekend, though, that crossed a line. When the couple returned from their weekend trip, something happened—some outburst—that resulted in a call to my mother’s parents to pick up their hysterical daughter.
My grandparents came for their daughter and, against her will, put her in a psychiatric hospital for six weeks, where she underwent repeated courses of electroshock therapy. Mom later told me she didn’t remember much from this period of her life; the shock therapy erased her memories. I interviewed her several times during the last couple years of her life, and piecing everything together, I think I have a good idea of what caused her breakdown.
When the couple came home from their weekend together, my mom said she “caused a scene.” She doesn’t remember exactly what she said, but I can easily imagine my voluble mother, in an explosive outburst, confessing her love to the woman.
Of course I’m speculating, but whatever she said was significant enough to land her in the hospital. There, the doctors tried to “cure” her homosexuality using the standard method of the day: pumping the brain with thousands of volts of electricity. The only thing the shock therapy accomplished, she told me in our interviews, was that it made her hate her parents.
What was it like for her to return to school the following year? She must have been craving quiet, normalcy. She found it in a shy boy from Queens. I wonder how much she told him about what she’d been through. Maybe some, maybe none at all.
From my dad’s perspective, I suspect he just wanted a girlfriend, the way I did when I was his age. The way you do right now. Somehow, they became a couple. I like to think of them in the beginning of their relationship being sweet to each other, and kind. Talking. I hope that’s what it was like. I hope they were friends. Within a year, they married. In their wedding photos, they look young and heartbreakingly hopeful.