Well, I’ve got to begin somewhere. I’ve told you all that I’m (along with three partners) opening a bar, and that in so doing am discovering manlinesses within myself that I’d never participated in, never thought I had in me, never really respected, never wanted.
Recently Tom Devine, who posts here regularly and vigorously, wrote a blurb about us in his blog in which he called me a UMass professor and businessman. I quickly corrected him that I am not a professor by any stretch, just a grad student and adjunct instructor, and that, I’ve never thought of myself as a businessman, and until now would have been sickened by the thought of being one, let alone being referred to as one in a public forum. But a businessman I am being recognized as in the small town I live in because at least something of a businessman I have become. I walk into town hall, and people I don’t know say hello, know who I am. They’re friendly people, and they say hello to everyone, but there’s something about their tone that says that a.) they know me even though I don’t know them, and that’s okay; and that b.) they’re giving me a kind of respect I’ve never had before that involves being a pillar of a community, a mover and a shaker, yes, a local businessman.
I’ve always thought of myself as an artist of one kind or another, but at the same time the guy who’s just a little too, well, normal (sports-playin’, TV watchin’, babe-oglin’) at his core to really be an artist. Of course, as I’ve grown older I’ve become less attached to the pose defining the artist, the superficial qualities of what I deemed “artist” have faded as I’ve met more and more fine art-makers who don’t nearly fit the Sam Beckett ascetic archetype I’d long idealized, an archetype I could never even vaguely attempt to duplicate. But I digress. Now, I suddenly have the appearance of having money (what I actually have is a fair chunk o’ debt), or at least what comes with it, ownership of a piece of property and the business within said property. I am perceived as that most heinous of adjectives to my punk-rock college self: legitimate.
This is a kind of grown-up-ness that I was never taught to value. Intellectual growth and growth as an artist, an educator, perhaps some sort of civil servant or other good-doer are what I was taught to value. Not growth as an owner of things, a builder of things, a contributor to, perhaps even a leader a community, to a local economy. I’m not opposed to being any of these in others who do good work and good works in those roles, but they’ve never been for me, but they all to me say both “adult” and “man” in ways I’ve never imagined being mine. Last night I walked into my local cafe/bistro, and I could tell that I was being seen in a new light. The Sox game was on and several local fellows were watching the tube. Someone I hardly knew gave me a manly nod, which I returned. Someone else asked me how "the work" was coming, and I told them about building the deck, installing the subflooring, painting the ceiling, installing the windows. We spoke of roofing.
At times, especially when I’ve got a piece of writing rumbling about in my head trying to get writ, I can be grumpy in the cafes and other public spaces I like to work in; I give people a curt nod to get back to my table and sit down at my computer. As writer-in-the-cafe guy I could do that. I could accept people thinking me an asshole sometime if it allowed me to get down to work. Last night I realized I can’t be that guy anymore. If I even vaguely snub a neighbor or acquaintence now, I’m doing it from a position of perceived authority and power (yes, owning a bar isn’t necessarily much in the wide world, but in a depressed mill town, it ranks considerably above being a teaching grad student and “writer” (they seen plenty o’ those loons wandering around, oft unemployed), and I simply cannot be that guy: the aloof, arrogant, bar-owner guy. Although, if the bar fails, I imagine I’ll be quite comfy being the guy-who-tried-to-open-a-bar-in-Turners guy. In short, I’m much more comfortable as a "loser" than I think I’ll be when thought of as a "winner."
I also realized last night that if, however, I were a woman writer/teacher who went and bought a bar and was rebuilding it from the beams in, I’d have none of the hesitance I have to being the Man. As a woman "winner," I’d fucking flaunt it, I’d strut it, because I’d still be a rebel, an outsider, an iconoclast, subverting the dominant paradigm while succeeding within it. My problem, I realized, is with being a man who’s being the Man.
As you may have read in these pages I was raised by a feminist and a moral philosopher. I was raised in the ’70s, in an atmosphere and an era in which traditional take-charge/build-stuff manliness was harshly, loudly critiqued. On my bathroom wall is a postcard-sized reproduction of a Jenny Holzer aphorism in block red text on a piece of plywood: “Turn soft and lovely any time you have the chance.” It’s an ambiguous reference to the way women were traditionally taught how to succeed, but I think I’ve spent a lot of my life, to one extent or another, trying to turn soft and lovely at even the hint of my being a builder, a doer, a maker, a winner, an aggressive, assertive MAN. While I’ve always wanted to stay a man, I’ve never wanted to be the Man – never wanted to be a landlord, a boss, an owner-operator. Now I am all three. I’ve found myself changing on a daily basis in response to the associated challenges suddenly placed before me.
My high school was the only small private school in my town. Its values were nearly the opposite of my parents – it was reactionary, patriarchal (all male), athletic, proudly competitive. How my parents ended up sending me to a school that contradicted so many of their values is a story for another post. Suffice to say that while the administration and parents weren’t much like me and mine, many of the teachers were superb, and, at least in the English and History departments, were shaggy lefties trying to sneak their values in whenever they could. The sole value that my school, formerly a military academy, now day-schoolified, held up as valid was LEADERSHIP. In reponse, I became a punk rocker (oh, okay, a new waver, but with like totally punk rock elements), and shunned anything that felt to me like leading in the terms the Albany Academy for Boys laid it out, I avoided “success,” in any way I could beyond as an actor and writer, although if I’d been a better athlete in high school I probably would’ve succumbed a bit more. And yet, here I am, at 42, finally doing something worthy of sending in to the alumni bulletin. Weird.
So that’s the one side of this bar venture of mine, the being-a-businessman-about-town part.
Part two, to come in a few days, will address, actually building things and how it’s changing my behavior all around and the way I see the world of men and myself anew in said world. It will address the manning-up of the first time construction worker, about actually building things with my hands, which I’ve never taken to nor rebelled against, I just didn’t have much obvious chance to ever experience it. My school, more or less a finishing school for future country club members, had no shop class (and no sex ed – it’s a wonder I ever bothered trying that stuff, either). My father was about as unhandy a father as ever there was – or, not necessarily unhandy, he just didn’t participate in that arena. Not only didn’t he have a shop or a workbench, he didn’t even have tools beyond a hammer, a screwdriver and some pliers. He was second a generation Jewish immigrant who rose to become a member of the middle-class and an intellectual. He lived a life of the mind, a life in academia. Many an immigrant’s dream was to get away from working with the hands, and he succeeded in doing so.
What’s surprising me is not just that I’m working with my hands, but the confidence in seemingly unrelated aspects of my life my involvement in construction has been building in me as I build this bar. I’ll tell you all about it soon.
