A Better Man Read online

  One great thing about having kids is they force you into an active practice of love whether you are ready for it or not. Among the best gifts children give to their parents is the gift of showing them their own worst self. When the two of you were babies, Mom and I could barely function from sleep deprivation and the mental fatigue of chasing around two chubby toddlers. At times, we yelled at each other. Sometimes we yelled at you. We took turns eating dinner because somebody always had to jiggle the baby while the other person wolfed down their meal. We saw the worst in each other and adapted. We learned how to be sleep-deprived and angry and impatient. We learned to get comfortable feeling inept, to navigate resentment, to persevere through moments of real disdain for each other. We sucked, but over time, the two of you taught us how to suck less.

  The truth is, I sucked worse than Mom because I was less emotionally prepared for parenthood than Mom. Why was I less emotionally prepared? Because I had spent the thirty previous years in a cauterized emotional state. To get better, I had to figure out a way to become a new me. I had to figure out how to become a better man.

  That process is slow and ongoing. It’s an everyday practice, just like the practice of love is an everyday practice. The good news is I can practice them at the same time because they’re the same thing.

  You may be wondering how somebody gets into the practice of love. Believe me, I’m an amateur at this stuff, but I don’t think love has to be mysterious. It’s not something you find, like a penny on the street. It’s right there, in front of you, but you have to be willing to let it in. How?

  I’ve found that it helps to start with some of love’s components and work on those: patience, kindness, empathy, resilience. All the stuff you already know. Maybe you just pick one of those things to work on in a given moment, or day. It’s like anything else. You practice and practice. Sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it doesn’t come at all.

  Sometimes you fake it.

  A lot of times you will fail in these everyday practices. That’s okay. Real men fail. There’s no shame in failure. Most of the time, there’s no shame in giving up, either. Part of the notion of masculinity is this “never quit” mentality. I disagree. There are going to be things you try, fail at, and decide are no longer worthwhile. No problem. I remember when you picked up the saxophone in sixth grade. You gave it a couple years but never loved it. Believe me, we didn’t love it, either. So you quit. No biggie. Quitting stuff is fantastic. I feel like I’ve quit more things than I’ve started. Not this, though, because, in the end, this is the only stuff that matters.

  Listen, I know how naive it sounds to say that “love” is going to fix men. Is love really going to help a guy graduate high school? Get a job? Is love going to feed his family? Is love going to drive the bad guys out of town instead of the gunslinger? Maybe not.

  But maybe.

  Not because love is magical thinking, but because it’s the product of inspiration. All of us are at our best when we’re operating from a place of spirit. When we persevere through difficulties, it’s because we have a reason to do so. Mom, your sister, and you are my reasons.

  You probably thought I was going to get through this whole letter without quoting Beyoncé. Wrong. A reporter for Vogue asked Beyoncé about her hopes for her baby son:

  “I want him to know that he can be strong and brave but that he can also be sensitive and kind. I want my son to have a high emotional IQ where he is free to be caring, truthful, and honest. It’s everything a woman wants in a man, and yet we don’t teach it to our boys.”

  That’s all it is, man.

  That caring, truthful, honest son with a high emotional IQ is only possible if we let our guard down sufficiently enough to allow that other side of our masculinity to fully emerge.

  As you leave home, I’m asking you take a leap of faith: Who you are as a man is enough. It’s more than enough. You don’t need to get married or become a father to be a man. You don’t need a high-paying job. You never have to question your manhood, defend it, or prove it. You only have to be who you are. All I ask is that you be all of who you are. The funny Elijah, the smart Elijah. But also the tender, caring, compassionate Elijah. Give yourself to others and let others give themselves to you.

  There are so many ways to be a man, as many ways as there are to take a breath. Your masculinity is not a competition any more than your humanity is a competition, any more than one breath is better than another. They are all important, each leading to the next. Most of the time you will not even know you are breathing. So it should be with your humanity.

  When I was a kid, somebody told me to “be a man,” but he didn’t tell me how. I’m telling you now. Be strong and resilient, yes. But also, be tender. Be kind. Be forgiving—of others, but equally importantly, of yourself. Breathe. Be inspired. Practice love.

  sixteen

  One Guy

  Turn Around and Wave Goodbye

  You leave for school in a few days. Mom bought new sheets for you, towels, a comforter, fan, reading lamp, a little area rug. Too much stuff, but she’s not giving you stuff—she’s giving you her love. Your school is too far away to drive back and forth and I don’t know how we’re going to get it all on the airplane. The bad news for Mom and me is that you won’t be able to come home as much as we would like, but maybe that’s good news for you.

  I’ve been racing to get this done before you go. Something to give you as you walk out the door (along with that cash you requested). The truth is, though, you probably already had a sense of most of what I’ve put into these pages. We all do. As I said at the beginning, boys attain fluency in the language of masculinity around the time they gain fluency in their spoken language. We may not understand why we communicate the way we do, but most boys conform to the grammar of masculinity as readily as we do to that of our native tongue. You’ve been speaking “boy” as long as you’ve been speaking.

  All languages evolve over time. Sometimes this happens on its own. Sometimes we have to consciously push them forward. Once, when you were about three, we drove past a cemetery. “Look,” you said, pointing to it. “The dead yard.”

  There was another mass shooting yesterday, at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Twenty-two dead and twenty-six wounded. The shooter was a young white male. I was out of the house most of the day and texted with Mom about it. “This problem is going to get worse,” I said to her, but I didn’t think it would happen that day. Around midnight, another gunman—another young white male—opened fire outside a nightclub in Dayton, Ohio. Nine dead, twenty-seven wounded.

  This morning over breakfast, I asked if you’d heard about the double shootings from yesterday. No. And you didn’t seem very interested when I told you about them. “Is this going to be another morning where we talk about murder?” you asked.

  “Probably,” I said.

  You sighed.

  You’ve grown up with these massacres. Your attitude about them isn’t indifference so much as resignation, the recognition that men are going to continue murdering strangers by the score. I’m not even going to bother adding the caveat “unless we do something about it,” because I don’t think we are going to do anything about it any time soon. Fortunately, my track record as a prognosticator is poor, so maybe—hopefully—I’m mistaken. In the meantime, a mass shooting inspired this letter to you and now, I guess, this letter is going to end in the shadow of two more.

  These events linger with me now for days. I try not to watch the news coverage or the funerals or the speeches made by politicians on either side. There’s no point in enraging myself any further, or allowing my sadness to carve out new crevasses to fill. Maybe it’s hard for me to put these events aside because it once happened so close to home. Maybe because I’ve got a young white male of my own. Maybe because our paralyzed country allows it to happen time after time after time.

  When I started writing this letter to you, after the Parkland shootings, I knew that it would be impossible to talk about boys without
talking about everything else. I almost didn’t even start because the task felt too daunting, too insurmountable for a former Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle to take on. What possible use could I be to you on this topic when I can’t even offer a better explanation of when to change your razor blade than, “You just kind of know.”

  But I also knew that nobody else was going to have this conversation with you because nobody ever had it with me. When I looked around, it seemed like nobody was having it with anybody.

  I told you I wanted my dad to tell me the secrets of manhood. As a kid, I envisioned manhood as a series of activities you ticked off one at a time like Boy Scout merit badges. I just needed him to tell me what they were. I thought he could bring me into his hobby room, close the door, and lay it all out for me. “Not all men drive eighteen-wheelers,” he might say, “but every man knows how to drive an eighteen-wheeler.”

  That’s why it was startling to me when the term “man card” popped up in the culture. “Turn in your man card” became the cheeky sneer of choice against men who held their girlfriend’s purse for them, or wept at McDonald’s commercials, or ordered a chocolatini at the bar instead of a whiskey neat. The idea of manhood as a checklist of manly behaviors has survived because, in some ways, that’s exactly what traditional masculinity is. The Infinite Axis of Manliness is alive and well and judging you accordingly. It’s my hope that your generation can shatter it to pieces.

  How do you do it? One guy at a time. One guy asking for help, opening his heart to another, standing up for others. One guy living a conscious life. One guy doing the simple, hard work of being a man. One guy practicing love.

  You’re going to mess up. Everybody does. I do constantly; I mean, you live with me so you already know that. That’s okay. Messing up is part of the deal. But so is asking for forgiveness. So is accepting apologies from others, forgiving them for their mistakes. And so is forgiving yourself, which may be the hardest one of all.

  I have no data to back this up, but I suspect so much of what poisons young men isn’t the hate coming in, but the hate we have for ourselves going out. What stories do you tell yourself about yourself when you realize you cannot measure up to an impossible masculine ideal? We’ve seen so much work being done on this question with girls, and so little with boys.

  ¿Quién es más macho?

  May we put that question forever to rest.

  You’re going to fall in love. Maybe a few times. Remember that love, all love, is a choice. It took me a long time to learn that love is an affirmation we make. Not once, but at all times. When you choose to love somebody, you are committing to give as much or more of yourself than you are expecting to receive in return. You are pouring yourself into another, as Dr. King said.

  I hope you’ll also embrace the good in traditional masculinity. Challenge yourself, test your limits, persevere. Have adventures. Do stupid, fun shit just because it’s stupid and fun. Jump out of an airplane (and try not to throw up all over yourself like I did the one time I went skydiving). Use your body. Run. Eat too much ice cream once in a while. Once, I dropped acid with my buddies in the Badlands of South Dakota. Obviously, as your father, I could never in good conscience endorse your taking LSD, but I am saying it was one of the best nights of my life.

  When I think about your leaving home, I have an image in my mind of you walking out the front door, your back to us. When I left home, though, all I remember is looking forward. I told you about the day my mom dropped me off at college in New York. She brought me up to my dorm room and I remember my impatience at wanting her to go. Just go, I thought. Go, so I can begin my life. What was she thinking about on her drive back to New Jersey? It never even occurred to me to wonder.

  Every parent has a sense of wholeness at night when they shut off the lights and get into bed and they know that their family is together, and safe, and home. Once you leave, you’ll carry that feeling with you out the door, and we’ll never get it back.

  Of course you’ll come home, but it won’t be the same again. Early school mornings out on the edge of the driveway waiting for the bus together. Packed lunches. Middle school dances. Our little family watching Stranger Things together, two episodes at a time. Driving lessons. Graduation. From now on, each time you come back, this home will feel less and less like your own. One day, you’ll tell somebody you’re going to your parents’ house and you won’t even notice you said it.

  When we moved into this house several years ago, you were still more of a kid than a young adult, and you asked for a loft bed that you could climb into every night. We resisted at first because we thought it would be ugly and that you would outgrow it by the time you reached high school. You insisted, though, so we gave in and bought you one. The thing takes up half your room and it is, as predicted, an eyesore. We’ve joked with you that we’re dismantling that monstrosity as soon as you walk out the door, but now that you’re almost gone, I think maybe we’ll keep it up for a while.

  Neither of my parents survived into old age. When you are the child of parents who did not live very long, it’s natural to wonder how many years you have before you join them in the dead yard.

  I remember that last Christmas with my dad. His ridiculous teddy bear hat. That inscrutable Dad smile. None of us knows what tomorrow will bring. The kids at Sandy Hook and Parkland, the people in El Paso yesterday, and Dayton. We don’t know so we do the best with what we’ve got right now. And right now, I have so much gratitude for you and your sister. My life as a man is better than it ever could have been without you. Kids teach us parents more than we can ever teach them. You’ve done that for me. Thanks for being my kid. Thank you for being my son.

  I love you,

  Dad

  Acknowledgments

  I went into this project with some reluctance. Okay, fear. A few people prodded me forward, especially my editor, Betsy Gleick. It was her idea to turn my original op-ed into this book and her tough love that kept me moving forward when I was not sure I could. Thank you to her and everybody at Algonquin and Workman who have been so supportive from the beginning.

  Before I began writing, I did a lot of reading. I’ve mentioned some of the authors in the book but I will mention them again here, as well as some others. For decades, many people have been asking the same questions about men that I only started asking in the last couple years. Thank you to Michael Kimmel, bell hooks, Barbara Ehrenreich, Dan Kindlon, Susan Faludi, Michael Thompson, Robert Webb, and Grayson Perry. I would encourage any readers who want to understand this subject in a deeper way to read any of these writers.

  A few people have taken the time to talk with me about this subject. Thank you to Wade Davis, Kari Keone, Liz Plank, Ina Garten, Lauren Duca, Linda Balsama, and the many men I spoke with who shared their stories and affirmed my belief that men wish they had a better language and outlet to talk about this essential part of themselves.

  Thank you to Barry Goldblatt.

  Thank you to Ted Schachter, Rachel Salzman, and everybody at Schachter Entertainment.

  Thank you, as always, to Martha, Ruthie, and Elijah.

  I just wanted to add that I know this is a loaded topic and I suspect that there will be people who felt like I got certain things “wrong,” or I didn’t address specific issues. No doubt those people are correct from their perspective. My primary intention was to write a loving, inclusive book that serves as a primer for guys to begin thinking about basic questions about modern masculinity, the same questions that I’ve been asking myself as a man and the father of a young man. My questions may not be your questions, and my answers may not be your answers. I think that’s okay. My secondary intention was simply to demonstrate that it’s possible for regular, nonacademic men to have these conversations in ways that don’t diminish their masculinity. Girls talk about girl stuff all the time. It’s time guys started doing the same.

  About the Author

  Michael Ian Black is an actor, comedian, and writer who started his career with the sketch
comedy show The State, on MTV, and has created and starred in many other television shows. Movie appearances include Wet Hot American Summer, The Baxter, and Sextuplets.

  Black is the author of several books for children, including the award-winning I’m Bored, I’m Sad, and I’m Worried, and the parody A Child’s First Book of Trump. His books for adults include the memoirs You’re Not Doing It Right and Navel Gazing, and the essay collection My Custom Van. Black also co-authored with Meghan McCain America, You Sexy Bitch.

  As a stand-up comedian, Michael regularly tours the country, and he has released several comedy albums. His podcasts include Mike & Tom Eat Snacks, with Tom Cavanagh; Topics, with Michael Showalter; How to Be Amazing; and Obscure.

  He lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children.

  Published by

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2020 by Michael Ian Black. All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051609

  eISBN: 978-1-61620-951-3