Recently, a dude friend and I were comparing gyms (I’ve returned to the YMCA fold, having come to the conclusion that all gyms suck but the Y sucks less.) and he told me this story:
He was in the locker room of the Y in Nothampton, MA a couple of years ago and there was a skinny, naked older-teenager parading sulkily and effeminately back and forth for quite a while. The young man was quite clearly putting himself on display, albeit confrontationally so, but to what end? Mind you, this was not an "urban" gym but a YMCA in Western Massachusetts, a liberal and gay haven, to be sure, but a town where the Y is still a more-or-less “straight” gym, in terms of both sexuality and straight-and-narrow. Then my friend noticed that the young guy had a tattoo across the very base of his back: one word, in bold, black, gothic script: “HARDER.” It seemed clearly intended as an imperative for someone standing behind him. My friend found the tattoo upsetting, revolting, but he also pitied what he saw as the kid’s masochistic self-hatred. My friend’s significant other (female), who we met up with later on, shuddered when reminded of the story.
While I was initially shocked by my imagined picture of the boy and his tattoo, what stuck with me is what a literally and figuratively indelible personal/aesthetic/ political/sexual, and clearly anti-masculist-statement this young man was making. His single word evokes visceral thoughts of violence and submission, of a queerness (I can’t imagine his word for it would be gay-ness or homosexuality) that flips the bird at the now somewhat mainstreamed, desexualized gay man (See “Will and Grace”). Sure, his tattoo is also very childish, or, at best, adolescent, but is (assuming he or his parents haven’t since paid for the tat’s removal) a clever, brave, and rebellious statement, and I was impressed. In an age when the known archetypes for male rebellion become macho cliches (see any men’s Levi’s ad), he shocks and rebels.
This story, and my reaction to it, also resonates for me in terms of Dan’s recent posts about having some regrets at not having taken greater advantage of the privileges afforded men, most notably to have as much sex as they can as young as they can. While, like most boys, I’ve at times wished I’d had more sex as a teen, I also have always had a converse (perverse?) desire to relinquish as much purely male authority as I can. When I’m winning too easily at a sport or game, I often back off, sometimes so far that I lose, which can be quite frustrating. When I win an argument, I often want to apologize. When in a group (a class, a writing group, etc.), I tend to see myself as pushy or obnoxious, but I’ve recently been told by a woman friend (who witnessed my frustration at wanting to speak in such a group but not finding an opening) that I back too far off in conversation for fear of interrupting, especially of interrupting women. I don’t think this is particularly noble of me, it’s just how I’m built (and how I’ve been built). I don’t think I under-represent myself too terribly much, though, and when I have something I really want to say, I can assert myself with the best/worst of men, if more easily so among only men. The kid with the “HARDER” tattoo, as I imagine him, encapsulates a far, far extreme of that desire to relinquish traditional a male role and its accompanying entitlement, and as such he fascinates.
