In a Man's World - Father, Son, Brother, Friend, and Other Roles Men Play 9780453004909

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"Startling and revealing. Gets to the heart of male-to-male relationships." .

.

— The Washington Post

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Garfinkel

with a foreword by Daniel Goleman of The New York Times

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IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

Perry Garfinkel

IN

A MAN'S WORLD

Father, Son, Brother, Friend,

and Other Roles Men Play

With a Foreword by Daniel Goleman, The New YorkTimes

TEN SPEED PRESS Berkeley, California

Excerpt from The Anatomy of Swearing by Ashley Montagu, copyright

© 1967. Re-

printed by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., New York.

Excerpt from The Male Machineby Mark Fasteau, copyright ©1976. Reprinted by

permission of McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York. Excerpt from Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives ofSavages

and Neuroticsby Sigmund Freud, translated by A.A. Brill, M.D., copyright ©1918 by A. A.

Brill

and renewed 1946 by Gioia B. Bernheim and Edmund Brill. Re-

printed by permission of Gioia B. Bernheim and

Edmund Brill, Belfast, ME.

Excerpt from "Discovery of a Father" by Sherwood Anderson, copyright ©1939

by The Readers Digest and renewed 1966 by Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson. Originally published in The Readers Digest. Reprinted by permission of Harold

Ober Associates, Inc., New York. Copyright ©1985, 1992 by Perry Garfinkel All rights reserved.

No part of this book maybe reproduced in any form,

except for brief reviews, without the written permission of the publisher.

1€>

TEN SPEED PRESS P.O.

Box 7 123

Berkeley, California

94707

Text design and typography by Hal Hershey

Cover design by Fifth

FIRST

Street

Design

TEN SPEED PRESS PRINTING 1992

Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data Garfinkel, Perry.

In a man's world p.

/

Perry Garfinkel.

cm.

Originally published:

New York New American Library, c 1985. :

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-89815-473-1 1

I.

.

Men

—United

States

— Psychology.

2.

Masculinity (Psychology)

Title.

[HQ1090.3.G37

1992]

155.03'32—dc20

92-10846

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

1

2 3 4 5

- 96 95 94 93 92

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I

would

like to

thank those people whose

efforts

helped make this book

Sandy Mandel, Ellen Pearlman, Sierra Zephyr, Maria Monroe, and Judy Barule for typing and transcribing at various stages and for their valu-

possible:

able feedback;

Suzanne Lipsett

for shaping, structuring,

and "teasing up the

overarching theme" in the manuscript; Joseph Esposito for early sensitive

Goleman the years and for finding this book its editorial direction; Daniel

of Sanford

J.

for friendship first

and support through

publisher; Francis Greenburger,

Greenburger Associates, for recognizing potential

in the be-

ginning; Carol

Mann, of the Carol Mann Agency, for continuing to believe

later on; Steve

Berman,

for planting the seed of the idea in the

first

place;

and Phil Wood, for giving it a second life. I

would also like to express my deep appreciation to those friends who,

each in their

own way, have supported me through

Daniel Ben-Horin, Jeremy Berge,

Mirabai Bush, Bill

Elliot,

Julie Berriault,

the years: Gaeta Bell,

Lonny Brown, John Bush,

Shoshona Frisch, Jeff Greenwald, Ira Kamin, Elliot

Mary McNulty, Richard Nagel, Mudita Nisker, Wes Nisker, Barbara Shulgasser, Peter Simon, Ronni Simon, Arlan Wise, Ed Kronstein, Michael Levine,

Wise, and Cary Wolinksy.

Ariana Garfinkel,

And to

three ever-present

Lillian Garfinkel,

and

Iris

women

in

my world:

Gold. Finally, to the

men who

gave generously both of their time and of themselves: this book's for you.

To

my father,

Donald]. Carfinkel

CONTENTS FOREWORD

1

PREFACE TO THIS EDITION:

A Man Moving, If Not a Mens Movement INTRODUCTION

11

1.

FATHERS AND SONS:

2.

PATERNAL GRANDFATHERS AND MENTORS:

After His Image

Bridges to the Outside World 3.

5.

6. 7.

15

43

THE WORLD OF BROTHERS: Cain and Abel in the Land of Nod

4.

5

BEYOND BROTHERS: Mens Clubs MALE FRIENDSHIP: No-Man's-Land HOMOPHOBIA: The Unspoken Barrier MENTORS WE NEVER MEET: Reflections of Men in the Media's Eye

67 83 91

117

129

CONCLUSION: No Man Is an Island

147

appendix: Questionnaire

151

BIBLIOGRAPHY

155

NOTES

163

INDEX

169

—

FOREWORD challenging times to be a man. There are forces afoot that have

are THchanged men's ese

cut

sense of themselves, blurring what once seemed clear-

modes and models of manhood. John Wayne

is

dead, and

we have not

yet picked his replacement.

In this state of affairs there

men

may lie some new degree of freedom

for

willing to seize the opportunity. As the hard-and-fast model of mascu-

linity gives

way,

it

makes room

for a greater range of humanness. For as the

facades of masculinity crumble we are seeing that behind the strong, rugged

and feelings that men yearned to speak. Men, hemmed in by a web of fears and failings, some self-im-

silence there lurked thoughts it

seems, have been

posed, others givens of the male condition.

Men are learning to find a new voice. It is not that men have failed to be eloquent; indeed they have dominated the air space around them. Rather,

seems that

men

—and

particularly

failed to find words for those things that

In the world at large,

men

speak

it

—have

American men of this century

have mattered in their inmost lives.

freely; in their private lives

they

fall

strangely mute.

Psychologists have

lence

among men was

known it for years. One of the first to study this si-

Dr. Sidney Jourard. In the early 1970s, Jourard re-

ported research showing that men, unlike

women, simply did not

reveal

most intimate fears and hopes, hatreds and joys. They did not disclose loves their and jealousies, envies and infatuations. Dr. Sam Osherson, formerly a Harvard Medical School psychologist currently with Harvard University Health Services, specializes in men's their

problems.

He calls this "a shroud of silence" that enfolds vast areas of men's

experience and their emotional lives in particular.

We have heard about male silence before, in one way or another often in the complaints of women who feel frustrated and baffled by it. But what is new is research that shows there is a distinct cost both psychological and medical to that silence.

—

—

For example, Dr. James Pennebaker, a psychologist at Southern Meth-

done research on the health consequences of confidSharing one's dearest thoughts and most heartfelt concerns, it turns out, is healthy. Pennebaker has been able to trace a strong relationship beodist University, has ing.

]

1

[

IN

WORLD

A MAN'S

tween the failure to unburden oneself and poor health. Troubled silence is a stress in itself;

confiding

is

good

for the soul.

The bottom

The male

line:

"shroud" of silence is an all- too-apt label. In the course of writing an article for The

problems,

spoke with Dr. Robert

I

Medical College. observed,

is

One

E.

New

York Times

Gould, a psychiatrist

at

on mens

New York

men in these times, Gould

of the key dilemmas for

their difficulty with emotional intimacy.

"Men are told that in these changing times they should be as emotionally intimate as their wives or lovers," he stated. "But men don't come by intimacy as easily as

women

do. They've learned since childhood to be

adventurous, but not to share their feelings."

Of course men do share much with each other and with the women in But what we are coming to realize more starkly now is the contour of what men fail to share: their most significant feelings. their lives.

"Men's palling around with each other

is

often a pseudo intimacy,"

said Gould.

Shooting the rapids on a

raft is

not the same as acknowledging

they are impotent, or don't enjoy sex at to

all. It's

quite difficult for

shed their defensive layers and be as intimate as

how often most men

women say they want

them to be. A woman may feel hurt when a man doesn't open up to her. But a

man just doesn't feel comfortable telling a woman about his weaknesses,

or confessing the ambitions he fears he'll never achieve.

The new look at how men hide their feelings is prompted not just by demands of the women in men's lives. There are other forces at work here, both social and economic. Consider the following statistics, markers of a vast social shift: A nationwide survey done by the University of

the changing

Michigan found that from 1 965 to 1 98 1 there had been a tidal change in the

Another national survey, by refound that the amount of time men spent in child care alone had increased since 1967 by 30 percent. arrangements of men's private searchers at

The

Ohio

figures

lives.

State University,

bespeak a significant

shift in

the interpersonal reality of

men in the latter part of the twentieth century, particularly young, married

—

men: they are more involved as fathers far more in touch and on the scene with their children than were their own fathers. And as men now look to their past for models of good fathering, many are disappointed. As Joseph Pleck, a director of the Male Role Program at Wellesley College, observed: In the 1950s, the secret was that, emotionally, Dad was not really part of the

men as fathers are looking back to their childhood for models. Being with their own kids, they suddenly hear a voice they haven't

family. In the 1980s

Foreword

heard

in a

father

left

long time

Often that legacy

men

—

their father's. They're trying to see the legacy their

behind them. is

sought when a

man

enters therapy.

What many

open about their feelings with those they care about most has left them isolated. They have wives, children, but keep their true feelings about their lives a secret unto themfriends selves. The progressive ideals of the "new man" baffle them when it comes to living them out. The sad truth seems to be that most men have not been prepared for what lies in store; the past too often offers too meager emodiscover

that their inability to be

is

—

tional resources.

Osherson,

who

has conducted research on psychological crises in

men's lives as part of a longitudinal study at Harvard Medical School, points out that young

men now

—

who

particularly those

have become fathers

have a fascination with their own fathers. For many, though, the fascination is

tinged with a

fear.

father, who they may remember as Many men grow up with a loving but distant

They fear that they will be like their own angry, demanding, or isolated. father

who was on the periphery of the family, a hard-working, mysterious,

twilight figure. Their wives

they want so.

to, too.

But that

want them

stirs

up

to be

more involved

about what

conflicts

it

as fathers,

and

might mean to do

They fear that they will become like the negative side of their fathers.

The predicament of the modern male

Women who past,

and

ous.

And

might be

no longer

a sense

with

will

put up with the

of fatherhood as

all

that, a

like if only

it

could be

centers

silent,

—

glimmering among

on

just these issues:

mysterious

man

of the

involved, openly caring, joy-

men

themselves of what

life

they could break out of the shroud of silence.

Perhaps most important of all for

men is that they are able to confront

them off from each other. For the shroud of siwhen men get together with each other. Hearty jovialor philosophical ramblings come easily to men, but too often are

the barriers that have shut lence ity

is

at its thickest

weightless, devoid of any sharing of

pacity to

tell

each other the

Men do

self.

real facts

of their

not seem to have the ca-

lives:

they shy away from the

and sons, insecurities and sex, fears and careers. Instead comes bluster and bluff, women and cars, sports and boasts.

true talk of fathers

This

is

not to say that

men do

not

know the

occasional soul-bearing

dawn across country, or the tear-filled confession of a buddy in some bar. But these rare moments of open-

talk while driving until

a marriage failed to

ness are lost

amid

the overwhelming proportion of vapid conversations that

men exchange, skirting the surface of troubled waters, but never entering.

3

[

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

And that is a shame. It is

the nature of psychological prisons that one key to freedom

is

in-

sight into the forces that have shaped their walls. Understanding, in this

realm, can

itself be liberating.

In that sense, Perry Garfinkel has written a

manifesto for male liberation. What he sees clearly, and describes ably, is the content and contours of the shroud of silence that too often engulfs men, frustrating the yearning to share freely the thoughts

and feelings

that truly

matter to them with the people about whom they truly care. In a Mans World offers a well-documented analysis of the psychological

and social forces that have made men silent about what matters most to it tells the tale in the words of men themselves a tale

—

them. What's more,

men has begun to corroborate. The roots, Garfinkel shows, the most primal relationships men have, as children, with their

that research on

go back to

own

fathers,

and

they grow that

to the messages

tell

them, in

—both

subtle

effect, that to seal

—they

and overt

the heart

is

to

receive as

be a man.

The legacy of that lesson from childhood is revealed in the meagerness of what men, once grown, share of their inner

though

lives

with others. But

al-

men have been silenced by the early events of their lives, they need

not be bound by them. That, too, is a message of this book, both explicit and implicit. If the great

and true wish of men

the rain of feeling, then In a

Mans

is

to live a

World offers an

And that, after all, is the treatment of choice.

life

more enriched by

elixir,

a dose of insight.

— Daniel Goleman

Preface to this Edition

MAN MOVING,

A

NOT A MEN'S MOVEMENT

IF

the spring of 1978, on the verge of turning thirty and armed with a book about how men relate to each other, I split up with my wife of seven years. We had actually been together for ten years and

IN

contract to write a

I

guess

was beginning to

I

feel that

twenties as wild and single rogues,

I

while

my friends had played out their

had played the part of the

dutiful

mar-

man. Now I wanted my twenties back. At least that was the way I saw it, and no amount of couples therapy was going to convince me otherwise. ried

remember one decisive moment in therapy with my wife. The therapist asked us why we sought psychological counseling. Iris said she wanted to understand how to make the marriage work, how to get us back together. I

I

said

I

wanted

to

understand

why

I

didn't

want

to be with her

anymore.

It

someone had finally opened the window in a stuffy room. The undeniable truth that breezed in changed our lives forever. The therapist suggested that Iris and I start seeing her separately. We drove home in our little maroon '73 the one we had bought in Munich and driven all over Europe that romantic first year of our marriage in a cold and bitter silence. We were each sitting next to a stranger. In a matter of weeks I had moved out of our cozy Cambridge carriage house leaving wife and baby behind to my friend Cary's eighteenth-century farmhouse thirty miles south of Boston. Cary had just split up with his wife (the disease seemed to be catching) and was leaving for England on a photography assignment for three months. Before he left he said he wanted to have a little talk with me. There were some "skeletons in our closet," he told me, and proceeded to remind me he still didn't trust me with his fiance, even though it had been several years since I had tried (albeit was as

if

BMW—

— —

—

unsuccessfully) to have an affair with her.

"Don't be

of guy."

I

could

silly," I

said.

feel his

"Of course you can

back

stiffen

me; I'm not that kind

It was my first realization that I might actually have to start examinmy own personal relationships with men in the course of writing this

brace.

ing

trust

when we exchanged an awkward em-

book.

5

[

IN I

A MAN'S

WORLD

spent the months at his house in a state of psychological disorienta-

me from my estranged wife and my eighteenmonth-old daughter, but they and my former life might as well have been

tion. Thirty miles separated

away and several lifetimes behind me. I felt as though had pulled my identity out from under myself. I kept telling friends, "I wanted to leave my wife, not my life." I passed the time in isolation, trying to begin the research that would eventually become this book, sometimes reading the same page over and over again, while my brain tried to figure out what I had just done to my life. All the time I vehemently denied that I was suffering any emotional fallout. After all, I was free, wasn't I? So why was I sitting up late watching Johnny Carson and drinking Scotch until I couldn't get up from the armchair. Considering that I don t drink Scotch and that I didn't like Johnny Carson, I ought to have noticed something was amiss. I now see that a book about how men relate to each other was a godsend, free therapy, though I paid heavily later, when the depression and the three thousand miles I

deadline caught up to

me simultaneously.

The book became an excuse for rediscovering my long- neglected network of men friends. Too bad I needed an "excuse." And too bad the friendships proved to be so unfulfilling, devoid of what I desperately needed: substantive emotional contact. I had hoped my old friends would remind me of my old self. They did, but I didn't like what I saw. The friendships were ambiguous and ambivalent. Then again, so was I.

What I wanted was support from a group of men who might be expesame confusion and emptiness. Such men were out there but My crisis was occurring B.B. Before Bly. That is, before the modern American poet Robert Bly emerged from his farm in Minnesota as the pied piper of the wayward male psyche; before Bly's Iron John and then Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly became long-time New York Times bestsellers; before Bill Moyers's widely seen PBS-TV interviews with Bly and Keen riencing the

—

not easily found.

were

aired; before "getting in

touch with your wild man" entered our ver-

nacular and the image of Puer Aeternus pounding congo drums in the

woods was branded in our collective mind. This was a time when men were in transition. We were post-macho and pre-wimp, or maybe it was postwimp and pre-neo-macho. In any case, not many people men or women recognized or understood what was expected of an emerging subspecies called by some "the sensitive new male." Much positioning and jockeying went on in what the media had dubbed "the battle of the sexes," a catch phrase referring to the reevaluation of traditional roles. And though there were numerous stories about bra burnings, whether women wash more dishes than men, and women enter-

—

—

ing nontraditional fields such as

fire fighting,

]

6

[

only rarely did there appear a

Preface

serious piece about such ground-breaking developments as legislative at-

tempts to seek equal pay for equal work for women. Even more rarely were there published stories about

men trying to find new ways of acting that did

not presume old paradigms.

(I recall,

story about a television journalist

for instance, being impressed

who chose to give up work to

by one

stay

home

and assume primary responsibility for child-care duties while his wife pursued a fulltime career opportunity; his name was Ted Koppel and he later

became host of ABC's "Nightline") The initial wave of books examining mens issues was in the early to mid-1970s. Warren Farrell's The Liberated Male, Herb Goldberg's The Hazards of Being Male, and Marc Feigen Fasteau's The Male Machine were all written, I felt at the time, more in reaction to the women's movement than

how civilized men should behave in modern society. They posited that men were to blame for women's second-class citizenship in society and that, in rising to their positions in society, men as earnest attempts to figure

had

forfeited their

out

warmer and

cozier side.

certain aspects of that conclusion, but

I

I

was not

in

disagreement with

didn't think there

was anything

to

be gained from punishing ourselves for turning the opposite sex into a sub-

Nor would it remedy the condition that had turned us into unfeeling machinery. Furthermore, felt that a movement asking men to voluntarily surrender long- held power was equally doomed. I thought there was a need for a book about man-to-man relationships that would also shed light on how men and women get along. I conducted more than one hundred interviews, read dozens of books and research papers, and engaged in a heavy dose of introspection. The conclusions I came to then seem obvious now: that men's competitiveness and unservient underclass.

I

willingness to share feelings with each other are learned behaviors.

about

men

how and why men learn emotional

I

wrote

inexpressiveness from the other

Though today those ideas may seem naive, way back in 1970s the journey of discovery made me feel like Daniel Boone ven-

in their lives.

the late

turing into the uncharted wilderness of male psychology.

My odyssey took me to the wilds of suburban New Jersey, where in the summer of 1978 a college

campus

1

attended one of the country's in

Ramapo.

I

first

men's conferences on

planned to conduct a couple of interviews

and see how men were grappling with these new issues. I felt completely unenlightened the morning

after,

when I woke up

next to a

tall

red-headed

woman with whom I had left the conference to engage in our own gender studies

workshop between the

sheets in her Tribeca apartment. Imagine

how difficult and painful confronting men must have seemd to me if I so much safer retreating to an encounter with an unknown woman.

felt

My reading and interviewing continued. Six months later, I had a second chance to see if I had made any progress when I attended the Fifth Na]

7

IN A tional Conference

MAN'S WORLD

on Men and Masculinity in Los Angeles, this time on as-

signment for the (now- defunct) Real Paper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I

soon saw that I was not alone in struggling to separate the personal from the political

when it came to the gender platform. The conference brought to-

gether the many factions of the then young men's movement: academicians researching the subject, filmmakers documenting the movement, male

mem-

bers of the National Organization for Women supporting the opposite sex, gays

and straights beginning to

"dialogue,"

and even some women.

comes a moment when he realizes he what the feminist movement has called "the housewife's moment of truth." I had such a moment of truth when I slipped away from that New Jersey men's conference with a woman. I had another in Los Angeles. This one took place in the parking lot outside of the Los Angeles Coliseum as the Rams and the Minnesota Vikings battled each other in a National Football League play off. I was with a band of antisexist pranksters dispatched from the conference. Our subversive mission was to gain national publicity for our "cause." Hoping for a few seconds on national TV, we had smuggled in banners declaring FOOTBALL IS RITUALIZED VIOLENCE and NFL MF.ANS NO FAMILY LIFE. We flashed our signs while the first half was winding down. Our demonstration did not evoke what you would call a warm response. A guy sitting in front of us, with a patch saying "Stud" stitched to his jeans, turned around and glared at me with a look that suggested I might have no life, family or otherwise, if I persisted in disrupting his enjoyment of the game. The TV cameras never pointed in our direction. Security guards confiscated our banners. We left at half time. Heading back to the car, our ringleader, Warren Farrell, the author of The Liberated Male, was irritatingly philosophical. "Well," he rationalized, "we learned something from that." Warren had organized the football fiasco, not without objections from those who felt the gesture would offend just the working-class men the movement was trying but failing to reach. The lesson: Just because you're an author doesn't mean you should be in charge. Our car was in the back of a parking lot, and the attendant, a heavy-set Latino, did not feel like moving a lot of cars to get to ours. There followed an exchange of requests, refusals, demands, denials, accusations, threats, and In every sapient man's

is

life

there

a victim of sexual stereotyping, akin to

other forms of increasingly unpleasant male behavior.

"You shoulda tol' me you were leavin' early," the attendant explained. "But, you see, you didn't ask," Warren responded in condescending

moving closer to the man to establish better rapport. I read the back of the parking stub and joined in: "It doesn't say anywhere we had to tell you. All you said when you gave me this stub was 'You tones,

]

8

Preface

have to show

me this to get your car back.' Well, here's my stub, want my I

—now."

car

"I

cant do

"You

.

.

.

it,"

he said, standing firm.

said ..."

I

started slowly through gritted teeth, the

ther used to, putting a forefinger

on

way my fa-

the attendant's chest.

"Take your hands off me," he shouted.

I

removed my

finger

and

quickly took two giant steps backward.

"Take your hands off me," he repeated. "They're off you. Now do we get our car back or do we have to call the

.

..

He turned reluctantly and gave some instructions to the other attenwho started moving cars. Walking to the car, it struck me: My own "housewife's moment of

dants,

truth."

mal

A classic violent and aggressive man-to-man confrontation, the priA white middle-class college-educated male pulling socioeco-

face-off.

nomic rank on

a

nonwhite working-class male. So much

for brotherhood.

We've come a long way. However, though we've become more sophis-

when it comes to identifying the thorny issues of sexual politics and using the appropriate gender-sensitive terminology, some things remain

ticated

the same. Fathers and sons ties.

still

ponder their differences and

their similari-

Men still wage war against each other. And the battle of the sexes rages

on. Until

all

that changes, we've

still

got a long way to go.

me through seven years of detours and dead ends, both personally and professionally. In a Mans World took far longer Writing this book took

to see the light of publishing day than

nally

came out

in 1985, fulfilling

profound (and unexpected)

I

had anticipated. The first version fi-

my goal to publish a book. But the most

effect

of the

first

publication was personal.

was strongly affected by the hundreds of thoughtful

letters

I

received

I

from

by new friendships gained and old ones renewed, and by one parI value most: the one I made with myself. Which brings me to the timely reincarnation of this book under the aegis of Ten Speed Press. The psychological studies and interviews that form the basis of the book still ring true. In fact, many men and women will readers,

ticular friendship

find them ity with

more relevant now than when they were first published. The clar-

which men speak here in their own voices cuts through much of the

mytho-rhetoric and confessional prose that now fills the shelves of the new

men's studies sections in bookstores and libraries.

For the record, from the outset

I

had

a

problem identifying with the

many other men, I feared losing my individuality to a larger body of men. After all, would John Wayne go to meetings? Is the men's movement. Like

Marlboro I

Man a joiner? However, of this I am sure: I am one man moving.

hope this book moves you as well.

9

[

INTRODUCTION Man dwells apart, though not alone, He walks among his peers unread; The best of thoughts which he hath known For lack of listeners are not said.

— Jean Ingelow, "Afternoon

at the

Parsonage"

trouble relating to each other ever since Irs no secret that men have had

Cain killed Abel. The first-born son of Adam slew his younger brother when God chose Abel's offering over his own. Thus was envy born, followed quickly by violence.

The underlying

distrust

men's beginnings or to one's

men can be traced to Men continue to brute or

between and among

own

father or son.

way through their male-male interpersonal relationships. more and less sophisticated versions of an old sandlot game called King of the Mountain, otherwise known as one-upmanship. They continue to try to outperform each other and through their behavior continue to demonstrate sometimes subtly, sometimes blastonewall their

They continue

tantly

—

to play

—

the belief that the combative stance is still the order of the day when

facing other

men.

This dominant competitive theme in men's relationships explains

and avoid intimacy with each other. "After all," men reason, "what fool would open up to one's potential rival?" But what is there to win in what often appears to be a singularly masculine and a seemingly lifelong competitive event? Respect? Approval? Acceptance? And from whom?

why men

fear

What greater power? What higher authority? And to what end? All appropriate questions

—but

all

too infrequently asked of men or

by men. This competitive credo is accepted as the unspoken, unwritten, and mostly unconscious contract that at once binds and divides men. This book

is

about power and control, about competition and jeal-

ousy, about love, hate,

and other repressed, unexpressed emotions.

It's

about what Freud called "the most primitive organization we know, the association of men." This fathers

and sons,

is

a

book about how men

relate to

—

each other

as

as brothers, as friends, as lovers, as business partners, as

tennis partners.

11

— IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

When I told people I was researching and writing a book about how men

relate to each other, the usual glib

don't."

Of course,

evident as

I

response was, "That's simple; they

become

not that simple. But one

fact

did

began researching and interviewing:

It is

a subject that only re-

cently have

which there

it is

men begun

to write, think, or talk about.

exists a considerable

ment, and frustration

—and

it is

It is

glaringly

an issue around

amount of guilt, hurt, anger, disappointavoided to such a degree that

I

began to

recognize an element of taboo surrounding it.

Why? What were men hiding? What were they hiding from? I

wrote

this

book because I was confused about and uncomfortable

—

my relationships with many men in my life from my father to men considered my closest friends. was unsure why at times I felt alternately at

with

I

I

and awkward in the company of men. What I quickly discovered was that I was not alone. While there is a great deal of lip service paid to it, the so-called male bond is one of the great myths of our culture. We perpetuate it with backslapping and bravado and through the institutions we have creease

ated dedicated to

its

preservation and proliferation.

We speak of our good

oP boys networks, our sanctum sanctorum, our exclusive men's

clubs,

and

other sacred men-only environments. But what actually goes on between

—

and among us within those contexts and why? What man has not found himself at some point in his life in some allmale bastion boy's camp, a fraternity, a local gym, the corner bar, the bowling team, or the poker crowd and felt isolated, alone, and frustrated at not being able to connect with another man on a personal level? At the same time, almost every man can recall a time among men

—

—

celebrating a sports victory, savoring a business coup, reminiscing with col-

—

combat together in which a sense of male camaraderie seemed so strong and so profound that to explain it, even to name it, would diminish its meaning and impact. lege buddies, in

Our bonds come through

doing together;

we have not

learned about

being together.

How much men things together

is

internalize that capacity for

and ease with doing

reflected in the results of an experimental exercise a Bos-

ton psychologist told

me he observed in his own therapy practice. Working

separately with men's

and women's groups, he timed how long it took each

group of six to form

a

human

pyramid. Inevitably, the

themselves faster than the women. To the psychologist

it

men

organized

demonstrated that

men are socially trained to form working teams more so than women. Men implicitly understand the value of hierarchy necessary for effective team-

work. That understanding as

I

is

reinforced until

demonstrate throughout this book.

]

12

it

becomes learned behavior,

Introduction

The underlying questions that insidiously pervade many men's relaWho's in charge? Who's on top? Who's winning? The degree to which a man bases his self-worth on the answers to and he invariably hopes the answer is himself is those sort of questions distance he creates between himself and other men. of the the measure When first undertook this study in 1 978, 1 found only one book that tionships with each other are:

—

—

I

addressed

itself to

the issue of

how men

Men

in

upon

studies of primate behavior

each other: the scholarly

relate to

Groups, by the Canadian anthropologist Lionel Tiger. Drawing

and

his

own speculations about the evo-

lution of society, Tiger (an anthropologist has never been so aptly

named)

hypothesized that the so-called male bond derives from men's prehistoric

background

members of hunting-and-gathering bands.

Tiger admitted

that his theory, lacking explicit field research,

maybe fraught

as

from the start

with empirical holes.

what

field research

how males

relate to

He confessed:

"It

was not, and

still is

not, wholly clear

could and should have been done to understand better each other and what this means for their communities."

Tiger's omission

my point of departure. Nowhere in Men

became

in

Groups are there represented the feelings and reflections of the sort of real

men

that dot the landscapes of our lives

—no

dentists,

school teachers, no salesmen, no real estate brokers, no

no

no no computer

car dealers,

artists,

programmers.

My own field research consisted of sitting down and talking with such men. Our discussions were based on, but did not

necessarily hold to, a pre-

pared questionnaire that usually served more as a springboard for a dialogue concerning feelings, attitudes, anecdotes, and impressions about

men. (A sample of that questionnaire appears in the end of this book, for those who would like to conduct

their relationships with

the

Appendix at

their

own surveys or "interview" themselves.)

My subjects were chosen in the same way men establish friendships in their lives —that is, subjectively. met some through my business associaI

Some were men

men from backgrounds like my own, men from diverse backgrounds, men I considered my friends (though I was brought face to face with the reality of how little I knew about the men I claimed to know). A demographic breakdown of the men I interviewed would not and tions, others

through

referrals.

I

already knew,

should not satisfy the rigorous standards of a data- and strata-conscious sociologist or psychologist.

But

I

did not write this

book for them. Anyway,

how do you stratify a Hawaiian bellhop, a Maine river guide, and a factory worker from central Massachusetts who had undergone a sex change operation from woman to man? Or an African American musician from Brooklyn and the heir to one of the South's great industrial fortunes?

13

How

— A MAN'S

IN

do you put

a

number on

WORLD

the intensity of emotion in the voice of an Italian

construction worker wondering where he "went wrong" with his homosexual son?

Or measure the poignancy in a man's eye when he talks about the

lack of communication between himself and his father? I interviewed several hundred men, then transcribed the tapes of over hundred of those interviews to use as primary material. The men I talked to represent a geographic, cultural, ethnic, and economic cross section. But they all have at least one thing in common: They are American men living in the last decades of the twentieth century. Among them are men who cautiously expressed themselves on the subject of manhood, a subject some told me they had never discussed with anyone else not their wives, girlfriends, lovers, and certainly not other men. I valued their disclosures. I found that race, religion, age, profession, income, or sexual orientation were not so relevant to their answers as the larger group into which all of the people 1 spoke with fell namely, the family of men. I also found that men's experiences with their fathers, brothers, friends, and other men are amazingly similar. And, too, I found how little of that common experience men communicate to each other. "We are," as one man I interviewed put it,

a

—

—

"a fraternity of disenfranchisement."

This book is for anyone who has ever felt disenfranchised from

whether you are

a

man

or a

woman.

It is

for

men

anyone who has found nearly

impenetrable and clearly incomprehensible the bastions of men, and any-

one who wants to know what

really

1

goes on between and

H

among men.

Chapter

1

FATHERS AND SONS AFTER HIS IMAGE And Adam

lived

an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his

likeness, after his image;

and called him

own

Seth.

-Genesis 5:1

From and

the beginning

my father always scared me. He's strong and forceful Me and my brothers all got hit but

intimidating. He'd bully us verbally.

mostly he'd

daddy

yell

voice."

It

— "GRRR!" You fucking trembled. He was

scary, believe

me, and a

lot

called

it

his "big

worse than getting

hit. It

was constant terror. I always felt scared shitless.

-A thirty-five-year-old chemical engineer from Maine

WE—

all

of us

men

—

are chips off the old blocks. Like father, like son.

we are little monkeys mirroring those great apes in our primary male role models our fathers. From them we lives, our first and learn the good, the bad, and the ugly of how to be men in a man's world. Like

This

it

or not,

initial

—

male-male relationship between father and son

and ambivalence, love and

in paradoxes

hate,

is

a study

bonds and barriers, camara-

and competition. It contains elements of an age-old struggle for power and control; of deep-seated feelings of inferiority; of emotional inexpressiveness; of reverence, revolt, and ultimately, one hopes, reconciliderie

ation.

The trust

not told

father- son relationship

—and of

all

he appears

me, the

thers

—were

is

one of great expectations, of belief and

and betrayal. The father is most of the men in my research love the most and be closest to their fa-

great disappointment, disbelief, at first to be.

In

men they wanted to the ones with

fact, as

—

whom they were least able to feel intimate. The

The hero has two faces. The father- son relationship is a microcosm and a model of how men re-

ally is revealed as the rival.

late to

each other. Because this

first

male-male dyad has such a powerful im-

men look for, come to

printing effect,

expect,

and

—not

surprisingly

—

find

traces of patterns established between father and son in their relationships with all

men. As

a

young man passes through the various masculine

—with male groups— grounds

and

training

and within allthese patterns, and others, are developed and reinforced. brothers, mentors, friends,

]

15

[

colleagues,

IN

WORLD

A MAN'S

In this developmental process

some

patterns are altered and trans-

—

formed. But through the course of this book you will see

—

the course of my interviews and research

and emotional abandonment

petition,

woven

that the

are inextricably

into the fabric of men's relationships.

least the inability to express in

The

as

I

saw through

themes of power, com-

and unalterably

lack of intimacy (or at

words one's feelings of closeness for another

man) and the fear of betrayal are also in evidence. This rather dreary landscape does not, of course, describe

all

interac-

among all men. Many of the men I interviewed, along with my friends and some of the writers I encountered in my research, have had mutually tions

supportive relationships with their fathers and other men in their lives. But

would not be a gross generalization to deduce from my research that for and the building of those the most part many barriers exist between men barriers begins at home. For most men life is a long search for reunion with their lost fathers. Ask Telemachus, whose hunt for his father Odysseus became the stick by which we measure all (Homeric) odysseys. Ask Luke Skywalker, who it

—

fought through three Star Wars movies to avenge his father's death only to discover that his arch enemy, Darth Vader, was his father.

One of the most important traditions, pervasive throughout cultures and around the world, is that of the rite of passage. Entry into clubs, teams, and manhood itself is generally marked by some test of strength and endurance. A man does not simply take his place among men; he must earn it. Because of the value placed on

ritual,

men

tend to view various stages,

and events in their lives as rites of passage. For book became a rite of passage for me.

instance, writing

episodes, this

Similarly,

I

have

come

through with their fathers

to see the stages that

of passage

as rites

—

men

in

our society go

rites as clearly

defined as a

Navajo dream fast or a Bar Mitzvah. In our culture, a son must pass through

manhood: along the way, he picks up vital

three phases in his relationship with his father in order to attain

reverence, revolt, and reconciliation. All clues

and

tools that he will use in his relationships with the

men

he meets

throughout his life.

REVERENCE In the first year of his life the male infant distinguishes between his two parents:

and

is

one has

a softer voice,

is

much more

almost always present; the other

is

often associated with food,

louder, larger, rarely

around

at

feeding time, or, in most cases for that matter, the greater part of the day. Gradually, by a process psychologists

call sex-role identification,

begins to comprehend: "I'm a male, like

man, just

like

my Daddy. When

him." 1

16

f

I

the boy

grow up I'll be a

Fathers and Sons-. After H/s \mage

During the

first

impressionable years of life, the boy's father personi-

Manhood. No matter what the father's personal characteristics, the them and incorporates them into his definition of a Man. All are secondary figures compared in the beginning, at least other men with this central and primary male role-modeling influence. Just how strong an influence the father is becomes more and more clear the older the son gets. Whether they work to match that model or fight to break free of it, fies

child accepts

—

—

all

boys

live

road

map

early

from

with the outline of that image in front of them, as

to

manhood. Even

in cases

their sons' lives, those sons feel the

sonal styles,

if it

were a

where fathers die or withdraw very

stamp of their

fathers' per-

and struggle either to copy, perfect, and improve on them

—

or

to forever free themselves of them.

do hatred and fear; acknowhis power to dominate. A boy's fear of his father, Freud suggested, has foundations in the Oedipus complex, which boys experience between the ages of about two and five. The complex grows out of the boy's love for his mother and his simultaneous identification with his father. As the child's sexual urges heighten, he begins to see his mother as the object of those urges and, Freud believed, his father as a sexual rival and the object of jealous envy. This unleashes a new Contradictorily, as reverence grows so

ledging the father's centrality

danger for the boy.

is

acknowledging

If he persists in feeling sexually attracted to his

he fears being physically harmed in retaliation by his fears that his father will cut off his penis, a fear

mother,

father. Specifically,

he

Freud termed "castration

anxiety":

The relation of a boy to his father is, as we say, an "ambivalent" one. In addition to the hate which seeks to get rid of the father as a rival, a measure of

tenderness for him

is

combine to produce

also habitually present.

The two

identification with the father; the

his father's place because he

attitudes of

boy wants

mind

to be in

admires him and wants to be like him, and also

because he wants to put him out of the way.

and hatred, reverence and fear, the groundwork and in a young child's eyes the father looms larger than life.

So, in a tangle of love is laid,

The respect born of fear only increases the father's stature. To a young boy, the father is a giant from whose shoulders he can see forever. He is allknowing and all-powerful and though he may not realize it himself one word, one glance, can make a moment to a little boy whose eye is always

—

—

glued to his father. There can be an exhilaration in a boy's identification

with his father. Sons bask under such phrases as "chip off the old block" and "like father, like son,"

but only

if those

fathers are positive, present,

volved role models. Studies of fathers' influence on sons

show sons love and affection.

identification occurs only where fathers

1

17

and

[

in-

show that positive

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

When they are there to fulfill the role, fathers are not just men to their sons, they are supermen. In the language of Freud, fathers are identified

with the superego: law,

restraint, industry, severity, aloofness, control,

and

—

command awe, respect, and emulation from a son. Steve, a forty-two-year-old business consultant living in New York told me: power

qualities that

1940, my father was away at war. He came back a hero, my hero. I remember him wearing tan summer khakis. He was goddamn

When I was born in impressive.

by him.

—a

He was stunning

Just

striking,

handsome man. I was awestruck

from the way he held himself you could

with the power.

tell

he was the

man

He was the boss, there was no doubt about it. He called all

the shots, at work and at home. The house was geared to his schedule, to his

temperament, to his wishes

—and

I

wanted to be just like him.

Dean, a twenty-eight-year-old Richmond, California, directly correlated

an

idyllic picture

of his

father, the hero,

social worker,

with a sense of

power and control: I

used to go out sailing with him, and he would take the

much

at

things,

home on

and he would be

the thing right.

times

I

the water.

felt

I

in total control.

think he

felt at

all

He was very

these freaky

He'd take pleasure out of setting

home with me out there. During those

a great deal of closeness to him.

men when we're working on

tiller.

The boat would be doing

Now I notice I feel close with

a project together, in a

team

situation, like

I

used to feel when I was helping my father on the water.

To be next to his father was to be next to that power and control. To be the son of an omnipotent demigod is to

identified as a father's son

—

—

claim some of that power for oneself. And all a son wants at this stage is to be beside his idol. In his autobiographical novel, Fathers, Herbert Gold cap-

tured as few writers have the love, pride, and euphoria of being identified as a father's son:

Dad

tiptoed into

straight

my room and rested his hand upon my cheek. I flew

up out of my dream

He lifted a finger to his mouth. Shh. He was

wearing pants and an undershirt, needed a shave, grinned and winked

me.

He was whispering.

"Son, you want to do something?"

I

at

was dressed

and washed with the speed of one of his best kleptomaniacs.

.

.

.

Yes,

I

wanted to do something. What we did on these occasions of doing something together was to go to the Russian Bath on Sunday morning, before the rest of the family mobilized for breakfast, sneaking in the old Peerless before left

down the driveway

my cousins or brothers could whine about being

out, conspiring against

mother and babies, just the two of us men

What a joy to exclude women

—my mother and cousins—from the naked 18

Fathers and Sons-. After

Hi's

\mage

Among the nations of men finally at age my father's son, his eldest, lounging at my ease with a maze of

and sweating world of the baths! 11,1 was

room devoted

to skin pleasure, lung relish, intense getting out-the-kinks

and dozing and

hilarity

shouldn't he? But

he'll

on rusty

chairs.

"Looks just

be

—

American food." And

taller

eats

like

you, Sam!"

"Why

my father,

more muscular than the others, with thick hocks and thick control beneath moved in the center of my vision. The steam

the pink salt-bruised flesh,

Skinny and prideful I moved underroom was the sanctum sanctorum In foot in the steam room like a drenched rat, learning the ways of men my child's eyes they were very much alike swollen sex, hanging gourds, purplish veins, creased bellies

—and

Sam,

kid! Lookit the kid, little

—

to

them I was different: a child. "Sam's

he's learning the

steam room!

Sam

Gold's

boy!"

Learning the steam room, learning the ways of men, as Gold understood even

at that

tender age, was afforded by the power of his father. To the

boy, the father embodies all a

man is and could be. Sociologist Leonard Ben-

son has written: Boys identify with father not because he is an adult but because he is a man.

They seek rapport with the mature man. They turn

to father because they

have been conditioned to want a validation of their masculinity. The typical father-son relationship follows a pattern

tween persons of unequal

skills,

as

found

in relationships be-

between teacher and student or master

and apprentice. Father participates in activities involving motor skills with

He serves as an exacting and insistent coach, acting out masculine patterns of aggressiveness. He drills his son continually, repeatedly calling his son.

attention to his mistakes. Learning male skills involves preparation for big-

ger

and more serious battles to come. Fathers crack down on their sons for

failure to

In a

show signs of progress toward self-sufficiency.

more

poetic style this Kwakiutl tribal chant expresses Benson's

meaning:

When I am a man, then shall I be a hunter. When I am a man, then shall I be a harpoonist. When I am a man, then shall I be a canoe builder. When I am a man, then shall I be a carpenter. When I am a man, then shall I be an artisan. Oh father! Ya ha ha ha. Across cultures and across generations fathers train sons to do, to define

themselves and to measure their power through the performance of skills.

Men

are, in

Benson's words, "instrumental," while

19

[

women are "expressive."

A MAN'S

IN

WORLD

Girls are "person-centered"; boys are "thing-centered." In a cross-cultural

survey Benson cited, fathers were classified as instrumental in forty-eight societies

ful at

and expressive in eight. Sons work hard to develop skills, to be success-

what they

do, to live

struggle for respect

up

from the

to their fathers' expectations.

It is

a lifelong

man who, in the son's eyes, represents all men.

What he slowly learns, though, is that he can never live up to his father's expectations, never totally win that respect, approval, and acceptance. He never seems to be able to do anythingas well as his father does, which the father does not hesitate to frequently remind his son. In this way, at the hands of his father, a son develops a sense of inferiority, of powerlessness, of not quite measuring

up to or doing as much as this model male. This inferiority complex remains compounded and more complicated as he interacts

with the son, becoming

with the other men in his life. father, on the other hand, playing the role of the greatest, bigand sometimes only man in the world is, while certainly an ego often too large a responsibility to bear. With the obligations of work

For the

gest, best, trip,

pressing

on them,

as well as their

own

conditioning as sons, fathers often

withdraw emotionally and physically from

their sons as

models and teach-

The sense of abandonment and betrayal by such a father can haunt a son and influence what he comes to expect from all men. A poignant example of abandonment was offered by James, a thirty- nine-year-old internist ers.

at a

San Francisco hospital: I

was

three,

maybe four. This moment

—

—you have

to understand

how pro-

my first memory, when sort of came up from underwater and took my first breath, foundly important

this

is

to

me

is

the furthest back

I

go,

I

when it all crystallized for the first time: "Here I am, this is me, this is who I am." I must have done something wrong because my father was yelling at

me and then he said I had to stay in the house while he and my mother went me in the house alone and drove away with my mother who, I recall, wasn't too happy about it but couldn't stop my father. I reout. So he locked

—

member the moment so clearly the car, their faces, what they were wearing, and how I felt. I was crying desperately. I was totally alone abandoned. And I blamed still blame my father for deserting me. I'll tell you, sometimes I want to go to him and tell him what a shit he was or just beat him up really bad, but I don't. And, when I think of it, I don't trust men now be-

—

—

—

cause I never trusted my father after that.

While other

men report less traumatic and dramatic demonstrations

of father desertion, the loss seems predictable, and the impact on their lives is

no less. The pattern, as exemplified by James, is a setup for a letdown. Puton a power pedestal only means that his fall to earth will be

ting the hero that

much

further

when he

disappoints or disappears. Like the child

1

20

[

who

Fathers and Sons. After His \maqe

learns not to put his

hand in the fire after he gets burned, boys learn the pain

of male abandonment from their hero-fathers. Afterward, they enter tionships with other

men

with great trepidation and restraint.

rela-

No one

wants to get burned twice.

REVOLT The law for father and son and mother and daughter it is

not the law of love:

is

the law of revolution, of emancipation, of final supersession of the old

and worn-out by the young and capable.

hood and womanhood

is

I

you, the

tell

first

duty of man-

a Declaration of Independence; the

pleads his father's authority

is

man who

no man.

— George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman The inevitable next stage of the father-son relationship is revolt. To asown power, a son often goes against his father even while he knows somewhere deep down that his father is right. Sons who identify strongly with their fathers soon must do all within their own power to define themsert his

selves in their

own

first men to manhood are also the first men to block it.

terms. Eventually sons understand that the

guide their way along the path to

Rejecting and passing one's father becomes the next rite of passage into manhood. George's father, who was a newspaper editor, left George, a fortyyear-old magazine editor, with an especially weighty cross of identification to bear.

George

carries the

same name

as his father, just as his father

had

borne the same name as his grandfather.

My father was always Big George, and crucial.

I

was

I

Little

George.

was Georgie. That was the burden one had

And

that

was

to bear having the

same name, of being the little member, junior, of being in constant competition.

My father was Pacific editor of Yank.

ever since that time

I

There's

wanted to be what he was.

If

no doubt about

it

not a newspaperman,

I

wanted to be a journalist of some sort. There seemed to be an uncanny inevitability to

it. It

was so much a part of me from the beginning. And

wanted to prove to him I could do what he San Francisco. I'd get right

Junior."

I'd call for

did.

the police chief and say, "This

through. The chief would

I

My first job was for UPI in is

—

George E

"

and

come on and I'd say, "This is George

"Oh, you must be George's kid," he'd say, and I'd cringe. "Yeah," I'd

say and then I'd have to listen to five minutes of "your old man and I go way

back together." "I know chief," I'd interrupt, "but what about the matter of the.

." .

.

But

fessional.

I

I

could never break through.

wasn't accepted for myself.

namesake.

]

21

[

I

I

wasn't being treated like a pro-

was somebody's

kid,

somebody's

IN A

MAN'S WORLD

In order to prove himself different and, he hoped, better than his ther,

fa-

George adopted a personal style diametrically opposite his father's. I

did everything

old block.

I

could to discourage the notion that

I

was a chip off the

My father had a reputation for being a hard-nosed feisty editor.

Nothing could have pleased me more than to hear people talking about me: "That's George's kid? But he's such a nice fellow."

why George married a woman of whom his father did not why he moved three thousand miles away, and why he was drawn

That's also

approve,

to magazines. I

chose magazines because they have more depth and dimension than

newspapers.

And I think that's the major difference between my father and

me.

For cessful.

many sons,

unlike George, the struggle with the father

As historian Ben Johnson wrote

is

in Timber, "Greatness of

unsuc-

name

in

the father ofttimes overwhelms the son: they stand too near one another.

The shadow kills the growth." Such, perhaps, was the case with a writer I interviewed (who preferred to remain anonymous), whose father was a fa-

mous writer: I

was about sixteen when

I

decided

strongest reasons was because

because

I

with him.

I

I

wanted

had no understanding of my I

to

be a writer.

One of the

had no understanding of myself, mainly father.

I

had no sense of intimacy

became a writer to find out what this man was involved with, to

understand his terms of reality so I could connect them with mine.

This

man had jumped

into the

most intense

fire

of competition:

He

entered the same arena as his father and was going to try to outdo his father at

what

his father did best.

I

found this to be a common pattern among the

men I interviewed. Men who join their fathers' businesses, who get involved in the same sports as their fathers, who adopt lifestyles similar to their fathers are all trying to beat their fathers at their own game. Following in their fathers' footsteps

or taking the path of least resistance, sons eventually strive

to pass their fathers. Sons

—and almost

who do

all

try

—

are merely putting

had trained them.

into practice that for which their fathers

Fired by revenge for the humiliation of circumcision, the pain of abandonment, and other childhood wounds and fueled by a growing confidence in his own strengthening body and ideas, a son eventually confronts

own territory and establish his own identity on his own confrontation many men specifically recall one piv-

his father in order to claim his

in the world.

He

separates from his father to be able to stand

ground. The actual

— ]

22

[

Fathers and Sons-. After

otal scene

—

usually occurs

H/'s

Image

when a boy is about fifteen or sixteen. Richard, a

twenty- five-year-old graduate student, described I

was

sixteen.

rights.

I

I

had taken

a theology course in school that focused

grew up

that kind of stuff, like separate drink-

all

ing fountains for blacks and whites.

and

sat

I

up

late after

and we talked

everyone

else

late into the night.

know how we got onto

don't

it,

civil

It felt

South Carolina with

in

on

The Autobiography of Malcolm X and like scales were falling from my eyes.

started reading things like

Manchild in the Promised Land. I

his:

The night I'm thinking of, my

had gone to bed.

It

was

father

a rare occasion

We must have been drinking a little, too.

but we started talking about

I

racial issues.

We talked an incredibly long time and we finally got to a point where we both had reached positions on which we were unwilling to compromise. felt

there was

were

inferior.

no

difference between blacks

and whites, and he

felt

I

blacks

So there we were, crystallized into two opposite positions. We

had been through all the intellectual arguments and we still disagreed.

I

re-

member thinking, "I'm here, and he's there. I have my own opinion." It was a definite break

and

it felt

great.

It

gave

me ground to stand on

that wasn't

my father's. Some men report much more violent breaks with their fathers during their revolt years. In literature this confrontation

symbolically or

literally

is

often resolved either

with the death of the father at the hands of the son.

Sons killing fathers or sons having fathers

killed

through some of the greatest and most enduring

is

a

theme

literature

Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, and The Brothers Karamazov,

that runs

of the world:

among others.

This

is

not surprising since, as Freud also noted, "parricide is the principal and pri-

mal crime of humanity as well as of the individual." He traces the very roots of religion tions of

—and —

men"

which, he

"the

asserts, is a

symbolic substitute for the

and pseudo-historical brothers all

most primitive organization we know, the associaand eating of a totem, or animal,

to a ceremonial slaying

father. In Freud's

psycho-

setting for the primal father-son struggle, a

band of

who had been driven away by "a violent, jealous father who keeps

the females for himself" set out together to slay the father. Freud ex-

plained:

This violent primal father had surely been the envied and feared model for

each of the brothers.

Now they accomplished their identification with him

by devouring him and each acquired a part of his strength. The totem feast, which

is

perhaps mankind's

first

celebration,

would be the

commemoration of this memorable, criminal

—

things began

social organizations,

23

act with

repetition

and

which so many

moral restrictions and religion.

IN A

MAN'S WORLD

In the end, the brothers Freud described found that they could not

have what they wanted:

"No one could or was allowed to attain the father's

perfection of power, which was the thing they all sought."

As seemingly seem, John

irrelevant to real lives as Freud's theories

sometimes

Munder Ross has pointed out:

The truth of Freud's notions about fathers is undeniable. At some level and in some measure sons did then and do now hate their fathers, do wish to take their place, notwithstanding their love and neficent

filial

duty. And however be-

and well-meaning they may be, fathers in their turn must nonethe-

less discipline

and deny their sons the full enjoyment of their pleasures and

ambitions; for such are the requirements of childhood and the obligations

of paternity.

What Freud presented was inevitable, the dynamic dualism of

a son's grateful affection for a father nurturant and giving, and the enraged, defiant son's battle against a depriving and constraining overlord.

There

is

no breakdown of statistics in the FBI's Unified Crime Report

that shows how many homicides involve sons killing fathers or fathers kill-

The Criminal Justice Research Center in Albany, New York, one of on crimes, refers inquiries to more general studies on domestic violence, where details on father and son murders remain hidden. In the overall pattern of homicides, figures on murders involving fathers and sons probably constitute a very small percentage. The fact is, sons act out the death wish on their fathers in other ways. One is for the son to withhold his own love and intimacy, as his father had done to ing sons.

the largest repositories of data

him.

I

believe that this tends to backfire, resulting in as

many love-starved

sons as love-starved fathers.

Another possible version of symbolic patricide is getting a vasectomy, an operation by which a son puts an end to his father's bloodline into the future.

I

talked to

one man whose son had the operation and with

the father had had an intensely competitive relationship. "I took

it

whom

person-

man said. "He deprived me of grandchildren. I saw it as his way of He was saying, T don't want to do to a son what you did to me.' " So ends the grandfather's dream of immortality. He feels his own ally,"

the

getting back at me.

death and blames his son.

The most common version of symbolic patricide is the son's rejection of his father as the model of masculinity. By adopting a different personality, style of dress, or lifestyle, or by changing speech patterns, hand gestures, and everything else about himself that reminds him of his father, a son commits psychological patricide. He kills the father in himself by trying to exorcise his father's influence from himself. "It's a way of saying, Fuck you, Dad,' " as one man put it. By refusing to let any part of his father live on in c

himself, the son effectively kills the father within.

J

24

[

Fathers and Sons-. After His Image All this

is

part of the revolt stage.

pects of the father-son relationship,

is

The irony here, inherent

in

that psychological patricide

many asis

a

form

of psychological suicide. By cutting himself off from and killing the father within, by denying that the father his

own

himself.

a powerful influence in determining

and

As I have shown, the father does

formation of his son's

in the

had

personality, the son suffocates

that role can be

kills a

very important part of

in fact play a very significant part

self appraisal.

A son's failure to acknowledge

a significant barrier to his self-knowledge

and development into

a fully

mature man. Not

until

and to his growth

he comes to under-

stand his father's influence on himself can he hope to resolve his differences

with his father and with other men.

RECONCILIATION motto of the revolt stage is "No pain, no gain," then for this final might be, "What goes around comes around." For finally, a son comes to terms with his father and with those traces of his father that he If the

stage

it

finds in himself.

"In spite of everything," Freud wrote, "the identification with the fa-

ther finally

makes

a

permanent place

for itself in the ego.

We give

it

the

name super-ego and ascribe to it, the inheritor of the paternal influence, the most important of functions."

The Russian and Sons,

first

novelist Ivan

in Fathers

published in 1861 amid a storm of controversy and contra-

diction that persists to this day. conflict,

Turgenev made the same point

The novel

tells

the story of generations in

of the old giving way to the new. In the end, the hero, Yevgeny Baz-

arov, the idealistic rebel

and symbol of change and "renunciation," dies of

blood poisoning. His easily influenced friend Arkady Kirsanov marries and

becomes a "zealous proprietor" like his

father.

that attempts to revolt against the father are

all

Turgenev seems to be saying in vain.

Somehow, no matter

how much a son changes, he retains a considerable part of that man with

whom he first identifies. Turgenev's story is one that selves,

all

of us know;

if

we have not lived it our-

we have heard it a hundred times. My interviews resounded with de-

scriptions of sons' struggles to gain independence

from their fathers only to

step into their fathers' shoes. Consider the account of Harvey, a thirty-

seven-year-old

New Jersey building contractor who ten years earlier had social reformer. This was the man who never

been a wiry, free-thinking,

settle down, who once shouted at his father, "Take your life and He now works for his father, embraces his father's goals and lifestyle, owns his own suburban split-level house, and has a pot belly, a de-

wanted to shove

it."

mure wife, and a son for whom he wants to do everything his father did for him. Or consider Rodney, the twenty- six-year- old son of a wealthy indus]

25

[

IN A

MAN'S WORLD

trialist, a Harvard graduate who turned his back on the family fortune to become a student of Zen meditation and a writer of short stories, giving up

a life of comfort to live in a modestly furnished, rented cottage but who then

returned to take over the family finances.

And, finally, Ken, a thirty-one year-old Los Angeles real estate broker whose story reflects a reidentification with his father's values as well as the development stages from reverence to revolt to reconciliation: I

had a

of respect for

lot

my father. He's a self-made man. He started out

with a pushcart in Brooklyn, went into the vending machine business, then

managed

motel in Palm Springs, bought out the franchise, and

a

makes probably $100,000 a year. Plus he tions; overall

he does pretty well.

him Saturday filling the gether.

I felt

like

I

remember

I

coffee machines.

was really helpful.

It

talks?

with Kate. Only once did

ever see

I

it

was a big thrill

to

go with

We got along well working to-

was also one of the few times I got to

do something alone with him. He worked a much. The heart-to-heart

now

invests in land, stocks, specula-

Hardly

him

lot,

ever.

I

and

I

didn't see

recall one,

when

I

him too split

express any real deep tender

up

emo-

when he cried at my older brother's wedding. It was just after both his It was the first time I had seen him let go in twenty years. With his sons, he was into corporal punishment. We knew when we did things wrong and we expected to get whipped. His philosophy to us: "Suction,

parents had died.

ceed!

Work hard." When I turned sixteen I stopped seeing my father as

God. There was a power struggle. He was clinging to tability of change.

became an

issue:

when I could

I

sort of lost respect for

car.

Once he

to sign the papers because to

my

but

him from then

I

saw the inevi-

on. Everything

my lifestyle, my dress, the length of my hair, my friends,

use the

went out and bought my own with

father,

it,

I

said

I

could never use the car again. So

my own money.

I

I

got one of my teachers

was too young. I brought the car home and said

"Keep your goddamn car, I got my own!" He flipped out. I had

usurped his power.

Ken rebelled for years against his father's middle-class morality: he dropped out of the mainstream culture that his father represented, dropped out of college, lived on a farm in New England with Kate (whom he never married), wrote an unsuccessful novel, started a restaurant that failed, started a

maple syrup business but

circumcised, "which

is still

a big issue with

left

it,

had a son (who was never

my parents," said Ken), left Kate,

moved to Los Angeles to try writing screenplays but never sold one, waited on tables in a hamburger joint, took a real estate course, married "a nice girl" (his parents' description), and is now buying and selling houses and condominiums with an eye on some Palm Springs properties. 26

Fathers and Sons: After H/s \mage

After rejecting his father's

model adamantly

for

many years Ken now

sees the irony of his turnaround:

am like him, in terms of my goals and my energy and my self-motihave always been a big achiever or tried to be. It's in my nature. All my life I've wanted to come up with a scheme that would make me rich I

guess

I

vation.

quick.

—

I

I

guess

I

he respect me?

got that from him. I

don't know.

I

I

now have a lot of respect for him. Does

wonder.

I

think he's beginning

measures respect in dollars. If I were making double what spect

I

to.

My father

am now, he'd re-

me twice as much.

many men the struggle to come into their own and out from unshadow of their fathers takes a turn when they first father their own

For der the

my Grandpa, "that much the better.") now off the son to carry on the family name; it is now shifted to the grandson. For the new father there is now a sense that he must "act like a man" because he is being watched as a role model. And he develops a new appreciation for what his own father had to do. Ken's son Amos clearly served that function: children. ("If the child

is

a boy", says

For one thing the burden

is

He was their first grandchild. Also I began to see it from the other side of the coin.

To see what it's like to be a parent, to see your flesh and blood and have

dreams

for him.

I

couldn't totally excuse

my father for a lot of his actions

but I understood him a lot more.

Ken, like other men I interviewed, hoped to be a different model to his

son than his father had been to him. Their attitude can be summed up

want

to

do everything

for

my son that my father did for me

But breaking the chain of events that not easy, though sons

set a

son up to be just

as: "I

—but more."

like his father is

may try. Ken told me:

I'm a liberated version of my father. I'm not restricted in my doctrines. He's locked in his ways. I'm

flexible.

He never was. With my son I try to be a lot

more emotionally expressive. We have a lot of heart-to-heart talks. I want him to accomplish whatever it is he wants to do. I want to participate in things with him but at the same time help him develop a strong sense of self.

Interestingly, as

much as Ken and others insist that their approach to

is distinctly their own, echoes of their fathers' styles resounded through many of the interviews. Men want their sons to be "selfmade" and "independent"; it is not surprising, therefore, that successive

raising their sons

generations of sons

become accomplishment-oriented and emotionally

inexpressive.

]

27

[

—

"

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

The Outsider The aloofness of the hero -father is a universally familiar notion, woven into

own Jewish upper

the basic organization of societies as diverse as Freud's

middle class and the preliterate community of the Trobriand Islands east of

New Guinea. For example, tomakava is the name given to fathers in the Trobriand Islands. The word

is

translated as "stranger," or "outsider." Anthro-

pologist Bronislaw Malinowski wrote about this matrilineal society in The

Father in Primitive Psychology,

first

published in 1927. The natives are

"quite ignorant of the man's share in the begetting of children," he discovered.

These natives "affirm without doubt that the child is of the same sub-

stance as

its

mother, and that between the father and the child there

is

no

bond whatever." In studying this primitive culture, whose structure and social order revolved around this obviously biologically unsound notion, Malinowski learned that even though they ascribed no procreative purpose whatever to men, Trobrianders

still

regarded fathers as "indispensable so-

unknown in the biological meaning so familiar to us, is yet maintained by a social dogma which declares: 'Every family must have a father; a woman must marry before she may have children; there must be a cially.

.

.

.

Paternity,

male to every household.'

Even

in this strong

mother-oriented society and without any knowl-

edge of biological imperative, the Trobrianders assigned importance to the social role

of the father in the family.

Why, I had wondered

as

I

read through this material, has

so-called "sophisticated" society

such a long time to

come

also read the following

to this

it

taken our

—considered so beyond primitivism

same conclusion?

On

the

same day I had

by John Munder Ross in the International Journal of

Psycho -Analysis (1979): "Until recently, the father has been a forgotten parent in the psychoanalytic and psychological literature."

One other cultural quirk belies the island people's belief system. Malinowski writes: "Not only

is it

a

household dogma, so to speak, that a child

never resembles its mother, any of its brothers or sisters, or any of its maternal kinsmen, but

such

similarity.

right,

it is

father,

on the other hand,

and proper thing for a man or woman

point, the matrilineal cal

extremely bad form and a great offense to hint

To resemble one's

resemblance It

is

to do."

is

at

any

a natural,

On this one important

bond is overshadowed for, Malinowski notes, "physi-

a very strong emotional tie

between two people."

was Malinowski's conclusion and conviction that "the ignorance of

paternity

is

an original feature of primitive psychology, and that in

all

speculation about the origins of marriage and the evolution of sexual cus-

toms we must bear in mind this fundamental ignorance."

]

28

[

Fathers and Sons-. After His \maqe

—

may sound like an apology or an excuse for the way fathers have

It

have not

—been with

their children.

or

But a form of this "fundamental igno-

rance" echoed through dozens of talks

I

had with

men who alluded to fathers

they never got to know, fathers they would have called "tomakava" had they

been Trobrianders, fathers who were eternal strangers, ever the outsiders: All

wanted to do was be close to the guy, but he was

I

there where

I

couldn't reach him.

"Who are you, Dad?" That was what In

might

our highly

still call

always really wanted to ask him.

I

and strongly patriarchal society, many men them the stranger in the father wishes to see there. The image of the fathe boy

civilized

their fathers strangers. For

overwhelms the hero ther as an

aloof, always off over

that

uncommunicative and unreachable outsider recurred through-

my interviews, as it does throughout Sherwood Anderson sketched his father:

out

literature. In

A Book

of Men,

know what was up and had the queer feeling I was with a stranger. I don't know now whether my father intended it so. don't think he did We were there at the edge of the pond. We had come in silence. It was still I

didn't

I

raining hard,

and there were

by thunder. We my father spoke, and in the

flashes of lightning followed

were on a grassy bank at the pond's edge when darkness and rain his voice sounded strange.

It

was the only time during

the evening that he did speak to me. "Take off your clothes," he said and, still filled

with wonder,

I

began to undress. There was a

flash of lightning

and I saw that he was already naked. And so naked we went into the pond.

He did not speak or explain. Taking my hand he led me down to the pond's edge and pulled me in. It may be that I was too frightened, too full of a feeling of strangeness to speak.

.

.

.

Before that night

my father had never

seemed to pay any attention to me. It is

lead us

all

a powerful image. to the

their loudest

Shrouded

in darkness

and

silence,

our fathers

pond of manhood. And their aloofness and silence become

message to us.

Fathers who absent themselves psychologically leave permanent scars

on their sons. Those who absent themselves physically as well have considerable effect on the social behavior of their sons. I pondered a number of sociological surveys that recount the impact of fathers' absences on sons. Boys whose fathers were absent for various lengths of time from birth to adolescence were less assertive, more dependent, more submissive, and less secure in their masculinity than boys whose fathers were present. Further, recreational directors rated nine- to twelve-year-olds whose fathers had been absent since their fourth year and found them to be more dependent on their peers, less aggressive, and less likely to engage in physical contact 1

29

[

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

games than boys with fathers present. Ten- to thirteen-year-old boys without fathers scored lower on academic tests than classmates with fathers. Boys without fathers had more difficulties in self-control. One psychologist speculated that a father's absence interferes with a boy's development of trust in other people.

against

and

A team of psychologists observed that rebelliousness

rejection of male authority figures were characteristic

adolescent boys whose fathers were absent.

And sociologist Albert

among K.

Co-

hen, in Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang, defines gang cultures as

predominantly male and blames juvenile delinquency among boys basi-

on the absence of a male figure in youngsters' lives. Most of these studies were based on data collected from families of military men, men whose work took them away for long stretches of time, and men who had truly abandoned their families. But I also found a study that made me realize even sons of so-called present fathers may suffer the same sociological symptoms. In this study, a group of three hundred seventh- and cally

eighth-grade boys were asked to keep a careful record of the time they spent

alone with their fathers over a two- week period. The results: The average time

each boy spent alone with his father was seven and a half minutes each week!

Thus, even fathers who are at home are somehow still absent. Repeatedly, in literature, research reports,

and my own interviews, the

hero comes close, then dissolves and disappears. all

their

male heroes

able, inimitable.

the hero

—

fill

Men come to expect that

will

be

elusive,

unapproach-

the outsider.

Some men spend

their

whole

lives

the void created by their father's withdrawal. And, sadly,

they often get caught in a vicious

and warmth from their

—

hero

But their greatest frustration comes from striving to know

who remains

searching to

like their first

circle.

For while they vainly seek intimacy

their fathers, they are also learning behavior

primary male

from them,

role models: they quickly learn to return the aloofness

they get. They withhold the emotions their fathers withheld from them. Through such cycles the barriers between men are perpetuated from one generation to the next, from father to son and from man to man. John, a twenty-nine-year-old speech therapist from western Massachusetts, strove to evoke an honest and open response from his withdrawn father for most of his years. But the difficulty intensified after John graduated from high school: I

it

often sensed something was going

was.

I

on with him, but he wouldn't say what

remember going to him as a kid and asking, "Are you mad at me?" I

assumed he was pissed across with

it;

off at a certain aspect of

that's his pattern.

I

me but he wouldn't come

thought I was happy as a kid, and yet there

was also always this feeling of insecurity. Yet, those feelings were. There was no

I'd

have to suppress whatever

way to vent them

30

at

home, so

I

put on a

Fathers and Sons-. After His \maqe front.

wasn't able to confide in him.

I

During

this

whole time

at least

She was upset and showed

ble.

Once

—only once—

did

With him

it.

felt

I

victimized.

coming across and I found I was really hating him

wasn't

his ultimate

I

go to him.

my mother would put her cards on the taI

felt

for that.

he

still

That was

weapon: the turn-off. We'd have arguments that got just to the

edge of physical violence

—though

there was never a question that we'd ac-

tually get physical with each other.

And even

have reacted. We'd have fights and great about not having to talk to

I'd

if it

did

I

probably wouldn't

say "fuck you" and leave and feel

him or

deal with him. Later, after

married and sort of righted myself in his eyes,

I

remember

I

got

feeling cheated

by my father, cheated of intimacy. John's father

communicated by his silence. His judgments were deliv-

ered in a verbal void or indirectly, leaving a lot of room for confusion in a boy's mind.

How was John to interpret such silence? That his father had no

feelings for

him? Or, worse,

that the feelings were so awful he could not

Or that his father how he had learned to sup-

speak them? That he wasn't worth the time or trouble?

was an empty man? Much press emotions

from

later

his father,

John realized

and

that his insecurity

was rooted

in that

confusing silence.

Kim,

a thirty-one-year-old

western Massachusetts and in his

sells

graduate school dropout

who

lives in

cordwood, described the phantom father

life:

When I think of my father I see him in a blue woolen winter coat buttoned up,

and he has one of those cardboard accordion-style briefcases under his

arm, hunched over slightly with a serious inexpressive empty look on his face,

standing at the bus stop.

That image of a sullen, silent like a

man locked up in a dark woolen coat hung

cloud over Kim's life. Similar images appeared throughout the lives of the

men I interviewed. For these men, fathers are dark and distant strangers who often

seem to play a minor role in their sons' emotional development. "To be

sure,"

wrote psychiatrist John Munder Ross, "the father

is

not

so constant a presence as mother, but rather he emerges off there,' a 'twilight figure' who takes

shape mostly in the morning and evening, who

is

ex-

posed to daylight over weekends and holidays, who may loom mysteriously as a

midnight marauder or ogre." Yet paradoxically, while the father often appears to take a back seat or a

shadowy secondary position in the parenting process, he serves as the quin-

The lessons of the man-father are indelimprinted on the boy-child. But who is this man and how do we get

tessence of masculinity for the son. ibly

close to

him?

31

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD know and

Writers through the ages have expressed an inability to

communicate with

John Updike, for example, wrote:

their fathers.

"I

wanted to speak, to say how I needed him and to beg him not to leave me, but there were no words, no form of words available in the tradition." James Baldwin:

"I

have written both too

much and

too

little

about

this

man,

whom I did not understand til he was past understanding." And Edmund Wilson: "I have always assumed through my college days that my father was as reactionary as was advanced, and did not dare discuss my ideas with I

I

him; but I had failed, as I realized later, to understand his real point of view."

The conflict between who the father appears to be and who he really is how to be a man. Not only does he receive mixed messages, but he suffers supreme disappointment and frustration in investing so much hope and trust so much love and pride in a hero who

plagues a boy trying to learn

—

—

seems, through his silence, to be rejecting him.

A

Becoming During

a

Father

workshop I attended on fathers and sons, a group of fifteen men and were asked to complete the sentence, "When I think of my

sat in a circle

father

I

feel

." .

.

These were some of their responses:

Hurt, rejected, half a man.

A strange distance and confusion about his actual role in my life and a fear that

somehow or other I have learned

to react in

ways he

reacts,

and

I

feel

trapped by it or him. I

it

by being good to

portant mission in I

my father that would like to compenmy children and I've taken that as the most im-

had such a weak experience with

sate for

feel this

I

my life.

incredible yearning for love, and such sadness that he's dying.

Sometimes

I

feel very,

very empty, the way I'm going to

feel

alone in the

world after he dies. Separate, angry, rejected, scared that he's going to die before

want from him. On rare occasions I

here

I

get

what

I

feel love.

The men were asked to complete another sentence, "If my father were ." say to him ..

I'd

say what

I

said the last time

to you." But

I

fear I'd get the

I'd

I

I

saw him:

"All

I

ever wanted was to be close

same response.

don't know what I'd say to him. I've never been able to approach

don't think

I

could start now. 1

32

f

him and I

Fathers and Sons-. After I'd say,

\mage

Hi's

"Old man, why don't you cross the

street.

Why don't you

take a

risk?"

"Dad, why don't you come out? You seem so bottled up hurt by that.

The

last

I

can't reach

man

said,

you and

"Dad,

I

it's

and

I

get

frustrating."

want

just

inside,

to say

I

love you,"

and then he

started to cry.

Why is

so difficult for fathers and sons to exchange those three

it

—words

words

that stick like

from the heart of the father

cement it

in the throat? If it

would most

likely

were to come

be returned

freely

in kind. So,

given the fullness of the boy's potential love, what motivates a father's with-

drawal from his son?

Dating from the pregnancy, fatherhood role to play. Biology forces

is

in

many ways an awkward

men, taught from childhood to be active, into an

unfamiliar and uncomfortable, even embarrassing passivity. After planting the seed they take a back seat in the process, watching their wives or partners get larger every month. Pregnancy creation

—

nancy tered

men

can only try to fathom.

is

a

Men

woman's journey,

a

mystery of

hear about the effects of preg-

the nausea, back pains, altered chemistry, altered physiology,

moods

al-

—and they can commiserate, but they can never experience

them. They feel one step removed. For men being or feeling, the predicament

is

who learn to relate by doing, not

frustrating.

"Come, feel your baby," says

your wife, and you gently place your hand on her bulging belly. And though you can feel it (him?) move, it remains a theory, a concept, not an actuality. By the time the baby is born, the mother has already established a strong relationship with the child based on the physical connection of the last nine months. For the next nine months the father struggles to catch up. His gestation period,

when he

physically

and psychologically adjusts

to parent-

hood, begins the day the baby is born.

For almost nine months after my child was born I was as touchy, moody, and physically depleted as my wife had been during pregnancy. Later I learned I was unknowingly participating in a variation of a practice known as couvade, a ritual observed in both ancient and recent times by many cultures and societies that was established to give men some sense of participation in the birth process. The ritual may include taking to bed, simulating labor pains, and symbolically enacting the birth of a child. In the tropical forest cultures of South America, the father of a newborn follows a rigorous diet for a week or so after the birth. Couvade was formerly com-

mon in the cultures of the Amazon Basin, Corsica, various Asian societies, among the Basques of Some anthropologists claim that the ceremony is meant

and, as recently as the early part of this century, France and Spain.

to demonstrate the father's

sympathy for the pain the mother withstands. 1

33

f

IN

They believe the custom

WORLD

A MAN'S

actually lightens the pain for the mother. Others

interpret the practice as an observance of the mystical relation

between the and the newborn. Some less spiritual psychologists view it as a pretense by men to do and feel something they cannot. Like a child who tries to steal the limelight by showing off, men are trying to rob women of a power father

women will always have over men: the power to create life. chologist Joseph Pleck

commented on

Sex-role psy-

the condition that might explain

such a motivation:

It

has been a recurring problem in

that will give gives to

them

cultures to create a social role for men

all

the social valuation

women. What

is

and importance that childbearing

intriguing in this paradox

is

that while so

many

different behaviors have been seen as a compensation for or a consequence

of men's envy of women's capacity to give birth, there has been so little consideration

and encouragement of the most obvious and pro-social way for

men to deal with this presumed envy

—by taking more

direct care of their

children.

In his

new

role as father, the

ground from the start. tural expectation, child,

in

and

as

Partly by

remains somewhat in the back-

he serves as a general support system for the mother and

an occasional

our culture are trained

sition

man

economic necessity, though largely by cul-

relief parent. In the tradition

within which

—with occasional exceptions—men

men

take the po-

of provider and supporter. They create the frame and the context for

women and children are the content, the picture in the frame. home for me on a personal level not long ago leafed through a family album. In it found photographs of my mother,

the picture;

This conclusion was brought as

I

I

my sister, and myself in the mountains, by lakes, at beaches, on back porches and front steps. found only three photographs in the whole album of my father, and only one of me pictured alone with him. My father, like most faI

thers,

was always taking the

pictures, telling us

where

to stand,

when

to

smile. His sincere desire to have a "picture for posterity" effectively took

him outside the family circle. And it left me to rely on vague fleeting memories to outline my phantom father.

We look into the mirror that our fathers could be, but the reflection is foggy.

I

found

this especially ironic

—and

pathetic

—

in light

of why

fathers say they want sons in the first place: as a mirror of themselves.

many may

It

sound egotistical and, some may add, sexist, but ask a man for the truth and he will likely sound like Charlie, a thirty-one-year-old musician from New York City, who had himself become the father of a boy five weeks before I talked with him:

I

34

[

Fathers and Sons. After His Image

Sure

wanted

I

a boy.

blood flowing. not that

Why?

it

was ego, a matter of keeping the family

I

couldn't teach a

I

Part of

A lot of the stuff want to teach, just that a

girl, it's

I

want

to teach to a boy.

boy is, well

...

It's

A lot of feelings

have toward a child have to do with passing on experience.

I've

read a

I

little

about ancestor worship; you go back and you go back and you go back until

back

finally you're

at

God. But

—but the

—and

I've

never really crystallized this be-

is male. When my child, come forth in the kid." And part of wanting a male child was the feeling that God

fore in

my mind

my wife was pregnant

I

link

is

between men. The passer

prayed, "God,

embody

yourself in

incarnates in the role of a teacher most often as a male.

sound

sexist,

role to

fill.

It

but

just

it's

some kind of feeling

did sound sexist, but that was his point.

wisdom, knowledge, and gularly male.

And

skills

although

from father

it

sounds

that

men

I

don't want to

have this special

The passing of experience,

to son

is

part of a tradition sin-

sexist, there

was

a part

of

me that

agreed with Charlie. The lesson of the importance of the lineage of men begins with the father.

Circumcision Once the father has a son, it is no exaggeration to say that his first act is usually to have a mark put on the boy, physically and permanently. The act of cutting off a man's penis

is

ritualized in cultures

all

over the world in the

performance of circumcision, the surgical removal of the foreskin. In overview of the father-son relationship, circumcision

durance

test that is part

fear

—

that

the necessary en-

And it man we revere is the man we must first learn to

of this

seems appropriate that the

is

my

first rite

of passage into manhood.

our protector-hero is the enemy-outsider against whom we have

to protect ourselves.

History's all

first

recorded circumcision was performed on Abraham and

the males in Abraham's house. Later the covenant of circumcision was

established with Abraham's son Isaac as a symbolic demonstration of obei-

sance to

God the Father. The degree to which later generations in our own

culture have taken over the legacy is illustrated by the fact that, according to a

New York Times report, male circumcision in

surgical procedure in the

United

States.

1976 was the most common

Over the

years, anthropologists,

and psychoanalysts have offered a variety of reasons for the continued widespread use of an operation for which the .American Pemedical

scientists,

diatric Society in

1975 concluded "there are no valid medical indications."

Hygienic explanations do not hold up. Circumcision does not control what

was termed "masturbatory insanity," one of the early rationales

]

35

\

T

(

v>

hich was,

IN incidentally, tice).

developed long

A

MANS WORLD

after the

operation was already in wide prac-

Nor does it prevent cancer, a theory put forward in the

not increase sexual

sensitivity.

1930s.

It

does

And aesthetic preferences remain, as always,

in the eye of the beholder.

By the end of the 1980s, members of the medical profession could not on whether to circumcise or not. In 1989, the thirty-seven thousandmember American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement effectively agree

hedging its bet: There are, it said, "potential medical benefits and advantages" in circumcising babies, as well as "inherent disadvantages

and

risks."

Mean-

while, while an estimated 90 percent of American baby boys were circumcised

had dropped to 59 percent by 1987.

in hospitals in the 1950s, that figure

Some suggest that circumcision represents a boy's willingness to bow to the

power of his

selves or

father,

though

in

no

culture

do boys circumcise them-

even ask to be circumcised. In most societies boys are forcibly sub-

ceremony when they are too young to understand consciously meaning of father-power or masculinity. No matter what the age of the boy at circumcision, from infancy to adolescence, the operation marks his first rite of passage into manhood, and a painful one at that. In one of the most explicit examples of this, boys in the Transkei region of South Africa stand up immediately after the circumcision is performed, beat their chests, and shout, "I am a man!"

jected to the

the

Though cumcision

in

pediatricians

our culture

may argue is

a

the point, the explanation that cir-

reenactment of a primitive

pounded convincingly by psychologist Karen Ericksen

ritual

pro-

is

Paige and her

worldwide study of 1 14

husband,

Jeffrey Paige. After a four- year

cieties to

understand the functions of circumcision, the Paiges found that

the 23 cultures that practice the genital surgery share a structure:

"They

are

composed of what we

groups, related males tives."

who

common

political

strong fraternal-interest

call

are united to pursue

tribal so-

common

political objec-

They continue:

The common pattern

is

for a village elder or chief to

command a reluctant

father to have his son circumcised. Evidence like this persuaded us that

male circumcisions are a public demonstration by fathers to elder kinsmen of their loyalty to the fraternal -interest group. The greatest sign of loyalty is to entrust one's son's reproductive ability to cisely

someone

because the ritual involves this risk that

it is

else,

and

it is

pre-

such a powerful emo-

tional symbol.

Nigerian fathers laugh nervously during the ceremony, telling the cumciser: "Easy, easy,

cir-

many women will weep if you err."

Research shows that babies and little boys do not quickly forget the attack

on

the source of their masculine power. Circumcised baby boys I

36

[

show

Fathers and Sons. After His \mage

greater increases in heart rate in response to sounds than do girls and uncircumcised boys. After circumcision, another study showed, male babies change their sleep patterns, staying awake for longer periods of time than

more and sleep less harder to console when they

they did before the operation. Circumcised babies cry

than females and noncircumsized males are get irritable.

Whether or not the circumcision

it

performed by the father, a son jus-

fact, is often the one reshow of his "loyalty to the fraternal- interest the body of religious elders, the body of medical elders, or the

sponsible for authorizing group," be

is

with his father, who, in

tifiably associates the act

it

as a

body of family elders, generally all bodies of men. "I think it was a kind of commitment my father wanted from me," said a

man

circumcised eight days after birth

covenants or rituals or research. authority.

They can get me.

think any aggression

I

I

"I

who knew nothing of Freud

think

it

changed

or

my attitude toward

now feel cowed by what happened to me. And

feel is a

kind of reaction or compensation for

I

it."

manhood will be a painful test. And he realizes, first subconsciously and then later much more consciously, that the person responsible is his father. This first wound inThis son, and

flicted

all

others, learned that the passage to

by the father runs deep

in the son. But,

even

in

circumcision,

am-

bivalence pervades the father-son experience, for the son has two reactions

made

to being

to withstand the test: he hates his father for being

suffer the humiliation is

made

to

and pain of the attack, but he also loves his father and

indebted to him for initiating him into the fraternity of men. This am-

bivalence

—of

love

and hate, of gratitude and revenge

interactions between fathers

Circumcision

is

ripples

through the

and sons throughout their lives.

very clearly just one of a series of physical humiliations

that endlessly reasserts

What

—

and reinforces the father's power over the son.

Fathers leach Their Sons

Through

their considerable

ambivalence and mixed messages, fathers do

number of important lessons on how to exist in a Many such lessons are transmitted nonverbally, and it is clear

pass along to their sons a

man's world.

them up simply by imitating their and foremost, these lessons have to do with power.

that sons pick

fathers' behaviors. First

By the time children reach kindergarten, teachers

are observing a

strong relationship between a boy's sense of masculinity and the degree to

which he perceives his father as making family decisions. In one study, third- and fourth-grade boys who show more so-called "feminine" traits reported having fathers who take a relatively passive role in setting limits on

them. By adolescence, according to another study, boys whose fathers ]

37

[

set

A MAN'S

IN

interest tests

than boys whose fathers described themselves as

strongly masculine limit setting

on masculinity

And male college students who

limits scored higher

did not set limits.

WORLD

on

adjective checklists rated their fathers as high

on

and competence.

Boys learn that limit setting and decision making are two demonstrations of power

and

control.

Achievement and accomplishment, which can

be seen as by-products of power and control, are two other demonstrations of masculinity a boy learns from his father.

If a father is a

high achiever,

One study of seventh- and eighthgrade boys showed that sons of men who held jobs demanding entrepreneurial responsibility scored much higher on achievement chances are good the son will be, too.

motivation

than boys whose fathers had no such responsibility

tests

work. Fathers of high-achieving boys are often competent

at

men willing to

— "beckoning from ahead

take a back seat while their sons are performing

rather than pushing from behind," as one researcher put

it.

This quality

presumably also helps a boy develop a sense of self-reliance.

—

power from their fathers by example and they learn that fathers have it but sons do not. This is demonstrated time and again from the beginning of the relationship. Dad is bigger and stronger. He is often the major breadwinner and therefore has monetary power. The house schedule often revolves around his comings and goings (mostly his goings) He knows everything, and there is no way to argue with him, no way to compete, no way to keep up, no way to do as well as he does. This letter from Franz Kafka to his father demonstrates the lack of control and power many sons feel around their fathers: In short, sons learn about

.

For me you took on the enigmatic quality that all tyrants have whose rights are based

on

their person

and not on reason. I was, after all, weighed down

by your mere physical presence. There strong,

tall,

broad.

your eyes but

I

felt

in the eyes of the

ure of all things. You were to be with

I

was, skinny, weakly, slight; you,

a miserable specimen,

.

.

.

and what's more, not only in

whole world, for you were for

me the meas-

completely tied to the business, scarcely able

me once a day, and therefore made all the more profound an im-

pression on me, never really leveling out into the flatness of habit.

What

me was your total lack of feeling for the on me with your words and judgments. It was as though you had no notion of your power. How terrible for me was, for instance, that: "I'll tear you apart like a fish." It was also terrible

was always incomprehensible to suffering

and shame you could

when you ran around the table,

inflict

shouting, grabbing at one, obviously not

really trying to grab, yet pretending to,

cue one, as

it

and Mother

seemed. Once again one had, so

J

38

it

(in the

end) had to res-

seemed to the

child, re-

Fathers and Sons: After His \maqe

mained

alive

deserved

As

I

gift

through your mercy and bore one's

—

used to go

down

most men: to the

basement with

carpentry in the evenings.

draw a

line

and give

my

just grab the

saw from

I'd hit

Then

and

I

my father to work with him on his

wanted to learn, so he'd cut a sheet of plywood,

me a handsaw. I'd try but go off the line a little or jam

the saw, and

mer.

—

man among men. Elliot, a thirty-one-year-old dentist, described

than a

a scene too familiar to I

hence forth as an un-

more and more men I began to see that most of us make up to them and to other men for feeling

interviewed

spend lifetimes trying to less

life

from you.

would

father

fix

miss. He'd put

he'd finally say,

"Go

a couple of times but then he'd finally

it

me and do

it

himself.

up with

upstairs,

want

I

Same with

and hamamount of time.

the nail

this for a certain

to get this done." I'd just disap-

pear because I didn't want to be around his critical energy anymore.

Our fathers are our

first

around and oppress the next Elliot

as

we can, we turn

man down the line.

continued:

Recendy, a friend asked

now

male oppressors. As soon

me to show him how to build something, because

I'm a pretty good carpenter. So

time he

showed him and then he

I

made a mistake I grabbed the hammer from him. He hated

you just show me how to do

it?"

he

said, just like

I

Every

tried.

used to say to

it.

"Can't

my father.

Then I saw it so clearly: "Here I am, my father revisited. I am my father." In this

way sons learn how to feel inferior to their fathers. They are left not as much of a "man" as this

with a feeling that they are not as good as

—

—

man who in the beginning stands for all men. Chapter 5 takes a look at how this sense of insecurity and feeling of inferiority in terms of other men is played out in peer relationships.

Another lesson, taught by its absence, relates to emotional expressive-

ness

—or

—among men. A psychologist

lack thereof

at the University

of

Pennsylvania found that in intimacy workshops more than half of the male participants reported that they do not

them, especially told

after

remember

their fathers

hugging

they were somewhat older. Typically, interviewees

me they had seen their fathers cry once or twice in their lives, usually at

weddings and funerals. As one man said, "I have a very emotional response to seeing

my father cry. It makes me want to cry. But it also made me feel

closer to him, to see he had a vulnerable side. I've felt he's always been cut off

from himself emotionally."

Some boys, deprived of any kind of emotional their fathers,

welcomed even negative

39

expressiveness from

reactions rather than nothing at

[

all.

IN A

MAN'S WORLD

Gay Talese, in Thy Neighbor's Wife, described this scene from the man who became something of a role model to too many men: Although Hugh Hefner's his

son overcome the

father, a

life

of a

competent swimmer, had tried to help

fear [of swirnming],

young Hefner stubbornly refused,

and one day his father became so frustrated and angry that he hit him. It was a rare

and welcome display of emotion from

his father, a remote, repressed

man who seldom revealed his feelings to his family and spent most of his time working quietly as an accountant in a large Chicago firm.

Through their silences, and even through such rages as Hefner's father permitted himself, fathers transmit another fundamental lesson:

self-reli-

By example, emotional aloofness is shown to be the hallmark of manliness, leaving excessive friendliness (as will be shown in chapters 5 and 6), ance.

to

be viewed with suspicion

if not disgust.

What, then, of the famous man-to-man or heart-to-heart puted to take place between father and son? According to

and and

research, such intimate far

between.

Men

and emotional father-son encounters

report that the two most

precipitate such tete-a-tetes are

and when

talks re-

my interviews

when

a son

common

are few

occasions that

announces he plans to marry

a son announces he plans to divorce. Often, these supposed dia-

logues quickly turn into monologues by the father on live his life

—

in short,

should

magazine editor whose father was a newspaper editor,

struggle. George, the

recalled for

how the son

demonstrations of superiority in an ongoing power

me such an exchange and the effect it had on his life:

When my father wanted to have what he called "a talk" with me, he would call me down lo have lunch at his favorite restaurant. It was an event, like a command performance. Except they were never dialogues. They were opportunities for

him

to

port like marrying the that girl

is

absolutely

her." "Well, it

— except

riage

Dad,"

that

it

had ended

I

expound on

life

said,

I

and other things of im-

right to the point: "I think

negative feelings about

"I'm sorry you don't agree." And that was about

had an incredible impact on me. Years later, after my mar-

in shambles,

a reverse effect

even though

letters

wrong for you. I have strong

I

went back

you remember that luncheon, Dad?" I had

and

wrong woman. He came

to

him

just before

started, "I

on me, you know. I wanted

he died. "Do

remember

to prove

it

vividly. It

you were wrong

sensed what you were saying might have been true. Well,

I

this moment a somehow I don't think my father understood what it meant to me. He made light of it and said something like, "Well, that's life. It's silly

just

wanted to tell you that you were right." I had built up to

long time, but

to talk about

it

now."

40

Fathers and Sons: After His Image

"Talking about trary to the

it" is

not what

heart-warming scenes

real-life fathers

do with

their sons, con-

such television shows from the

in

Sixties, and Seventies as "Father Knows

Best,"

"Leave

to Beaver,"

It

Fifties,

and "My

Three Sons."

Death Of The Father. The Final By first confronting his own

father

Rite

and then becoming a father himself, the own man. But, as Stan, a forty-year-

son comes ever closer to becoming his

old investor from Washington, D.C., put to

it,

"You always

your father, no matter how old you are." Until, that

sage in the

filial

is,

feel like a

boy next

the final rite of pas-

relationship: the death of the father.

"What's been your biggest disappointment in ern singer-songwriter Merle Haggard was asked

country and west-

life?"

when he was

forty-three

years old.

"The death of my father," he

more than 30

replied without hesitation. "It

years ago, but a day doesn't go by that

I

happened

don't think about

him."

"Who have your biggest heroes been?" he was asked. "My father, of course." I was talking with a literary agent in New York who had taken over his father's business shortly after his father died.

"Did you

feel a lot

of grief

when your father died?" I asked. "No," he said, "in fact back.

It

it felt

though I loved him very much and Freud man's

an enormous weight was

like

was like a semi- religious experience. I

life.

cites the

When

lifted off

my

for the first time, even

very close to him."

felt

I

felt free

death of the father as the most important event in a

Freud's

own

father died, he wrote, "I

felt as if I

had been

torn up by the roots." Not long after that he initiated his self-analysis and

began to develop his theory of the Oedipus complex.

Some men respond with doning them

—

this

anger

at their fathers for

time by dying. Others respond with

realization of the repressed death wish.

Still

that with their fathers' deaths they

of a man,

looking

if only

caused by the

others respond with fear:

they are alone in the world without their fathers to

of their emotional reactions, most

once again aban-

guilt

fall

now

back on. Regardless

men I interviewed expressed the feeling had now finally attained the full stature

out of necessity. Now that they no longer had their fathers

down on them, these men

that they were nobody's "junior"

felt

anymore.

With

that traumatic event

comes

a feeling of freedom, but with that

now the son must step into the role of He must accept the power for which he has

freedom comes a new responsibility: a family elder, or patriarch.

1

41

f

— IN strived

all

these years.

WORLD

A MAN'S

He must show that he can fill his father's shoes. It is a

which he has practiced his whole life, and yet it comes awkwardly. The father's death is the final reconciliation with the one person both

role for

guided and blocked the way to manhood. The bereaved son often experiences an acceptance of those traits he had worked so hard to negate and

deny during

his father's

life. I

interviewed Tom, a forty-two-year-old

man

from Los Angeles who was twenty-one years old when his father died: After he died I became very much like him. I was aware that he had gone but

he lived on through me. He existed in me. And whatever he had passed me I would carry forward. In our family I'm the oldest son so I immedi-

that to

ately

took over.

I

grew up instantly the day

I

found out he

died.

I

stopped

being a kid and started being a man. Losing him was the biggest change in

my life. It was the first time I began to sense my own mortality. Until then I think

I

believed

life

worked out

fairly,

you reach some

that

accomplishment, happiness, whatever

.

.

.

and then

sort of sense of

my father died

un-

happy, unfulfilled, he didn't get a chance to finish what he had started

and

it

sort of

came

as a

shock to me.

I still

haven't gotten over

it

ten years

later.

Without

reconciliation, fathers

remain outsiders. With

it,

sons com-

manhood and the circle that brings them back to themselves. Until they come to know the man they revered and modeled themselves after, they will never know themselves. Even reconciling with the idea of the man after he is dead is better than remaining forever at arm's plete the cycle of

length from one's father, one's primary male hero.

—

Through these stages or rites from reverence to revolt to reconcilia boy discovers the stranger in the hero, the opponent in the supporter, and at each passage he generalizes lessons learned from one man to apply to all men. If he has learned well about the importance of power, achievement, competition, and emotional inexpressiveness he will enter relationships with other men with great caution and distrust. This has been the legacy from father to son. ation

—

—

42

—

Chapter Two

PATERNAL GRANDFATHERS AND MENTORS: BRIDGES TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD I

men after the images of my heroes. Men, Ladies

expected to be coached by

and Gentlemen, who one could depend on, look up

to,

believe

in.

I

wanted

what I had coming.

— Mark Medoff, "The Locker Room Kid" Esqu i re, October 1975

Fathers

— absent or present —

about the mysteries of manhood. Nor should they be. their lives

men

pick up valuable pointers from other

how men

of the masculine connection, about while each new man in his life

boy Throughout

are not the only people to teach a

men about the basics And

act with each other.

may add new depth and breadth to his under-

standing of himself in relation to other men, he also begins to recognize

fa-

power and control, the male hierarchy, and the closeness and distance between men. As a boy begins to look around in his life for other male role models, he finds two men his paternal grandfather and his mentor who contribute in significant ways to his development. In his grandfather, and later in his mentor, he finds two men whose appeal is due, in part, to the fact that they are devoid of the emotional entanglement and competitiveness that arises miliar lessons learned at his father's feet. These are lessons about

—

—

—

with his father

at least at first.

Paternal Grandfathers: If the

source of male power and

above him

—

The

Soft Spot

empowerment is the father, then the man must, we can only assume, have manifold

—

the father's father

power.

We are pulled to our paternal grandfathers as a connection to our male lineage, and as a key to understanding our fathers and ourselves. They are

drawn

to grandsons as perhaps their final opportunities to assure the

continuation of their wisdom, or

at least their

43

[

names, and in an

effort to

— IN A

MAN'S WORLD

right some of the wrongs they committed with their sons. In grandfathers we see our past. In grandsons we see our future. The link between the two

was explained

in a gripping fashion in a

dream

told to

me by Benjamin, a

thirty-two-year-old Boston attorney:

dream my grandfather had just died. We were at the funeral, except my grandfather was still alive; I guess it was that state before the soul is supIn the

posed to leave the body. Anyway, he was dressed in a white tuxedo sitting in

My father was my grandfather's arm; we were dressed in white tuxedoes, too. My grandfather directed my father to a door and into a room that looked like the basement of my grandfather's house. My father used to haul winter storm windows up from there for my grandfather when Grandpa got too old to do it himself. He told my father to start bringing the windows upstairs. Then my grandfaa white wheelchair, surrounded

pushing the wheelchair, and

by white walls and clouds.

was walking next

to

it

at

— —

me and I'm not sure here whether he actually said it or me with his eyes but the message was clearly, "You're the one." It was

ther turned to told

I

a strong

image and a strong message. I was the inheritor of the family chal-

ice,

the family name; he was passing the family reputation down to me. I felt

my

father was bypassed.

Memories of paternal grandfathers frequently came up in interviews as the soft spot in their man-to-man relationships. This, I realized, was quite possibly one of the very few men in a man's world with whom we were practically guaranteed to be free of power struggles, competitiveness, and egoclashes. Why? The difference in generations accounts for a relative lack of assumptions and expectations of what constitutes success in the world two factors that engender conflict between father and son. Lower expec-

—

tations

with a

produce higher

satisfaction; they allow for

emotional interchange

lot less static.

Also contributing to the relative emotional neutrality of the grandson-grandfather bond

is

the old man's

time when the boy

is

growing up and watching him

at a

power position

in the

world at large

intently.

While the

boy's father struggles to define and maintain his power/position in the

world of work, the grandfather may well be into the power years of his

—those in

fifties

life

and sixties in which he is part of the command generation

which he has clearly established his authority and expertise. But apart from

his position in the outside world, his unquestioned role as the elder

family hierarchy

may be enough

male in the

to assure his superior position, both to

himself and his grandson, rendering competition out of the question.

Furthermore, since the grandfather

is

beyond competition,

"past his

prime," retired, physically weak, and viewed by the rest of the family as a de-

]

44

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

boy may feel no threat of being overpowered and may much freer to open his heart, fears, and hopes to him. So though the boy may be drawn to the grandfather's power, it is pre-

pendent

figure, the

be, therefore,

cisely the lack

of competition for power that makes this such a rewarding

conflict-free relationship. For

both young

man and

old, distance affords

closeness.

This distance/closeness theme was reinforced in the two most com-

monly recalled images that surfaced when asked men to tell me about their I

paternal grandfathers. In both, the grandfather appears as a less-than-real,

remote

figure.

One view came

in

romantic sepia tones and diffused

lighting, in

an

man with the largest, most inthe world, and with all the time in the world. A warm man full

oval cameo, blurry at the edges. Here was the viting lap in

of deep laughs, deep personal contentment, and always those deep sparkling eyes gazing adoringly at us. Clearly out of focus,

it

was the vision of a

man so loved, so idolized, that suspected these young boys never really got to know the man in a clear objective light. He remained a distant and distorted image, his own kind of stranger. I

The other picture of the grandfather was quite different but no less disdark lighting we now see a dour, grumpy man with a long gray

tant. In cold,

beard, speaking perhaps in a foreign language,

who smelled funny, and

never

seemed to be paying full attention to us. He was the tyrannical patriarch whom everyone feared.

When

brief a time, a shiver

Here again,

as

this

man

turned his attention to

went up our spines. He was even more of a

we learned from our

fathers,

however

us, for

stranger.

we find built-in

ness in one of our closest male-male relationships. Despite

separate-

all its

richness

and warmth, the grandfather-grandson relationship brands us with the message of distance between men. In later chapters we see how this lesson gets retaught and relearned. Nonetheless, the deep longing for closeness that

all

humans share draws men to each other.

Closeness to one's paternal grandfather also holds out the hope of closeness to one's father

— though,

ironically,

attempt to block that hoped-for connection the

first

words of Herbert Gold's

sometimes the man who may

is

the father himself. These are

Fathers:

My father has never spoken his father's name. "He hit me for whistling like home a carp for the holiday, he took me to the rabbi, He did this or that. What my father has left me of my grandfather is a silent old man with a long white beard, a horse, a cart, a cow, a mud-and-log house an old country grandfather fixed in my mind like the memory of a painting. That's not enough, of course. This stylization of a peasant, he brought

but

I

didn't

want to

go."

—

images does not satisfy the craving for history. I must tempt out the truth.

]

45

[

— IN A

MAN'S WORLD

A father's attempt to thwart his son's knowledge of the grandfather may reflect the father's own unresolved anger, pain, and frustration with his father. Boys watching their fathers for clues as to how to relate both to father and to all men pay careful attention to the interaction of grandfather and father. What they may find is a mirror of what they are encountering themselves. These observations were offered by two men from what appear to be diametrically opposite backgrounds, one an upper-class older

WASP

(white Anglo-Saxon Protestant), the other a working-class African Ameri-

can of twenty- two.

First the

WASP:

By the time I came along things were pretty hostile between Dad and his father.

ther.

also

One reason was that Grandfather was financially dependent on my faAnd my grandfather was a man of tremendous pride. And my father resented some of my grandfather's earlier successes that my father

never lived up to even though their roles were reversed by the time I can re-

member.

My father and grandfather were up against it most of the time

they were together. My father and his father argued a lot.

Now the Afro- American: I

think grandaddy had a real wicked temper but only with his sons, not his

grandsons.

warrant

I

guess

I

figured

my grandaddy

's

my father must have done something bad to

anger, because

all

the rest of the time with us he

was so gentle. But I sensed my father and his had their own thing going, and I

sensed myself as very

much on the outside of it.

Feeling ostracized from the interaction of father and grandfather only

—

adds more confusion and a sense of inferiority

—

sider

in the

shadow of "grown-up men."

a feeling of being the out-

But, as

Gold

also implies, a

craves to understand himself through understanding his

and

in

boy

history

most cases that understanding comes through the lineage of men in so he pushes through father to reach grandfather. Even when

his family

—

the grandfather has been long gone by the time the is

own

so strong he will find out about the man

—

if not

boy arrives, his craving

from his own father, then

from other relatives (usually the women). Charles, a twenty-two-year-old computer programmer from western Massachusetts, told me about his grandfathers: I

never

knew either of my grandfathers. One died when I was three, the last couple of years I've started to hear more about my

other at four. In the father's father.

I

hear

it all

from

my grandmother. My father never talks

about him. You can't ask him or he gets evasive. They didn't have a relationship, as far as

I

could

tell. I

don't think he

had much contact with

his father

except in what they always referred to as "projects." Like the time

46

my

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

know what to do with it, so my And it's the same with me and my father. My only contact with him has been over these "projects," when grandfather bought a ton of grain and didn't

farm to

father started a chicken

get rid of

it.

I

My grandfather was apparently the

was building something with him. source of a

lot

of energy in our family. His philosophy was, "Don't just

— do something, even

stand there

ment and then had

down

to pull

if it's

wrong."

my grandfather coming into

story about

He built a boat in the base-

part of the house to get

it

out. There's a

the shoe factory he

owned one

winter day and telling the workers huddled around the hot steam pipes,

"Get to work, you get of fantasies

I

warm

that way."

Knowing these

stories bolsters a lot

have about being the third in a line of driven men,

men who

get things done, who accomplish tasks quickly.

There was a swelling sense of pride lated these cherished family tales

ferent voice than

when he

in this

young man's voice as he re-

about his grandfather, a significantly

talked about his father.

much our paternal grandfathers can mean to us

It

—

made me

dif-

how

realize

especially in light of dis-

appointments with a father. Into them we can pour all the love we may have

had trouble giving to our own

fathers.

They are our fathers once removed.

William, a fifty-five-year-old banking investor from San Francisco,

looked to his grandfather for an image when he rejected his father as one.

With

my father

I

developed an attitude of I-don't-give-a-damn-what-he-

thinks, mainly because

he never approved of anything I did anyway. I think

my father meant well but he suffered from being the son of a well-known vaudeville song-and-dance

man when vaudeville was in its heyday. He per-

formed in Europe and Japan and

all

over the world.

I

never

knew him but

my aunts told me stories about him. He had a powerful presence, was told; he was elegant and arrogant. On his deathbed, in his nineties, he I

propped himself up on his bed deciding in what pecking order the relatives could come in and

visit

him.

He was probably a horrible person to know

but a remarkably self-assured son of a bitch, from what I could gather. It

was clear after sitting with this man for two hours that he had followed

in his grandfather's footsteps.

bitch

who

savored

He was

army stories

in

a short, stocky, self-assured son of a

which he put superior

officers to

shame.

His employees, I was told before I left his office, called him Napoleon.

Other Types Of Paternal Grandfathers There are some

men whose

grandfathers

made more than brief appear-

ances or came in dreams or handed-down stories. In the eighteenth century

and

early in the nineteenth,

men left their families for months or years for

47

IN

jobs that would

A MAN'S

WORLD

make them enough money to send

families or retire early back to their

for the rest of their

homeland. The education of the man's

young son, left at home with his mother, fell to the grandfather. I was told of such a relationship by Leon, a sixty-three-year-old Greek restaurateur living in New York City. I asked him, "What was the most important thing your father gave you?" "My grandfather," he answered. I

spend much time with

didn't

my father because people at that time, in

that area of the world [Greece], migrated or

was work. Sometimes

I

He explained:

wouldn't see

him

went to

sea,

or wherever there

for a few years.

It

was kind of

my mother was rather young and busy raising the family, it was my grandfather who really brought me up. He had the time, he had the strange. Since

interest,

and he knew so much. I was in awe of him, held him in the highest

regard.

remember how people from

I

to him, seeking advice.

different villages

would come to talk

My grandfather would take me for walks and inject

me with his philosophy of life. He talked about religion and war and Greek history.

When

I

admired him so much.

I

man what he learned from his grandfather, he emThe first was discipline. The second was worldly wis-

asked this

phasized three points.

dom, as he put it, "a sense of the scope of the world and what I had to know to be in it " And the third was the importance of lineage: "Our family structure is based on patriarchy. Everything is spelled out quite precisely. I understood that anything my grandfather told me came from the same source as

my father."

Another kind of relationship between grandfather and grandson emerged through the interviews: a "bridging" relationship that helps the son the is

who is revolting against his father nonetheless maintains contact with men in his family. The young man, usually in his early or mid-twenties,

looking for a friend and approaches his grandfather for solace, camarade-

rie,

means of staying in touch with his somewhat more dependent, himself lonely children preoccupied by making their livings and his own peers

conversation, and intimacy and as a

own

lineage.

with his

The

grandfather,

slowly dying off, appreciates an ear. Craig, a thirty-six-year-old Los Angeles

school administrator, described such a relationship:

My grandfather is eighty-seven years old. was a

kid.

I

wasn't that close to

He was your basic immigrant who

started with nothing

killed himself

him when

working.

and built up a pretty successful business.

I

really

I

He

have

Our closeness started about six or seven years ago, just after my grandmother died. I used to walk him to the dentist and he and I would walk and talk. It was beautiful. He talked about his childhood. He was so generous with his feelings, in a way that I couldn't a great deal of respect for

him

for that.

48

(

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

And I was so responsive to that. started to feel so open to him. We became very close, a deep friendship without any regard for the olderyounger thing or the fact that he was supposed to be my superior. He never moralized like my father. couldn't share with him many of my contemporary experiences but we maintained a good level on lots of things and perbe.

I

I

sonal issues.

minutes.

It

I

just

spoke with him the other day on the phone for forty-five

was heaven.

I

feel

very lucky to have contacted

him again.

"He never moralized like my father." Here is a key to the grandfather's role in a young boy's life: he can reminisce with love, and enjoy the boy without feeling the need to create a fledgling man who reflects well on himself as masculine standard-bearer, as the father does. Through the old man the boy gets a taste of relating to a grown man on his own terms while still remaining anchored

safely to the family.

Soon, though, the growing boy

is

impelled outward. As he matures he

comes to acknowledge the need for a guide, or more accurately a bridge, out of the family and into the world of men. Crucial though their influence may be, neither fathers nor grandfathers can supply all of what a boy needs to feel fully

equipped

in a

man's world.

Mentors: Bridging The

Gap

Young boys eventually begin to look outside the family circle for other male role models especially if they have been disappointed by fathers they could not depend on, look up to, or believe in. In this turn outward, boys are looking primarily for training and development in specific skills; reinforcement, approval, and acceptance as individuals; and entree into the world of grown-up men. These desires were echoed by many of the men I interviewed, with comments like these:

—

What I needed was someone who'd show me the ropes. I was looking for a man I could talk to, who listened me for who I am and what I could become.

I

to

me, who appreciated

wanted someone who would take me under his wing.

Enter the mentor.

He is a man who

fills

in the gaps in a

young man's

education by teaching him the nuts and bolts of a chosen field of interest; by

encouraging and simply paying attention to his development; and by serving as a stepping-stone to the next level to which the younger

man aspires.

Such men pass through a boy's or man's life as teachers, coaches, or instructors; as

mechanics, grocers, or the guy

down

partment heads, or bosses.

49

the street; as supervisors, de-

IN

The mentor

years vite

—too old

is

A MAN'S

WORLD

usually a half generation older, from eight to fifteen

to suggest competitive peership

comparisons to one's

father.

He

is

equal parts peer and parent and serving as protege.

and not old enough

to in-

embodying a bridge between them for the

a transitional figure,

A man's mentor is almost always male, a fact that reconfirms to me

men's belief that power comes through a male hierarchy.

Most relationships with mentors are encounters that may last several A mentor may be someone a man meets only briefly but who leaves a lasting impression. Or he may be someone the man never meets but who remains an inspirational male model to emulate (sports heroes, for example, or movie or rock stars, writers, politicians, war heroes). Or he may be someone with whom a man interacts for a number of years. Throughout history and across cultures, mentors have held a highly regarded place in a man's world. The Japanese might call him sensei or "the person born before," or "older"; it is one of the highest forms of address that can be bestowed on a person in that culture. In the Hindu tradition he is a guru, "venerable one." The Latin word mentor means "advisor" or "wise man." In Greek mythology, Mentor was a trusted friend, a consultant to Odysseus, and later a guide to Odysseus's son Telemachus. Plato expressed the strong emotional bond a protege feels for his men-

years.

tor as he sat beside Socrates,

who was about to drink the hemlock:

And we waited, talking and thinking of the greatness of our sorrow; he was like a father

of whom

we were being bereaved, and we were about

to pass

most of us had been able

to con-

the rest of our lives as orphans. Hitherto trol

our sorrow but we could no longer forbear and in

own tears were flowing fast self) for certainly

I

(so that

I

covered

spite of

myself my

my face and wept over my-

was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own

calamity in having lost such a companion.

Though the relationship of Socrates and Plato became a model for almost all mentors thereafter, scholars say one would have to hunt through volumes of Plato's writings for passages revealing the nature of that relationship. In fact, almost no one analyzed the mentor-protege relationship until

1

978 when

now retired Yale psychologist

Daniel Levinson stumbled

book, The Seasons of a Mans Life. Looking at the stages of adult male development, he called the relationship

onto

it

in the course of researching his

with a mentor "one of the most complex, and developmen tally important a

man can have in early adulthood." Yet, as

important as mentors appear to be, surprisingly few men in

study or Levinson's could identify actual

men

in their lives

my

whom they

would describe as mentors. Most recite the names of heroes from history or film: from John F. Kennedy to John Wayne. Why do male figures like these

50

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

loom

larger in

mens lives than real-life people? Are there so few men worth

emulating? Despite their own understanding of the need to find such mentors, are tial

men simply afraid of seeking out and making contact with poten-

mentors?

One explanation maybe that men define the mentor in such idealistic that finding any man who could live up to those expecta-

and heroic terms tions in the

first

place

would be

difficult.

Levinson described the "func-

tions" of a mentor:

He may act as a teacher to enhance the young man's skills and development. Serving as a sponsor, he may use his influence to

intellectual

facilitate

the

young man's entry and advancement. He may be a host and guide, welcoming the initiate into a

new occupational

social

world and acquainting him

with its values, customs, resources and cast of characters. Through his virtues, achievements

own

and way of living, the mentor may be an exemplar

that the protege can admire

and seek

to emulate.

He may

provide counsel

and moral support in times of stress.

Observe first that Levinson applies afunctional index to the definimaking it seem like a list of accomplishments one checks off. Also note the order in which he lists them, with skills first and emotional support last, and that only "in time of stress." Another clue to the reason for a relative scarcity of real-life mentors came out in my interviews. Men responded to questions about mentors with descriptions of what they referred to as "heroes" and "father figures." The tion,

repetition of these terms forces a comparison to

so-called "father figures" based If

men

are looking for

our fathers/heroes. Are these

on real father models or mythical archetypes?

mentors

who

resemble their fathers

—

ideas of what their fathers should be

—

or

fulfill

their

would be reasonable to expect them

it

to have trouble relating to the outsiders they actually encounter, given the

proscriptions against intimate father-son interaction. In the search for "fa-

men

therly" mentors,

are inevitably

bound to come

face to face as proteges

with the same issues, patterns, and stages they encountered as sons. In cases where the mentor-protege relationship

is

established,

men

often hope for companionships free of the emotional complexities they

have with their fathers or sons. In

fact,

the emotions in this relationship run

very high, setting up the familiar reverence and revolt stages as seen be-

tween father and son. Reconciliation is often less noticeable simply because the relationship

is

so short-lived.

REVERENCE A mentor earns much of the reverence he is paid by a younger man simply by demonstrating a belief in the latter's skills and abilities. The men-

51

A MAN'S

IN

tor sees promise in the protege

WORLD

and often

gives a vote of confidence just

when the young man is trying to prove himself to his own father. Cal, a thirty- five-year- old

Maine potter, told me about his male hero:

name was Bill Foster, an older guy, my father's age. I grew up down the from him in suburban Rochester, New York. I had worked for him since I was young. I cut his lawn, painted his house. He started building a houseboat in his backyard and I helped him on that. And I loved him; he His

street

was a wonderful guy. I guess he was the closest thing for me to a "good guy" father figure.

My own father used to scare the shit out of me. But Bill, he re-

me as a person. We'd talk for long periods while he worked; he'd tell me stories about when he was a kid. It was very important for me to see other males acting like regular people. He was a warm kind of guy and it lated to

—

was through him that I knew such a feeling was possible between men.

Without

all

the Oedipal and other complexities inherent in the fa-

ther-son relationship

—

a

matter of being too close, too emotionally in-

—

and too egotistically invested the young man can share his hopes and dreams, his concerns and insecurities with the mentor without fear of reproval and rejection. The young man and the older man

volved,

usually share an interest in a subject, sport, car, or machine; they have a

common

language in

which the two can

criteria for excellence

the

its

jargon and technicalities. Here

interact,

is

a universe in

where the standards are objective and the

mutually understood

domain of a father and son. Growing up in a working-class

—

district

as contrasted directly with

of Pittsburgh, Peter, a forty-

four- year-old carpenter, recalled treasured friendships with older men who

took the time his father could not: After school

I

would go to the local bus garage. And I met a guy there, Hugh

McDonald, and he taught me day I used to go help him

fix

all

about

the buses.

how to deal with It

went on

machinery. Every

for years

from the time

I

me to come and I really enjoyed going there, seeing how excited he was to see me. He'd give me a cup of tea I was thinking recently that my "male learning" came from men like that, passing figures, rather than my father. There was another guy who ran a little two-acre farm

was seven. He'd expect

nearby, and every weekend for four or five years I'd go hang out with him.

him tend the cows and sheep and plow the fields and plant vegetaI'd be with one guy and on weekends with the other. More than anybody else, these two guys taught me the skills of being I'd

help

bles.

So during the week

alive in the world.

I

learned about mechanics and

— powerful elemental

tools.

52

I

learned about the earth

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

Again, the lessons of the mentor, like those of the father, were functional

—

in this case, literally

mechanical

—but what the attention-starved

young man treasured most was "seeing how excited he was to see me."

Where a father is likely to challenge his son's chosen interests, weighthem for value against his own or against his own aspirations for the ing boy, the mentor unconditionally accepts the boy's interest, sharing what he knows and even justifying the boy's interest by having the same interests himself.

REVOLT Slowly things begin to turn in the mentor-protege relationship. Just as in the father-son relationship, the

young man who had felt respect, admiration, and from his mentor now

commonality, gratitude, and even love for

—

—

reaches a point in his growth where he needs once again to declare his inde-

pendence, as he did with his father. He needs to assert his position and authority,

to be

autonomous.

Now he feels hemmed in by the mentor: patronized,

unappreciated, and resentful.

ogy

He views his mentor's ideology and methodoland unbending. Having attained some

as old-fashioned, uninventive,

stature of his

own

in the

world into which he was ushered by the older man,

the protege sees the limits of the

beyond

his mentor.

—and he

mentor

He begins to feel that

in the

sees

world of grown-up

mentor is not such a big deal after all. And in order self he

something for himself

to

men his

become a big deal him-

must put his mentor behind him. Of this phase, Levinson writes:

The mentor he formerly loved and admired is now experienced as destructively critical

and demanding, or as seeking to make one over in his own im-

age rather than fostering one's individuality and independence. The

mentor who only yesterday was regarded as an enabling teacher and friend has become a tyrannical father and smothering mother. The mentor, for his part, finds the

young man inexplicably touchy, unreceptive to even the

best counsel, irrationally rebellious

and ungrateful. By the time they are

through, there is generally some validity in each one's criticism of the other.

The break

is

often bitter

and

hostile.

But

it is

essential for the

young

man if he is ever to feel fully empowered. The mentor as well grieves at losing a special relationship. that

it

It is

a tribute to the intensity of the relationship

takes a while for feelings to settle. After the break, the

see each other again or they may establish a

two may never

much cooler and cordial work-

ing relationship.

RECONCILIATION Once nized for

power

the protege feels that his

it,

is

his

own and that he is recog-

he can usually acknowledge freely the important role the men-

]

53

[

A MAN'S

IN

WORLD

As time heals wounds, each is more able to understand and their influence on the other. Whether they reconcile their differences with each other in spoken words or not (though, true to most man-to-man relationships, they probably will not), the protege will reconcile with his mentor in one of the most important ways: by making the mentor a more intrinsic part of himself, by incorporating into himself aspects of the older man he admires and even some of those he does tor played in his

life.

the effects of their meeting

not. Just as the son

who later realizes he has followed in his father's footsteps

or picked up his father's values, attitudes, and even physical mannerisms, so too does the young

man come to terms with the imprint of his mentor on it may take a lifetime for some men to acknowledge

himself. Nonetheless

the influence of their mentors

—

if they

even can claim to have found one.

The Mentors of an American Businessman The majority of the mentor-protege in the context

relationships

I

heard about occurred

of business. That stands to reason. Rising through the ranks

of any business, a

man has a number of opportunities to apprentice himself

to a mentor. Organizations are structured hierarchically,

and getting to the

the aim. A man in middle management finds a superior at the execumanagement level from whom he can learn the ropes and who might later help promote him. Each teacher is a rung on a ladder by which the young man steps to the top. At each step he picks up more valuable infor-

top

is

tive

mation about how men

No

each other and to the world

relate to

interviewee demonstrated the case better than

year-old president of a successful

who provided me with an

Bill,

at large.

the fifty-two-

New York investment and real estate firm, account of the series of mentors who

explicit

schooled him in the ways of the business world.

Bill worked his way from bottom up, from mail room to management. Along the way he apprenticed himself to men who seemed to care about him for himself (he would believe the contrary later), men who guided him toward productivity and upward mobility. From these men he also learned the pitfalls of life in a man's world: distrust and emotional inexpressiveness. Bill traces his inter-

the

est in

business to the influence, or lack thereof, of his father.

"Your father taught you how to be a businessman?" I asked.

memory of anything my father ever told me, not one conversation. I'm sure we did things together, but for some reaOh, no. In

fact

I

haven't a single

son I just go blank when

I

businessman. teach

me

He died when

anything.

I

The biggest favor my fame this image of himself as a big

try to think about that.

ther ever did for me, though, was to leave I

was young, before he had a chance to

really

was completely at sea except for this idea I had of him

54

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

being affluent and grandiose,

all

of which was negated by

my family years

later.

Bill felt

cheated by the early death of his father and took

authority figures for a while.

it

out on

all

He was kicked out of four all-boys schools for

disciplinary problems.

My first mentor,

I

would

say,

was

a

guidance counselor

at a

vocational

man me without overpowering me. He also showed me was playing this game me against the authorities as a reaction to my father's death. resented all authority because, I figured, what did it get you? They all abandon you in the end like my father just at a school

I

was

at.

He was important because through him

I

learned a

could show care and concern for

—

I

—

I

—

—

time when you need them the most.

When school ended, so did their relationship. Bill felt let down again, but he came away, nevertheless, with a desire to become a psychologist,

based on the model of this guidance counselor. After a

Army, however, he ended up

stint in the U.S.

and then got a job in the mail room of an advertising agency, where he met his next mentor, Max. in business school

He was my boss. This man opened my eyes to the whole world of business. Through the work I was doing for him

I

slowly

came

to

understand the

workings of the entire hierarchical structure of American business. Also he

was a meticulous person about everything he did. He taught me how to organize

my time, how to

I've lived

use

it,

how to

He gave me an image

set priorities.

with ever since of how a business person functions within himself

and, at the same time, within the business structure.

I

was particularly for-

tunate because he was a production manager, responsible for producing things.

So I was immediately impressed by the imperatives

— deadlines

for

tonight, deadlines for tomorrow, think ahead, think ahead.

The lesson was all,

do, do, do. Produce, perform,

meet

understand the hierarchy and learn to work within

a deadline.

it;

Above

maintain the ap-

propriate outer form.

"And what about your personal

relationship with this

man?" I

asked.

After a long pause he answered: I

don't really know.

I

don't know. There wasn't

much of one. There was an-

man in the department who I also thought of as a surrogate father type. With him I had a warmer relationship. He was more concerned with me; he cared. If I didn't look well he'd worry about my health. And he had other

this

impenetrable calm. You could run into his office and shout, "The

building's just

on

fire,"

and he'd

say, "Call

want to finish this layout."

55

me when it gets two doors down, I

IN

While

Bill

A MAN'S

WORLD

did appreciate this man's

more human side, he also took to

heart the lesson of emotional restraint in the face of work. After another

long pause he added: But even with him there was no great personal relationship. I'm wondering if I

had that kind of intimacy with any of the people who taught me what

I

know. They all helped me define myself professionally but not personally.

The next guy, Don, was considerably older than me. He refined me. He's the one that taught me how to dress, that it's better to be thinner, that you carry it. He taught me grooming and bought me a hairHe took a personal interest in my appearance but, I realized later, it was more for his business than for me. He taught me how to modulate my voice. From him I also learned how to listen and be more re-

a handkerchief and use

brush

use today.

I still

sponsive.

All these were tools to

tionships. Bill received

improve profit margins, not interpersonal

more

rela-

training and outer armament. But by this

point in his career, he was able to return something to his mentor: I

learned a lot from

him but I was also helping him grow and eventually be-

came a partner. I came

in

and took an old established business with a good

name and a fine product but no promotion and I doubled his business two or three years in a row.

"And how did he show you his personal appreciation?" I asked. "See, it was a work relationship, again," he explained. "He showed his appreciation by increasing my salary. He was proud of me I could tell by the way he introduced me but it was never spoken between us." By now

—

—

Bill

had learned to control the urge toward emotional expressiveness. Bill's education as an American businessman was capped by his

mentor, from trusting

men

This

last

whom he learned perhaps the most important lesson about

— even mentors.

man was head of an even larger corporation, which had bought out

company I was with. He was definitely a powerful father figure to me. He taught me how to wheel and deal, how to be hard. That was what I ulti-

the

mately learned from him. I had trusted him and found out he was trying to

me on a contract. I went into his office one day with a tape recorder my leg and made him repeat all the terms of our agreement. When the showdown came, I produced the tape. He taught me sometimes screw

strapped to

you really have to play rough. In playing

was trained to

rough with

live

it:

his mentor,

he graduated into autonomy as he

seek out the advantage and do not

]

56

let

your feelings get

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors in the way.

Aside from learning the Machiavellian ways of men,

learned the other,

Bill also

more painful lessons of disappointment and disillusion.

A Mentor

Being

would appear that most of the value of the mentor-protege relationship is gained by the protege. What is in it for the older man? Plenty. Being a mentor is as important a developmental stage as having a mentor. To step into the mentor role is to acknowledge that one has accuIt

mulated enough knowledge, to teacher. That

in itself

is

skill,

and expertise

yearning to be looked up to by other for

from student

for

many years.

Men but

A

to graduate

many men continuously men, after being looked down upon

enough reward

it is

in their twenties

and

thirties

become mentors

not until they reach their forties that their

mentor of forty would be passing through

a

full

to

adulthood behind and enters

his

is

realized.

phase of adult maturation

Levinson terms the "mid-life transition." Beginning when a early

younger men,

potential

man leaves his

middle adulthood (forty to

sixty),

marked by awareness of physical decline, career solidification, family stabilization, and generally greater responsibility as an adult. A this transition

is

man's relationship with his parents changes; roles reverse. His children,

if

he has any, are becoming independent. Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson identified

an important aspect of middle adulthood as the concern for the nur-

turance of future generations.

He termed this natural inclination to assume

responsibility for the education

adults as "generativity."

and indoctrination of the next

line

of

A man acts on this drive as a father, Cub Scout

leader, teacher, supervisor, or

mentor.

For a man of this age, finding a male protege to whom he can transmit

knowledge can be a deeply satisfying way to

The mentor's own meaning

fulfill

the urge toward genera-

by the new knowledge that part of himself will be projected into the future via the younger man. At the same time that it makes him feel connected to the future, the mentor role connects a man with his own youth, which he sees quickly fading. Contact with young men working, planning, directing, and socializtivity.

—

is

justified

—

them recharges the middle-aged man's own youthful energies and reminds him of the continuity of the life process as he comes to terms ing with

with the inevitability of his own death.

But there is a negative side as well. Being a mentor can be an awkward and heavy burden to carry. I learned this firsthand on a visit I paid to an editor

who had been an important professional and personal influence in my

life.

When I started out as a freelance writer he had given me several key asmy career and my self-

signments for major magazines that helped both

1

57

[

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

More than that, though, I admired the humanistic touch he re-

confidence.

tained while wielding power and ideas in a big way. In the library of his Princeton, New Jersey, home I finally got up the courage to declare respect,

my debt,

and thanks.

The first thing I learned, as I tripped over my own words, was how difficult

it

was to take the leap into expressing my feelings of gratitude without

sounding corny or insincere. His response did not help matters. He quickly deflected the

compliment and my awkwardness:

Mentor? That always troubles ships. Ultimately,

over the other.

I

it's

me as a way to be thinking about relation-

the language

don't

I

dislike. It implies

dominance by one

know of a mentor-protege situation

aren't gaining something.

It's

in

which both

not a one-way thing. There has to be a funda-

mental exchange going on.

He seemed to have jumped so quickly from the personal to the general that the emotion of the moment had built myself up for was lost. u What wanted to say to you was that I really appreciate our friendI

I

ship

beyond all that," I said. "So do I," he said and then went on: I

know it doesn't work unless there's a parity. I

benefitted as

much from the

things you've written as you have, in a purely commercial sense.

I

needed

somebody to do a story that nobody else could do and you did it. Part of my stock in trade

is

to

tors get paid for.

be able to have access to writers like you. That's what edi-

So the books are balanced

at the

end of the day

in those

terms.

sounded hard-boiled and out of character from a man with whom I had had long talks about magazines and human nature. But what I realized was that in all that time we had never broached the subject about our feelings for each other. They were understood. There was mutual admiration and respect, personally and professionally. When it came to talking about it, however, my mentor became curiously impersonal. "Does it make you uncomfortable knowing that you're such a strong role model for me?" I finally asked. This

all

"Well,

ing of it?

you

see

I

it

does bother me," he admitted.

my weaknesses and flaws. If

of the sort that It

"I get

wonder. But I don't take it seriously.

took

I

I

I

scared of it.

Am

I

deserv-

know you won't be blinded;

do take on

'proteges,'

they are usually

know are too independent to buy my model entirely."

me a long time to realize that in giving vent to my feelings for

him I had stepped

bounds of our structured relationship into the never-never land of feelings. That was all that was needed to make him close up and back off. outside the

58

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

Two

Classic

Mentors

Most of us, sadly, miss out on having or being mentors. We must rely on the stories

of others. Perhaps that

is

why we revel

in the legacies

of some of the

mentors of history: Gandhi, Vince Lombardi, Buckminster Fuller, Gurdjieff, Linus Pauling, and many others all served as mentors to young great

men who saw them as teachers. Two famous mentor-protege relationships were richly documented in letters: those of editor Maxwell Perkins and writer Thomas Wolfe, and psychoanalysts

Sigmund Freud and Carl

Jung. These

two intense relationships

produced words and ideas that changed their respective fields. Of interest

in

both cases are the dramatic stages of devotional reverence followed by painful revolts,

and, at the end, token reconciliations. Also evident are themes

cited earlier in this chapter: the

believing in the protege,

important function the mentor serves by

and the

to the interpersonal relationship.

difficulty It is

of expressing emotions relating

also interesting to note that

the so-called personal interaction that took place between these

curred not face to face

—

a threatening position for

how they feel about each other medium of letter- writing affords.

say

—but through

much of men oc-

most men attempting to

the safer distance that the

Maxwell Perkins/Thomas Wolfe name of Maxwell Perkins is synonymous with model and model mentor. In his thirty-six-year career with Charles Scrib-

In publishing, the editor

ner's Sons,

Max

(as

everyone called him) guided the careers and develop-

ment of such writing talents as Ring Lardner, Erskine Caldwell, Taylor Caldwell, James Jones, Van Wyck Brooks, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and others. The simple reason that so many writers considered him their mentor lay in his philosophy of dealing with writers. He coddled, prodded, supported, encouraged, and in

But to three

who were

Fitzgerald, Ernest

all

other ways appeared to believe in his writers.

—

become America's foremost writers F. Scott Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe Perkins transcended to

—

the role of "editor of genius" to serve truly as a mentor to these men, not just as

an influential editorial advisor but as an inspirational older male figure.

One can read many of the Perkins-Fitzgerald

qualities of the mentor relationship in the and Perkins- Hemingway matchups, but in the Perkins-

Wolfe pairing we see the full-blown manifestations

—both

positive

and

negative

— of

erential

admiration and appreciation, turns into a struggle for power and

control,

and ends on a sad note of reconciliation just before Wolfe's death.

the mentor-protege bond.

59

The

[

relationship begins with rev-

— IN A

At the cation,

start,

MANS WORLD

hearing his book had been accepted by Perkins for publi-

Wolfe echoes every young man's desire for recognition:

"I

cant

tell

you how good your letter has made me feel," he wrote to Perkins. "Your words of praise have filled me with hope, and are worth more than their weight in diamonds to me." In his first correspondence he described for all men what he wants from a mentor: "I want the direct criticism and advice of an older and more critical person." Wolfe revealed in a letter after their first meeting how important Perkins's praise was toward alleviating his self-doubt: "I was so moved and touched to think that someone at length had thought enough of my work to sweat over it in this way that I almost wept. It was the first time, so far as I can remember, that anyone had concretely suggested to me that anything I had written was worth

as

much as fifteen cents."

Working with an unwieldy manuscript the way no editor in publishing had before, Perkins helped Wolfe shape and produce Look Homeward, Angel With its publication Perkins became recognized for what any good editor and any good mentor knows is his purpose and his reward. "Without that other genius Max the world would never have heard of Tom Wolfe," a literary commentator said at the time. The compliment would be-

—

—

come a double-edged sword later in the relationship. Wolfe's reverence for Perkins continued to grow. Here, in one letter of affection,

he linked his own success with finding a mentor:

You have done what I had ceased to believe one person could do for another you have created

liberty

and hope for me. Young men sometimes believe in

the existence of heroic figures stronger and wiser than themselves, to

whom they can turn for an answer to all their vexation and grief. You are for me such a figure: You are one of the rocks to which my life is anchored. .

Characteristically

gets

it,"

.

humble, Perkins returned the compliment and the

appreciation. "I'm mighty glad you feel as you

deserving

.

do

—

except for a sense of not

he wrote back, and then he makes the point that the mentor

back as much as he gives:

"I

hope anyway that there could be no serious

thought of obligation between us but, as a matter of convenience of speech, I

would point out

that even

if

you

really

owe you." The two men would walk the

cancelled by what

owed me

a great deal,

it

would be

I

streets

of New York

mostly about work, publishing, and ideas for books and

at night, talking stories. It

was on

one of those walks that Perkins mentioned he "had always thought a grand story could be written about a boy who had never seen his father, his father having left when he was a baby and of how this boy set out to find his faand finally did find him in ther and went through a series of adventures some odd situation." Wolfe picked up on this theme appropriately sug-

—

.

.

.

—

60

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

gested by his

own

father figure

—and wrote

subject of a man's quest for his father. That

for the next four years on the book became Of Time and the

River.

no coincidence, I believe, that Wolfe initiated the first stages of his revolt and break from Perkins while trying to complete Of Time and the and one's father River. In order to come to final terms with one's father a man must move away from him. figure "We create the figure of our father and we create the figure of our enemy," Wolfe wrote Perkins in a letter he never sent. The implication is that they are one and the same figure, and that both are merely a creation of our minds. Wolfe was caught in a struggle with himself with the two sides of and with himself, the boy and the emerging man, the son and the father the feelings, even against his strongest inclination and need, that he must It is

—

—

—

shed this father figure

in

—

order to find himself.

But his need for support against his

own self-doubt won out the first

round of his revolt. He still wanted Perkins's approval. Working hard in London, he wrote Perkins: "I am a brave man, and I like myself for what I did here and I hope you like me too for I honor and respect you and I believe you can help me save myself. ... I turn to you because I feel health and sanity and fortitude

in you."

But when Perkins urged Wolfe to hurry up and

finish,

applying some

patronly pressure, Wolfe pulled away even further, responding, "The only

standard I will compete against now is What I do now must be for myself."

in

me:

if I

can't reach

it, I'll

Perkins understood well the role he played in his protege's article I,

quit

life.

In an

he published years later, he wrote:

who thought Tom a man of genius, and loved him too, and could not bear him fail, was almost as desperate as he, so much there was to do. But

to see

the truth

ing

is

that if I did him a real service

him from

—and

in this

I

—

did

it

was in keep-

losing his belief in himself by believing in him.

needed most was comradeship and understanding those things

I

What he

in a long crisis,

and

could give him then.

The big break between the two came after the publication of Of Time The reviews were favorable, for the most part, except in suggesting that Wolfe could not have written the book without Perkins's help. As soon as Wolfe realized that he was to be accepted for his accomplishand

the River.

ments only if his mentor's participation was acknowledged as well, he was compelled to end the association so he could affirm his place as a full-grown man among men. Things became volatile between the two, with Wolfe pulling away and Perkins trying to appease him. The deterioration of their rela-

tionship accelerated. Wolfe himself understood the process, at least

61

on

— IN

some

level.

In his novel You

A MAN'S

WORLD

Cant Go Home Again,

Wolfe's protagonist,

George Webber, says to his editor: "For I was lost and was looking for some-

one older and wiser to show me the way, and I found you, and you took the The road now leads off in a direction place of my father who had died contrary to your intent."

And so it did with Wolfe. It was then that Wolfe declared his complete autonomy from Perkins by severing his contractual agreement with Scribner's. Perkins was hurt, confused, and distressed. Officially he "faithfully and honorably discharged all obligations" of Wolfe to the publishing house; personally he failed to express his deeper feelings. In a letter after Wolfe's declaration of independence, Perkins awkwardly tries to apologize for his inability: I

can't express certain kinds of feelings very comfortably,

alize

what

my feelings are toward you

control you. I

could do.

I

but you must

only did that when you asked my help and then

It all

re-

You seem to think I have tried to I

did the best

seems very confusing to me, but whatever the result I hope

you don't mean it to keep us from seeing each other, or that you won't come to

our house.

Wolfe would have none of it now. After a suit against Wolfe,

case,

legal settlement

of a sticky

during which Perkins suggested he pay just to end the

Wolfe shot back at Perkins: Are you

—the man

trying, for

want hope

I

trusted and reverenced above

all else

in the

world

some mad reason I cannot even guess, to destroy me? Don't you

me to go on? Don't you want me to write another book? Don't you for my life my growth the fulfillment of my talent? My health is

—

well-nigh wrecked

—

—

— worry,

grief,

and disillusionment has almost de-

stroyed

my talent

Wolfe's

own insecurity at not being accepted as a separate entity from

is

this what

you wanted? And why?

mentor motivated his need to disassociate from him. He began work on another book but he would not discuss it with Perkins "for fear that ... it may be killed at its inception by cold caution, by indifference, by the growing apprehension and dogmatism of your own conservatism. Tell me," he continued in a letter, "what there is in the life around us on which we both agree; we don't agree in politics, we don't agree on economics, we are in entire disagreement on the present system of life around us, the way people his

live,

the changes that should be made."

The break hurt Perkins terribly, but he kept his feelings to himself. For the most part he never struck back, realizing the break was inevitable, staying inside the bounds of his mentor role. After hearing that Wolfe had signed with another publisher, Perkins wrote, "I can easily imagine a biog-

62

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

raphy of Tom written twenty years from

up

now that would ascribe this action

and manly determination

to his instinctive

to free

all

his

bonds and stand

alone."

Throughout a breakup that was intensely emotional (though consubdued as much as it could be), Wolfe made several gestures at reconciliation and paid tribute to Perkins, for he could not entirely let go of this man he sincerely loved and admired. In one letter he concluded: sciously

This letter I

is

a sad farewell but

I

hope it is for both of us a new beginning

am your friend, Max, and that is why

and want you

to

—

be mine

wrote this letter.

I

... I

am your friend

please take this last line as being

to say the whole way through.

I

what I wanted

am your friend and always will be, I think.

—

months of Wolfe's life tragically cut short at thirty-eight by a brain tumor Wolfe finally broke through his negative feelings about Perkins. From a hospital bed in Seattle, after a particularly close bout with death, Wolfe scribbled a letter to Perkins. A more poignant final reconciliIn the last

—

ation has never been written: I've

made

a long voyage

and been

dark man very close; and

much

of mortality

"hunch" and wanted has happened,

I

clings to

still

to write

that 4th of July 3 years ago,

life

all

I

me

you and

shall always think

top of the building and

to a strange country,

don't think

I

and

I've

seen the

was too much afraid of him, but so

— Whatever happens

tell

I

had

this

you, no matter what happens or

of you and

feel

about you the way

it

was

when you met me at the boat, and we went on

the strangeness

and the glory and the power of

and of the city were below. Yours always,

Tom

Sigmund Freud/Carl ]ung The competition

for power, the lack of personal exchange about intimate

feelings, the great

need for approval and confidence

the father-son relationship

—

tween Sigmund Freud, known Jung, Freud's leading disciple.

—

all

dynamics seen

in

are clearly evident in the relationship beas the "father"

of psychoanalysis, and Carl

Though the two men saw each other in per-

son but a few times during a seven-year period, they maintained close contact

through

letters.

The Freud-Jung Letters,

written from 1906 to 1913,

is

a collection of

360

letters

"the record of a friendship, a spiritual father-

son relationship between two unique and ultimately irreconcilable talents," according to the book's editor, William McGuire.

Though

there are hun-

dreds of pages of letters exploring the evolving theories and practices of the

1

63

[

— IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

—

new field of psychoanalysis, only infrequently

and sometimes only betwo lift the professional veil to focus on the interpersonal relationship between them. When they do, one of the things they reveal is that their relationship was at least as important as their exchange of tween the lines

ideas.

—do

these

For students of psychiatry,

as well; these were, after

all,

this relationship carries special

meaning

the founding father and the heir-apparent of

psychoanalysis.

In the hibit

is

though

first

stage of their interaction, the reverence

and respect they ex-

mutual. Each had the effect of building the other's confidence, for different reasons.

"You have inspired me with confidence for the future," Freud wrote to Jung after the young man had written to the older, telling him

admired

his theories

as replaceable as

yourself. "I

.

.

and wanted to be his student.

everyone

to continue

else

"I

how much he now realize that I am

and that I could hope for no one better than

and complete my work."

only fear that you overestimate

me and my powers," Jung wrote

back, confessing his lack of self-confidence, especially in the

shadow of his

hero.

Freud understated the point when he wrote Jung: the recognition you desire

and deserve

...

it

means

Finding an able second in Jung fulfilled Freud's tion

"I

hope you will gain

a great deal to

me too."

own desire to gain recogni-

beyond his own life. In the early years of their relationship Jung continued to put Freud

the hero's pedestal.

on

"My veneration for you has something of the character

Ironically, the issue of religion and its place would eventually cause their schism. At one point in their correspondence, Jung suggested a form by which

of a religious crush," he wrote. in analysis

they might continue their interpersonal liaison: "Let

one between equals but

me enjoy your friend-

and son. This distance appears to me fitting and natural. It strikes a note that would prevent misunderstanding and enable two hard-headed people to exist alongside one ship not as

as that of father

another in an easy unrestrained relationship." Surely this student of psychoanalysis was not inviting them into what

knew was the briar patch of human relationships: that of father and son. And did he actually believe that "distance" would enhance underthey both

standing? Inevitably,

and not surprisingly, their friendship began to turn. Differ-

ences began to surface. Jung wanted to explore parapsychology and precognition;

Freud rejected these pursuits as nonsense.

One evening, while they

talked together in one of their few personal encounters, a loud noise

sounded in a bookcase. At once, Jung predicted it would happen again and it did. But Freud would have none of his friend's claim to psychic 64

Paternal Grandfathers and Mentors

power. "That evening freed

me inwardly from the oppressive sense of your

paternal authority," Jung wrote. Freud replied that he indulged in Jung's in-

what he called the "spook complex" with the interest "one accords in which one does not participate oneself."

terest in

a

charming delusion

New differences arose around such theories as incest and libido. Jung's letters

began to contain a tension: He chomped

the bit of theoretic dis-

at

covery while Freud tried to tame his impatience. Freud wrote back to Jung: "Rest easy dear son Alexander, self

will leave

I

you more

to

conquer than

I

my-

have managed." The reference to Alexander was an allusion to the an-

cient lineage of

mentors and

their proteges

— from Socrates

to Plato to

Aristotle to Alexander the Great. Jung, however, would not be satisfied with

Freud's leftovers,

"One

and he invoked these

repays a teacher badly

should you not pluck selves;

at

if

lines

one remains only

my laurels? Now

and only when you have all denied

If

from Nietzsche's Zarathustra:

I

me will

And why, then, me and find your-

a pupil.

bid you lose I

return to you."

only every mentor had such an enlightened attitude. Now, in order

to find himself, Jung different titude."

I

had

am from you

to revolt fully

—enough

from

his mentor.

to effect a radical

He

change

realized

in

"how

my whole at-

He felt Freud "underestimates my work by a very wide margin." He

lashed out at Freud, suggesting, "Look at your bit of neurosis

—but you

could not submit to analysis, 'without losing your authority.'" Later he

added this critical appraisal: Your technique of treating your pupils

like patients is a blunder.

duce either slavish sons or impudent puppies father, sitting pretty

If

ever

you should

You pro-

You remain on top, as the rid yourself entirely of your

complexes and stop playing father to your sons and instead of continuously aiming at their weak spots took a good look at your

own for a change,

then I will mend my ways and at one stroke uproot the vice of being of two

minds about you.

At

first

terse reply.

Freud, emotionally tongue-tied, could muster only a brief,

Then he wrote again:

tion entirely.

I

shall lose

"I

propose we abandon our personal rela-

nothing by it for my own emotional tie with you has

long been a thin thread

—

take your full freedom."

the lingering effects of past disappointments

He

added,

"We

are agreed a

man

should subordi-

nate his personal feelings to the general interest of his branch of endeavor."

Following that there were only

stilted letters

back and

forth.

Jung

eventually resigned from the editorship of the psychoanalytic society's

publication that Freud started with Jung's help.

Then Jung resigned the name after

presidency of the organization. Freud barely mentioned Jung's that. Jung,

though crediting Freud

as his teacher

65

and founder of psycho-

IN A analysis, never contacted his

MAN'S WORLD

mentor

again. Their eventual reconciliation

was only in the professional debt of gratitude they paid each other.

Whether one's male mentor is Freud or the neighborhood fire fighter, young man's development is the same. He serves as a bridge from the inner circle of the family to the wideopen outside world. He provides the polishing phase of the young man's training, one in which objective criteria, not the father's subjective standards, are made explicit and then applied. In a sense, when a young man has found a mentor, learned from him what he can, and then surpassed him, he the importance of his contribution to a

No longer merely a son, a grandson, a student, or a protege, the young man has earned his autonomy as a full-fledged man in a man's world: the embodiment of a special culture has truly

become

transmitted to

a

man

for better or worse.

him by now- receding

mentors.

66

figures of fathers, grandfathers,

and

Chapter 3

THE WORLD OF BROTHERS: CAIN AND ABEL IN THE LAND OF NOD I

think there's always been a level of competition between

brother Kevin and me. bigger and

taller.

I

think he's

that

felt

I'm a lawyer now, and

I

way because

think he

still

I

my younger

was stronger and

feels

prodded on

to

compete against me professionally. He decided to go to medical school, I'm convinced, just to one-up me. When we were younger

I

used to beat the hell

"Do you want to wrestle?" and pull him to the ground. and he'd say, "No," and I would say, "Too bad,"

out of him

all

the time. I'd go

up to him and

say,

We fought constantly.

— Dan, forty-one

We were very close, my brothers and me. We did a lot of things together. We of illusions, games, sports. We published litcreated our own little world tle magazines. We designed futuristic cars. But the most important thing I

—

learned from having two brothers proach." That there athletic ability, place,

and

is

is

what

I

call

the "male-oriented ap-

always a clearly defined pecking order, based on age,

You

intelligence.

learn

how to take first place, second

and third place and you learn very quickly where you'll usually fall in.

Men are definitely competitive, and brothers more so. I felt as though I performed well among

my brothers, that this is a man's world and that I was

strong in it.

— Alan, twenty-eight The one role a man plays throughout his tle

over time

is

that of brother.

The

life

that seemingly changes lit-

legacy of brothers

—

—

in literature,

marked by the competition for power as well as the failure to communicate on personal matters. As in relationships between fathers and sons, the bond between brothers is made complex by fervent loyalty and fierce rivalry, closeness and distance, camaraderie and competition. mythology, psychological study, and

In general,

all

real life

is

sibling relationships contain such characteristics. Dr.

Jane Pfouts, former associate professor of social

North Carolina, has written:

]

67

[

work

at the University

of

— IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

When people speak of their siblings, they speak of ambivalence, of solidarity

and

world

of the desire to be equal and yet differentiated. The sibling

rivalry,

is

a fateful world, for

it is

here that children

rewards of interacting with peers and

have their beginnings. elty, betrayal

Is it

It is

it is

first

learn the costs

and

here that permanent adult roles

also a primitive

world of naked emotions, cru-

and Machiavellian deceit.

not surprising, then, that the brother bond has been a bond of ad-

Remember Cain and Abel? Only four chapters into the Old Testament and we have the young society's first murder: fratricide.

versaries for so long?

Cain slew Abel out of jealousy of their father's favor.

And

—

their

the punishment for that murder: "If you

longer yield

its

strength to you.

earth

And Cain

Nod,

east of Eden."

left

is

punishment

rejected

Land of Nod. And then

shall

become

till

the soil

a ceaseless

it

shall

no

wanderer of

the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of

Fitting the crime, the

taken away and he

You

Heavenly Father's

there

by

is

harsh: Cain's strength (power)

his father,

was

is

abandoned, and banned to the

Isaac, tricked into giving the blessing in-

tended for his oldest son Esau to his younger son Jacob. The blessing:

May God give you Of the dew of heaven and the fat of the earth, Abundance of new grain and wine. Let people serve you,

And nations bow to you; Be master over your brothers,

And let your mother's son bow to you. Cursed be they who curse you, Blessed they who bless you. It is

indeed

a blessing to covet: a blessing

premacy (power), of mastery over

of wealth (power), of su-

his brothers (power).

When

Esau

learned that his brother had gained the blessing he "wept aloud." Isaac

spoke these words to Esau: "By your sword you shall live and you shall serve

your brother." But Isaac also promised his son revenge: "But when you

grow restive, you shall break his yoke from your neck." Esau's own vow: "Let but the mourning period of my father come, and I

my brother." A generation later the sons of Jacob, now known

will kill

as Israel, rose

up

"Now Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age And when his brothers saw their against a favored youngest brother:

father loved

him more than any of his brothers, they hated him so that they

]

68

The Wor/d

of

Brothers

could not speak a friendly word with him." Later they plotted his death but sold

him off as a slave instead. The stories of the Bible can be taken

in

many ways

—

as true historical

events, embellished truths, parables, folklore, or even fanciful nursery

rhymes

—but

in

any case the massive impact they have had on our culture,

attitudes, values,

us

is

ents

and behavior

is

undeniable.

What

that a definite hierarchy exists

tell

and approval of their par-

that brothers vie for the affection, attention,

and

the biblical stories

among them, determined most

often by order of birth. These conclusions were echoed a couple of thou-

sand years

later in the literature

of modern psychological research on

sib-

lings.

Brothers base their attitudes and behaviors in terms of each other on

comparative

abilities

and accomplishments, on

cording to what they do and

Two

how well

psychologists found that

they do

a hierarchical

ranking ac-

it.

manual workers

are

more

satisfied oc-

cupationally when they perceive their occupational positions as better than

those of their brothers, while the least satisfied are those whose occupational levels are lower than their brothers'. Bert

Adams,

in

Kinship in an Ur-

ban Setting, has written: Siblings are in fact the comparative reference

group par excellence, being

among one's effective

kin from birth or soon thereafter, and being social

givens, unlike friends.

We are now prepared to suggest that middle-class

values,

and personal comparisons and identifications in terms of them, are

central to the relations between siblings in

be more

explicit, a

young adult

identify with, his sibling

if

is

more

the sibling

is

our urban, industrial society. To

likely to feel close to,

middle-class than

if

and possibly

he

is

working

class.

If the

brothers are "occupationally disparate"

—

that

is, if

—

one winds

up in a professional job and the other in a blue-collar job they are unlikely one another. Adams explained: "In this case it appears that

to feel close to

occupation

is

too salient as a measure of personal success or failure to allow

the working-class male to be subjectively close to his middle-class brother.

To do otherwise would be to admit within the family his own occupational shortcoming." In other words, their relationship is determined by what they do, not what they say. These occupationally disparate brothers, Adams noted, "are the most likely of any category of siblings male or female to assert that

—

they have

little

in

—

common, or little basis for a close relationship."

Of the brothers I interviewed, Joe and Harry best exemplify this findis made all the more interesting by the fact that they are

ing. Their case

69

IN twins. Here's

A MAN'S

how Harry, the

WORLD

older twin by half an hour (they are thirty-

two), depicts his relationship with his brother: I'm a social

scientist. Joe's a welder.

we rarely get

We live a half hour from each other but

we were kids I used to boss him around. That little half hour difference was enough to make me feel like the older brother. I dominated him. I'm the same way now. I definitely let him know together. Ever since

how I feel. I'll get mad if he tells me something he screwed up at work. When we were kids we fought a lot, too. Especially after report cards would come out; I clearly was smarter than him. He resented it and felt frustrated much he could do about it. Our parents have always

because there wasn't

tried to treat us equally but there

tention

were subtle ways they gave

me more at-

and encouragement to achieve. One birthday I got an expensive set

Or they'd take me out to dinner when I made the honor roll. Now when we see each other at family gatherings it's awkward. We have all this shared family history but we also feel like we have nothing in common. We never confide in each other mostly because he'd never come to me for help or admit something's not going right for him. of science books; Joe got a football.

—

Pfouts's psychological study was

exclusively

on brother-brother

one of the few I found concentrating

interactions. In the study, fifty pairs (no

more than four years apart between the ages of five and fourteen) were clasgroups on the basis of scores on personality and IQ tests. The study found that when two brothers were both gifted and their scores were nearly equal on IQ and personality tests, their relationship was ambivalent and highly competitive in the academic, athletic, and social sified into

realms.

When one brother scored in the gifted range and the other at least

fifteen points lower, the

more

able brother

was ambivalent toward

his less

and the less able was quite hostile toward the other. When both brothers were equal in intelligence but one was better adjusted socially, the well-adjusted brother was ambivalent, but the maladjusted brother was able brother

hostile

toward the other. When one brother was both

scored high on personality the able,

gifted intellectually

and

and his brother scored low in both areas, well-adjusted brother was ambivalent and the deficient brother tests

was hostile. Here again we see the emphasis on competitive performance as a basis for emotional feelings. This study suggests that the healthiest emotional en-

vironment

is

between brothers of equal competitive level. My own research

bore that out. I interviewed another pair of twins, Steve and Mike, who were matched in almost every category. Academically they scored within points of each other on their college entrance exams; their class rank was the same;

they both went to the same law school, were both class officers in college,

70

The World

of Brothers

and were equally popular and equally competitive in sports. That made them feel better about each other, especially compared to Joe and Harry. I spoke I

first

with Mike:

know I would have

felt

bad

if

I

much worse than

did

wouldn't have liked to do better either, though

worse.

When found I

it'd

Steve.

But

I

also

be better than doing

out our high school class rank was the same,

I

When we got our law board scores back I did really well and thought, "Oh God, poor Steve," but when he told me he did the thought that was good.

same, I was able to Steve I

feel great.

commented on the same subject:

certainly

would have

the same time when

he did as well. the bar exam,

better to

do

passed. At

administrative oversight.

first I

Mike's

I

felt terrible. It

But he did pass. There was some-

obviated the need for competition. athletically, that

was very

It

satisfy-

preferred hearing that than hearing I was better.

However, the need for competition was not obviated, ports.

at

When we took name wasn't on the pass list due to an

heard someone say we were the same

ing to hear;

him than worse, but

found out I did well on something I was relieved when

thing comfortable about being even. If I

better than

didn't like the feeling of doing better either.

I I

I

felt

as Steve pur-

was, rather, precisely because they were equal in competitive

achievement that they felt comfortable being competitive. Later, examining men's friendships,

I

observed a similar phenomenon.

Men who feel equal much more.

competitively enjoy their competition and friendship that (This discovery is elaborated in chapter

5.)

For Steve and Mike, as for other twin brothers, being equal, although

good in some ways, created a problem: how to establish a separate identity. Steve addressed the issue:

Because of my brother

from him twenty.

I

for

I

was never the only person.

I

was never separated

any substantial amount of time until

was never

alone.

don't have a sense of what

I

was nineteen or

We played together, went to school together. I it's

like to get

someone there to play with. Even now I

up

in the

morning and not have

don't visit friends a

lot,

don't talk

about my feelings as much as I imagine other people do because I never felt the need to do that with my brother. I'm aware of what he's thinking. I know he's thinking the

same things

that part of my subconscious are thinking

because of shared history, genes, etcetera. By college with different kinds of people and

it

really felt

we were associating

wonderful to be taken into

someone else's confidence in a way that separated me as an individual.

Mike spoke on the same subject:

1

71

[

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

Sometimes we're frighteningly similar. Basically we're more alike than not.

We share a certain sense of humor. We say the same things at the same time. I

think as the years went on

we had to

cious. I'm slightly conservative.

so

I

more auda-

create differences. He's

always

felt

embarrassed about the

that

we chose

city.

But the kinds of women we went out with were always different.

the

same

schools, the

same professions and live

in the

fact

same

Asserting their differences became an issue of these brothers who were much alike. For others who cannot compete on equal footing, the differ-

ences can be a sore spot that forces a face-off.

The dilemma of two brothers competing on unequal ground is vioby Sam Shepard, many of whose works reflect the masculine tendency toward action and physical senses more than intellectualization and expressiveness. lently portrayed in True West, a starkly straightforward play

True West's protagonists are two brothers: Lee, the older desert drifter who

up selling an on the "true" West while Austin's version is rejected as being too unrealistic. Lee, whose envy and hostility toward his brother are clear, gloats envies the younger, Austin, a successful screenwriter. Lee ends idea based

over his victory, until Austin, in a last desperate attempt to preserve his own sense of worth, tries to strangle Lee to death. In the closing scene the two

square

off,

"keeping a distance between them."

the distance

and

as "the lights fade softly into moonlight, the figures

brothers

now appear to be caught

very

but watchful for the next move."

still

A single coyote is heard

in

of the

in a vast desert-like landscape, they are

The stage directions are bleak. Sadly, the same scene is acted out every day in real life on the business stage. I talked with a man who runs a successful construction company together with his brother. I wondered how they managed to work together without running into the wall of all

two

It's

things.

this

What it comes down

tionship. Personal feelings

male/brother to

is:

rivalry.

Business comes

He said:

first in

our

rela-

and emotions are secondary or nonexistent. In

A lot of what he does pisses me

fact

my brother and

off.

We've got different value systems. I'm more into the work and the

sponsibility.

we

I

aren't that compatible.

re-

He likes the money but doesn't want to have to work for it. But

don't discuss any of this.

We actually don't have intimate talks about

anything, especially about ourselves and least of all about the business. So that's part

of it. The other thing is, well, I'm older so

I

give the orders. That's

our understanding and we never even verbally agreed on that way since

that;

it's

just

been

we were kids. I told him what to do and he did it.

Once kids grow up, many people assume, childhood competitiveness dissipates,

but the evidence contradicts that notion. In a paper presented to

12

The WorW

of

Brothers

the American Psychological Association in 1980, University of Cincinnati

psychologists Helgola Ross

(now deceased) and

Joel

Milgram made

a

strong case for the persistence of rivalry into adulthood. (This research

does not apply exclusively to brothers, but we can make some deductions

men from

about

from

a

it.)

Of sixty- five subjects aged twenty-five to ninety-three

midwestern community, 71 percent said they had been rivalrous

with a brother or feelings,

sister.

Of those, 36 percent claimed to

have overcome the

but 45 percent admitted the feelings were still alive. Half said the ri-

valrous attitudes were precipitated by parents favoring one sibling over another.

And, they added, when competition continued into adulthood, it was

fueled

by the continuation of parental favoritism.

One problem

these researchers identified as contributing to the diffi-

culty sorting out these rivalries lings rarely talked

quoted

earlier.

about their

— even

into adulthood

rivalry, as

Successful siblings often did not even

ments were causing envy, and

siblings

—was

that

most sib-

suggested by the working brother

who

felt

know

their achieve-

inferior did not

want

to say

As Ross and Milgram stated, "Admitting sibling rivalry may be experienced as equivalent to admitting maladjustment. To reveal feelings of rivalry to a brother or sister who is perceived as having the upper hand so.

increases one's vulnerability in an already unsafe situation."

These comments, viewed

in light

of the competitiveness that domi-

nates male-male relations, help to explain

why rivalry among brothers be-

and continues well into adulthood. In fact, as brothers get older and are ever more deeply indoctrinated by their fathers and mentors into the world of men, it should be no surprise that competition between brothers grows more intense. Psychological research and comments by men I interviewed bear out this expectation. Bert Adams observed in Kinship in an Urban Serf mg that grown men report less closeness and contact with brothers than women do with sisters, even when differgins at a very early age

ences of geographical proximity are taken into account. Even after reading that,

I

was surprised by the comments of a fifty-eight-year-old

said his relationship with his sixty-year-old brother

the two of them were

still

man who

was the same

as

when

adolescents:

My brother lives in Chicago. I'm in Boston. He never comes to see me.

I

al-

ways have to visit him. This was the first time I had seen him in about three years;

I

combined the visit with a business trip. On the first day together we

—

decided to play a round of golf

like

we did when we were kids. Well, right

—

telling me which club to use, how to play the ball, what I was doing wrong. It was as though we were ten and twelve again, and playing older brother-younger brother. And don't you know I fell right into the same role. Defending myself, trying to outdo

away he reverted

to this big brother stuff

73

IN

him. The

rest

A

MANS WORLD

of that week with

him was

— as

far as

I

—very

was concerned

remote. I don't know how he felt. We never discussed it.

Both are successful businessmen, respected

in their worlds.

And yet,

with each other, they are reduced to two boy-brothers vying for control, for superiority. sons,

And as

in other interviews with

mentors or brothers

—they both

men

—whether

fathers

and

exhibit an inability to talk with each

other and resolve their differences.

When

Brothers

Bond

Where, then, is that highly touted brotherly love, that spirit of brotherhood, that he-ain't-heavy-he's-my-brother sensibility?

Is

the brother

bond just

one more of those male- male relationships that holds out the promise of more than it delivers and therefore conditions men to expect little or

—

nothing from the

men

in their lives?

The answer

is

yes

and no.

Yes,

our

culture pays a lot of lip service to the notion of brotherhood, but brothers as supportive

men on whom men

can depend

stantiated by the research or the anecdotes of men

I

is

not necessarily sub-

interviewed. No, on the

bond does exist between many brothers one of the strongest, most positive dyads in a man's

other hand, because a very strong that

is

potentially

world.

Aside from the older brother/younger brother tug-of- war, the competition for father's attention

and

blessings,

and the

rivalry in adulthood,

brothers are there for each other the way few men are. One element contrib-

uting to the strength of the bond is the sheer amount of time spent together. Another element is the biological connection. Still another factor, no doubt, is some version of Freud's somewhat overdramatic notion of the brother horde banding together to kill the father. In Totem and Taboohe en-

visioned this scenario:

One day the expelled brothers joined

forces, slew

and

ate the father,

and

thus put an end to the father totem. Together they dared and accomplished

what would have remained impossible for them

singly.

Perhaps some ad-

vance in culture, like the use of a new weapon, had given them the feeling of superiority.

Of course, these cannibalistic savages ate their victim. This vio-

lent primal father

the brothers.

had surely been the envied and feared model

for each of

Now they accomplished their identification with him by de-

vouring him and each acquired a part of his strength. The totem

which

is

perhaps mankind's

first

celebration,

would be the

commemoration of this memorable, criminal

act with

which so

things began, social organizations, moral restrictions and religion.

74

feast,

repetition

and

many

The World

of Brothers

Freud added: "In thus ensuring each other's

lives

the brothers express

the fact that no one of them is to be treated by the other as they all treated the father. They preclude a repetition of the fate of the father." This does not necessarily mean brothers go around plotting to kill their fathers. They can, however, gain a power together over their father that

they couldn't achieve individually and, in so doing, break through barriers

between themselves. And they can

"kill" their father in

other ways, as a

twenty-two-year-old named Carl explained in less psychoanalytic terms:

On almost every level as

I

can think of, my brother Rich and I were as different

day and night. He's dark- featured; I'm

light.

He's introverted. I'm an ex-

He reads a lot and is a good student. like sports and hate homework. But we had one thing in common: We both hated our father. It trovert.

seemed

I

to us like he played us off each other.

"Why can't you get better

grades, like your brother Rich," he'd chide me. "Hit the ball, klutz," he'd

embarrass Rich. We used to plot little ways of screwing him up. Like leaving his

lawn mower out

fore his poker

in the rain to rust.

gang would come over

Or making a mess of the den just be-

—and then disappear

for the night.

We used to complain about him to each other and it really brought us together. Now we're closer than ever, we can respect and even admire each other's differences.

tling,

Whether symbolically "killing" the father or working or even wresbrothers bond like most men bond by doing things together. The transcendent power of the brother bond is most dramatically

—

—

demonstrated in times of stress: when

a brother has a drinking or

drug

problem, when his marriage falls apart, when he is breaking up with a lover, when he has lost his job, when he has serious illness or injury. In this regard brothers are like men in other kinds of relationships with men: They come to each other's aid in times of crisis,

and sometimes only at those times. This

account by Martin, a thirty-seven-year-old Los Angeles

sales representative,

reminded me of experiences sons related when talking about their fathers:

When my brother and I were young we were inseparable. We fought, yes, but

it

was

like puppies. It

was

playful. It

would pass

we'd be off on our next adventure or a project

like

in a second

and then

building a tree house.

Years later we had a falling out. His lifestyle changed,

and I didn't like it. He

was married but having affairs and flaunting them. His business scene was questionable;

I

wondered whether he was

selling drugs.

But

I

—

never asked,

Then he started acting very weird moody, irresponsible and I knew it must be drugs or pills. His wife left him. He had no money. He was a wreck. Even though I had lost all respect for him, he had no one to turn to, so I asked him to move in with me. I mean, this was that

was

his business.

—

75

A MAN'S

IN

my brother. I couldn't bear to

—

blood

just fall to pieces.

It

WORLD

see this

guy

I

penses, spent long evenings just talking with

—got him

niscing

never knew

I

grew up with

was like when he bled,

to go to a therapist

him

—

I

bled.

flesh

and

covered his ex-

crying, laughing, remi-

and basically get his act back together.

could be there for anybody the way

I

— my

I

I

was there for

my

brother. I

talks

had heard

stories

from sons about having so-called "man-to-man"

with their fathers in similar times of crisis:

when they were either get-

ting divorced, getting married, or going through career crisis tion.

edge,

It it

and

transi-

appears to be the same way with brothers. Only when pushed to the seems, do

vulnerabilities

Birth

men come to each other's side, open up, and reveal their

and needs.

Order and the Quality

of

Brotherhood

"My relationship with my older brother and my two younger brothers was always strained," began Steve, a thirty- eight-year-old small-press publisher

from San Francisco:

We were all very competitive. Michael, the oldest, would come home from school and take out his defeats on me.

I

worshipped him anyway, though.

My mother was aware of the little jealousies between us; my father was basically

unsupportive.

I

think generally I'm

still

kind of terrified of anyone

who I picture as an older brother. Nowadays Michael and I don't communicate

on what you'd

call

an intimate

playing charades around him. the realization that while ate

I

It's

level.

not

We joke a little but I feel like I'm

like there's a lot

don't necessarily fear

of contact.

I

came to

him anymore, I still associ-

my lack of confidence to always coming in second to him. still look to men to fulfill successful role models for me and I'm still unfulfilled. I

—

other

One summer I came home from a madly romantic affair with a young lady, much older, and I remember specifically thinking, "Now Michael will accept me" which he didn't. I have another brother twenty months

feeling

—

younger than me. With him

and almost

literally

it

was a classic case of some guy coming along

taking the nipple away from me.

day when people are serving food;

I

I still

get anxious to-

always think I'm not going to get

my

portion.

Recent studies suggest that birth order

is

an important factor in rein-

forcing the rivalry of siblings. University of Michigan social psychologist

Hazel Markus reported in Psychology Today: "Firstborns develop particular ideas

what

and expectations about power, leadership and responsibility; about socially acceptable and about the importance of friendships and re-

is

]

76

The World

of

Brothers

lationships with other people. These ideas are likely to be markedly differ-

ent from those that develop in later-boms." Recall Little George,

competition with his

from chapter

father,

who

strove

1

who

,

always

felt

himself to be in

outdo

his life to

all

his father or to

be as different from him as he could. George took the brunt of the pressure

from

his father, saving his brother

years, it

was

and now a like to

sales

Frank from feeling

manager for a television

station,

it.

Younger by four

Frank told

me what

be the "number two son" in his family:

My father and

I

had

a very comfortable relationship.

brat of the family; in fact

I

pectations of me that he had of George.

I

I

got to be the spoiled

He didn't have all the ex-

got away with murder.

didn't fight against

my father the

way George did, and I didn't feel the need to establish my own identity from him.

I

went through a healthy rebellion

stage,

but for the most part

mired the tough-guy image of my father and even the best reputation you can have in this business. I

felt

I

out of competition on that count. That was

emulate

I

ad-

it. It's

never wanted to write so to George. When my my father tried to pres-

left

brother and his wife decided not to have children, sure

tried to

me into naming my first son after him. But felt that was George's renot mine. But my father was pleased it was a boy anyway, to I

sponsibility

—

continue the family name.

George served a buffer between

as a buffer

between Frank and

their father.

He was also

Frank and the world:

When I was just entering high school, George was graduating. When I was entering college, George was just graduating. George

knew the ropes and

me into each of these scenes. I relied on him a lot. It was nice being known as George's younger brother. It gave me access and credibility. I got friendly with his friends, who were always older, and that made me feel speushered

cial

—accepted by the big

guys.

I

joined the same fraternity he belonged

to.

Even today some people by mistake call me George, and I like it.

George was a model to died we were at that night

whom I looked for how to act. When our mother

camp together. I remember being driven home from camp

and watching George

to see

how I should be responding emo-

tionally.

At some point, though, it became important for Frank to differentiate himself from his brother. I've

I

asked him

how he did that. He recalled:

been watching a lot of old family movies

lately.

Most of them show

George and me wrestling. That was our thing, to argue, fight. I always took it

as fun but there was also

ber specifically when

I

something very serious about it to me. I remem-

was twelve and he was sixteen and we both realized

77

[

IN after

A MAN'S

WORLD

one fight that George no longer had the physical edge. I was the better

athlete and that became

my thing. George was the thinker; I was the jock.

Psychologists have given birth-order effects some careful attention. In a study at the National Institute of Mental Health, researchers observed

thirty-two first-born and second-born siblings

months

old.

They found

when each was

three

that parents spent less time with their second-

borns than with their first-borns in

social, affectionate,

teraction. Stanford University's Eleanor

and care-giving in-

Maccoby and her colleagues at the

Stanford Longitudinal Project watched mother-child behaviors, noting in-

and neutral bids for mother's attention, as well as instances of mother's warmth, praise, pressure to complete tasks, and verbal and physical attempts to prohibit their children from doing something. The results showed mothers to be more restrictive of their first-borns than their second-borns. The reason for this may be that parents become stances of positive, negative,

less

anxious about their skills as parents after the first child is born and allow

second-borns more freedom. The less

study by psychologist at

anxious and

show, suggest that

later-

And, according to a and then graduate student Geoffrey the University of Southern California, later-borns seem to

borns appear to be

Maruyama

effect, studies

Norman

less controlling.

Miller

have another advantage: greater popularity than first-borns. Later-borns

were more

likely to

be chosen

as

people to play with or

sit

by

in class than

were first-borns or only children. Psychologist Markus offered an explanation: "Later-borns see themselves as powerless

subordinate

roles.

They seldom have

[my italics] and as occupying

a direct pipeline to those in control

[also my italics] of the family organization and must therefore learn to work with and around other family members to achieve their goals." On the downside, however, later-borns were found in studies by Uni-

versity of Cincinnati students to have less pride in themselves than first-

borns. Never the sole focus of their parents' attention, later-borns are likely to

think that people hold

esteem rated lower. In addition, later-borns find

it

difficult to assert their

independence since they have not only parents but older siblings treat

less

them in high regard and therefore their selfas well to

them as dependent and in need of help. Among first-borns, the most reliable and best-known findings

in

birth-order research repeatedly suggest that they are achievers, often overachievers. First-borns are also leaders.

charge

—taking over whether

They tend

others need

it

to see themselves in

or not, which

may account for

their relative unpopularity. Because they are older siblings, they tend to act as

though anyone else

is

a younger sibling needing direction.

Darryl was about to travel from Maine to California to

brother

Raymond

in order to "straighten

78

out some things"

visit his

when

I

older inter-

The WorW

Brothers

of

how he

viewed him. He talked about

always

kept under Raymond's

felt

thumb:

When we used to wrestle he'd sit on my chest. It wasn't puppy play; I'd have trouble breathing and he wouldn't get off me. Then

came a much

better athlete

it

changed because I be-

and physically stronger than him. So he started

me mentally because he was smarter. Until last summer he'd call me "Dummy." He eventually apologized in a roundabout way but not until after he had barraged me with a total attack on me: "What are you going to do with your life? What are you doing about poverty in America?" On and on without letting me get a word in edgewise. abusing

That's part of why I'm going to see him, because tual violence. In a

him

to

—but

way

I

don't

really love

I

what he's doing to

—

to go

been

to

I

Raymond. I simply want

me is ac-

to say, "Look, I've

know if have the strength

do

this

my whole life. When are you going to start coming to me? When are you going to show me you love me?" What he does is use mind coming

games

you

to

to pull

it

right out

from under you. After

all

these years he's

an

still

unknown to me. That's part of his intrigue, and his power. He sucks you in with his mystery, his coolness and aloofness.

Raymond always

lets

me

know he's doing something I'm not. We'll talk on the phone and he presents himself through the things he's doing. "I'm writing. I'm building a cabinet. I'm studying it.

art."

But he never reveals what's behind

it

—

his feelings

about

And he never, never says, "I love you. I care about you."

many other men he was willing to break set by expressing his true feelings to and for his brother. He Darryl's frustrations were clear. But unlike so

recognized the strength he would need to overcome the barrier of inexpressiveness

—and

suffer possible rejection, or worse, indifference

say "I love you" to his brother.

conducted and

it

brought

It

—simply

to

was one of the most poignant interviews

home the

difficulty

three words to each other even under the

all

men

I

have saying those

most heart-rending circum-

stances.

As an aside to the discussion

here,

I

would note

that

throughout the

men about the lack of commuespecially when the talks relate to feelings

interviews in this chapter are statements by

nication between brothers

about each other. This

many men shared

assert,

is

when

—

not necessarily a bad thing. There are times, as

talk

is

superfluous,

when words

pollute a simple

moment. While interviewing brothers, I was told about such a mo-

ment:

My brother and I often spent long periods of time together in absolute silence.

And there

within

it. I

still

seems to be

don't feel like

it's

a

lost or

]

kind of communication that goes on

wasted time when we're together

79

[

like

IN

A

MANS WORLD

One time we were both in graduate school, living in the same city, and much so we decided to have lunch together. We went apartment and made tuna fish sandwiches and we sat in total silence to his for half an hour munching and chomping and grunting. And when we were that.

not seeing each other

all

done he said to me, "We'll have to do this more often." We both became

totally hysterical laughing. It struck us that here

we were and nothing was

going on in terms of interpersonal communication

—and

yet just being to-

gether was enough.

Brothers Playing Mentor One element that

can strengthen the bond between brothers derives from

an adaptation of Erikson's generativity theory.

An

older brother can serve

mentor to his younger brother, ushering his sibling into the world of men even as he himself tries to figure it out. Just having someone even a kid brother as a protege has its advantages. But further, playing mentor provides the opportunity to learn on the job. While the older brother plays mentor, the younger watches him for messages as to how to relate to other men. Relationships between brothers follow the same pattern from as

—

—

reverance to revolt to reconciliation ship. First, the

—

—

as seen in the father-son relation-

younger brother idolizes his older brother, playing monkey-

see-monkey-do. He

feels flattered to

be accepted into his older brother's

group of friends. Later,

as

however, the younger brother revolts in order to define himself

an individual. The turning point comes when the younger brother can fi-

nally

overpower

finds an area in

come,

as

his older sibling physically or intellectually, or

which he excels and

we have

seen,

when

his brother

when he

does not. That point might

the younger brother

becomes

successful in a

career.

Having finally confirmed for himself that he no longer lives in the shadow of his brother, the younger brother can reapproach his brother on more equal footing (though the evidence in this chapter shows how difficult it is to maintain that footing). For the most part, the brother bond prevails; reconciliation is accomplished. The biblical Joseph finally forgave his brothers for their mistreatment of him, but not until he was securely in power in Egypt. Even Esau as a grown man forgave Jacob. When Jacob knew they would meet again he feared Esau's revenge and hid his family. But Esau met his brother with outstretched arms. Often, reconciliation between brothers (and all siblings) coincides with aging, illness, or the death of a parent. The loss of a parent can prompt siblings to pull together to strengthen their

80

own

family bond. Brothers are

The WorW

brought closer together by a shared

of

Brothers

guilt

through the ambivalence both

may have felt for their father over the years. In a twelve-year study of sibling relationships, Purdue University de-

velopmental psychologist Victor ings toward each other surface

or seriously

ill.

found that

Cicirelli

siblings' negative feel-

when their parents become more dependent

Typically the younger will expect the older to take care of the

parent, while the older will resent the younger for shirking the responsibility.

Conversely,

parent.

The

some

siblings

compete

to

do the most

younger or less-favored child views

it

as

for the

dependent

an opportunity to win

a lifelong family contest. Finally, after the death of a parent, siblings

may

jockey for position of leadership as they move into the roles of family elders. Societal changes are

making reconciliation between brothers a greater

imperative than ever before. As one of the main theses of his book, The Sibling

Bond, Michael Kahn suggested that "siblings are becoming more and

more dependent upon one another the attrition in family

size. If

in

contemporary families because of

you have only one

sibling, that

one becomes

enormously important." Divorce, one-parent homes, two working parents,

and the fact that a transient culture splits up nuclear families geographically all underscore the need for siblings to maintain contact with each other.

The bridge to the land of Nod is not long. Bound by blood, bonded by their maleness

and shared childhood experiences, brothers could very well

be the model of what we

idealistically call brotherly love

those emotional road blocks

on

—except

for

all

the bridge.

For, as we have seen, brother teaches brother what father teaches son, what mentor teaches protege, what men teach men. The iesson: Rivalry rules. He who comes in first who is born first, scores higher, earns more is better. The lessons of competition and emotional inexpressiveness are re-

—

inforced. In short, the relationship

is full

of now familiar ambiguities and

ambivalences.

And yet the

pull endures.

The

love between

and among brothers of

blood and otherwise compels them to cross that bridge. By the time boys have become men, though, they have learned to proceed with caution.

81

[

Chapter 4

BEYOND BROTHERS MEN'S CLUBS Our strongest descriptions of relations between men are analogies to kinship, as when an older benefactor is described as "like a father," or two inseparables as "like brothers." When human relations have meaning to men, we judge them to be at least akin to kinship.

— Wilson Carey McWilliams,

The Idea of Fraternity in America

In

his in-depth analysis of

American history and

political thought,

McWilliams continued: "Kinship does more than describe group feelings. It introduces men to hierarchy, authority and command." The central theme of life in a man's world could not be expressed more succinctly. McWilliams's massive work is based on what he called "the long-cherished ideal

and

of the

past: fraternity, a relation

of affection founded on shared values

goals."

"Of all the terms of kinship, none has had so enduring an appeal and so firm a place in political symbolism as fraternity." And yet, he pointed out,

"of all

human relationships

.

.

.

fraternity is the

most premised on imperfec-

most fraught with ambiguity, the least subject to guidance by fixed rules, the most dependent on choice." The dilemma is that even those groups that proclaim universal brotherhood face the problem that men fall tion, the

short of the ideal. In other words, real

men do not measure up.

Moreover, he explained, the definition contains seeds of its

own

de-

Adhering to the hierarchical structure of such organizations means a man must suppress disagreement for the sake of order, which only struction.

"produces self-contempt in the suppressing individual

agreement

and the

is

to

draw lines of superiority and

.

.

inferiority

.

and to hide disbetween the

self

other."

Members of the

Kiwanis, the Masons, the Knights of Columbus,

Sigma Alpha Mu, Tau Delta Phi, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Wednesday night bowling league might argue adamantly against such an

analysis.

Their or-

ganizations, they would contend, are the very affirmation of the definition

of fraternal: brotherliness. But such a defiant single-mindedness fails to ac-

count for the two-sided nature of brothers' relationships as examined in the

83

[

— IN A

MAN'S WORLD

preceding chapter. Associates who stacle

course

full

call

themselves brothers step into an ob-

of hierarchy, authority, and

command. They also

take

on

the ambiguity, ambivalence, power struggle, and competitive stance that are the hallmarks of the blood-brother bond.

Nonetheless, men join clubs. As a man moves through his life, he becomes a member of many mens clubs, organizations, and fraternities. They exist in all social strata from the Harvard Club to the Harlem playground. Each has its own rituals, its own rites of passage, its own rules and hierarchy. Men join these clubs or groups, I believe, for two reasons. One is, as stated in

—

"common purpose or interest." For men oriented as "doers," that is important. They can focus on the object or the dictionary definition, to pursue a

task at

hand rather than on

their interpersonal relationships. Oddly,

men join men's clubs and organizations is the diopposite of "doing." It might be called "being," in a world where men

though, the other reason rect

need an excuse simply to be together. Lacking the ability to create interper-

men

sonal relationships with thers or sons, their

in the

world of men

mentors or heroes, or

formalized and sanctioned structure that

at least

—with — men seek the

at large

their brothers

their fa-

promises a degree of more

intimate contact. In piactice

—on

gree.

What men

clubs

and

the surface

learn about

fraternities

—

that

how to

need

is fulfilled.

relate to other

But only to a de-

men by belonging to

appears to be closer to McWilliams's assertions than

simply relaxing and hanging out with the boys.

Big

Man on Campus YMCA, the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, and high men have the opportunity to get a major lesson in

After the Boy's Clubs, the

school leadership clubs,

the context of college fraternities. Here

—amid

the rushing

and mixers and

hazing and raiding and chugging, the sometimes physically abusive and

al-

most always humiliating initiation rites, the selectivity and exclusivity young college men are trained, armored, and prepared to take their places in a

man's world.

Most people think that fraternity life as depicted in the highly popular 1978 film Animal House was grossly exaggerated. Consider, however, what happened that same year at Dartmouth College (the alma mater of Chris Miller, Alpha Delta Phi 1960-1964, coauthor of the Animal House screenplay). A Dartmouth English professor had proposed the abolition of fraternities on campus after a woman, on leave from a mental institution, was found to be the object of various sexual acts performed by several brothers of a particular fraternity. The woman was, in brotherly tradition, passed on to another house and another. By the end of the evening light bulbs and fire

]

84

[

Beyond Brothers extinguishers had been introduced as props in the act. All of this was verified.

The professor was charging

among other

that the fraternity system perpetuated,

unacceptable qualities, racial stereotyping, uncivilized and

destructive behavior, theft

and vandalism,

anti-intellectualism, excessive

and sexism. I missed out on such inhumane fun and games when I was in college. I was turned down by the fraternity I wanted to join. It was one of those great drug and alcohol

use,

traumatic rejections that

mark

a

turning point in one's

life.

Being ostra-

body of men put me outside, made me feel less of a man, and finally put me back into and onto myself. It turned out, as those things do, to be the best thing that could have happened to me: I was left to my own cized from a select

my own personal identity.

devices to create

Years

while working on this book,

later,

who did pledge the frat that had rejected me. rious as to what the experience taught him.

New

I

ran into

I

my friend

Robert,

was, needless to say, quite cu-

Now a corporate lawyer living in

York, Robert spoke of "a positive experience." But the experience

seems to have had more to do with management training than establishing deeper and more intimate relationships with his fraternity "brothers." For those people who took advantage of it, Robert said: It

was an opportunity to learn management skills and take leadership roles.

You had

make

to

sure there was enough

money to buy food and run

house. There was a sense of belonging that was nice, although

maintained

much

contact with anybody. If you

I

the

haven't

would have told me back

then that's how it would work out, I would have been surprised. The fraternity

was too big

for

to

it

be anything but a superficial grouping.

I

don't

think the fraternity fostered closer relationships. The important thing was

belonging to a desirable group rather than being a faceless freshman in a

dorm, without a lot

car.

couldn't wait to get

I

of status. But in terms of relationships.

my fraternity jacket. It meant a .

.

? I

from seeing how to deal with a group. Thatwas enriching,

got to learn about people

useful.

But as far as having

good strong relationships you'd have forever, that obviously was

not the case. Robert's fraternity education focused lead them,

how to manage them

ings with them. Even the exalted

peated in so

many cultures

—

left

on how to control men, how to little on how to exchange feel-

—and very hazing—

a symbolic rite of passage re-

him cold. He continued:

There was another guy in the house named Robert, too. He was a racist and selfish

and

I

didn't like

him

rolling

around on the

floor

One time we pledges raided the other we got in a big water fight. We were all

at all.

brothers with shaving cream and

and they poured

]

85

[

flour

and

sticky stuff in our

— IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

At one point they made me and Robert roll around arm-in-arm and you

hair.

know, for a while after that there was a certain closeness between us that came out of sharing that demeaning experience.

him a little less. But having a common enemy did bring our class together. Though we were artificially motivated, it worked to a degree. But it was superficial; it didn't last long.

guess

I

I

Let's say

I

disliked

had false expectations. I wanted it

to

be different.

Rolling around on a floor together doesn't make you friends for life.

The same kind of experience was reported by a man who belonged to another kind of fraternity: an exclusive men's club. In

fact, Ken, an oldone of New York's highly respected publishing houses, belonged to four men's clubs in New York: the Century Association, the Coffee House, the Dutch Treat, and the Player's Club. It seems as though a

guard editor

at

man would form a lot of friendships belonging to so many clubs. Actually, many memberships because it was good for

he informed me, he held so

men.

business, not out of a need to affiliate with I

would never belong to four clubs at my own expense, but it turns out that

clubs are very useful for professional people.

ness lunches.

It's

exhilarating to go in

I

take writers there for busi-

and sit down and end up talking with

a British publisher working on an exciting project, or the president of a college or a film executive. ideas.

talk

I

It's

a place to meet important people

and exchange

suppose there must be an emotional life at clubs, I guess maybe men

about intimate things

late at night at the club

bar over

lots

of drinks.

For myself, I don't ever remember unburdening myself about my problems to another

man

at the clubs or listening to

wouldn't go in there and pour

anyone do the same.

my soul out to another man

unless

I

feel

I

knew

I

him very, very well. And even after all these years, there's no one there I feel that close to.

These sort of private clubs

do bring men

—

as well as other fraternal organizations

together. But for what? Better business contacts, training in

leadership, simply the feeling of belonging feeling of being "outsiders," less than

.

To men perpetually fighting the

worthy of membership

in the club

of

grown-up men, that last reason is paramount. The primacy of that need is reflected by the fact that men put such a high price on belonging. Membership acceptance in a man's world must come at a cost.

—

—

Initiation Rites

manhood is a test one passes ... or fails. All societies of men repotential members to go through some sort of trial or initiation rite

Attaining quire

to literally separate the

men from

the boys.

86

The

ritual is a

reminder that

Beyond Brothers there

son

is

a ruling class of men

who accept or reject us as their equals. The les-

hits us hard: there are insiders

matic (God demanding that club

member measuring

and

outsiders.

Such

Abraham sacrifice his son)

rites

span the dra-

to the pragmatic (a

the strength of an initiate's handshake). In be-

tween, cultures have incorporated such ordeals as depilations, head-biting, evulsion of teeth, sprinkling with

human blood, immersion in dust or filth,

heavy flogging, scarification, smoking and burning, circumcision, and subincision.

Almost

all

member demonstrate to ensure the maintenance of a line of command a hi-

initiations require that the potential

his subordination

—

erarchy and a "lower-archy," as

it

were. These rites are a ritualized paying of

obeisance to authority. They are also an enactment of the graduation from

boyhood to manhood. As such, they are not unlike the

rites

of passage that

become a standard part of all men's relationships with each other. Fathers and sons, mentors and proteges, brothers all contain aspects of dominance and submission, all reach a turning point in which one betters the

—

other. Initiation rites act out that psychological break with authority. In turn, however,

we become servants to yet another authority.

Consider also the

trials initiates

go through to prove their courage,

worthiness, status, and willingness to submit to the senior

men in a group.

In ancient Greece young men of sixteen or seventeen were admitted to

the city-state with

full

the religion of the

city.

Boys

among the

berty, are sent

visions

voting rights only after they had sworn allegiance to

Native American Plains nations,

upon reaching pu-

out to spend several days fasting on a mountain and receiving

from various

spirits.

In the

American subarctic culture, boys of the

Kaska tribe approaching adolescence are sent into the forest alone to seek a vision, inspired

by "dreaming of animals in

a lonely place."

Among the Masai of eastern Africa, boys twelve to sixteen years old are circumcised and after that

left

in seclusion for four days, followed

riod during which they are dressed in female Finally they are admitted to

attire,

by a pe-

and their heads shaved.

adulthood and allowed to become warriors.

Aboriginal Australian boys' initiation includes piercing of the nasal

septum, tooth pulling, hair removal, scarring, playing with sion,

fire,

circumci-

and a blood rite. The Yurupary of the northwest Amazon region in the South American

tropical forest induct their boys into the secret society of mature males. They are shown sacred trumpets and masks representing ancestral spirits and subjected to violent whipping, which they must tolerate in silence.

Among the Ge of central Brazil, rites span a ten-year period beginning at

age ten, including three years in isolation from the community.

87

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

Most rites involve enduring physical pain or some other expression as men, be they religious leaders or company presidents. They also include periods of isolation and here we see more of the ambiguous message behind such men's organizations. For, psychologically and to be a full-fledged man one must know isolation how make it on our own; we must be self-sufphysically. We must know to ficient. And yet, initiation rites require a man to humble himself and defer to the group. He must give up his individuality for the group ethos. Thus the messages men learn from the rites are themselves "fraught with ambia demonstration of respect for the elder

—

—

guity," as

In

McWilliams put

Men

in Groups,

it.

anthropologist Lionel Tiger refers to initiations as

"part of the male-male 'courtship' pattern tied to the tendency of males to

seek status

among other

males, to form groups with them, and to value

highly the corporate 'presentation-of-self to the '

Courtship that ties

is

is

community at

large."

an interesting word, given the fear of homosexual tendencies

conspicuous in heterosexual pairs of men, groups, and secret socie-

(discussed in depth in chapter 6).

initiation rites,

definite

It is

significant that so

many fraternity

for instance, involve partial or complete nudity and have

homoerotic overtones. In one that

pledges stand naked in front of an open

I

fire in

read about, for example,

which branding irons are

conspicuously heating. The pledges are blindfolded and told they will be

branded. The branding irons are drawn from the hiss into a cold

fire

and plunged with

a

bucket of water as cold irons are jabbed against the buttocks

of the candidates. Another fraternity strips pledges and

ties

bricks to their

throw the bricks without it was reported that one fraternity made pledges bring five-inch nails and a bottle of petroleum jelly to the initiation ceremony. They are made to strip, articulate various vows, then bend over. Behind them stand senior members of the fraternity. The room is darkened, and the pledges extend their hands back penises. Blindfolded, the pledges are told to

knowing the

strings have

been

to the seniors to receive the nail

stead a can of beer

is

cut.

At Cornell University

presumably to

insert into their anuses. In-

placed into their hands, the lights go on, and they party

the night away.

Acting out sexual submissiveness to another man

is

the ultimate

dem-

onstration of servitude and powerlessness in a culture that sees homosexuals as

unmanly.

The Power of Secret Societies People fear what they do not

know and cower to

those

who do know.

Se-

crecy ensures that there is an insider and an outsider. It assures the authority

88

Beyond Brothers

of those

at the

power, which

top and

is

it

defies the authority of society at large. Secrecy

is

the rationale behind the existence of secret societies.

Lionel Tiger commented: Secret societies

...

and mainly men

are the consequence of an effort of individuals

—

garious propensities, the expression of which inhibited by their community.

by authorities

.

.

.

.

.

.

may be (or may be seen to be) members from detection

Secrecy protects

and may also disguise the weakness or strength or the na-

members' activities. What

ture of

is

striking

is

when

that

a secret society

operates within a culture from which (almost by definition) sociate

itself,

— usually

to create the social conditions for exercising their gre-

it

seeks to dis-

power-holders in that culture and other persons generally

act to the society with great antipathy.

The

secret

band

is

re-

defined as a

hostile group, potentially antipathetic to constituted authority in

its

un-

The create line function of secrecy is ... to a of demarcation between those who know the secret and those who do not.

willingness to yield to open authority and expose

its

workings.

Tiger's biological-anthropological explanation that the result

.

.

.

male bond is a

of our early hunter- warrior training does not address the psychology

of relationships between individual men. But in this analysis of secret societies

he touches on several key issues

psychodynamics

and

I

have identified in terms of male-male

—namely power and

authority; "in" groups

and outcasts;

a fear of sharing weaknesses and vulnerabilities. However, his remarks

shed light on an aspect of mens inter-relationships other context. Tiger's implication

what society

at large inhibits: that

is

is,

that

men join

I

had observed

in an-

secret societies to

do

to exercise "gregarious propensities,"

man to man. In other words, we are so well trained by fathers and other men in

our lives to inhibit expression for one another that, if we want to do so, we

must

retreat

from the

sight of a society that teaches us that such activity

taboo. But the desire to spite all that training fulfilling

In

—

is

do so is so strong that we form secret societies dethough the reality quite often turns out to be less

than the ideal.

fact,

I

began to see that male friendships may be considered a secret

same reason. In interviews, men told me that they had special friendships based on a shared sense of secrecy. In these relationships, both men saw the outside world with the same point of society of two, quite possibly for the

view.

They shared

a sense of the absurdity of life.

feeling of isolation

and alienation from

society.

They both had

the

same

When they were younger

they created imaginary worlds of dragons and pirates and space odysseys.

When they were older they confided in each other their disdain for a superior or a spouse, or the society or culture in sire for a certain

person.

89

which they lived, or a secret de-

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

However, as explored in chapter 5, even in intimate relationships between two men, there remains an inability to express deep feelings of affection.

Hanging over all this, of course, is the taboo of homosexuality. Societies and individuals who suffer from homophobia are immediately suspicious of men who congregate secretively. What are they hiding?

Homophobia

clearly inhibits

men

in pairs or in

groups from expressing

their "gregarious propensities," as discussed in chapter 6.

The Search Continues Whether

it is

secret or public,

letically oriented,

highbrow or lowbrow,

intellectually or ath-

the men's club serves as a retreat for men from the society

of men-at-large, a society in which they can expect to

and unnurtured. They join groups to

feel inferior,

differentiate themselves

of men "out there," to create (however illusionary it maybe) an sivity

and

superiority.

and competitions large. Will

for

ignored,

from the sea air

of exclu-

Once inside, however, they are faced with struggles power and control similar to those in the world at

they be accepted and promoted within the hierarchy of the club?

Or will they become one of the mass of men among the rank and file of the organization 7 And from among the members, will a friend emerge with

whom one can hopes and

share feelings and ideas, weaknesses and vulnerabilities,

fears?

Finally, a

man comes away from

his

men's club and fraternity experi-

ences with mixed feelings. His need to belong

is

fulfilled

but his need for

—

men may not be. Appointed as a member accepted by a higher body of men he is, nonetheless, disappointed by what he gets besides the basic training in masculine skills with which by now he is very facloseness to

—

miliar. For, at this point in his

life,

he understands too well the importance

of being on top of the heap, of performing (doing)

maintaining a strong and

silent

emotional stance.

at a

He

is

and of

peak

level,

also

reminded of

the ambivalence and ambiguity of relationships with men.

He is fed, in part,

by the camaraderie of the group, but he is starving for the one true friend in

whom he can confide. And like the salmon who swims against the current, he moves upstream in search of such a friend.

90

Chapter 5

MALE FRIENDSHIP: NO-MAN'S-LAND If one

would have a friend, one must be willing to wage war for him: and in

order to wage war, one must be capable of being an

enemy

In one's

friend, one shall find one's best enemy.

— The Philosophy ofNietzsche Every single one of my male friendships petition: The operative question

is

is

tainted with

some kind of com-

"Where do I stand in terms of that guy."

— Tim, thirty-one My Dinner with Dennis had not seen Dennis for seven years. We had grown up in the same neighborhood, played basketball, baseball, or football every day after school, I

played music together, gone to countless parties, movies, sports events.

were what you could not

tell

call friends.

you how he

We hung out a lot. We talked, as about things

really felt

about the pressure of being a man, about

sex,

—about

I

recall,

We

but

I

his bossy father,

about our futures, about any-

thing of emotional significance. After high school ways: Since

I

we went our

separate

had last seen him he had been through a tumultuous marriage

and a vindictive divorce, moved from the suburbs to the city, and transferred from a small firm to a major corporation. We were getting together for dinner, ostensibly to talk

about our friendship as part of my research.

two hours together were awkward. We talked about our work, the upcoming election, our travels. Had he seen so-and-so? Had I heard from what's-his-face? Dead end. In the cab on the way to dinner we

Our

first

said almost nothing.

we have anything atrocities

in

I

wondered:

Is

the evening going to be a total loss?

common anymore?

In traffic

I

Do

mumbled about the

one must put up with to live in the city. He told me his parents had

moved from our old neighborhood. An elegant dinner consumed and distracted our attention.

We ordered, admired the decor, and discussed the

food and the clientele around us.

It

was not until we were sipping our coffee

that we got to talking about anything that resembled how we felt about ourselves,

our lives, and what we had gone through in the last couple of years.

]

91

[

— IN A

"So how goes the battle?" I

MAN'S WORLD tried.

"It goes." "It

goes how?"

"It

goes hard.

finally

Up and down. Now that the divorce is final I feel like I'm

recovered from a long case of the grippe."

"You mind me asking?" "No,

"So

.

O.K."

it's .

.

what happened with you and her?"

"I don't

know. Things just.

." .

.

His voice trailed off. I waited.

"What? Things just what?" "Things just searching

." .

.

he started and looked up from his empty coffee cup,

my eyes for a sign of betrayal. Was I still his trusted friend? Was I

ever his trusted friend? "Things just broke down. She was too demanding,

too

selfish.

She wanted

me to be available for her when she wanted me, but I started to feel like a yo-yo. And then. He

she wanted her space, too.

."

.

stopped, looked away, looked back at me.

thought:

Can

1

I

.

could almost hear his interior

trust him? Finally he blurted: "I

was having sexual prob-

lems."

So he told me about his sexual problems, and then I told him about my sexual problems,

and then our sexual problems did not seem like such big It was a moment of disarmament; the barriers

problems anymore.

dropped. We went back to his apartment, now talking about everything. He

took out his guitar and played a couple of new songs he had written.

I

ac-

companied him, banging out a beat on his coffee table. It was like old times again.

That encounter

—

replete with

its

disappointments and fulfillments

good example of the cautious approach two men take toward each other in establishing contact. Step, freeze, step, freeze seems to sum it up and genis

a

erally at to

each freeze point

men are sizing each other up. How will I compare

him? Can I trust him?

Behind the bear hugs of camaraderie,

men seem

other at arm's length. They keep a safe distance

themselves and other men. This safe space

is

—

to be holding each

a buffer zone

— between

quite literally a no-man's-land,

an emotional twilight zone few men appear to be willing to navigate.

And who can blame us for assuming a defensive stance after an initiation into man-to-man relationships such as we have had? After all, what had come of trusting fathers, mentors, brothers? Betrayal. Disappoint-

ment. Distrust. Unrequited

love.

Men enter into friendships with men well

trained in the disciplines of masculinity.

We should not be surprised, then, that the issues of power and competition,

one-upmanship, and a

failure to

92

communicate

feelings verbally for

Male Friendship

each other permeate men's interrelationships. Nor should that so

many men

report having

no

we be

surprised

"best friend."

"Who's your best male friend?"

I

asked in interviews. Repeatedly

I'd

get unfulfilling answers: I

have none; I'm a loner.

I

had

a close friend

from

my old

neighborhood but we haven't talked

in a

longtime. I

have a number of acquaintances but none who

That kind of question I

see

continuum.

as a

it

is

not in

I'd call a

best friend.

my context.

My best friend last year is not my best friend this

and will not be my best friend next year.

year,

So unconditioned were many men to the arena of male friendship that they would answer as though they had not heard the question:

My wife. My girlfriend. The

replies

seemed contorted and evasive

until

I

was confronted with

the complexity of the issue when the tables were turned on me. Who was best friend?

I

was hard put

to

name

the single

man

in

whom

I

my

truly con-

There were several, spread over time and place. Or there were none at moment. And too, I could not be sure that my current "best friend" also

fided.

the

considered

me his best friend, and that seemed important if not relevant. Mans Life, wrote: "In

Daniel Levinson, in his book, The Seasons of a

our interviews, friendship was largely noticeable by

its

absence

Most

men do not have an intimate male friend of the kind that they recall fondly from boyhood or youth." Still,

rors,

men do establish friendly relationships with other men. The deis a pull men cannot ignore. We are each other's mir-

male contact

sire for

each other's source of energy, each other's touchstones to an elusive

and evolving male reality. But how do men question

more

relate to

each other?

frequently than

own

men

And why do women ask me that

—and why

are they always too quick

And why are men, who could presumably be closer to the truth of it, much slower with and less sure about

with their

answer: "They don't."

their responses?

At cludes,

least part

I

—and appeal of—men's friendships

of the quality of

have learned, their enigmatic nature.

of what makes a particular friendship unique or special.

We just click. He's a nice guy.

93

[

in-

Men grope for descriptions

— IN

Whenever we

A MAN'S

see each other

there's this sort of golden

None of it seemed to

WORLD

—no matter how much time has gone by

chord that we strike together.

satisfy. All

of it indicated men's ambiguity, am-

and lack of clarity about their relationships with all men. dilemma of men's friendships as in other male-male dyads is the discrepancy between real and ideal. Men have high expectations of their men friends. They expect someone who will be loyal, will stand behind them to the bitter end, will lend any amount of money, will provide a

bivalence,

—

Part of the

—

place to stay for any length of time, will drive any distance in an emergency, will lend

an ear, will listen to one's problems when no one else will.

In reality, that mythical friend

exist

—or he may have

existed at

more than

one point,

likely

but, as

did not and does not

heard so often, time

I

passed and so did the friendship.

But through the interviews there emerged some answers to questions such

as:

How and by what criteria do men choose friends? When do men go to each other for support? What do men do with each other?

How do they communicate? What do they talk about? What types of friendships are there?

How do the issues of power and competition effect Social science studies

playgrounds and continue school to nursing home.

tell

us that male friendships are formed in the

down

From

the corporate corridors, from nursery

the start, research shows, the relationships

that boys develop with other boys differ substantially

with

girls.

men's friendships?

from those girls have

When asked to represent "best friends" of one's own sex in a play

construction task, boys put greater spatial distance between figures standing for themselves

and

their best friends than

stability in their best friendships

than

girls.

do

girls.

Also, boys

show less Douvan

Psychologists Elizabeth

and Joseph Adelson found male-male friendships among adolescents less intimate than those among young women. Parental expectations also play into me picture: One study found that parents expected young boys to be less

involved in personal relationships than

As

adults,

girls.

Sidney Jourard pointed out in The Transparent

generally disclose less about themselves to other

women.

Sociologist Alan

men

than

Self,

males

women do

to

Booth compared men's and women's friendship

men

number of friendon the whole as less do women, close and spontaneous. Constraints imposed on men's friendships by society and the family inhibit intimacy. Thus, men's friendships tend more topatterns

and observed

ships than

that while

report a greater

men's friendships are described

1

94

[

Male Friendship

There is even evidence that men see simply men as a negative quality. Men rated high in the motivational syndrome known as "need for affiliation" are judged by other men as being dependent and needing approval qualities they consider

ward

sociability than intimacy.

wanting relationships with

—

unappealing.

To put it

in context, psychologists

Douvan and Adelson had this to say

about adult friendship in general:

To a disquieting degree, the adult friendship flight

from boredom

against intimacy.

—

is

no more than

a pact against isolation, with

a

mutual

amendment

an

Those things which are crucial to personal integration are

studiously excluded from the interaction.

In

my own

case,

I

was embarrassed

at

how little

personal history

I

knew of interviewees whom already considered close personal friends. "What was your father like? What about your relationship with him?" These seem now like basic questions one asks a man if you want to get to know him or understand him better. But before my research, I asked them infrequently. Did not care enough to probe that deeply? Or did I underI

I

stand that the questions had the power to

emotional undercurrents?

When we do

let

loose a flood of deep, dark

—"Where'd

ask personal history

you grow up?" "Where'd you go to school?" "How do you like your job?" it is with the unspoken agreement that we will not break the code against intimacy.

We will not show too much of ourselves or ask others to.

Misery Looking

for

The Camaraderie

Company:

of Alienation

The pact against isolation, I found, had far greater pull in bonding two men than I had realized. For, as my own research and analysis shows, the ultimate irony of social relationships among men is that what brings them together is what keeps them apart, separated and alienated from each other. That is,

many men say that their closest friends are those with whom they share "a sense of being outlaws," alienated

from the mainstream of society.

Isolated

themselves, through training and practice, they identify with those also feel isolated.

many men as the "camaraderie of alienahow some of the men I interviewed expressed it:

dichotomous tion." Here's

who

The bond is that they feel no bond. I came to think of this

Jeffrey, a

rallying point for

thirty-seven-year-old lawyer from suburban Boston, said:

A lot of times when I feel alienated from life I seek out male friends rather than female. Men, more than women, understand it better. We talk about existential things,

not necessarily our personal problems but the absurdity

]

95

[

— IN A

of life. Tolerance into the social

is

MAN'S WORLD

My friends will still accept me if I don't fit my best friend I see a little bit of the thief in him

important.

norm. With

and I respect that. Walt, a thirty- three-year-old anthropologist from Washington, D.C., told me: I felt

the closest rapport with guys who explored the outer limits of the cul-

ture, the

edge of hipness. They were always older and countercultural.

Hegel on their bookshelves, Modigliani on the walls, Coltrane on the turntable, coffee

and a bag of pot on the kitchen table.

Anthony, a forty-one-year-old put

it

real estate

broker from Los Angeles,

way:

this

My best friend is kind of broody and moody. He's kind of out there psychoWe have a similar outlook on life: it's ridiculous. Like, it doesn't make sense. We see a lot of non sequiturs. Our favorite expression when we

logically.

see

one of these non sequiturs

the

same time.

is,

"No meaning." Often

we'll

even say

it

at

We can trace this common feeling of alienation to experiences we had with our fathers or fraternity brothers, and

and

we can

in each other, affirming that our connection

celebrate

is

and

revel in

our disconnection.

it

It is

shaky and vulnerable ground, for it admits to a great weakness. But men who dare to cross the turf find a reward: Misery loves company. "I don't let myself get depressed very often," a man in his late twenties told me, "but when do I either want to be alone or I want to be with a man friend. It's the drown-your-sorrows effect. think it's easier with a man than with a woman because when it comes to sorrows I think men understand I

I

that alone "It's

and abandoned

feeling better."

commiserating together about how hard it

is

to be in the world

how hard it is to be a man," Charles, a thirty- four-year-old musician, explained. "We get down together. We sing the blues together." Men gather at bars to cry in their proverbial beers, to drown their sorrows in the company of a male friend who understands or at least claims

—

to.

We are accomplices to a plot over which, we feel at times, we have little or

no

control: at work, with

minds.

Men

pair

—seeking

up

to

women, with our own decaying bodies and

become partners

in

crime

—outlaws,

thieves, ali-

from the storm of solitude, disappointment, frustration and disempowerment they feel at the hands of other men. These are the secret societies-of-two that I alluded to in chapter 4. By forming these pairs, men can at once deny complicity in a system that oppresses them and ens

solace

affirm complicity in a friendship that allows

96

them to subvert that system.

Male Friendship

Man Talk How all this gets expressed in a man's world

—

in a world where the verbalimodeled nor encouraged is another matter altogether. was at a cafe in San Francisco's North Beach, sitting next to two men who had embraced robustly upon meeting and

—

zation of such feelings has been neither I

then, after bright talk about recent activities,

"So

how are you

moved on to this dialogue:

really?"

"OK. As good as can be expected. You?" "Same.

I

know what you mean."

"Yeah."

"Yeah..." "Yeah... "It

is

"It's

"I

it's

heavy..."

heavy."

not easy.

." .

know what you mean: it never is."

"But, hey, no pain, no gain." "Pain's

good for you."

"That's what they say..."

"So what else is new?"

Somewhere

in that exchange, these

two expressed

financial pressure,

and general fatigue and depression. Maybe. But what they mostly expressed, unaccustomed as they were to putphysical ailment, marital trouble,

ting feelings into words,

born of isolation,

is

that they

insulation,

conveying sympathy,

pity,

or

and

were not alone

alienation.

self-pity,

but to

in their pain

—

a pain

You could call what they were me the word that best defines

how men relate to each other is empathy, which is defined as "understanding so intimate that the feelings, thoughts, and motives of one are readily compre-

men

hook of actually having to say anything. We can empathize our way through a variety of communica-

hended by another." Empathy tions

and miscommunications

lets

off the

—and never have

to talk about

it.

But how can men "readily comprehend" others' feelings and thoughts without ever verbally expressing them? Wouldn't that shroud of silence create too

much room

for confusion,

miscommunication and misunder-

standing?

Mark, a twenty- six-year- old radio disc jockey

living in Providence,

Rhode Island, explained why he does not necessarily need words to express emotions with friends: I

have maybe four close

men friends. But we just don't discuss emotions.

We've had so many experiences together we don't have to say anything. There's such a beauty in that. If you've been through a heavy experience

97

— IN A

MAN'S WORLD

man friend, watched him go through it or vice versa, you've seen

with a

each other at your worst and best but

it's

not spoken.

don't want to talk

I

my wife and her girlfriends, the first thing they ask is, "How's your relationship with Mark?" With my male friends it's about

treasure that.

it. I

nothing

like that. It's

With

more of talking about whatever business is

at

hand.

With friends I'd rather be doing something; that defines it all. I think doing something with like

men replaces love-making with them. If you like me and I

you and we know how much we're into it, that's exquisite. Words some-

times just pollute pure experience. That's

years and only twice get

women get down to portant.

down

in casual

why I could have a friend for ten

to the kinds of emotional sharing that

phone

calls.

But

men know what's im-

still,

know this guy would stand up for me, put up money for me, even

I

maybe jeopardize his life for me.

Men learn from their fathers that actions speak louder than words. "I don't care

what you

do,"

ditches but dig the best

my father frequently reminded me. "You can dig

goddamned ditches in the world."

On several occasions after interviews of an hour or two, men's wives would join us, astonished. "Why, I think that's the longest Earl has talked to anyone about his feelings since I've known him," one woman said following a session in New Jersey. In Bolinas, California, a photographer's wife came into the living room saying, "I was just out in the kitchen thinking how strange it is that there are two men out there talking about their feelings and one of them is my husband. I could see women doing this but men? I know it sounds like a cliche, but around here the main topic of conversation

—

between

men

Was

is

cars."

she speaking in cliches?

Was

phenomenon? Or

this a regional

a

metaphor for the mechanical kinds of things men talk about? What do men talk

about

if

not their feelings?

What is this so-called "man-talk?" And how

about those highly touted "man-to-man" talks?

As

I

interviewed

talking about

more and more men, I found

something besides the nature of their tioned.

The

that those not used to

men, focus on relationship. That goes unmen-

their feelings, but longing for contact with

— —becomes matter of

object of shared attention

sports events, business deals

cars, stereos, sports

a

equipment,

great meaning.

Men

can get animated and excited about the subject without having to get personal.

We can

express personal opinions about this

make of car or that

sports team, even partake in heated debate about which

giving

it

the facade of passionate involvement

is

worse or better

—without

ever venturing a

real personal feeling.

Every once in a while man-talk. This

is

men participate in something that is known as No women allowed. Man to man. These are

serious stuff.

]

98

[

Male Friendship usually the kinds of talks that come up in times of crisis. When a situation becomes so stressful that men are forced to finally deal with it. We break the news. We share the hurt. We get to the bottom line. Harry, its about that Carl, your wife

money I owe you.

and I are having an affair.

my girlfriend just left me. Stan, just lost my job. Bill,

I

Bob, you're the only person Steve,

I

I

can turn to with this problem.

had a little accident with your car.

me when I The message is simple: stuff of life when men call a cease-fire,

These are some of the circumstances asked them

when

they had had a

Help. I need a friend. This

the real

is

men

man-to-man

declare a neutral zone, drop their defenses,

recounted to

talk.

and cross

into that zone of no-

man's-land. Because they had had so few such conversations

—most can

re-

member only one or two and those only in such critical times as impending divorce or impending marriage

Men

were not sure exactly

—they

how to

act.

said they were very

They tended

awkward scenes.

to overdramatize, get

very serious. Furrowed, earnest brows, just like they had seen on "Father

Knows Best." A sympathetic arm, briefly, around the other guy's shoulder. A commiseratory but fleeting glance. I do not mean to imply that these

—

—

gestures are insincere. But

uncomfortable in stilted

—

men

are so unfamiliar with

these situations that they act

—and,

them out

therefore, so in a stiff

and

fashion that could be read as superficial obligation.

"Man-to-man" implies that two men meet on equal ground, as equals which is probably why these talks occur so rarely. And why they are

—

so uncomfortable as well. nesses, frailties

—

Dropping the barriers, admitting mistakes, weak-

"fuckups," as they are

known

in the vernacular

—means

one or the other or both must give up some power. And that is never easy for

men. That

also

may explain why, though men like to talk about their latest

sexual conquests, they

do not talk about sex in

as Bernie Zilbergeld related in his

a serious vein to each other,

book, Male Sexuality:

Men are extremely secretive about their sexuality. They may joke about sex, talk a lot about this or that woman's characteristics and how they'd like to get her in bed,

and make many allusions to their sexual prowess, but, other

than these bits of bravado, most men simply don't talk about sex to anyone.

One of the cornerstones of the masculine stereotype in our society is that a

man has no doubts, questions, or confusion about sex, and that a real man knows how to have good sex and does so frequently. For a man to ask a question about sex, thereby revealing ignorance, or to express concern, or to admit to a

problem

is

to risk being thought

]

99

[

something less than a man.

!

Almost every

WORLD

A MAN'S

IN

man tends to think that all other men are having a better

time sexually than he has.

.

. .

This reinforces his idea that it's best to keep his

mouth shut.

With

mind, one wonders why the subject heterosexual

that in

men

most about is women. Men either brag about their latest "conquests" or complain about the "one who broke their heart." They praise the ground women walk on or proclaim them instruments of a demonic force. They talk

bemoan the fact that they are married, or bemoan the fact that they are not. They admit their confusion about women (not sex, mind you) or claim their superior understanding of other," they

them. Either way, by making

can draw closer together. In

fact,

I

women "the men use

have observed that

women as both bonds and barriers in their relationships with other men. Talking Dirty Man-talk frequently refers to a particular manner they are alone. ing

—and

it is

—

also called talking dirty

It is

another way for

men

I

which

men talk when

to affirm that they are outlaws. This

Australian rigmarole shows, perhaps in excess,

guage to

in

also swearing, cursing, or cuss-

how men manipulate

lan-

reflect their masculinity:

was walking along on this fucking fine morning, fucking sun fucking shin-

ing away,

little

country fucking lane, and

I

meets up with

this fucking girl.

Fucking lovely she was, so we gets into fucking conversation and I takes her over a fucking gate into a fucking field and we had sexual intercourse.

Talking dirty, or speaking in obscenities or profanities,

male language.

It

is

the secret

goes along with foxholes, locker rooms, campgrounds,

and playgrounds: Heeeeeeyyyy muuuuthaaafuuuuckaaaa

!

!

How the fuck are ya? Fucking-A right!

That is the extreme. There are modified versions for businessmen and other civilized sorts: If you

don't deliver by Friday, goddamn

it,

you don't get paid.

The hell I don't. Hey, kiss my ass, buddy.

Up yours, sonofabitch. There sailor." It is

is

something crude, brutish, and mannish about "cursing like a

a verbal beating of fists

on 100

one's chest.

/

am tough. No sissy here.

Male Friendship

You can often tell which man is feeling unsure of his masculinity by how frequently he spices his language with profanities. Young boys quickly learn that swear words are the passwords that gain them entry into the big boys' club.

Curse words are often substitutes for the emotional content erwise

fail

to express to each other. Ashley

sity for profanity in

men oth-

Montagu dissects man's propen-

The Anatomy of Swearing: to have recognized the function of swearing

Almost everyone appears

namely, an effective means of permitting the escape of excess steam. It is especially appropriate for the

grown

individual, the

man who knows that

even though the pain be sufficient and the occasion great enough to cause

him

to weep,

he cannot do so because he has learned to consider such con-

man to whom swearing has become an ingrained habit, may become psychologically as well as physiologically very much more

duct unmanly. In a it

satisfying than either weeping or laughter.

Men whose verbal expressiveness has been either thwarted or underdeveloped build up a

lot

of frustration

—

"excess steam"

—which

finds a

vent in swearing. I've noticed that the incidence of profanity increases

when men

gather, especially

situations,

I

have

men's inability to

Competition:

come

when men

gather without

to recognize each swear

really talk to

word

women. In such buzz word for

as a

each other.

The Common Ground

Though there may not be a "best friend," there are all kinds of men friends: work friends, sports friends, poker friends, neighborhood bar friends, hobby friends, childhood friends, wives' friends. Each fulfills a different need. Each need only goes so far and no further toward intimacy. A man may tell his bowling buddy how tough work is, but not that his job is threatened. He may tell a drinking friend about the possible pink slip but not that he

feels

humiliated by

it.

He will tell

that to an old childhood friend, but

probably not even to him will he admit

how much being jobless would

emasculate him.

But to the man, all these friendships have at least one thing in common: competition. The need for one man to know he is better than another is

rooted deep in male- male psychology.

From the start, from the initial handshake, the meeting of two men is one another. One woman I know compared

a face-off, a measuring against

an introduction of two men to two dogs circling around and sniffing at each other.

As these images

suggest, the competition begins with physical

parison. Bigger, of course,

is

better.

1

101

[

com-

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

We look up to sixand literally. Short men will always be boys or do a lot of Napoleonic toe-lifting to compensate for their lack of inches. Men who are looked up to have a psychological advantage. They also have an ecoSociety seems to predicate success on height.

footers

—

figuratively

nomic advantage, according to studies. An investment banker with Merrill Lynch White Weld Capital Markets Group, working in conjunction with a labor economist, once correlated income with height in a sample of seventeen thousand Army Air Corps cadets. Of this group, ten thousand reported their salaries after twelve years, and five thousand after twenty- five years. They concluded that those six feet or over made approximately 8 percent more money annually than those five-foot-six or shorter.

A marketing professor at Eastern Michigan University asked 140 sales whom they would choose between two equally qualified candi-

recruiters

dates

— one who was

two percent

six-foot-one or one

who was five-foot-five.

said they would opt for the taller

Seventy-

man. In researching his book,

The Height of Your Life, Ralph Keyes interviewed the head of the country's largest employment agency for accountants and financial officers, who ad-

men have an easier time finding jobs because "they fulfill an A former IBM director of corporate informaKeyes that tall men were given preference for visible positions,

mitted that

tall

image, they look the part." tion told

such as salespeople and corporate

officers.

"They wanted salesmen

to look

domineering, aggressive," Keyes reported. "Tallness was part of that."

Very tall

men pay a price, however, for being head and shoulders above

other men. They have to act the part: they must

up

live

to the restrained,

mature, aloof role of a full-grown man. They must always represent their stature

—without unduly wielding

they are

much more

the

power that comes with it. As a result, men of normal or

emotionally straitjacketed than

short height. "I cally,"

always tried to be one of the guys but never was

a very large

—mentally or

time but then they'd leave me.

I

intimidated them, they said." On the other

hand, short people can act out boyish immaturity as

much as they like. To

claim their power and assert themselves, they have to be at least in the eyes

physi-

man told me. "I had one or two close friends for a short

of others, they

feel freer to

feisty.

Eternal boys,

be as emotionally outrageous

The manliness inherent in the tall man's bearing does not have same hold on the shorter, "boyish" man. Ethan, a five-foot-four media coordinator living in New York City,

as they want.

the

analyzed his I've

life

as a short person:

found that because

I

am

short,

I

appear nonthreatening.

seem more comfortable letting go with me. physical with me.

Not sexual, but

I

also notice

physical. Recently

102

I

My friends

men feel freer to be

was going through a

Male Friendship depression and a rather brace.

me a very warm em-

male friend of mine gave

tall

think he could do that because he

I

a certain relaxation because

felt

I

was a little guy, almost like a child, not another adult male with whom there might be

amused

all

at

kinds of question marks regarding homosexuality. I'm always

my own outspokenness with tall people. I'll say, "Shut up or I'll

knock you across the room." Kind of mock threat language which people never take seriously because physically express hostility. tacked, because don't think

I

can get

men

it

couldn't

I

use

I

do

it

but

it

enables

me to

never worry about being guy;

it

guess

I

little

have a Napoleonic complex but

I

give orders

I

my chest and

won't beat up on a

thing, a manipulative thing. I

off

at-

doesn't look good.

I

have a sort of control

my height disadvantage to my advantage.

and I think people follow them because they don't

feel threat-

ened or competitive with me precisely because of my height. I've also found

show me off. In certain social contexts friends will bring up know I'm expert in, and they are proud to see me pontificate which is something they might not do for someone who was four inches taller. People enjoy seeing and hearing me put down rough tough-guy types. Maybe because everyone sides with an underdog, and that's what a people

like to

topics they

short guy often feels like.

Physical stature is only the start. As we grow older social stature becomes even more important. Our personal possessions bear a price tag other men quickly estimate in terms of their own possessions; what we can

who is doing better. If a picture is worth a thousand words, become the novellas by which men reveal themobjects

afford indicates

then things selves to

—

—

each other and, conversely, by which they judge each other. A man's

clothes or his tennis racket speak for the lit

at the

appropriate

moment, can

man himself. A high-priced cigar, much for a man as a high-level

say as

communique. When the Boston Celtic's former coach Red Auerbach ceremoniously lit up a big one, he was saying, "The game's over, boys, and I've

won

again."

And, to move in for an even closer look, beards and mustaches have always been more to

men than

so

places in history, a man's beard

many facial

hairs.

At various times and

was the embodiment of his honor. Pulling

another man's beard was tantamount to the ultimate only

at

linity

gunpoint.

—

It

insult,

answerable

men associate beards with mascuwomen cannot grow them That also makes shaving

seems obvious that

if only because

.

morning ritual, and one more male bond. But another aspect of beards and mustaches makes them attractive to men: They hide the face, they conceal the vulnerable upper lip and chin, they make the man less naked, less available. They are a built-in male mask. Besides, they make him a singularly male

103

[

IN

WORLD

A MAN'S

look older and wiser, reinforcing the importance of a hierarchy based on

They say, "I'm wise, I'm manly," and "Don't get too close." Razor manufacturers have capitalized on the machismo of beards. Gillette, Wilkinson, Schick, and Bic fight tooth and nail or more correctly, whisker and follicle for control of the $600 million per year razor blade age.

—

—

market, hyping not just shaving but the instrument

itself as

a reflection of

masculinity. In an article for Esqu ire magazine Chris Welles wrote:

Though shaving may now require less once did, most

skill

and involve less danger than

it

men still want the razor they use to reflect their belief that

shaving remains serious business. They regard their razor as an important personal tool, a kind of extension of self, like an expensive pen, cigarette lighter, attache case

or golf club

set. Gillette

has labored hard, with success,

to maintain the razor's masculine look, heft,

and feel

as well as its status as

an item of personal identification worthy of, for instance, a Christmas

But the competition between ply for control of a situation a conversation

—

gift.

men is not always physical; it can be sim-

for instance, in conversation.

between and among

men

is

Domination of

a kind of competitive

which being recognized as the ultimate authority in the group

is

game,

in

the object.

As much as men do not like to talk about their personal feelings, they love to talk

about themselves: their accomplishments, what they know,

who

they

know. Some will hold forth on seemingly any topic, even when they do not

know the answers or what they are talking about. Conversation with these sorts of men become contests for control in which there are no rules of usual etiquette. One man will start talking before the last man has finished

—and

usually in a louder voice. This,

rapidly into loud talk-bouts.

—

A woman

one can

friend

and

well imagine, escalates I

had dinner one night

my research for this woman (my friend) to draw my attention to the fact that all three of us men attempted to dominate the conversation in boom-

with two other couples

book. Later

it

all

involved in fields related to

took a

ing voices of authority, interrupting each other.

study that showed

men

use the

word "but" more

(who use "and" more), which implies while

women

male trained

are additive. "But"

in competition.

I

is

"And"

that

men

recalled reading

about a

frequently than

women

are

more argumentative

a conversational crossed is

sword of the

the supportive link of the nurturing

female conditioned to cooperate.

Making Sport of Sports Deception

is

crucial to success;

and painfully

that

life is

and

to

young men who have learned

a battle for survival, basketball

104

[

is

early

one of the few

Male Friendship

games

which the weapon of deception

in

is

a legitimate rule

and not the

source of trouble.

—

Jeff Greenfield,

"The Black and White Truth About Basketball," Esquire

One

of the socially acceptable ways that

men

vent their competitive urge

has traditionally been through athletics. Sports are the Great Contest for

men.

If you

can

hit the

long ball,

if you're

the fastest kid in the class,

if you've

promoted among the ranks of men. By grade school we have already psyched each other out, scouted each other's athletic potential. This is dramatically illustrated on the playgrounds every time boys choose up sides. There is nothing so humiliating as repeatedly being one of the last chosen. It burns lifelong scars into some got great moves, you are immediately

men's memories.

Men choose their friends by how well matched they are athletically. Two boys or two men enjoy head-to-head combat/competition, especially when they know they each have a fair chance of winning an equal number of times. But what happens when one excels too often? Predictably, the other drops out

—and not

friendship altogether.

I

just

from competing with his friend but from the

was astounded

at

how frequently this

pattern re-

peated itself among the men I interviewed. The testimony of Paul, a twentyeight-year-old

Long Island chemist and avid jock, is typical:

Stanley was my best friend in grammar school. He was good athletically. We were sports companions. remember hours and hours of football, baseI

ball, basketball

that

—

playing, watching

on

television,

came with the bubble gum. He was

even trading the cards

a year older

and

later,

school, he was a better basketball player, the star of the team.

him

—though

better than

But with

I'd

never let him

idolized

know that even today. But when he got a lot

me, that created a separation.

all

I

by high

I

just couldn't

keep up with him.

my friends, when I think about it, sports was an important

touch point.

To let the fact that one beat another at a sport be cause for ending a re-

two people would rarely occur to women, I am assured by women. For men, though, it is surprisingly important. Once that friend lationship between

knows our weak again. in

To

spot,

we

feel

too vulnerable to expose ourselves to him

me it echoed lessons learned earlier at fathers' feet, where coming

second was a regular event. Rather than chance placing second again,

men prefer to drop out of the contest altogether even though it may mean forfeiting a valuable friendship.

105

IN If

A MAN'S

we think the competition on

WORLD

the playgrounds

is

intense,

it is

un-

imaginable in professional sports. Maintaining friendships in that arena nearly impossible.

country

Bob Woolf, one of the and

(his clients

is

leading sports attorneys in the

among many others, John

friends have included,

Havlicek, Jim Plunkett, Larry Bird, and Carl Yastrzemski), told me:

Most

athletes

— despite the

size

—

of their bodies

are kids. Kids in very big

bodies. Every athlete has been catered to since he was in seventh grade. "You're the greatest, a hero," they're told. But

it's

an

illusion because

they get into the professional environment they find out

all

when

the other guys

much competition, so much insecurity. I know a lot of guys who sit on the bench screaming, "Get

have been told the same thing. Every day they face so

a hit, baby," but

hoping the guy

strikes out, or gets

an injury or traded.

Friendships in professional sports are a dangerous thing. Next thing you

—

know your roommate

a person in

whom you may have confided insecu-

—

weaknesses, and deep dark secrets

to be,

and eventually really does become, your enemy. I watch

develop.

is

traded and

now he's supposed

rities,

their careers

A lot can cope with the fame and money and flamboyant living.

Then some develop

this attitude: "I

have proved myself as an athlete but

have to prove myself in other areas." Off court they're

all still

I

vying against

each other for their manhood.

one of the few readable sports autobiographies acby the star, former New York Knick basketball star (and later Bradley elaborated on the topic of competition, in this case

In Life on the Run, tually written

Senator)

Bill

between himself and teammate Cazzie Russell, both vying for a starting for-

ward position: I

came

to view

our competition as a sad but necessary aspect of profes-

However much Cazzie and

sional basketball

I

respected each other,

every game and every practice became a battle to show [Coach Red]

Holzman that one of us was better than petition drained

Our head-to-head com-

me of much emotional energy, for I was never sure that I all, I could never relax. felt tension the moment I

Above

would win

I

Each of us looked for any kind of edge

stepped onto the court off the court, the anger closeness.

the other.

and aggressive drive

spilled over

Even

and prevented

The tension between us never became bitter or hostile

—

I

think

we understood each other and possessed a mutual respect more basic than words could convey. I finally realized that Cazzie and I were pawns in a larger

game,

tion but

like

most

corporate executives apparently competing for promo-

directly benefitting the corporation that established the

arena for competition.

Many fans saw the familiar signs of their own work

]

106

Male Friendship

from the anxi-

situations in our competition; their interest in part derived eties

generated in their

own lives and projected onto us.

These insights on the vicarious competitive thrill fans get from spectator sports are astute indeed. For those of us disinclined to participate in

sports or disqualified from high-level competition

been

with the competitive urge

instilled

—

—but who

spectator sports

is

still

have

a socially ac-

ceptable safety valve and another rallying point for men.

No one summed up the psyche of a spectating athlete better than A Fan's Notes:

the

Why did football bring me so to life?

my

writer Frederick Exley in

feeling that football tion. In football a

either did

it

had been

traditional,

can't say precisely. Part of

man was

in a

it

upon

was

asked to do a difficult and brutal job, and he

was not unlike the jobs which

called

it

world of circumspec-

or got out. There is nothing rhetorical or vague about

to believe that past,

I

was an island of directness

to do.

all

men,

in

smacked of something

It

it; I

old,

something

something unclouded by leger-de-main and subterfuge.

that kind of

power over me, drawing me back with the

known, scarcely remembered, elusive as integrity

force of

—perhaps

chose

some sunnier

it

It

had

something

was no more

than the force of a forgotten childhood. Whatever it was, I gave myself up to the Giants utterly. The recompense

I

gained was the feeling of being alive.

men who have had to kill off or suppress their emotions for and men in so many other ways, sports is a lifesaver. Men who have first

For against

been trained to compete, and then have had to thwart and need for competition, can experience the

thrill

defeat vicariously in the neutral zones of their living ers,

frustrate their

of victory and the agony of

rooms or the bleach-

without ever having to put their own egos on the line. A man can invest

his favorite

team or superstar with

he could not savor for himself.

all

the

lost,

hoped-for, and gained glory

Men can sit in the stands or around a televi-

on the back, punching each other in the arms as though they themselves had won. Even in discussing and watching sports, we assume a combative sion set in the den cheering, clapping, slapping each other

stance.

ball

I

have seen

men with blood in their eyes while debating whether a

landed in or out, whether the Yankees would win the pennant, or

whether one man or another could win at pool, darts, running, swimming,

men to whom ERA will always be the worth (Earned Run Average), not a constitutional

or any other sport. These are the

measure of a

pitcher's

amendment guaranteeing women's rookies, sports history

age of beef in the

rights (Equal Rights

Amendment).

—about and of stadiums and hot dogs competition. —becomes

How well informed a man is

standings, statistics, college prospects,

the percent-

records, capacities

sold there

itself a

107

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

Edging out the Competitive Edge What is the common denominator of all men's friendships? Texts like Wilson Carey McWilliams's The Idea of Fraternity in America suggest that it might be a quality he terms "value homophyly." That is, men like men with the

same

interests

themselves

—

and standards of judgment. They like men who

their mirror images.

are like

Men with common interests can do and

enjoy the same things together. They pick friends with the same standards

of judgment to confirm and reaffirm their own rank among men.

McWilliams's analysis

is

accurate

—

as far as

it

goes. In

my own exami-

man-to-man relationships, however, the deeper I probed the more I recognized that the primary fact of life in a man's world is competination of

tion.

It

stood to reason, then, that the true

friendships

is

common denominator of men's

competition. Value homophyly is just a nice way of putting it.

—

—

We measure our own worth and each other's by the friends we keep. If my friends are richer, more handsome, more hip, and better athletes than yours, am better than you. In the ideal, we conceive of our friendships with I

men as nonthreatening, noncompetitive oases in a desert of solitude. But men are so well indoctrinated to competition in all their other male training grounds that the urge to one-up each other I

is

seemingly irrevocable. As

studied the power dynamics contained within the various kinds of rela-

tionships

men described,

I

discovered the

way in which men

sidestep

what

can frequently become down-and-dirty and potentially humiliating competitions for supremacy. Rather than enter into friendships in petition will be an issue, they enter into friendships in will

not be an issue.

And yet, power,

control,

which com-

which competition

and competition remain the

determining factors.

Two types of friendships emerged from my interviews that exemplify them the Star and the Nerd, and the Fifty-Fifty Friendship. The which one is dominant and the other subservient, escape a fierce face-off for authority because one clearly already has the power. There is literally no contest; both know who is in charge. At the same time, as we shall see, both gain from the alliance. The Fifty-Fifty Friendship, on the other hand, can skirt the competition for power and control because both win an equal amount of times. Their equalness means neither has the this.

I

call

first pair, in

clear advantage over the other. Neither feels

overpowered. And yet both can

continue to compete head-to-head, each victory negating the

Such

a friendship, as

we

shall see,

last defeat.

promises a healthy venting of competi-

tiveness without threatening one's ego or the friendship.

108

Male Friendship

THE STAR AND THE NERD Don Quixote had

Surely you have noticed every hero has his sidekick.

Sancho Panza, Johnny Carson his Ed McMahon, Dean Martin his Jerry Batman his Robin. Elementary school teachers frequently notice

his

Lewis,

boys

top of the class

at the

—

—

academically, athletically, socially

ing boys at the other end of the competitive scale.

them? Where

the "value

is

homophyly"

in

What is in

such a pair-up?

—

it

If

befriend-

for either of

it is

true that

—

men seek their mirror image or the image they aspire to what is the star who picks a nerd for a friend saying about himself? And why would a nerd, who knows he is only going to look that much worse next to someone that much better than himself, set himself up for such humiliation? In such relationships, great deal of pressure

is

where the

lines

of power are so clearly drawn, a

taken off both parties to perform according to the

other's expectations.

What each gains is appreciation for being valued for qualities that have been thwarted and unrecognized by other men. The without losing stature. star,

gain a

little glitter

Moreover,

it is

And

star

can act

like a

nerd

the nerd can, simply by association with the

for himself.

lonely at the top. Everyone else

to get too close to the star.

is

too intimidated to try

The Big Man on Campus tends to have lots of ac-

whom he can confide his own weakmuch image to protect. With a friend he outclasses, that

quaintances but few true friends in nesses; there will

is

too

never be a danger. So the star

nerd allows the

star to get

down

lifts

the self-esteem of the nerd, and the

off the precarious pedestal

on which he

lives.

Two men

I

interviewed (separately), Paul and Ken, serve as great ex-

More than proxamong other things, there was the need to escape the oppressive atmosphere each felt in his own home.

amples. They were next-door neighbors in grade school. imity, however,

brought them together;

Paul was the weaker, less popular of the two. Thin and frail, with braces and big ears, an effeminate gait and speech, he was the youngest of four chil-

dren and the only son. His father had been bedridden since Paul was

five

(and died by the time Paul was twelve). Though his father was dying, his

home was full of warmth and family sing-alongs around the piano. Even so, the intensity of being surrounded by so much female energy had a suffocating effect on Paul. What he wanted was contact with a male and even the "big brother" his

mother hired did not suffice.

Ken, on the other hand, was handsome, athletic, an academic achiever, the friends.

guy with

whom everybody—boys and girls

At home, though, he lived in a

forty-seven

stifled

—wanted

to be

environment. His father was

when Ken, an only child, was born; his most vivid memory of

109

IN

was of a

his father

A MAN'S

WORLD

man "hunched over with a serious kind of inexpressive

look on his face and a passiveness toward me." His mother was the pre-

dominant person in his life. The house was spotless, sterile; it left Ken with a feeling of being in a void. Ken never felt comfortable there. He describes his parents' marriage in similar images: "emotionally paralyzed, sterile." In our

conversation he continued: It

was creepy in my house, which is why I always went to Paul's house every

afternoon of my life. With Paul it was like having a twin brother. What Paul

and

I

shared was a great deal of inventiveness.

gether.

Alone together, we were somewhere

else

We were really funny to-

—

just

whacky, crazy, zany.

We spent a lot of time making up games and ways of communicating. We'd build offices in the backyards and invent phone systems and interplanetary television shows.

—wrote and put them

We made up operas, radio shows

on just for each other. Paul's

memories of the early days of their relationship were quite dif-

ferent:

The only thing I had over him was that my family was richer. But he was stronger, much more physical, more attractive to the girls and a better student.

You see, Ken was very popular, so if he came over to play with me, that

was a plus OK." To

for

get

me. Others would think, "If he

him

come over

to

bribe

I'd

then Paul must be

likes Paul,

him with

candy.

Or

I'd tell

him

I'd

my house and if he found them he could keep them. I bought his friendship. worshipped him. He was my hero. And when we hidden presents

in

I

were alone he would open up

making up he'd be

stories

mean

to

I

get back

creativity? Yet

like

really get

me, and he had

cated between us.

wanted to

and

with nobody

else.

We'd stay up

this sadistic streak in

him.

It

night

was compli-

think there was a tremendous animosity in at

all

out there. But then sometimes in school

me. For what?

him and he

My family setting? Our money? My

he loved me. We were buddies.

Ken countered: Yes,

I

Paul.

was an aggressive kid but that's not to be confused with being mean to

my part. I think was that way bemy house. What Paul saw in me that most

There was no vindictiveness on

cause things were so repressed in

I

my wit and humor. I may have been all the things Paul says but I didn't have that many friends who would call me up and say, "Hey, come on over." Paul was always calling me up. He had a very low selfothers didn't was

profile.

Sometimes I would be in a bad mood and look at him and call him a

"scrawny

kid, a little shit," things like that.

But we never fought. No,

my

power over Paul was not physical. I dominated him emotionally. The way I

110

Male Friendship

would use back.

I'd

my power was to threaten not

threaten

him with

punching him but no ately

less destructive.

He had

me almost every day, and often

needed

balance, though

him.

to play with

social extinction

I

I

held myself

— which was worse than

this thing

where he desper-

needed him, too. There was a

some of the reasons for our needs were different.

Behind the seeming lopsidedness of their

relationship, there

was

in-

deed a balance. Each gave and received something very valuable. The degree to

which the friendship depended on the lopsided power balance is illusby what eventually became of these two after the scales were tipped

trated

several years later.

They went to different high schools and as Ken became more and more popular with girls and more successful in athletics, he pulled away from

Paul. "I started to think, 'Yeah, Paul

sexy. He's not, so forget

wanted

to

do was play

—who

girls

him. Fuck his

baseball,

is

little

different, weird. I'm

shows and

which he didn't

didn't like him." As boys trying to be

Ken pushed Paul

ish playthings so

into the

mature,

enterprises.' All

I

and play with

like to do,

men put aside their child-

background of his life.

Paul went off to college in Boston, Ken to

New York.

was not until Ken had tired

It

the year after they graduated that they saw each other again.

New York; nothing was happening. He went to visit Paul, who was now involved with a group of exciting and innovative media personalities. Ken was impressed with the new power of his old friend and moved to Bos-

of life in

ton,

assuming he would quickly become the kingpin

Paul's felt

life.

But

it

in Paul's circle

was now Ken who had to make overtures to

comfortable dealing with each other on an equal

and

Paul. Neither

They fought.

basis.

None of the lightness was there. Said Ken: "I had my own reputation to save, my old authority to reclaim. And he had a new reputation to live up to." They remained friends through those years, and for many more, but

—the —was gone. And without

the tight camaraderie

other

Paul best

Ken was

feeling that they could really confide in each it,

the friendship faded.

summed up the history of their friendship:

great for me.

but we never

felt

as

And I was great for him. I

used him and he used

though we were taking advantage of each

other.

me

There

were ways in which I had the power and there were ways in which he had it.

From the outside it appeared as though he had it, but from the inside we both knew there were times I had it. Even when I let him walk all over me, there was a sense in which

I

was in control because

at least

I

had his undi-

vided attention. I was the one he wanted to walk over. I think one of the rea-

sons we're not as close doesn't exist.

now as we might be is that that power structure

The tables turned in a sense and when we tried to play our old

roles they didn't exactly work.

And now that I appear to have more power,

in

i

IN

A MAN'S

hard for him to assume

it's

this

WORLD

new role. It's too bad because I still love the

guy-

too bad. Too bad that a

it is

but

in their case

—

power was not an

as in others

—

When

issue.

power could destroy a friendship, the friendship was based on the fact that

shift in

it

entered into the picture, the friendship

could not last.

THE

FIFTY-FIFTY FRIENDSHIP

The

Fifty-Fifty Friendship occurs

equal achievement. Their relationship it

is

between

men

of approximately

charged with competitiveness, and

remains healthy and inspiring as long as each

man has the opportunity to

come out on top half the time. This sort of relationship can be highly volaand even destructive, but it can also be a powerful vehicle by which both parties can work out their interpersonal issues. The difference lies in talking. Two men who can discuss the pros and cons of their friendship can achieve mutual respect and friendship that transcends competition. The Fifty-Fifty Friendship is worth fighting for. Evan and Jon have tile

such a friendship.

Both thirty-two, both dark, curly-haired Jews from Brooklyn, both dentists,

both sons of dominating mothers and absent or passive

fathers,

both of equal height and build and equal athletic and academic ability, Evan

and Jon

are a

Theirs

matched pair.

is

a friendship that could be built

on

rivalry

and competition,

an endless recording of every win and loss. But as potentially competitive as it

could be, this relationship

is

one of the

closest

and mutually supportive

all the men I know and interviewed. What is their secret? They "work it out," as they put it. They let very little slip by inconsistencies, bewithout drawing it to the other's attention. In sports trayals, nonsupport it is called keeping the defense honest, or calling a foul when you see one. In the vernacular, it is called "calling him on his stuff." In this way, no matter

among

—

—

how competitive they are with each other, neither man is allowed to get too far

ahead.

Jon told

me how they met:

Evan and I met in dental school. I was drawn to him at first because he was a sort of antiestablishment

comrade, one of a handful of dental students who

stood up against the dental education system and institution. But we never got to

know each other until we met at a party given by a mutual friend. Ac-

tually,

our girlfriends met

first

and they introduced us to each other. I don't

know if we ever would have gotten as close as we did if it wasn't for our girlfriends.

We were forced to spend a lot of time together because of them.

And frankly, at first

I

liked Evan's girlfriend

112

more than

I

liked Evan.

Evan

Male Friendship

common, but Evan kept saying he felt this "resistance" from me. I remember the first of our "work-outs." We were walking

and

I

certainly

had a lot

in

through a park with our girlfriends. They had lagged behind, and Evan and I

were talking about our future plans. In the middle of the conversation he

said, "Jon,

I

really get the feeling

you don't like me." "That's not true," I shot

back and tried to change the subject. But every now and then he'd come back again, checking feelings;

I

felt

this feeling

pushed and wanted to

Somehow

me.

alone."

I

trust

I

can

—

retreat.

man

wasn't used to a I

pursuing

can get very cold. I just disap-

that's

listen to Evan.

Evan because

I

my power number. Evan wouldn't else I'd say, "Leave me know we're on equal footing. He gets me to

pear emotionally. Withdrawal let

with me.

I

With anyone

my resistance isn't to him but to most men, and that when he really pushes me can trace it back to my father. My relationships with other men are quite different. For instance my admit that

I

friend Richard conflicts.

and

I

—we're

living in the

same house now

Maybe we brush it under the rug.

I

or disappointing him. pect

I

never

feel guilty

make a lot of demands of

don't

him and he doesn't make them of me. I never feel

—we don't have

like

with him.

If

I

I

am disappointed in

have pain

I

don't ex-

him to make me feel better.

Though Jon he doesn't have

described himself as "totally caught up in power" he said

many conflicts with his men

The only person who good

to fight with.

I

have

real

friends.

blow-out fights with

He doesn't run

He will

away.

sense out of it. I'd run away, but he's taught front

him with something he stays with it

him doing that and I

figure, "Jesus,

it's

is

Evan. He's very

take an attack

and make

me a lot in that regard. If I con-

until

we get to the other side. I see work it through." I become

better to

more willing to accept my part in the dispute. I realize by the end of my sessions with Evan that

I

could have been more sensitive, that there was some

middle ground between

us. I've

never had another person

I

could do that

He has an incredible amount of guts to pursue a question like "Why don't you like me?" And that's why I like him. I have tremendous respect for him for that.

with.

It all

siveness,

seems so simple. When they talk, they work it out. All the defen-

all

the competitiveness,

all

the barriers drop away.

and Evan — —men who

In Fifty- Fifty Friendships like that between Jon one's best friend could indeed be one's worst to brave

it

enemy

in

which

are willing

across the barriers against verbalizing their feelings find that they

can detonate the potentially explosive bomb of competitiveness.

Working it out may cause sparks, smoke, even fire, but those men who and fight it out, if necessary, find their friendships are deeper,

stay in there

113

[

WORLD

A MAN'S

IN

more meaningful, and longer lasting. Those who show they care enough develop lifelong friendships.

And yet talking

—about

within the friendship

itself

feelings,

about

about issues of conflict

fears,

—appears to be the hardest thing in a man's

world. Everything a man has learned from men and about men through the various training grounds discussed in this book encourages lips sealed.

From

his father to his film heroes, the

him to keep his

message has been that a

That approach is also necessary in a competiwhat tive environment where you say might be criticized, put down, or otherwise held against you. Fearing such response certainly would lead a man to believe that what you do not say to men will not hurt you. man's strength

Besides,

is

his silence.

men

figure,

why bother

investing

all

that

emotion

in a rela-

same way all their other man-to-man abandonment, betrayal, or simply lack of ful-

tionship that will probably end the

—

experiences have ended fillment?

ones in

Anyway,

men

in

have been conditioned to believe,

women are the

whom you are supposed to invest your emotions.

That kind of thinking, of course, leaves too many lonely when they begin to look around at

— or —men for

men

alone and

friends.

The Benign Friendship To be antly

sure,

—

if

most friendships between men appear

without passion

time, distance,

and

—without such

disagree, not to call each other

back to told

the

There seems to be a

differences.

on

me about such friendships,

fire

their stuff.

college, high school, grade school,

to float along pleas-

verbal workouts. tacit

They weather

agreement not to

Some of these friendships go

even kindergarten.

When men

asked what held them together. What kept

I

of friendship ignited? Their answers invariably begged questions:

"Why have you remained friends for so long?" I would ask. "Because we've been friends for so long," they would

reply.

Longevity, they were saying, was the basis of the friendship.

The bond

of a shared history created a loyalty to a friendship that might very well be all

but nonexistent in substance in the present. This benign friendship,

learned, was the friendships,

I

predominant type between and among men. Men

also discovered in interviews, appear to give

thought and verbal expression to the what and

little

I

in these

conscious

why of a bond they claim

is

important enough to maintain and continue.

seem as different as Donald is a doer, a carpenter. Stan is a thinker, an investment analyst. Donald is stocky of build, like a running back, with an open face; he is likable, engaging, sometimes Donald and

two men can

be.

Stan, for example, both nearly forty,

Donald

is

outgoing; Stan

is

reclusive.

overbearing. Stan, tall and thin, aloof and impenetrable, hides behind thick,

1

114

f

Male Friendship

dark eyebrows and a handlebar mustache. Unlikely as it seems, they have been friends since high school, bridging gaps of time, philosophy, and per-

They now live in neighboring towns. I wanted to know what made the friendship of Donald and Stan tick. Where was their common ground? What attracted them to each other? How did they make the friendship last? Their answers or at least their atcame out over a weekend of talking, first with Donald tempts at answers and then with Donald and Stan together. The clearest conclusion is that they are unclear about such issues. The saddest is that their cloudiness is typical of the men I interviewed when it came to examining their friendships with men. It was Donald's wife, Kathy, who first posed the most vivid image of their friendship. She told me that Donald and Stan are like two old villagers who meet every day at the same time at the town water well. Whether they want to meet or not is no longer relevant; meeting at the well is so much a sonal

style.

—

—

part of their daily ritual that they could not imagine

Donald immediately objected rate description.

thing deeper. I

I

It's

life

not just habitual.

I

an accu-

have feeling for him. There's some-

truly care about Stan's welfare, that he's

hoped Stan would have

without it.

to the depiction: "That's not

a better reply

when

I

doing OK."

asked him,

"Why are

you and Donald friends after so long?" Stan curled the end of his mustache, thinking. His eyes narrowed to a slit.

"Time," he finally answered. I

think

it's

time. Durability.

Donald and

I

met when we were eleven years

old at camp. There was no particular relationship formed but we met. Then

we met again

—ninth grade homeroom. Again, there was no

any significance

until the last semester of high school.

our relationship was neutral.

relationship of

Even then, though,

We saw each other on a daily basis, but with

no particular relationship. These two simply cannot identify what holds them together. What they finally agree on

is

that they cannot agree

on how and what they feel for

each other and that they rarely even think about it. Despite this resistance to exploring the origins and dynamics of the friendship, theirs like

is

a friendship,

many men's, that continues and endures almost in spite of itself. Their

loyalty seems to be to the longevity of the bond, not really to each other. The way it continues is for them to refrain from venturing across those boundaries that protect their

tance

privacy (read vulnerability). Maintaining the dis-

—respecting the And

difference, not

many men, this

making waves

—

inhibits depth,

I

them what they want: male companionship without confrontation. Nobody calls suspect.

for

sort of friendship works.

]

H5

It

gives

IN

anybody on

his stuff.

It is

safe

A MAN'S

WORLD

but not challenging. And, in

my estimation,

not very rewarding.

would appear, then, that I paint a bleak picture of man-to-man relaThe patterns of behavior I describe here start to be engraved at an early age in a man's life, and have been in evidence since the early ages of mankind. Are fathers and sons meant to be eternal antagonists? Are all men It

tionships.

forever to face off in Is it

indeed

what by now seems to be a naturally combative stance? think that men could or even should turn

—

realistic to

against such a strong tide? Anyone who

is

ing men these days, can bear witness to the fact that

down

the walls of these timeless traditions. But

—

pathfinders

or,

—

a man these days, or who

watch-

is

some men are breaking

it

also

more accurately, these barrier razers

—

seems that these are

still

in the

mi-

nority.

summed up in two words: trust and respect. men cite most frequently when they talk about what

This chapter could be

These are the

qualities

they look for in

men friends. men you can trust. That's home to men by other men.

In a competitive environment, there are few

the lesson that has been repeatedly brought

You can never totally confide in a man who has been conditioned to see you as someone he must surpass to prove his own supremacy. How can you trust a man who distrusts you? It is a vicious circle only some men are able to break.

—

We treasure respect because comes so dearly it

thers. In the eyes

of every

and acceptance we tried in vain

model

in

if at all

—from our

fa-

man we meet, we look for the respect, approval, to gain

from the first and primary male role

our lives.

When we do find a man we trust and respect and, perhaps more imwho trusts and respects us, it is a welcome relief—like coming

portantly,

home.

In such a relationship

we have an opportunity

develop such friendships and

we should

to reconcile

re-

We should

cherish such friends.

They may

and

hold the keys to the gate that leads to our own self-discovery.

116

and

friends.

solve issues that plague us as fathers, sons, brothers,

Chapter 6

HOMOPHOBIA: THE UNSPOKEN BARRIER The seemingly shameful homoerotic feelings that sank from awareness are always ready to resurface. The discomfort that would be associated with their reemergence into awareness acts as

an

efficient

guardian of sexist

training. The secret shame of these hidden feelings is the dragon at the gate-

way of full self- awareness.

— Don Clark, Ph.D., Loving Someone Gay

Textbooks define homophobia as "the dread of being in close quarters with homosexuals

or, in

the case of homosexuals themselves,

loathing." The double issues of homosexuality ity

have gone unmentioned so

far in this

self-

and the fear of homosexual-

book, as they remain unspoken in

the heterosexual man's world except largely in the form of taunts and bad jokes.

Spoken or unspoken, heard or unheard,

phobia lurks insidiously behind

visible or invisible,

many encounters,

homo-

threatening heterosex-

men and forcing them into emotional and physical straitjackets. Homophobia accounts for one of the major barriers inhibiting closer and more intimate relationships between men. ual

To most heterosexuals, homosexuality is the dark pool of masculinity, a mirror they

The

deeply.

and some homosexuals would rather avoid looking into too of it in others, in themselves makes men think twice

—

fear

—

about touching each other with any more tenderness than that displayed in

on the shoulder. It makes men avert their eyes them from expressing love for other it will be "taken in the wrong way," as some men I

beefy bearhugs or quick pats

from a

stare held too long. It inhibits

men on the chance that interviewed put Since

it.

men have been conditioned and trained not to

of intimacy from men,

when a physical

suspicious of its origins

is

offered,

we are therefore

and motives. That kind of paranoia leads us to be-

lieve that, especially in situations where

he has nothing to gain economically or

man who reaches out to us must want something. But what? Sexual

socially,

a

favor

the answer that springs to a

is

gesture

expect gestures

mind conditioned in such a way.

]

117

IN A

MAN'S WORLD

lies dread. On the face of the dread appears whom the training did not take. Studies have shown

Behind such suspicion to be of "the others" on

that children

and lower

it,

species of animals demonstrate a basic dread of

anything or anyone they perceive as different from themselves. Higher spe-

—

—

human know it better as xenophobia, man squeezing my shoulder just a bit too tenderly, staring into my eyes with too much affection could he be cies

of animals

that

is,

the adult

the fear of strangers or foreigners. This

—

a deviant, loathed, feared, or misunderstood by the majority of society?

Behind the fear of being propositioned, of finding oneself in an awkward situation, or even of discovering an insistent anticipatory pleasure that calls into

fear

question ones

own sexual preferences

—behind

it all

stands a basic

of the unknown. Few phenomena so widespread as homosexuality have

remained so poorly understood by the majority. Men, both in

my interviews

and in some of the social science research I surveyed, confirm that a distorted view of the gay world

is

the

norm among heterosexual men. But when men

reach across this gap of information, they discover human beings on the other side,

men who

are not that

much

different

from themselves. Once he does

break through the myth of differentness that separates straights from gays, the heterosexual

man seeking to be honest with himself has a new fear to contend

with: not the fear of difference, but the fear of similarity.

"Everybody's Got a Story

." .

.

A gay friend of mine asked, not half-joking, how could write about homosexuality without having "sampled the fare." My field research did not inI

clude going to gay baths or submitting myself to a hands-on homosexual

book I had had ample opportunity so-called homosexual "tendencies" and my attitudes toward homosexuality in incidents I have come to learn are typical of most growing men. encounter. But long before writing this to

examine

my own

"Garfinkel, your ass wiggles like a

girl's,"

the sixth-grade class bully

down the hall at me, in ten brief seconds affecting a year-long selfconsciousness regarding at least my gait. And then there was the exploratory encounter with the kid down the street which I never admitted to another soul until I began talking to men in the course of researching this book. In college, when my roommate came out of the closet and told me shouted

about "his scene," as he used to call of a heterosexual naivete.

I

it, I

felt

as

though I had been slapped out

looked deep within myself to ask

why I was at-

man who was gay and why he was attracted to me (was it only as a friend?). His deepest fear, he told me later, was that if he confided to me that he was gay he would probably lose me as a friend. His fear was unfounded; he remains my friend. tracted

(if

only as a friend) to a

]

118

[

Homophobia Several years

later,

traveling with a five-man jazz band,

I

felt

men and male companionship and a quality of communication

a love of

unrivaled

by contact with women. The ease of the feeling, the completeness of the rapport, made me wonder further about where one (and specifically this one) draws the line between loving a

man and making love to

a

man. But

when one of the fellow musicians suggested we physically consummate our mutual love and appreciation, I withdrew. I knew if he had been a woman would not have hesitated. had to ask myself again why could feel love for I

I

I

another

man but not want to express it physically.

As Alfred Kinsey documented

in studies

long ago, most

men

have

at

one early "experiment" or encounter with sexual activity with another male. Further, Kinsey and his coauthors wrote as early as 1948 that 30 percent of the adult men in the United States have at one time or another been least

brought to orgasm as a

result

of oral genital stimulation by another man.

Whatever private meaning such encounters have for those who define themselves as heterosexual, it is safe to say that, as mine did, recollections of the encounter stay tightly locked away: secret, dangerous memories, threats to one's own not always stable sexual identity. For despite the confusion ho-

mosexuality engenders, what remains clear

rounding such

activities.

is

the potency of the taboo sur-

This chapter looks at those taboos, where they

come from, and how they inhibit men from forming closer relationships.

W/io Hates Gays

—and W%

Let

me state my thesis clearly right from the start: I contend that homopho-

bia

is

a learned behavior built into the training that

in their lives.

That

is,

most boys receive early

—gay

homophobia is typical of all men in our society

or straight. It is part of the fabric of our culture, reinforcing traditional masculine attributes

by teaching that men who need intimacy and emotional at best weak, at worst (when emotional intimacy

support from other men are

leads to physical intimacy) sick and sickening sociopaths to be shunned. As to

how the rampant homophobia in our culture thrives, the answer is simple. It

and lies. To many heterosexual men, the "typical" male homosexual

feeds off of myths, misinformation,

is less

good, less honest, less fair, less positive, less valuable, less stable, less intellec-

more shallow, more unhealthy than the "typiAbove all, he is seen as less masculine. This is not the

tual, less friendly, less clean,

cal" male heterosexual.

reaction of only uncultured rednecks. In a Psychology Today poll of readers'

—

about masculinity a group of respondents markedly more affluand better educated than the average American a surprising 70 percent reported believing that "homosexual men are not masculine," a decidedly damning view in a society that so admires masculinity. That reinattitudes

—

ent

1

119

f

— IN A

MAN'S WORLD

forces my suspicion that the homosexual is our culture's bad boy: the very model of what the teachings say you are not supposed to be. In one study demonstrating attitudes of heterosexuals toward homosexuals, participants placed stick figures representing themselves at varying

from

distances

a variety of categories of people.

They found

that partici-

pants placed themselves significantly farther from marijuana users, drug

—

and past homosexuals in Former homosexuals, it was found, were thought to be even less trustworthy than current homosexuals. In another study, the same man was rated as among the most preferred when no one knew his sexual orienaddicts, obese people, present homosexuals,

that order.

tation but

among the least preferred when labeled homosexual.

In that same study, another facet about attitudes toward gays was re-

one "confederate" was labeled as a hosecond "confederate," but was not labeled as such in a "neutral" situation. Participants were asked to perform a number of nonverbal communications and then asked to rate other members of their group, including the confederate, on a number of dimensions. There was clear evidence that participants perceived their groups less positively, and group problem solving was less effective, when a homosexually labeled person was present. Moreover, the confederates who initially performed the labeling were all perceived as significantly more masculine and more sociable when they labeled someone homosexual than when they did not. In other vealed. In the experimental situation

mosexual by

words,

a

men who

demonstrate the

ability to identify

mosexual are rewarded and reinforced by other men labeled

"more masculine." P. Bell's and Martin

Alan ties:

S.

another

in

man

as a

ho-

our culture by being

Weinberg's massive study, Homosexuali-

A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (an official publication of

the Institute for Sex Research, founded by Dr. Kinsey), cast a

doubt on the popular image of the homosexual

shadow of

as neurotic, suicidal, de-

and drunken. Nevertheless, the image has survived along with the stubborn stereotypes of gays as women haters and child molesters and for millions of active and passive "fag haters" it has justipressed, drugged,

—

fied a pattern

of social abuse only now being challenged in the courts. Cur-

no guarantee that such challenges can be won. our attitudes, our one-line jokes and innuendos blatantly victimize homosexuals. The heterosexual's message to his gay male counterpart is: "I am straight, correct, normal, and good. You are abnormal, wrong, deviant, and bad. Your demeanor nauseates me. Your behavior is immoral, sacrilegious. I don't want you teaching my children, fighting in rently, there is

Our

laws,

my armies, leading my congregation in church, joining my clubs." Good Book itself: man kind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them

For inspiration and precedent we can point to the "If a

man

also

lie

with a

120

Homophobia

have committed an abomination; they surely shall be put to death, their

blood

upon them" (Leviticus 20: 1 3).

is

It is

not hard to conceive of the gen-

erations-long chain of fathers teaching sons, leading Bible. And

in case there are

all

the

way back to the

not enough God-fearing folks around, there

is

plenty of good old Judeo-Christian legislation around to institutionalize the hatred of gays.

Homosexual activity, even between consenting adults, is

considered a criminal offense in thirty-one of these United States. The

United States has the most severe antihomosexual laws world. By contrast, Napoleon

in the

Western

made consensual homosexuality

legal in

France in the early nineteenth century; antihomosexual laws were repealed

In

Belgium and Holland, a few decades ago in Denmark, Switand Sweden and in the 1960s in Czechoslovakia and England. the United States, whether it is Idaho's "infamous crime against na-

ture" or

New Hampshire's rubric "lascivious acts," we find a way to punish

a century ago in

zerland,

homosexuals. In Georgia the

clemency

is

crime, or no exclude.

life

sentence

is

mandatory for sodomy unless

recommended. And when there is no punishment to fit the way to prove the crime, we go beyond the law. We harass. We

We prohibit. We entrap. We raid. We beat up.

At the very least, we enforce deceit. I know a gay couple who separate their single

beds and put a dresser between them when

the beds back together when the guests leave.

relatives visit,

then push

Not only are they deal ing with

knowing what kind of terrible things their relatives would think about them their

if

homosexuality were revealed, but they also have to face living a lie.

homophobic pressures in society, gays buy the whole cloth. But for them gay-hating translates to something much more destructive: self-hatred. If you are told long enough and in enough different ways that you are no good, it is inevitable that some of that criticism penetrates. You can build Far from being exempt from

themselves too often

—

typically, in fact

—

mile-high walls to block the onslaught of epithets until those walls themselves

become

ment

will seep in,

some of that judgYou will look in the

part of your personality. But eventually

and

it

mirror and say out loud,

too will

become

"My feelings

part of you.

are true, I'm good, I'm

but another voice will be insidiously and relentlessly

between your thoughts: "You're a

at

handsome,"

work, whispering

freak, you're disgusting, you're repug-

nant, you're bad."

"There's an awful lot of self-hatred

among gays," confirmed Dr.

Steve

Morin, a gay San Francisco psychologist I interviewed whose clients are pri-

He continued: A lot of people simply don't feel good about gay men. One gay man, who had been in one of my therapy groups, started coming to see me in private

marily gay.

therapy. He'd walk three blocks out of his way to avoid Castro Street (a pre-

dominantly gay neighborhood) because he was "so disgusted by the sight

121

A

IN

MANS WORLD

of all those faggots." He'd broken up with his lover, phatically wasn't like

my

cise in

"them"

—not

gay male groups.

I

like

who he asserted em-

those "faggots." We do a

ask them

"What

little

exer-

are faggots like?" People

come up with things like: "They aren't dependable." "They're hard to relate to." "They're promiscuous." The men have internalized many of the

—whether they

stereotypes the public holds to be true;

constitute a big barrier in getting gay

they see themselves

—and

are true or not.

They

men to work with gay men because

"their kind"

—

in society's light. In other words,

as bad people, people to avoid.

Thus, besides functioning to reinforce traditional masculine values in the fiercely heterosexual population,

homophobia

instills in

gays them-

selves a crippling self-loathing.

Fathers of Gays

An organization called POG ist

—Parents of Gays—was meeting

at a

Method-

church in a grungy section of New York's Lower West Side. There were

about two dozen couples seated on metal chairs spaced

in a circle in the

dank linoleum-floored basement. Some of these parents had been members of this group since its inception seven years earlier. Some were first-timers. I could easily tell one from the other: The new parents were sitting quietlv clutching their purses and nervously fingering the creases in their hats, avoiding eye contact with anyone else and barely even talking to church's

their mates. It

was

a support group, an information-exchange center,

working out

guilt,

an arena for

shame, anger, disappointment, and a sense of failure.

It

quickly became apparent that most of the people doing the talking were

women,

the mothers of gays.

The men

—

the fathers

barely turning their heads toward the discussion.

spoke out.

One

admitted what

really

sexuality was that "he's breaking chiatrist

who,

I

—

sat soberly, silently,

Two new men

is

sick."

— —allowed

my line of immortality." Another

would have thought, should have known

that "homosexuality

In response to a

better

that

shouted angrily,

"We

a psy-

woman who countered that

the American Psychiatric Association had issued a decision that sickness, he

finally

bothered him about his son's homo-

it is

got clubbed by those gays into

not a

making

announcement. They're a bunch of political barnstormers." Afterward people mingled. A woman approached me and said she saw

me taking notes and thought I might be "someone who knew a little more about

all this."

I

told her about the

into a long lament about

book I was working on, and she broke

how terrible her husband felt. "He

feels

so guilty

that he did something wrong, or that he wasn't there enough, and that's why

122

Homophobia

our eighteen-year-old son

is

corner eyeing us intently.

I

her husband they too

felt

—by

gay" she

said.

I

observed her husband

tried to reassure her

telling her that

in a far

—and more importantly

most of the men

interviewed told

I

their fathers were not around enough and that not

me

all

of those

in tow. After

an awk-

men were gay. "Wait a second," she interrupted. In a

ward

moment

she

silence he introduced himself. His

rette breath.

him

name was Tony; he was

for

He came close to me and could smell his cigaI

what he was going through, but

for

I

felt

how he was

know," he started, lighting another cigarette, looking

around the room, down

anywhere but thought

in I

at his feet,

pain

going

over

left

and

my shoulder, at my chest

my eyes. Then he continued:

was doing things with him. I was a Boy Scout

understand. He's confused. He's not

like

father.

fast when was a kid. My wife says the problem much with me when I was his age.

grow up

I

This could be

I

just don't

me. I'm aggressive. He never

lows through on things. He's very immature for his age.

too

a general

it.

"I don't

I

be right back."

His eyes were sad and bloodshot; he was truly shaken.

— not

through

right

ffl

came back with her husband

contractor from Brooklyn.

for

M

my father talking about me when

I

I

is I

guess

I

fol-

had

to

compare him

was eighteen,

I

thought. This could have been any father complaining about any son. I

asked

him if he could tell me something positive about his son. Tony

shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows, finally looking into my eyes with hope: "We've been to a professional psychologist, and he says isn't

necessarily a confirmed

homosexual yet and we could

Looking into Tony's desperate eyes ther.

I

still

my son

cure him."

saw the implications

to this fa-

He did what he could to train the boy to the ways of men and mascu-

linity,

and he

"failed." If a father sees his

having a homosexual son

reflects rather

son as a reflection of himself,

poorly on a

man invested with the

belief in the Tightness of heterosexuality.

"He's not like me," Tony had told me, but I think what he wanted to assure

me

—and himself—was

that he was not like his son.

Tony wanted me to

him his son's homosexuality was not his fault. I could not do that, of course. The causes of homosexuality have been debated throughout history, and no single answer is in sight. True, most theories center on a family psychodynamic involving both parents, with tell

doting, seductive,

and domineering mothers taking most of the "blame." In

recent studies, however, passive well.

and

hostile fathers share the

Given the key role the father plays in training

behavior,

I

his

wondered what happens between the tw o when r

123

"blame"

as

son in "masculine" that training

IN A

MAN'S WORLD

creates such antithetical results.

My assumption is that there is a crippling

to hostility as a method of selfThe look in Tony's eyes reinforced my hypothesis. And a talk I had with a friend of mine named Francis, who works as an office temporary while studying therapy, running men's groups, and undergoing therapy himself, went a good way toward confirming my hunch. He told me:

sense of failure

on both

sides,

which turns

protection.

I

always saw my father as the object of my love, at least in the beginning. My

sweetest,

warmest memories of him are

at

Christmas. He's showing

me

how this little flip-flop airplane works. And I remember feeling so happy and it wasn't so much about the toy as about him. The significant feeling was of strength and security and energy coming from him

directly to

me.

I

knew that everything in the world was OK because he was there. "You have to be a man." That's the phrase I remember him saying most. We were taught to shake hands "like a man."

was very effeminate in behavior

point to his brother

who

to be a priest, definitely didn't

—

men grew up in and my father'd my uncle as an example of how not to act. "That's like a woman, and

make use

He used to

—he studied

it

in the

world of macho

Italian

I

you don't want to be a woman." Francis

was

first

told both his parents of his

He had

homosexual

feelings

when he

already been having an affair for three years with a

boy Almost everyone in the neighborhood knew about Francis's sexuality. It had gotten to the point where it was not uncommon for strangers to approach him and threaten to beat him up or tell on him if he did not give them a blow-job. After the "umpteenth" time, out of self-defense, Francis finally went to his mother and told her, but he made her promise not to tell his father until he had gotten his courage up. But over dinner one night, she told Francis's father, who maintained his cool despite twelve.

five years older.

an obvious internal raging

fury. After

dinner he brought his son

down

to

and exploded: "You put that thing in your mouth, that thing you piss out of? You're a fag, that's what you are!" Every gay man I interviewed told me it was much harder to tell his father he was gay than to tell his mother. Many never did tell their fathers, even after they had told their mothers. Some assumed their fathers knew by the basement

inference. Others lied, describing "girlfriends" who were really boyfriends. Many of those who did tell their fathers suffered the consequence of being cut off entirely, as though they were dead. And for a few others the reason for telling was to inflict the painful sting of the truth on the man who caused them so much pain.

The

difficulty lies in

admitting one's failure to one's teacher, in

case one's father: "I couldn't be the

this

man you thought you were making of

me." But the other side of this admission of failure father as a masculine role model.

124

is

a sharp rejection of the

Homophobia

"My mission in life was to be as unlike my father as I could," a gay man of thirty-one from Los Angeles told me. "In doing that maleness.

I

disassociated

was a sissy, the very thing

from the

qualities of strength

my father warned me

I

denied a

I

lot

of my

and competence.

I

should never be."

The final slap in a father's face is the long-term implication of his son's The reason many men say they want sons in the first is ripped out of their immortality, to "carry on the family name" place grasp. No grandchildren! Straight men who have announced to their fasexual preference.

—

—

thers that they are going to have vasectomies have experienced similar

responses from their fathers, as have married

men who

have

made

a con-

scious choice not to have children. In effect, then, the boy's homosexuality

is

a blanket rejection

—

as a man. Seen no wonder that homophobia is so pervasive in our sociThe homophobic wall blocks all that is "antimale." And to the fathers

ther as model, teacher, standard-bearer of the male culture in this context, ety.

of the fa-

it is

and mentors who take seriously their roles as trainers of the next generation is a major threat to their authority as teachers and

of men, homosexuality

the validity of their teachings.

The Intimate Male: Just as masculinity has its

that

if

gay

men

A Dead End

myths, so too does homosexuality. One of them is

exhibit "antimale" traits, then they probably have

loving, supportive, intimate relationships free of competition

warm,

and

full

it is

true

of

open communication. It

sounds good and many gay men would have you believe

until, that

free

is,

you inquire a little further. Far from living together in a rivalry-

atmosphere

in

which competition, power

struggles,

and emotional same obsta-

inexpressiveness are unheard of, gay relationships contain the cles as

into

other male- male dyads.

If

intimate male- female relationships run

problems owing to differences

psychology of genders, intimate

in the

male-male relationships face the dilemma of similarity. Competition

is

an

integral part of the gay lifestyle.

The

YMCAs and the body-building gyms of this country are filled

with gay men working on their physiques only partly for the benefit of their health; they

know how all-important their bods

market called "cruising."

more enlightened gays

It is

are less

are out there

on the meat

a tough, highly competitive contest.

concerned about another man's

And if

"lats ,"

they

may not be immune to the even keener competition over economic status, and fast-tongued wit. Far from transcending the eternal and exhausting power struggle, gay men are totally immersed in it. And if straight men think they've got trouintellectual brilliance, incisive

1

125

[

IN A

MAN'S WORLD and reacting

bles in their sexual relationships, relating to

to the iron-clad

code of male values to which they were conditioned, listen to what gay men have to contend with in their intimate

lives.

Talking about his gay psycho-

therapy practice, Morin told me:

You see so clearly how being two men interferes with intimacy. The competition issue:

The competition of finances, of who's got more money, who's

got a bigger cock, who's

more attractive to another man, who's more loving

and giving, who's got more friends issue:

—

it's

constant competition. The power

When you put two men together and then define them as lovers, you

have hooked them into a power struggle.

through

it,

It

can be very ugly. In order to get

they have to step out of their male roles. They've got to be able to

compromise, and show a valuing of the relationship particularly typical of

—

attitudes that aren't

men. Based on characteristics that best describe

males from various researches

—

they're very independent, almost always

hiding emotions, very dominant, very competitive, almost always acting as leaders, very rough, not talkative, very sloppy in habits, having

for security, can't express tender feelings easily qualities could hardly

relationship.

be expected to have

Each one of those

much

little

need

— two people with these in the

way of an intimate

traits is a specific interference, in fact, to in-

timacy.

Gay men

commonly believed

more promiscuous than and being male means being sexually aggressive, whether that trait is innate or trained. The truth is, the sexual "promiscuity" of gay men reflects the male approach, unimpeded. One study on initiating sexual activity defined about fifteen steps in a man's courting and seduction of a woman, from initial eye contact to smiling to first physical contact to intercourse. The study showed that at each step the man makes the gesture but the woman, trained traditionally to be passive and receptive, either encourages or discourages the man. Women have built into their social sign language various red lights and traffic signs: "Yield," "Detour," "Do Not Pass." With men, it is green lights all the way. There are no checks or balances to the sexual advancement and seduction. Ironically, the unimpeded sexuality wreaks havoc on the chance to establish intimacy to express affection, fantasies, vulnerabilities. Among homosexuals, then, the male style of competitive toughness, lack of intimacy, and fierce independence contains the same impediments to love that heterosexuals experience. The irony is that, although culture via fathers and other male teachers holds them up as the very model of the bad boy, gay men suffer the same blocks to intimacy and growth-promoting relationships as men who tow the all-masculine, hetstraight

are

men. But gay men are males

to be

first,

—

— —

—

—

erosexual party line.

126

Homophobia

SaidMorin:

Two men come home from

a day in which they have been powerful, inde-

pendent, decision-making people

work, and what they

at

really

need

is

to

be able to crawl into bed with another person, their lover, in a near fetal position, it's

and give vent

to the

dependency needs they've frustrated all day. But

impossible to do that without contradicting most of what we are

brought up to believe.

If

men

are almost always hiding emotions, that

much room for intimacy. Breaking through that barrier to exemotions is the hardest thing for men. A lot of men see have never

doesn't leave

press cried

—not

I

since they were children.

Enlightenment Through Education The problems gays and

straights share are not

described in earlier chapters

— those

much

different

from those

from

a system of

that arise logically

values that discourages emotional honesty and nearly deifies independence

and

self-reliance.

Nor

is

the solution

all

sure to the feared "other," shattering of myths and

mitment

to truth,

homophobia

will

It is

education, expo-

lies. If

we make no com-

that exotic:

continue to

pit father against son,

friend against friend, gays against straights, gays against gays,

and each man

against himself.

new information. Only in 1969 did the psychological research community push aside centuries of ignorance when Change comes

slowly, as does

Masters and Johnson undertook a study on homosexuality. Fifteen years

same researchers published their 450-page tome, Homosexuality in The book concentrates solely and apparently for the first time on the simple mechanics of gay sex. The language is appropriately technical and removed. By the end we learn there are no differencesbetween heterosexuals and homosexuals in the physical processes of lubrication, erection, ejaculation, and orgasm. Masters and Johnson believe that their later the

—

Perspective.

—

demonstration

will eventually lead to

sexuality, and, at a basic level, better

more

public acceptance of homo-

medical care. In the past, for example,

some doctors refused to give gays rectal examinations for fear of arousing them which, as a Time magazine survey of gay awareness noted, is a "concern that has never been shown by gynecologists conducting vaginal ex-

—

aminations."

Another landmark event, occurring three years

after

Masters and

Johnson began their study of gays, was the convening of the National Institute of Mental Health Task Force

psychologist Evelyn Hooker,

on Homosexuality in

1967.

Its

chair

was

who had been proposing studies of the "nor-

mal" overt male homosexual and the social structure of the gay community

]

127

[

A

IN since 1954. In 1978 she

MANS WORLD

was lauding the Society for the Psychological Study

of Social Issues, a division of the American Psychological Association, for dedicating an entire issue of its Journal of Social Issues exclusively to theory

and research on social concerns of gay people. "What is notable or perhaps even historic about epilogue. "This

When

is

a

this issue?" she

she chaired the

asked rhetorically in the publication's

in publishing in the social

first

and behavioral sciences."

NIMH Task Force, she said, "there was literally no

published research on any of the topics covered here."

was not until December 1973 that the psychiatric community, in the form of the American Psychiatric Association, removed homosexuality from the association's list of mental disorders. Psychiatrist Judd Marmor's was one of the voices of reason at

Knowledge

yields to action slowly.

It

that time: Surely the time has come for psychiatry to give up the archaic practice of classifying the millions of object choices as being,

men and women who accept or prefer homosexual by virtue of that

their alternative life-style

conventions must not be the basis in It

fact alone,

mentally

ill.

The fact

that

happens to be out of favor with current cultural itself for a

diagnosis of pathology.

took the governing body of the American Psychological Association

yet another year to follow suit

Homosexuality per ability,

and adopt the following resolution:

se implies

no impairment

Psychological Association urges lead in

in

judgment,

stability, reli-

or general social or vocational capacities. Further, the American all

mental health professionals to take the

removing the stigma of mental

illness that

has long been associated

with homosexual orientation. realize that there is not much men and straight in how they relate to their fathers, how they relate to their brothers, how they relate to other men friends. What makes some men homosexual and others heterosexual may remain one of those unsolvable mysteries of the human psyche. But the more I think about it, the less etiologies seem to matter. "A man's a man for a' that," wrote Scottish lyricist Robert Burns. We are men first, men last, men always

Over time, we as a society are coming to

difference between gay

and

in

all

ways. Race, creed, color, even sexual preference

place to the primary instinct of gender.

For a' that and a' that, It's

coming yet, for a' that,

That man to

man the world over

Shall brothers

be for a' that.

128

—

all

take second

Chapter 7

MENTORS WE NEVER MEET: REFLECTIONS OF MEN IN

THE MEDIA'S EYE I

love a

man who can best me.

—Errol Flynn All the while that we pass through basic lives,

we

are

influenced by

we see on

more

subtly

— though no

rites

with the

men

in

our

—taught and

importantly

less

men we never actually get to meet. These are the male figures

the silver screen, in advertisements, books,

are the unreal

real

men

our lives, who become more

real to

and magazines. They

whom we watch almost every day of

the media make,

us by virtue of their pervasive presence.

Everywhere we turn we are bombarded with images of how men should re-

how they should behave in each other's company. home for me in interviews with men who cited personal heroes and mentors such as John Wayne and Robert DeNiro instead of real men in their lives. In a society in which actual mentors are few and far between, in an age when the mythological figures that once inspired and guided us are fading from memory, men have come to rely on such media heroes. The Marlboro Man and John Wayne these are our modern-day late to

each other,

This was brought

—

archetypes. Ancient figures such as Prometheus

to

newer ones, to

and Parsifal have given way

television's fast-flashing, constantly dissolving, dis-

cardable images: Dick

Van Dyke,

William Bendix (of "The

Life

Bill

Cosby,

Don

Johnson, Ozzie Nelson,

of Riley"), The Fonz, Archie Bunker, Fred

Savage, Mighty Mouse, Popeye, Superman, Batman, Captain Kangaroo,

—

Buck Rogers, Sky King, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Wizard, Mr. Magoo pick your own hero. What they tell us is consistent with what we learn from the other men around us. The message of the media man can summed up in six points:

—whether

Winning

it is

a

thing. Accomplishment is

In order to win, a

gun duel or a top corporate position

—

is

every-

all.

man must be ready to resort to violent or otherwise ag-

gressive behavior.

129

.

Because the

rise to the

WORLD

A MAN'S

IN

top can be so brutal, emotionally, a

man must hide

his pain behind a wall of silence and inexpressiveness.

Maintaining that wall of silence requires an independent stance. Living up to the model of the media man, like living fathers,

up to expectations of

mentors, and older brothers, is practically impossible

reinforces man's inferiority in the

—which only

shadow of other men.

The image of masculinity is ambiguous, out of focus,

elusive,

and

evasive.

The outer form is emphasized over the inner.

Those

are the messages that get flashed

the images. Witness

between the

lines

and behind

how they work.

Paper-thin Heroes

A more virile

male image could not have been created than the classic his broad shoulders, deepset eyes, and strong jaw, always pictured alone, a million miles from civilizaMarlboro Man, the billboard dream man, with tion, or so

it

seems. This

is

a

man with a mission, a difficult man to match.

The advertiser would have us believe we too can become this way by smoking its pai ticular brand of cigarette, but the more important message we get is that this man's man is handsome, strong, powerful, active and alone. Magazine ads in such men's publications as GQ and Esquire suggest that men should want to be on top. "He's wearing something that makes him different from every other man," a fragrance maker declares. "You're at the height of your powers, when nothing is too much and

—

everything

is

just

enough," encourages another.

"Panatella separates," claims a cigar ad. "You'll stand out

without getting

from the herd

fleeced."

"Winners pick first-class," says a

camera promotion.

a winner," boasts a

The worst offenders

are liquor companies. "Because

Scotch maker, making

it

seem

as

you enjoy going

though

his

product

a

is

"When you make it with Myers's, you've made it. a rum that means you've come up in the world," claims another. The classic Dewar's Profiles are studies of men of great achievement. Even a ballpoint reward for placing first.

.

pen maker would like you to believe its product is a recognition of your "mark of distinction." The standards they all set are high, often unattainable. But the man who cannot reach those heights can

from

his actual mentor, then

at least learn

ings are slim. "Every change in men's fashion

so

little

how to

from the media. Even

happens," six-time Coty

is

look the part

—

if

not

here, though, the pick-

seen as a revolution because

Award winner Ralph Lauren has

said.

His

comment suggests that men are left to search very scrupulously for clues. 1

130

[

Mentors

We

Never Meet

In the late 1970s, responding to the paucity of direction for

men

in

number of large- format paperback guides to grooming for men were published to cast some light on the subject for men in the dark. Trouble was, they either confounded men more or made them feel more inferior. Looking Good by Charles Hix (Wallaby, 1977) and The Ultimate Man by Henry Post (Berkeley, 1978), two perfect examples, are the kinds of books that make a man never want to look in the mirror again. Their pages fashion, a

are filled with pictures of those male

manufactured us,

in

some factory in

models who appear to have been

Detroit, designed to intimidate the rest of

with their chiselled features, clear complexions, slim V-shaped builds.

And while these authors offer tips on how to take care of our drooping bodies, our wrinkling skin, our thinning hair, how to mix and match accessories, how to affect the "rough man" look and the "classic man" look, neither Hix nor Post can actually identify what

it is

they are trying to create. Post

writes:

The Ultimate Man

is

the guy you and

realized that each of us

I

have wanted to be ever since we first

would grow up to become men. But what kind of men

would we be? Would we be like the man we admired? Would we have what he had

—

great looks, style,

and sex appeal? The Ultimate Man was a dream, a vi-

sion of youth that seemed far away from the reality of our mirrors.

Hix tries defining his ideal man:

What is "the look?" I make my living with words, but Til be damned if I can describe it. The closest I can come is to say that it's looking put-together, with equal portions of good health and self-confidence yet without looking vain. No, that's not

it. It's

example of what every

same raw

standing out in a crowd of men by being a better

man

in that

crowd would look

material. That isn't right either. Is

you've got? Yup.

It's

it

like if

he had the

making the most of what

how you've always wanted to look and secretly felt that

you could if you tried. You can. Try.

They make fashion and grooming a competitive event. "You can. Try." They emphasize aspiring to an unattainable dream; to those outer qualities of looks, style, and sex appeal; to standing out in a crowd and being better. Granted, the situation may be far worse for women. Trying to live up to the impossible models paraded before them on the glossy pages of women's magazines,

women

all

but surrender in defeat or become compulsive

dieters or frenetic fashion freaks.

Or else they completely reject the model.

it is for men but, unlike men, most women are very definite, well-versed, and expressive about what the current look is and how to attain it or distain it. It is much more part of their

The competition

is

no

less

keen than

—

vernacular than men's. Hix

is

so ill-at-ease with expressing

1

131

[

it

verbally he

is

MANS WORLD

IN A

man again without men once a model to folmust find his own answer, leaving and you alone who make low. Henry Post agrees: "In the end it's you reduced to

cliches. Finally

he gives up. In the end, he suggests, each

—

—

Be yourself. Make your style you. From that point on it becomes all too personal, all too elusive to pin down." By now men have become accustomed to an image that appears elu-

the difference.

sive as

soon

...

as

it

approaches "personal."

Why look so good? To impress women and other men, of course. The point was underscored by

Bill Blass,

Coty winner and one of

a three-time

America's best-known designers:

The way you look

him

three reasons to dress well professionally, and to

You

travel

A man's wardrobe will help

creates the first impression.

get a better job or help

him

—

feel

good about himself socially. There are

to give yourself pleasure, to advance yourself

make yourself more attractive and sexually desirable.

around and you

see

how bad

it is

where you can't one-up your superiors. And

in corporations, for example, in

many companies the man's

clothes have to follow in the style of the boss's clothes.

Even the way a man dresses, then, must follow the top-down mentality as prescribed.

The Glossy Man In the mid-1970s magazines rekindled a for a while but then

and

illusion

romance with men

that flared

up

smoldered into the same old smoke cloud of confusion

and scarce few clues

as to

how men can, should, or do relate to

each other. In 1975, Rolling Stone may have been the

cus an entire issue on men.

"Men on

first

national periodical to fo-

the Ropes" was the cover line but edi-

torially Rolling Stone was at loose ends.

Michael Rogers, in his introduction,

wrote:

— to rephrase the fellow who may have inadvertently started the — "What do they want?" Beats whole tangle the place Men

in

us, frankly,

first

even though we've spent the better part of a year thinking about the longer we thought about

it

it

.

.

the murkier the whole subject became.

as the discussion deepened, the block

began to look increasingly

.

and

And

sinister:

What dark secret were we, in fact, trying to hide?

(as

Most of the articles in that issue reflect the subject that seemed then now) to be threatening men: sex ("How I Learned About Sex!" "True

Adventures of a Men's Pulp Editor"). But a reader sense of male isolation. Included in that issue

132

is

is left

with a pervasive

a long excerpt

from boxer

Mentors

Muhammed Ali's autobiography, one point

W>

Never Meet

The

Greatest:

My Own Story, in which at

Louis trainer Reverend Williams compares Ali to a dinosaur:

St.

"Everybody's got buddies, I know. But not dinosaurs. The dinosaur's differ-

own satellites. His own crowd. Dinosaurs go it alone." men were teetering on the ropes, unsure of who and what they were,

ent. He's got his If

a 1977 survey of twenty-eight

Today magazine for entific sense is

well

on

his

its

thousand of them conducted by Psychology

special issue

on men did not make much

social sci-

of the changing image of the male. "The macho frontiersman

way out as the model of the perfect American man," the magaconcluded. "But he isn't gone yet, and men have more

zine's researchers

new male than women have." same period Esquire returned from

trouble defining the

During magazine to

that

a

men's magazine.

demonstrate that 1

978

it

it

It

would follow an old lead rather than forge a new one. By

was proclaiming "The Year of the Lusty Woman:

Sex Object Again." Two years line culture"

tion." In this

later

it

It's

All Right to

Be a

was heralding the return of "the hard-

and the demise of the "age of vulnerability and self- absorpnew/old sensibility, "tough-guyism came into vogue. We

began to wonder

how we'd do

in a fistfight in a bar.

not just appreciate but admire brawling."

a general interest

did not take long, however, for Esquire to

The

election of

We began to admire

— the John Wayne ethic and principled

Ronald Reagan, the magazine noted, was a

indication that this was the direction

clear

men were taking.

The 1980s saw the birth of a whole new genre of men's magazines. With names like Changing Men, Brother, Nurturing News, and, emphatically,

Man!, these publications ventured off the page into the margins of

masculinity. These were not the slick, glossy, four-color publications with

ads for sports cars, colognes, and clothing; they were newsletters and photables. What they made up for with enthusiasm and a

tocopied sheets that appeared to be laid out on kitchen lacked in professional appearance they true intellectual curiosity roles

and exploratory

spirit

concerning the variety of

men could play. Some approached the subject with great academic se-

riousness and sensitivity. Others had the nerve to

make fun of themselves

and their heightened self-consciousness. Some were oriented toward homosexual men, others toward heterosexuals. Together they all helped create a national network of all kinds of men looking for new answers to old questions. Available at the various

country, circulated through

men's centers emerging throughout the

some nascent underground movement,

these

magazines quietly created an atmosphere in which the broad-based appeal of Robert

Bly's Iron John

could be made possible later.

Ushering in the 1990s, a number of new men's magazines tried to capitalize

on what by then was being acknowledged as a legitimate trend: interest in men. None of them lasted very long. Mens Life, published by Ru-

by men

133

.

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

pert Murdoch's News Corporation, survived one issue and then folded. Men, which was to be published by Norris Publishing, never reached Volume 1,

Number

1,

before

merged with Smart magazine to become Smart for Men.

it

However, Smart for Men never got published

downtown

covered Manhattan's magazine.

least in its positioning, a so-called

And

scene,

M magazine had undergone to

come

either. Details, a

was revamped

magazine that

in 1990 as a men's

several incarnations but remained, at

men's magazine.

full circle, in

1992 Straight Arrow Publishers, (which

Mens who had brought the coun-

publishes Rolling Stone magazine) brought out a magazine entitled

Journal Jann Wenner, the visionary publisher

and

tercultural rock

magazine well into the mainstream, described at men in their thirties and content would not venture too far into the psychologiroll

Men s Journal as "Hemingwayesque." Aimed forties, its editorial

cal

depths of men; rather,

sports,

and travel.

It

it

would safely explore outdoor activities, fitness,

appeared, once again, that the arrow

ing was returning to the place from which they had

Booked

men were follow-

hoped to come.

\Jp

And then there were the books, which started trickling out in 1 975 and grew into a deluge by the

Marc Feigen

end of the decade. Warren

Farrell's

The Liberated Man,

The Male Machine, and Herb Goldberg's The Hazards of Being Male were among the first to define the issues and became Fasteau's

must reading

for

any

man looking for a new model to follow. The first was

basically written in reaction to the liberated

others, as their titles imply, point out the

women's movement. The two

down side of male behavior. In The

Male Machine, Fasteau stated: The male machine

is

a special kind of being, different

from women,

chil-

men who don't measure up. He is functional, designed mainly for work. He is programmed to tackle jobs, override obstacles, attack problems, overcome difficulties, and always seize the offensive. He will take on dren and

any task that can be presented to him

in a competitive

most important positive reinforcement

is

victory.

framework, and his

He has armor plating

which is virtually impregnable. His circuits are never scrambled or overrun

by irrelevant personal

signals.

He dominates and outperforms his fellows,

although without excessive flashing of lights or clashing of gears. His tionship with other male machines difficult for

him

is

rela-

one of respect but not intimacy;

it is

to connect his internal circuits to those of others. In fact,

his internal circuitry

is

something of a mystery to him and

primarily by humans of the opposite sex

134

is

maintained

Mentors

The only problem had

is,

We

Never Meet

as Fasteau admitted

by the end of the book, as he

beginning, "from Daniel Boone to our mobile corporation ex-

at the

ecutives to

our most dedicated scientists, our success myths

individual (virtually always a

man) who by

his lonely

...

are about an

independent

efforts

man and accomplishes great things, preferably of the kind that can serve as a monument to himself." Again, his conclusions led men back to where they started. His hopes for the new man of the future fly in the face of his analysis of the man of the raises

past

himself above and away from his fellow

and

present.

men out of the confusion, studies like Male (Still) Dorit Know About Male Sexuality, The Phallic Mystique, Sexual Solutions, Men in Love, and others. Up until this point the print media reflected back to men a model that Other books

Sexuality,

Beyond

tried to help

the

Male Myth, What You

was at best fuzzy at the edges. Newspapers, magazines, and books reassured men they had to stay on top and hide most of their emotions, that they

would remain alienated from and inferior to most other men. How to actually act among other men, however, was left unclear. Meanwhile, throughout the 1 980s women were being barraged with a full-scale attack

of popular psychology and self-help books aimed

at their

Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood and Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them by Susan Forward and Joan Torres claimed to help women out of the vulnerable side. Hugely successful books like

enveloping and intricate web of confusion about relationships with men.

Along with these were the first books about addictive and codependent be-

most successful of which were Melody Beattie's books, starting with Codependent No More. In my opinion, books of this sort forced haviors, the

women

(for

women were clearly the intended audience)

into self-limiting

pigeonholes, creating easily accessible crutches by which they could justify

and excuse their behaviors without necessarily changing them.

As a byproduct of this movement, another series of books started appearing that, in turn, blamed men for the breakdown in men and women's ability to communicate with each other in a manner that could enhance

—

intimacy. If books like Why Cant Men Open Up? Overcoming Mens Fear of Intimacy by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith and Men Who CantLoveby Steven Carter and Julia Sokol achieved rather than obstruct

anything, it was to reveal that the so-called "battle of the sexes" remained in

They also showed how little we actuunderstood about what makes men tick. What was becoming discernable, however, was that there did exist the possibility that all was not well under that staunch masculine veneer, that quite possibly men were the finger-pointing reactionary mode. ally

hurting and that, though the notion was at

135

first

rejected

by women, men

A MAN'S

IN

too were emotionally oppressed

WORLD

—not by women but by the

repressive pa-

had themselves been party to institutionalizing. Responding to that new awareness, yet another collection of books

triarchal system they

was published

in the 1980s

and 1990s that earnestly examined some of the male psychological condition. Warren Far-

factors that contributed to the rell,

after a

long hiatus, returned to the subject with

Why Men Are the Way

They Are, a well-researched, extremely objective study of exactly what the title

implies.

Herb Goldberg also produced

several

more popular psychol-

ogy books, including The New Male: From Macho to Sensitive but Still All Male, The Inner Male: Overcoming Roadblocks to Intimacy and What Men

The Goldberg books seemed to be rewashed versions of his The Hazards of Being Male and, frankly, excuses to keep his name in front of the reading public as more authors entered the now-luReally Want.

original innovative

crative field of men's literature.

Books with more substance included

A

Choice of Heroes: The Chang-

Manhood by Mark Gerzon and Finding Our Fathers by Samuel Osherson. Later came King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculineby Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, The Wounded Maleby Steven Farmer, and Absent Fathers, Lost Sons: The Search for Masculine Identity by Guy Corneau. Some books took on subjects that had heretofore been considered ing Faces of American

completely taboo in a man's world, such as sexual abuse of men. Broken

Boys/Mending Men: Recovering from Childhood Sexual Abuse by Stephen D.

Grubman- Black and

Victims

No Longer: Men

Recovering from Incest and

Other Sexual Child Abuseby Mike Lew are two examples.

The reading

list

became so

"best-of "anthologies such as

extensive several publishers brought out

Men s Lives,

edited by Michael

S.

Kimmel and

Michael A. Messner, and Fathers, Sons and Daughters, edited by Charles Scully.

So many men's books were published stores with extensive sections

in the 1980s, in fact, that

book-

on "Women's Studies" or "Gender Studies" men eventually succumbed to this del-

that included a scant few titles about

uge and established "Men's Studies" sections. But

it

was Robert

Bly's Iron John:

A Book About Men that almost sin-

glehandedly brought this entire body of literature,

if

not the whole subject

of men, into the mainstream. Bly was the poet from the farmlands of Minnesota who became the Johhny Appleseed of men, planting seeds of the old

male myths into the new male conscience, connecting present and future generations with their

much

own

past. In his

informal poetic prose style (in

fact,

of the book derived from earlier talks and interviews he had given),

Bly explained men's maladies through analogies to Greek mythology and fairy tales.

Though

esoteric at times

and self-indulgent

136

at others

—

in

any

We

Mentors

case hardly the linear sequential to receiving that cut

through

and went seller.

and accepting data

much of the

Never Meet

mode in which most men are accustomed

—

there was clearly something in Iron John

men had been reading and hearing became a surprise New York Times best-

B.S. that

straight to their hearts.

It

Perhaps the secret of its success was that

miliar voice of a "masculine"

unconscious back door, as fenses

it

man

were

it

spoke to

men in the unfa-

with a "feminine" awareness

— catching them

down, thereby allowing the message

— from

the

off guard, with their de-

to penetrate almost subver-

sively.

On

its

heels,

ten extensively

ing a

Sam

who had writthe Belly: On Be-

Keen, a psychologist and theologian

on myths and the psyche, published Fire in also made The New York Times bestseller

Man, which

background informs

his writing,

weaving together psychology,

list.

His

spirituality

and mythology into a cogent analysis that picks up where Bly leaves off. And where Bly leaves quite open-ended the implications of his observations on

men and women, stranding men alone with each other in the woods, Keen specifically directs men and women toward "coming together." He concludes: "The great calling of our time that is worthy of men and women is to hold each other within our hearts, and to conspire to the relationship between

create a hearth with the earth household."

Hollywood Heroes There

is

no shortage of models

vaded our

lives since its

and especially American

who loom

for

men

in the

medium that has most per-

beginnings in the early part of this century. Film, film, has given us bigger- than-life

male characters

over us on the silver screen, casting gray shadows of self-doubt

on us by their very magnitude. "Hollywood knows well that men cannot live by the models of masculinity

it

proffers,"

wrote Joan Mellen in Big Bad Wolves: Masculinity

in

American Film: Never intending that heroes,

it

men actually attempt to model themselves on such

offers fulfillment to the audience

through figures capable of feats

of power and control inaccessible to mere mortals. Such heroic images ford

men and women vicarious release while rendering them

timid by comparison. They wish they could illusions

about resembling them.

af-

small and

know such men; they have no

An abiding malaise results in the male,

victimized by this comparison of himself and the physical splendor of the

hero with whom he has so passionately identified. The vicarious discharge in the dark of his daily frustrations carries with

it

an unavowed threat of

emasculation because he must re-enter the world feeling even

137

[

less ade-

IN A

quate

MANS WORLD

—the opposite of what the movies seem

to promise.

.

.

leave the theater, catharsis behind us, we are left with nothing so

When we much as an

.

overwhelming sense of our own inadequacy. In seeming to entertain

us,

movies in a very real sense have exacerbated our pain.

The William

S.

Tom

Harts and

Mixes, the Gary Coopers and John

Waynes, the Errol Flynns and Marlon Brandos, the James Deans, Paul New-

mans, Clint Eastwoods, Sylvester Stallones, Chuck Norrises, Robert DeNiros,

Harrison Fords, Mel Gibsons, and Arnold Schwarzeneggers

—

these are

They are men of powerful men authority, men of action. They do now, think maybe) later. They are loners, quintessentially strong and silent. They are competitive, always out to prove themselves better, stronger, faster, smarter, sexier than other men. They are aggressive and violent when they have to be. in control of themselves and of others. (

These film heroes, these inspirational mentors other mentors

—

seem

purport to bolster are also

left

—

like

our fathers and

undermine men's self-confidence even

Besides being

left

as they

with the feeling of inadequacy,

men

with a feeling of disappointment and a kind of abandonment even their film heroes

after seeing that

chy.

it.

to

As Mellen put

fall

in

behind an established hierar-

it:

American films have not only sought

to render

men powerless by project-

ing male images of fearsome strength and competence. They have also pro-

posed consistently over the years that the

who

conformist

who

exhibit the

supports

God and

most power stand

real

man

is

not a rebel but a

country, right or wrong.

The heroes

for the status quo, even as they suggest

that physical action

unencumbered by effeminate introspection

characterizes the real

man. Thus, in the most profound sense, the bold exte-

rior of these

is

what

men on screen conceals the fact that the films actually foster a men are never rebels but can al-

sense of passivity by suggesting that such

ways be trusted to acquiesce in the established order. Further disappointment comes

behind the big silver screen the

stars in

when we discover that when we look whom we had invested a great deal of

who they appeared to be. Plastic surgery, cosmetics, and do wonders. Few people know that to enhance attraction, Clark Gable had his ears pinned back. Or that Gable

belief are not, in fact,

great publicity departments his physical

and James Dean wore

false teeth.

Alan Ladd, a short man, had to stand on

boxes while being filmed. George Raft wore elevator shoes. People are often surprised to learn Errol Flynn

had

how short Richard Gere and Sylvester Stallone are in reality.

his

nose bobbed. Marion Michael Morrison was considered

name for the persona Hollywood had in mind for a certain actor, so he changed it to John Wayne. Wayne and Henry Fonda wore toupees. too effeminate a

Marlon Brando wore a corset to conceal

]

138

his bulk.

[

The deceptions go on.

Mentors

And

altered, the

gether. "Strong silent type"

—both

in real

life.

Never Meet

while the view of an actor's exterior gets blown up, propped up,

and otherwise trait

W>

film stars

view of his interior is

the phrase

is

basically concealed alto-

we apply

to

men who display this men of power

and our idealizations of the romantic

As Mellen explains:

The silence of the male hero in American films dates from The Virginian ironically

was the

enough, from the beginnings of the sound film

frontier

code

itself. Its

which companions on a

in accordance with

would not ask too many questions or inquire into each

—

origin

cattle drive

other's past

On

the cattle runs the true cowboy was supposed to eschew complaining, bragging, or lying.

his

life.

He was judged by how silently he could endure the rigors of

His solace had to come, not from what were considered weak-

minded confessions of uncertainty, self-confidence late this

and pride

regret or fear, but

in tasks well done.

To

from inner strength,

talk too

much would vio-

code and demean his mission.

William

S.

Hart, the

first

great

American hero of the Western film and

whom many other male movie stars molded themselves, revealed in his autobiography, My Life East and West, that he, like many male movie after

stars,

bought the

West makes men

The

full

cloth of the

quiet; they

goods he was

seldom

altitude clarifies their brains

selling:

talk unless they

and

gives

"The bigness of the

have something to

them nerves of steel." Hart

impressed on his male audience the importance of taking

would go through defeat," he said

hell

on

three pints of water before

I

say.

also

first place. "I

would acknowledge

of the heroes he played. His credo: "One of the most danger-

ous things in life is to lose your courage.

If you

can keep your fighting spirit,

you always have a chance. The very fact of keeping an undaunted front may cause the other side to weaken. If your courage goes, you are whipped

know it." With few exceptions, Hart's model endured over the decades

your enemy and the world soon

through the gangster movies of the 1930s (James Cagney, Paul Muni, and

Edward G. Robinson, whose Scarface advised, "Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doing it"); through the 1940s war films (Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart, whose credo in Casablanca was "I stick my neck out for nobody"); through the dark films of the 1950s (James Dean and Marlon Brando, whose Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar Named Desire proclaimed "Every man's a king and I'm king here"); through the 1960s dominated by Sean Connery (whose ultimately superficial James Bond hid behind a facade of superhuman feats and womanizing); and into the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s,

which brought us

full circle

with the popularity of Clint Eastwood's

Dirty Harry character, Sylvester Stallone's zenegger's Terminator.

]

139

[

Rambo and Arnold Schwar-

A MAN'S

IN

WORLD

Demonstrating the degree to which Eastwood had been accepted as the quintessential male role model on the screen, the epitome of masculinity,

in 1983

an annual poll of thousands of owners of American movie thea-

named Eastwood

ters

appearance since 1968

the top box-office attraction.

among the top ten

(only John Wayne and Cary Cooper had

It

was

living star

more times on the list).

His return to the top spot was thanks to his year-end pact,

his sixteenth

—more than any other hit

Sudden Im-

whose hero was Inspector Harry Callahan, the consummate man of

few words. Harry's .357 Magnum, one of the most obvious phallic symbols

—

almost always hidin American cinema, said it all. His beady, icy blue eyes den behind a pair of dark sunglasses saw it all. Eastwood's Dirty Harry was the Zen cop, alienated, nihilistic, aggressive and destructive, emotionally repressed and nonexpressive. His suit was always dirty and wrinkled, as though to worry about his outer appearance would be to descend into

—

feminine vanity.

—no

He traveled alone

"The kind of thing the roles he plays.

"Do

do

I

is

things

your hands," said Harry in

no wife, no woman. Eastwood has said of way and you take your life in

partner,

glorify competence,"

someone

else's

Magnum Force.

Author Mellen writes of Eastwood: "With consummate inexpressive-

immune to either the praise or the own code in a world where men like him-

ness he assumes the role of superman, gratitude of others, living self have

friendship.

1

970s a film

It

phenomenon emerged, purporting to glorify male to as the "buddy movie." We saw, among others,

was referred

Robert Redford and Paul later

his

long since become obsolete."

In the

and

by

The

Sting,

Newman

in

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy,

then Voight and Burt Reynolds in Deliverance, Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland

et al. in

M*A*S*H and Art Garfunkel and Jack Nicholson in

Carnal

Knowledge.

Of course these were not the first films to revolve around friendship between men. What Price Glory (1926) depicted two professional soldiers during World War I, comrades on the battlefield and off, as well as friendly same woman. In the same year Beau Geste also exalted male caThe opening title proclaimed: "Love of man for woman waxes

rivals for the

maraderie.

and wanes. Love of brother for brother is steadfast as the stars." Throughout the years that followed, American films showed men in pairs: the cowboy and his sidekick ( John Wayne and Walter Brennan, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Roy Rogers and Pat Brady, Hopalong Cassidy and Gabby Hayes); the gangster and his partner (epitomized by Edward G. Robinson and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in Little Caesar); and the comedy teams (Martin and Lewis, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello). Most of these pair-ups

exemplify a kind of dominant-submissive friendship in which one clearly

140

Mentors

We

Never Meet

holds sway over the other, a pattern of friendship described in chapter 5 as the star

and the nerd.

But

if these

films cast

mens relationships as competitive, imbalanced,

buddy movies were potentially the herald of a more sympathetic, more positive model of how men more could relate to each other. What they showed, however, was a male bond based not on mutual appreciation and affection, but on a collaborative esor nonexistent, the so-called enlightened,

cape from an increasingly hostile environment and an utter rejection of

women. The message behind these movies was that men are better off with each other than with the opposite sex. Finally, though, these films end with the destruction or defeat of a In Butch Cassidy girlfriend,

is all

and

men-only society.

the

Sundance Kid, Katharine Ross,

but ignored by the twosome and the pair

bloody death alone with each other. (To

illustrate, again,

as Redford's

is left

to die a

how these male ac-

embrace the parts they play, Paul Newman's real-life wife, Joanne Woodward, was quoted as saying, "When those men get together, forget opening your mouth if you happen to be female. Bob and Paul really do have a chemistry. Someday, Paul and Bob will run off together. And I'll be tors

behind with Lola Redford.")

left

The only female lead in M*A *S*H is a woman derogatorily named "Hot Lips" Houlihan, played by Sally Kellerman. She is meant to be unattractive sexually and dumb enough to take Army regulations seriously. The film ends with a metaphorical football game, player after player hauled off

on

stretchers,

reminding us that the context of M*A*S*H is war, a men's

"game" in which no one ends up better off.

Cowboy women are excluded except to be hustled by the male prostitute, Joe Buck ( Voigt) who finds true caring in his crippled newfound friend, Ratso (Hoffman), who finally dies in Joe's arms on a bus en In Midnight

,

route to Florida's warm sun.

Carnal Knowledge is one of the most searing of this genre of films. Though the plot follows both Nicholson's and Garfunkel's episodes with a number of women, their friendship is the enduring relationship. In the last scene Nicholson tute

is

pathetically

and impotently alone with a female prosti-

who precisely follows his sexual fantasy instructions, while Garfunkel

couples off with a young hippie

woman he deludes himself into believing

holds the "secret" of love.

TheNewAntihero Finally, after three-quarters

of a century of cinema, there emerged in the

new American film hero whose very attraction was that he was not a hero. This was the fallible male, the underdog, singularly ordinary. He

late

1970s a

1

141

f

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

was sensitive, vulnerable, tender. He was John Travolta, Jon Voight, Richard Dreyfuss; he was the "new" Burt Reynolds or the ever self-effacing

Woody

Allen (long before the revelations about his involvement with his ex-lover,

Mia

Farrow's, adopted daughter, Soon-Yi); he was Dustin Hoffman and Dudley Moore. These were men who did not necessarily have the classic handsome looks or the intimidatingly perfect bodies and if they did we could admire

them without

insecurity because the heroes themselves

their looks for granted, or

not present the

seemed

to take

were insecure about them themselves. They did

macho all-powerful front of former film heroes. They were

not aggressive. In

fact,

new hero

they were so laid-back, one female film reviewer de-

thing; breaking even

Winning was not everywas considered good enough to these guys. The

reviewer described this

new hero:

fined this

as "masculinity declawed."

We can see the new male image in contrast to the mature, dependable, rockwho reeked of integrity and were unbudgeable in their strong silence. The Original Sensitives Montgomery Gift, Brando, James Dean began the revolution. All were somehow brutalized, ravished like

heroes of the

Fifties,

—

—

beyond

repair, poetic in their pain;

no question about

it,

they had feelings.

They would not qualify as New Heroes, however, because they were too unstable.

The new hero is not crazy

;

it is

extremely important that he be good

at relating to people. ... In recent films,

ways.

deglamorized, brought

It is

masculinity

down

dust.

The New American Hero avoids

male.

He is nonthreatening.

is

to size, put in

felled in a variety its

of

place, left in the

the cliches and prerequisites of the

He was young, like Travolta, or looked it, like Gere, or appeared it, like He had not yet found his place in the world, did not

the diminutive Moore.

have

all

the answers,

and was the

mount. Travolta was a fuss

was an out-of-work actor

questionable. For tally

all

to

admit

it.

His career was not para-

in

The Goodbye

Girl.

His power was Rocky was to-

his physical front, Sylvester Stallone as

And Woody Allen, no matter what movies he and stars in, is the eternal self-doubting klutz.

unsure of his prowess.

writes, directs,

Cool he

is

not.

In contrast to the a

first

clerk in a paint store in Saturday Night Fever. Drey-

men he had grown used to seeing on the big screen,

man could watch these portrayals and not cower with twinges of inferior-

ity.

Rather than a seeing moralizing bigger-than-life father figure, he saw

the reflection of a

man with whom he could identify his own inadequacies,

weaknesses, and other hang-ups.

Many male

actors

made

the transition from tough guy to softie. Al

Pacino had gone from the heavy

in

The Godfather to

142

a bisexual in

Dog Day

Mentors

W>

Never Meet

Afternoon, Robert Redford from the gun-toting Butch Cassidy to the

Horseman, Paul

more

Newman from Hud to

The and Burt Reynolds, who turned from good of boy pictures like W. W. and the Dixie Dancekings and Smokey and the Bandit to Starting Over

sensitive introspective Electric Verdict,

and The End.

Of this new type of character Reynolds told an

interviewer:

People are tired of getting screwed by everything and everybody, and in pictures,

I

like to play this character

who's not quite

all

there,

who

my

steps

down from his truck and scrapes the manure off his boots and who's always fighting for his dignity. He's antiestablishment, he's funny

body to cheer for

As doesn't

—

he's

some-

a hero.

for himself, he said: "I

come out

and

mean,

in a little plastic

I

go into the crapper, too, and

bag once a month. And I actually get

it

sick

and I cry at movies and I sometimes have trouble breathing."

The New Media Image Makers

—

Along with the new film heroes there came the new film makers not Spielberg and Coppola and others of that ilk, but the young independent documentary filmmakers who took a very close look at the issues of male identity and how men relate to each other. Josh Hanig and Will Roberts produced Mens Lives in 1 975 on a shoestring budget, and within three years it was an underground hit among men looking for new roles to play. The documentary traces the male growing- up process from boy scout camp to factory. "What choices are open to men growing up in America?" the narrator asks after showing a collage of images that we all grew up with, which dramatize male priority and prowess: Superman of the comic strips, Tarzan beating his chest, Walt Frazier the basketball superstar, a growling Broderick Crawford bragging in a western about who is fastest on the draw, Charles Atlas after and the ever-masculine John Wayne in a war film. Interviews with typical men from Dayton, Ohio, show a high-school football player exclaiming "I like to kill. I like to kill opponents," and a young boy who cherishes his car because girls "think it gives you strength to handle a car like that." In other interviews young men proclaim "without competition there's nothing," and "a man needs to be in control." And with each utterance you can hear echoes of all the decades of masculine training that has come from films, fathers, and other male figures. Filmmakers Hanig and Roberts, in

most men see themselves as inadeshadow of the supermen they see projected on the screen. Men in Mens Lives admit they can never let other men know them well for fear of appearing weak, unable, and vulnerable. The film leaves one with

their narrative, share their discovery that

quate, especially in the

1

143

[

MAN'S WORLD

IN A

and aggressiveness pervade our society, especially the society of men, and that survival emotional and economic dethe sense that competitiveness

—

—

pends on developing such tendencies.

Behind the scenes of the making of the was told

true.

"Making the

film

film,

was an emotional and

Hanig found the same

gut-level experience,"

he

me several years after the film had gained a solid reputation. He was

twenty- seven

move from San Francisco to Los more seriously. He related his experience

the time and planning to

at

Angeles to pursue a career in film

tome:

We had never made a film so we were in the process of learning filmmaking, of trying to sort out a very complicated issue, and of trying to ing relationship. Will had one child and another one

had

bitten off

make a work-

on the way. We felt we

something that was much too big for

us.

I

was

living with a

woman and here she was pointing out the classic contradictions: I was off working all the time and not putting any energy into our relationship. But I felt

obsessed to finish the film. We felt tremendous pressure. And both Will

and

I

that

we had

are strong-willed

men, so there was

to deal with.

between us

We fought a lot. We cried a lot. Sometimes it was

and the fear of failure. We were sure it was going to be

just the responsibility

a lousy film. In fact

a lot of competition

most of the time we worked on

it

we were afraid that it

was going to be bad and that we would be in debt and have nothing to show for

it.

And our personal lives were falling by the wayside.

His reflections on his self-doubt sounded orities

about also

men in

spoke about

countless interviews.

seemed

about I

a familiar

much

like the

same

inferi-

and the same I had heard men speak Making work a priority over a relationship

in his film,

male pattern.

When

asked him what he learned

I

how men relate to each other from making the film, he replied: think it's

that

I

much more complex than I used to think. I see some good things Men come together

didn't used to see. Camaraderie, for instance.

over seemingly

artificial situations

in business relations

to talk about what

— but

it is

at least

— mostly it

brings

sports, or drinking in bars, or

men closer. It makes them able

they're going through but for the

most part it is true:

men are frightened to death of intimacy. They're scared, they don't know how to deal with it. They've never been trained to deal with it. They're cut off from

it.

Male rage seems

to be the

emotional expression for men.

most common, most honest form of

And we live in

a great deal of confusion

about who to direct that rage toward.

One of the people whom Hanig admitted he himself had felt anger toward was his own

father:

]

144

Mentors I

he never really taught

felt

real

man in the world.

did.

It

I

never quite had

it

down the way other guys

me to talk to him. Last time was home we got

can be very hard for

I

He saw a new film was working on and had a lot of critiAnd the way he expressed his criticism was very unsupportive; it hurt

into a big fight.

cism.

my feelings. son,

Never Meet

me the well-kept secret. The secret of how to be a

felt like

I

We

I

I

got angry

and he had a

opened

and told him he was my father, not just any old per-

responsibility to respond to

a big door.

ability to feel close to

him sometimes.

can't express

him

it. I

told

I

I

much

of what

I

feel

very close to him at times but

thought we avoided each other, were afraid of

each other, competitive with each other.

agreed to

me with some dignity. That

We started talking about our relationship and my in-

said.

It

It

was hard

could have been a

for

him

much

to hear, but he

better talk but

it

was the first of its kind for us and a big breakthrough.

That

talk

was Hanig's

as his film

was one of the

terms with

its effect

first

step toward a reconciliation with his father,

first

attempts of that

on men.

145

medium

to truly

come

to

CONCLUSION:

NO MAN I

IS

AN ISLAND

did not find the world desolate when

My fathers planted for me before

I

I

entered

it.

was born.

So do I plant for those who will come after me.

— The Talmud from any Men — and

generation, from any culture

—

have a legacy to live up down. The torch of masculinity is passed from our grandfathers to our fathers, from our fathers to us and from us to our sons. That's both good news and bad for men. For there are values and bea legacy to live

to

havior patterns we learn from our grandfathers, fathers, mentors, brothers, friends,

and other men

— values we cannot learn from women — that

should be cherised forever. But there are also lessons that become every man's burden. To ignore or to deny one or the other

is

to negate both.

Men

By cutting ourselves off from our fathers, by keeping all men at arm's length, we deny ourselves some of the most important lessons of our lives. I have reported here on men's feelings and experiences in relation to the men in their lives. What I saw clearly from the beginning was how few men there are in our lives. It left me with an image of men as pilgrims wancannot be whole without acknowledging

dering in the dark without a candle.

all

What

each other's teachers, each other's candles.

I

of their

sides.

see clearly

now is that we are

We teach each other about how

men, and how to be with men: both the push and pull, the approach and avoidance, the love and anger, the support and competition, the bonds and the barriers. The simple wisdom gained from writing this book is that men should to be

—beyond the proverbial shoptalk—about deeper oneself—playing type— no longer seems ap-

talk to each other feelings

ing

it all

to

the strong, silent

propriate. In fact, in

their

concerning work, love, themselves, and especially each other. Keep-

it is

quite literally killing us, as Sidney Jourard points out

The Transparent Self. Men are like clogged pipes ready to burst from too

much pressure;

expressiveness reduces the pressure. That has been cor-

roborated, as Daniel Goleman noted in the Foreword, by research at South-

ern Methodist University showing a strong relationship between the failure

147

A MAN'S

IN to

WORLD

unburden oneself and poorer health. It was reinforced in a study publish-

ed in January 1992 in The Journal of the American Medical Association. In the study of more than 1300 heart patients, researchers from Duke University Medical

Center found that those who lacked a spouse or confidant were

three times as likely to die within five years of diagnosis as were the patients

who were married or had a close friend. The researchers concluded: "A support group maybe as effective as costly medical treatment. Simply put, having

the

someone to talk to is very powerful medicine." The structure for such man-to-man dialogue has been first

in place since

men's hunting-and-gathering groups. Rutgers anthropologist

Lionel Tiger has suggested that today's Kiwanis clubs are evolutionary extensions of the

same gatherings. So

is

good ol' boys network, a

the so-called

communications system that rivals AT&T in effectiveness. No, the problem is not structure. The problem is content: How will men fill their time together? I

find

a

glimmer of hope

in the patterns

I

discovered from

my own re-

we go through with our fathers: reverence, reand reconciliation. Through reconciliation with our fathers, we

search, specifically the stages volt,

reunite with

all

men.

More encouraging is as this century

draws to

the broad-scale reconciliation

a close.

I

see

it

I

in the increasing

see

growing number of fathers (both old and young) to the vital in their sons'

development.

establish (or reestablish)

I

see

it

among men

awareness by a roles they play

men are making to

in the sincere efforts

ongoing relationships with male peers

—

relation-

on something more emotionally substantive than sports, steand stock prices; relationships whose primary purpose is mutual

ships based reos,

support. I

see

it

in the

remarkable success of Robert

Bly's Iron

John and

Keen's Fire in the Belly, two books simultaneously among the top ten

Sam

on The

New York Times bestseller list throughout 1990 and 1991. In turn, these books and others brought attention to the men's movement, which im-

—

—

drums and male bonding aside forced men to examine a fundamental question: How can we work it out with the opposite sex until we've worked it out with our own? I have seen it as well in men's groups, which, like the women's conages of congo

sciousness-raising groups of the 1970s, have allowed

men

to explore the

masculine dimension within a relatively safe context. As I completed my research, I attended one such group in Berkeley, California, that focused on what the psychologists leading the session called "male empowerment." I worried that we had come full circle, embracing the same traits we had tried to shed

when the issues of sex roles emerged in the early

accepted the fact that

if

reconciliation with fathers

148

1970s. Eventually

I

and friends empowers a

Conclusion.

man

to better

Bly, too,

understand himself, then

encourages

swords," as he puts

Circe as a

No Man

it

men

—

as

I

Is

an Island

was

come back

all

for

"male empowerment."

"show their Hermes instructs Odysseus to draw his sword on

show of strength

to

in

to their power, to

The Odyssey.

The challenge for men now is to balance their emerging power of selfunderstanding with an appreciation of the responsibility that accompanies such power

—

the responsibility to return respect with respect, acceptance

with acceptance, forgiveness with forgiveness, and love with love.

These days

I

journey through the years felt at

times

like that

pilgrim wandering, clueless,

search of my own male Grail. sarily

—

microcosm in myself. In my own spent researching and writing this book, I have

find change in the

I

down dark corridors

in

have come through that corridor, not neces-

unscathed but the better for

it.

And

thank.

149

for that

I

have

many men

to

APPENDIX: QUESTIONNAIRE Although I've finished this book, my interest continues— in fact deepens.

at all,

it

is one reason I have included here the questionnaire I used in would like some additional feedback. If this book affected you

That

interviews. will

I

have raised some questions

—and,

quite possibly, some answers.

Are there questions I did not ask here? Answers I never heard? Perhaps you

would like the opportunity for introspective exploration. Send me your responses and reactions for your own sake as well as for mine, as my writing and research continue to focus on men's issues. I invite both men and

women

to join in this dialogue. This questionnaire

springboard for further discussion friends.

may

also serve as a

— and intimacy— with your own

My mailing address follows.

ABOUT YOUR PATERNAL GRANDFATHER What do you recall about your relationship with your paternal grandWhat kind of man was he? What did you two do together that gave you a special feeling? What did you learn from him? How did he show his father?

love for you

— or did

he?

How did your father and grandfather get along? fight or

Did you

see

them

embrace? Did you talk with your father about his relationship with

his father? In

what ways do you

see

them

as alike?

How are you and your

grandfather alike?

ABOUT YOUR FATHER What is your earliest memory of your father? When you think of him how do you picture him? And now? How much time did you spend alone with him when you were younger? Or ever? What did you do together? Did your father hug or kiss you? Or you him? Now? Did you or do

then,

you have private "man-to-man" talks with him? On what kinds of occasions? Did he ever give you the birds-and-bees talk? Have you ever seen your father cry? How did it make you feel? Does he express emotions to you, like anger or love? Do you ever say "I love you" to him? Or him to you? Do you think he tried to imbue you with a special philosophy? What was his favorite saying or what phrase do you associate with him? In what ways are

151

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

you similar to your father? In what ways different from him? Do you respect your father? And he you? How do you demonstrate it to each other?

ABOUT YOUR SON(S) Did you or do you want a son more than a daughter? How is your relationship with your son different from or similar to yours with your father? Is

your son

son? talk

like

you?

How or how not? Do you spend time alone with your

What is the quality of that time? Focused or distracted? Do you try to about what is on his mind or in his heart? What do you want to give

your son that your father did not give you?

Do you feel a special responsibil-

show your son some of the ways of a man's world? If you have two or more sons: Do you prefer one over the other(s)? Do you feel differently toward the older than the younger? How? Did you feel it was more important to try to mold the older than the younger one? How did you encouarge them to relate to each other? ity to

ABOUT YOUR BROTHER(S) What did you and your brother(s) do alone together when you were What do you do now? How often do you see each other? Did you fight as kids? Physically? Verbally? Do you now? What is the age difference

younger?

between you? Did you feel you had to live up to your older brother's reputa-

Or

though you had a personal mentor ushering you Did you resent the attention your younger brother got? Does the older/younger syndrome still exist between you? Over what issues are you jealous or competitive? Did you ever have a really intense confrontation with your brother(s)? Did you have intimate talks? Do you think the term "brotherly love" refers to you and your brother(s)? Did you ever work together? If not, could you imagine doing so? How would you describe how close you are now? Is your relationship based on the past or pretion?

did you

feel as

into the man's world?

sent?

ABOUT YOUR MALE PEERS Who was your first male friend? What did you do together? What attracted

you

to each other?

think of a time that you tive

—over

looks, athletic prowess, intelligence, the opposite sex,

background? is

Were you supportive of each other? Can you a special bond with him? Were you competi-

felt

economic

How were you similar? Dissimilar? Are you still friends? Who

your oldest continuing male friend? Describe that relationship and why it

buddy from elementary or Can you see any similarity among your male friends? What do

has endured. Describe a friendship with an old

high school.

you

get out of your friendships with

]

men

152

that

you do not

get

from

friend-

Appendix

ships with

women? What

Did/do you belong ternity, sports

to

you about your friendships with men? such all- male groups as Cub Scouts, boys camp, frafrustrates

team, men's club, or Armed Forces? Where did/do you fit into

Would you describe yourself as a leader or Under what conditions do you go to male

the social fabric of such groups?

follower (or both or neither)?

"man-to-man" talks? What's hardest to talk about with men? What do you talk to men about most? How physically affectionate are you with your men friends? When was the last time you cried in front of a man? How many really close friends do you have right now? How often do you see them? What do you do together? How did you meet? What is the attraction? Are they of similar background, profession, prowess? Have you ever been involved in a dramatic face-off with another man? Over what? How do you work out your differences with men friends? Have you and a friend both been interested in the same woman? What happened? Did your friendship survive? If your wife or girlfriend does not like your male friends, do you see them without her, not see them at all, or not see her? friends for

ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY Did you have any homosexual encounters when you were young? Were you involved in group "circle jerks" or gang bangs? How did all that feel to you? How comfortable do you feel in the company of a gay man? Have you ever talked to a gay man about his sexual preferences? Have you ever intellectually explored the possibility of sex with a man? If you are heterosexual, can you verbalize why you have not had sex with a man? How would you react if you found out a very close male is gay? Would you disLater?

continue the friendship? Talk about

it

with him? Never discuss

Please mail your responses to:

Perry Garfinkel In a Man's World P.O.

Box 3225

Oakland, California 94609

153

it?

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161

NOTES FOREWORD 1

Jourard in The Transparent Self p.

2.

"In the 1950s the secret was." The New York Times, Aug. 2 1 1984.

3.

"They fear that they will." The New York Times, Aug. 21,1 984.

1

7. ,

INTRODUCTION 1 1.

Ingelow.

"Afternoon

13. "It

was

CHAPTER 17.

Parsonage" from The Poetic Works of Jean

at the

New York: John W. Lovell Publishers, not,

and still

is

1

88 1

,

p. 35.

not." Tiger, xix.

1

"The

relation of a boy." Freud, in "Dostoevsky

and Parricide"

in

Collected Papers, p. 229. 17. Fathers' influence

on sons.

Biller, in

"Father dominance," Develop-

mental Psychology, pp. 87-94. 18.

"Dad tiptoed into my room." Gold, p.26.

19.

"Boys identify with

19.

Men

21

"The law for father and son." Shaw, p.

.

.

.

father."

"instrumental"

.

.

.

Benson,

women

.

p. 15. .

.

expressive." ibid., p. 30. 79.

22. "Greatness of name in the father." Johnson, Timber, p. 18.

23. "Parricide

is

the principle

and primal crime." Freud,

in Collected

Papers, Vol.V, p. 229. 23. "This violent primal father." Freud, 24.

Totem and Taboo, p. 183.

"The truth of Freud's notions." Ross, p.

3 19.

25. "In spite of everything." Freud, Co//ecte^ Papers, Vol.V, pp. 184-85. 25. "Zealous proprietor." Turgenev, p. 200. 28.

"The natives are "quite ignorant." Malinowski, p.

28. Natives "affirm

without doubt." ibid., p.

12.

28. Fathers as "indispensable socially." ibid., p. 85.

28. "Until recently the father." Ross, p. 3 1 7. 28.

"Not only is it a household." Malinowski, p.

28.

"The ignorance of paternity." ibid., p. 95.

163

88.

14.

.

IN 29. "I didn't

A MAN'S

WORLD

know what was up." Anderson, in A Book ofMen, pp. 30-

39.

29.

Number of sociological

surveys. In Biller: Lefkowitz (1962), Al-

tucher (1957), Distler (1964), Stears (1951), Stoltz (1954), Tiller (1958),

Lynn (1959), Hetherington (196b), Miller (1958), Pope (1953), Mischel (1958), Todd, Brannigan and Murphy (1970), Meerlo (1956), Douvan and Adelson ( 1966), Gray ( 1959), Deutch ( 1960). Also see Men's Studies section of Human Studies Collection 30.

30.

31. 32.

at

MIT's Humanities Library.

Gang cultures, Cohen, p. 78. Time spent alone with fathers. Brown 1961 ), in Hamilton, p. (

"The father is not so constant." Ross, p. 322. Quotes from Updike, Baldwin, and Wilson from

154.

A Book of Men:

Male Experience. Ross Firestone, Editor. New York, Stonehill Publishing Company, 1975. Updike, p. 82; Baldwin, p 17; Wilson, p. 71. 33. Couvade. Lamb, p. 58. 34. "It has been a recurring problem." Pleck, "Men's Power with Women, Other Men, and Society," p. 8. 35. Circumcision. Genesis XVII, verses 10-13, 23-27 and XXI, verse 4. 35. New York Times article as reported in "The Ritual of Circumcision," by Karen Ericksen Paige, in Human Nature, May 1978, p. 46. 35. "There are no valid." Paige, Human Nature, p. 46. Visions of the

1

36.

Medical

36. "I 36.

fallacies

of circumcision. Wallerstein, throughout.

am a man." Williams in

CoEvolution Quarterly,

p.

69-77.

"They are composed of." Paige, p. 46.

37. Third-

and fourth-grade boys. Lefkowitz (1962) in Benson. and decision making. Biller in "A multiaspect investi-

38. Limit setting

gation of masculine development in kindergarten-age boys," Genetic Psy-

chology Monographs, 1968, pp. 89-138. Also Biller in "Father

and

sex-role

development

38.

Seventh and eighth grade boys. Distler (1964) in Benson.

38.

High-achieving boys. Hamilton,

38.

"For

40.

"Although

p.

2 1 5.

me you took on the enigmatic." Kafka, Diaries 1910-13, p. 78

41. "What's in

dominance

in kindergarten-age boys."

Hugh

Hefner's father." Talese, p. 30.

been your

biggest."

From

interview with Merle Haggard

WET magazine, winter 1981.

CHAPTER

2

45.

"My father has never spoken." Gold, p.

50.

"And we waited,

1

and thinking." In Phaedo,

Plato, in

The

Dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett, 4th edition revised (Oxford,

The

Clarenden

talking

Press, 1967).

164

Notes 50.

5

1

"One of the most complex." Levinson, p. 97. "He may act as a teacher." Levinson, p. 98.

"The mentor he formerly loved." Levinson, p. 101. on generativity are in Childhood and Society. See also Hall's interview with Erikson in Psychology Today pp. 22-30. 57-58. The influential editor was T. George Harris, founding editor of Psychology Today and American Health. 53.

57. Erikson's theories

60. "I can't 60. "I

you how glad." Berg, p.

tell

was so moved." ibid.,

163.

p. 165.

60.

"Without that other genius," ibid.,

60.

"You have done what I had ceased." ibid., p. 201. mighty glad." ibid.,

60. "I'm 60.

61

61

.

20 1

"Had always thought a grand story." ibid., p. "We create the figure." ibid., p. 207.

am a brave man." ibid., p. 2

"I

6 1 "The only standard." .

61

p.

p. 170.

"I,

ibid., p.

1

173.

4.

23 1

who thought Tom." ibid., p. 297.

62. "For

I

was

lost." ibid., p.

392.

62. "I can't express certain kinds of feelings." ibid., p. 395. 62. "Are 62.

you

—

the

"For fear that

63. "I can easily 63. "This letter 63. "I've 64.

man trusted." ibid., p. 397. may be killed." ibid., p. 398. I

... it

imagine

is

a biography." ibid., p. 423.

a sad farewell." ibid., p. 422.

made a long voyage." ibid., p. 441

"You have inspired me." McGuire, p.

27.

64. "I only fear that you." ibid., p. 30. 64. "I

hope you will gain the

recognition." ibid., p. 48.

"My veneration for you." ibid., p. 5 1 64. "Let me enjoy your friendship." ibid., p. 64.

65.

"That evening freed me." ibid.,

65.

"One accords a charming." ibid., p. 220.

p.

122.

217.

65. "Rest easy dear son." ibid., p. 250. 65.

"One repays a teacher." ibid., p. 491.

65.

"How different I am." ibid., p. 522.

65.

Freud "underestimates

65.

"Look at your bit of neurosis." ibid., p.

65.

"Your technique of treating." ibid., p. 534.

65. "I

my work." ibid., p. 525. 526.

propose we abandon." ibid., p. 539.

CHAPTER 3 68.

"When people speak of their siblings." Pfouts, p. 200.

68. "If you

till

the

soil."

Genesis 4: 12-16.

165

IN

A MAN'S

WORLD

68.

"May God give you." Genesis 27:

68.

"By your sword." Genesis 27: 40. "But when you grow restive." Genesis 27:

68.

68. "Let but the

28-30.

40.

morning." Genesis 27: 41.

"Now Israel loved Joseph." Genesis 37: 3-4. 69. Manual workers are more satisifed. Psychologists Form and 68.

Geschwender in Bert Adams, p.

1

16.

Adams, p.

1

17.

appears that." ibid., p.

1

17.

69. "Siblings are in fact." Bert 69. "In this case 69. "Are the

it

most likely." ibid., p.

1 1

7.

70.

Comparative personality and IQ studies. Pfouts, pp. 200-203.

72.

"Keeping a distance." From "True West" by Sam Shepard, in Seven

Plays, p. 59.

75.

Ross and Milgram research reported in Virginia Adams, pp. 38-40.

73. Brother-sister 74.

comparison. Bert Adams, p. 122.

"One day the expelled." Freud, Totem and Taboo, p.

183.

75. "In thus ensuring." ibid., p. 188.

76. "Firstborns develop particular ideas."

78.

Markus, pp. 35-37.

NIMH, Maccoby and Miller-Maruyama

research reported by

Markus. 78. "Later-borns see themselves."

78. Univeristy

Today June 1981, p.

36.

of Cincinnati students study. Reported in Psychology 89.

Adams, p.

120.

81. Cicirelli's study in Journal of Marriage

and

78. Reliable birth-order research.

ported in Psychology Today, June 1 98 1 8 1 "Siblings are becoming more .

in Psychology Today,

CHAPTER

June 198 1

,

,

p.

1

the Family, 1980. Re-

10.

and more dependent." Michael Kahn

p. 47.

4

83.

"Our strongest descriptions." Mc Williams, p. "The long-cherished ideal." ibid., p. 0. "Of all the terms of kinship." ibid., p. 18.

83.

"Produces self-contempt." ibid.,

84.

The Dartmouth College

83. 83.

June

Markus, p.

1.

1

p. 47.

episode, reported by

Merton

10, 1979.

88. Initiations as "part

88.

of the male- male." Tiger, p. 185.

The Cornell incident. Tiger, pp.

187-88.

89. "Secret societies." Tiger, p. 167.

CHAPTER

5

91. "If one

would have a friend." Nietzsche, pp. 63-64. ]

166

[

in Esquire,

Notes

our interviews, friendship was largely." Levinson, p. 335.

93. "In

94.

"When asked to represent 'best friends.'"

94.

Boys show less stability. Horrocks and Thompson, pp. 53-63.

94.

Male-male friendships

less intimate.

ibid.,

pp. 143-51.

Adelson and Douvan, pp.

174-202. 94.

Males generally disclose less. Jourard, p. 166.

94.

Comparison of men's and women's friendship. Booth, pp. 183-92. Wanting relationships with men as a negative quality. Shipley and

95.

Veroff, pp. 349-56. 95.

"To a disquieting degree." Adelson and Douvan, p. 178.

100.

"Men are extremely secretive." Zilbergeld, p. 4.

101. "Almost everyone appears."

Montagu, p.

65.

102.

Height studies.

104.

"Though shaving may now require." Welles

in Esquire,

February

1980, p. 41. 105.

"Deception

is

crucial to success." Greenfield in Esquire,

October

1975. 1

06. "I

107.

came to view our competition." Bradley, pp. 1 00- 1

"Why did football bring me so to life." Exley, p. 7.

108. "Value

homophyly." McWilliams,

p. 44.

CHAPTER 6 117.

"The seemingly shameful." Clark, p.

6.

119.Kinsey,p. 120. 119. Psychology

120. ( 1

Today January 1977, Vol.

10,

No.

8, p. 42.

Study of stick figures conducted by Wolfgang and Wolfgang

97 1 ) in Journal of Clinical Psychology 27, pp. 5 1 0- 1 2. 120. Perceived

Karr,

and unperceived homosexual studies conducted by

unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Washington, 1975. 120.

Images of homosexuals reported in Bell and Weinberg.

127.

The summary of Masters and Johnson's Homosexuality

in Per-

spectives^ cited in Time magazine, April 23, 1979, p. 77. 127. Time, April 23, 1979, Vol. 113, No. 17. pp. 72-78.

128.

"What

is

Issues, 1978, Vol. 34,

CHAPTER 1 30.

notable." Evelyn Hooker's epilogue in Journal of Social

No. 3.

7

Ad samples from GQ and Esquire between June

1983. 130. "Every change in men's fashions." Post, p. 120.

131.

"The Ultimate Man." Post, p. vii.

131.

"What is 'the look'?" Hix, p. xiv. 1

167

f

1

979 and August

IN A

MAN'S WORLD

end its you." Post, p. 164. "The way you look." ibid., p. 56-57.

132. "In the 1

32.

132.

"Men

—

to rephrase." Rogers.

133. "Everybody's got buddies." ibid., p. 39. 133. 133.

"The macho frontiersman." Tavris, p. 35. "The Year of the Lusty Woman," Esquire, Vol. 90, No.

13,

Dec. 19,

1978. 133.

134.

"The hard-line culture," Esquire, Vol. 93, No. 4, April 1980. "The male machine is a special kind." Fasteau, p. 1.

134.

"From Daniel Boone." ibid., p. 205.

137.

139.

"Hollywood knows well." Mellen, p. 5. "American films." ibid., p. 5. "The silence of the male hero." ibid., p.

139.

Quotes from

138.

13.

My Life East and Westhy William S. Hart in Mellen,

p. 35.

139-140. Eastwood top box-office attraction reported in The San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 13, 1984.

140.

"The kind of thing I do." Mellen, p. 269. "With consummate inexpressiveness." ibid., p. 267.

141.

"When those men get together." ibid., p.

140.

17.

142. "Masculinity declawed." Gross. 1978.

143. "People are tired." Playboy,

October 1979, p.

70.

CONCLUSION 147. "I did not find the 147.

Keeping it

147.

The

all

world desolate." The Talmud, Taanit, 23A.

to oneself is killing

men. Jourard, p.

17.

SMU study was conducted by James Pennebaker and re-

ported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in 1986. 148. Journal of

American Medical Association

Brody.

168

study. Reported in

INDEX Abandonment, son's sense of, 20-2 1

Blass, Bill,

41

Bly,

Aborigine initiation

rites,

87

132

Robert, 133, 151

Bogart,

Humphrey, 139

Abraham, 35, 87

Bonding by brothers, 74-76

Achievement, 38

Books, media heroes from, 1 34- 1 37

Adams, Bert, 69, 73 Advertisements, media heroes from,

Booth, Alan, 194 Bradley,

Brothers, 67-8 1,83-84, 154

11

Muhammed,

achieving separate identities, 7 1 -

132

ADen, Woody, 142

American

72,77 birth order

Pediatric Society, 35

and quality of brother-

hood, 78-80

American Psychiatric Association,

bonding by, 74-76

128

American Psychological Association,

competition between, 67, 68-69, 70-74,76-77,81

73,128

Anatomy of Swearing, The (Mon-

hierarchy among, 67, 69 lack of emotional intimacy be-

tagu), 101

Anderson, Sherwood, 29

tween, 67-68, 72, 79-80, 8

Animal House, 84

occupations

of, as

determinant of

closeness, 69-70

Anti-hero, 141-143 Athletics,

106

Brennan, Walter, 140

Afternoon at the Parsonage (Ingelow),

Ali,

Bill,

Brando, Marlon, 138, 139, 142

130-132

105-107

playing mentors, 80-8

Auerbach,Red, 103

psychological study of, 70 Brothers Karamazov, The (Dosto-

Baldwin, James, 32

evsky),23

Beards, 104

Beau

Geste,

Burns, Robert, 128

140

Business:

Benign friendship,

1

14-1 16

joining men's clubs

mentors

Betrayal, fear of, 16 Bible, 68-69, 80,

120-121

for,

86

management skills for, 85

Benson, Leonard, 19

in,

54-57

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,

Big Bad Wolves: Masculinity in the

140,141,142

American Film (Mellen), 137 Birth order of brothers, 67, 69, 76-80

Cagney, James, 139

"Black and White Truth About Bas-

Cain and Abel, 68

ketball, The,"

Carnal Knowledge^ 140, 141

105

169

1

1

A MAN'S

IN

WORLD

Casablanca, 139

Electric Horseman, 142

"Castration anxiety," 17

Emotional intimacy between men,

Cicirelli, Victor,

147-151

81

homophobia and, 89-90, 117-118

Circumcision 35-37 ;

Don, 117 Montgomery, 142

Clark,

lack of, 1-4, 12, 16,92

Gift,

between brothers, 72, 76-77, 79-

Clubs, men's, 83-90, 148 fraternities, 84-86,

78,81

between homosexuals, 125-127

88

initiation rites, 85-86,

86-88

in

lack of emotional intimacy in, 85-

power of secret societies, 88-90

men's difficulty with,

men join, 84, 86, 90 ,

1

5,

1

-4,

89

father-son relationship as source

Cohen, Albert K., 30 Competition

by media heroes, 129-

145

86,89,90

reasons

men's clubs, 85-86, 89-90

reinforced

of,

92

in

3 1-32, 39

male friendship, 9 1 -92, 94, 1 14

between brothers, 67, 68-69, 70-74

with mentors, 5 1 56, 58-59

between homosexuals, 125

one-upmanship as cause of,

lack of, between grandfather

,

and

in

,

Empathy, 97

grandson, 44, 45

male friendship and, 101-114

End, The, 143

the Fifty-Fifty Friendship, 112-114

Erikson, Erik, 57, 80

sports and, 105-108

Esau and Jacob, 68-69, 80

the Star

and the Nerd, 109-112

Esqwzre, 104, 130, 133

Confiding, see Emotional intimacy

between

1

times of crisis, 40-4 1 75-76

Exley, Frederick, 107

men

Connery, Sean, 139

Fairbanks, Douglas,

Cooper, Gary, 139

FansNotes, A (Exley), 107

140

Marc Feigen, 134

Cornell University, 88

Fasteau,

Couvade ritual, 33-34

"Father figures," 51

Criminal Justice Research Center, Al-

Jr.,

see also

Mentors

Father in Primitive Psychology, The

bany, 24

Cursing, 100-101

(Malinowski),28 Fafhers(Gold), 18-19

Dartmouth College, 84 Dean lames, 138, 139, 142

Fathers and sons, 15-42

becoming a father, 32-35

:

Death of the father, 41 -42, 80-81

brothers and, 74-75, 80-81, 90

Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the

circumcision, 35-37

Gang (Cohen), 30

death of the father, 4 1 -42

Deliverance, 140

heart-to-heart talks, 40-4

DeNiro, Robert, 129

the hero, 17-21,30

Dog Day Afternoon,

homosexual sons, 122-125

142

Dreyfuss, Richard, 141-142

as

model of how men each other, 15

Eastern Michigan University, 102

the outsider, 28-32

Eastwood, Clint, 139-140

170

relate to

\ndex

Gandhi, 59

physical absence of father, effects of,

Garfinkel, Perry (author), 4

29-30

reconciliation, 25-28, 42, 145, 148

Garfunkel,Art,140,141

reverence, 16-21

Ge initiation

revolt, 2 1-25, rites

26-27

of passage, son's,

1

6, 36,

42

Genesis

87

5:1, 15

Gentlemen's Quarterly, 130

son's relationship with his grand-

father and, 45-48

what

rites,

"Generativity," 57, 80

Gere,Richard,138,142

fathers teach sons, 37-41

Gillette,

104

Fathers and Sons (Turgenev), 25

Godfather, The, 142

Federal Bureau of Investigation Uni-

Gold, Herbert, 18-19,45,46

fied

Crime Report, 24

Goldberg, Herb, 134

Goleman, Daniel,

Fiftv-Fifty Friendship, 112-1 14

Films,

Fitzgerald,

F.

Scott,

1-4,

147

Goodbye Girl, The, 142

media heroes from, 137-141

Gould, Elliot, 140

59

Flynn,Errol,129

Gould, Dr. Robert

Fonda, Henry, 138

Grandchildren, 24, 43-45

Fraternities, 84-85,

Grandfather(s), 44-49

men's

Fraternity, 83 Fratricide,

desire to

68

know, 46-47

father-grandfather relationship

and, 45-47

Freud, Sigmund, 11,17, 23-24, 25, 28,

41,74-75

other kinds of relationships with,

as Jung's mentor, 59,

47-49

63-66

power of, 43, 44, 45

Freud-Jung Letters, The, 63-64 Friendship, male, 9 1 - 1 1 6,

1

48

as stranger,

45

Benign Friendship, 114-116

Grant, Cary, 139

"best friends," 93, 94-95

Greatest:

competition and, 101-114

My Own Story, The (Mi),

132

the Fifty-Fifty Friendship, 112-114

Greeks, 50, 87

role of sports, 105-108

Greenfield,

the Star and the Nerd, 109- 1 12

Gurdjieff,59

cursing as part

2

see also Grandfathers

88

see also Clubs,

E.,

of,

1

00- 1

105

Jeff,

Guru, 50

1

descriptions of, 93-94, 95 difficulty achieving

emotional in-

Haggard, Merle, 4

timacy in, 92, 94-95, 114

Hamlet, 23

excessive friendliness, 40

Hanig, Josh, 143-145

man talk, 97- 100

Hart,WilliamS.,139

the

no man's land of, 92

Harvard Medical School,

shared alienation

in,

95-97

,3

berg), 134

trust and, 92, 116 Fuller,

1

Hazards ofBeing Male, The (Gold-

respect and, 116

Heart-to-heart

talks:

father-son, 40-41

Buckminster, 59

between male friends, 99-100 Height, 102-103

Gable, Clark, 138

171

[

1

1

IN A

MAN'S WORLD

Height of Your Life, The(Keyes), 102

Indians, North American Plains, 87

Hemingway, Ernest, 59

Inferiority complex,

46

stemming from father-son

Hero(es): father as son's, 17-21

media, as mentors, 50, 51, 129-145 Hierarchy among men, 12,50, among brothers, 67, 69

Ingelow, Jean,

1

Insecurity stemming

132

from father-son

relationship, 31, 39

International Journal ofPsycho -Analy-

in business, 47, 55 initiation rites and,

rela-

tionship, 20, 39

86-88

sis,

The, 28

Interviewees, choice of, 13-14

in men's clubs, 83-84, 89

Hindus, 50

Isaac,

68

Hix, Charles, 131-132

Hoffman, Dustin, 140, 141, 142

Jacob and Esau, 68-69, 80

Holzman,Red,106

Japanese, 50

Homophobia, 90, 117-128 as

Johnson, Ben, 22

hindrance to emotional

Joseph, Biblical story of, 68, 80

inti-

macy, 89, 117-118

Jourard, Sidney, 1,94, 147

homosexual experiences and male

Journal ofSocial Issues,

who hates gays-and why,

119-122 Kafka, Franz, 38-39

Homosexualities study, 120

Homosexuality,

1

17-128

Kahn, Michael, 81

enlightenment through education,

Kaska Indians, 87 Keller man, Sally, 141

127-128

fathers of gays, 122-125

Keyes, Ralph, 102

hindrances to emotional intimacy

Kinsey,Alfred,119

between homosexuals, 125-127

Kinsey Institute of Sex Research, Al-

homophobia, 90, 117-128 initiation rites and,

fred,

1

120

Kinship in an Urban Setting (Adams),

88

Kinsey study on, 120 laws against,

28

1

Jung, Carl, 59, 63-66

heterosexuals, 118-119

69,73

20- 1 2

Kwakiutl Indian chant, 19

Masters and Johnson study on, 127

Ladd, Alan, 138

Homosexuality in Perspective, 111

Lauren, Ralph, 130

Hooker, Evelyn, 127-128

Laws against homosexuality, 121

Hud, 142 Hunting-and-gathering bonds,

Levinson, Daniel, 50-5 1 53, 57, 93 ,

Leviticus 20: 13, 120-121

13,

Liberated Man, TTie(Farrell), 134

148

Life

IBM, 102

on the Run ( Bradley)

,

1

06

Lineage, importance of, 46, 48, 125

Idea ofFraternity, The (Mc Williams),

Little Caesar,

83,108

"Locker

Identification of son with his father,

140

Room Kid, The," 43

Lombardi, Vince, 59

16,17,18-19

Longevity and male friendship,

Income and height, 102

116

]

172

1

14-

\ndex

Look Homeward, Angel (Wolfe), 60

being a mentor, 57-59

Looking Good ( Hix) ,131

brothers playing, 80-8

Loving Someone Gay (Clark),

in history,

1 1

50-51,65

media heroes as, 50-5 1 65 ,

Maccoby, Eleanor, 78

reconciliation with, 53-54, 63, 66

McGuire, William, 64

reverence of, 5 1 -53, 60, 63-64

McWilliams, Wilson Carey, 83, 84,

revolt against, 53, 6 1 -63,

108

Magazines, media heroes from, 132-

two classic, 59-66

Sigmund Freud/Carl Jung, 59, 63-

134

Magnum Force, Male bond,

64-66

roles of, 49, 50, 51

140

66

Maxwell Perkins/Thomas Wolfe,

13

Male Machine,

59,59-63

TTie(Fasteau), 134

Male Sexuality (Zilbergeld), 99- 100

"Mid-life transition," 57

Malinowski, Bronislaw, 28

Midnight Cowboy, 140, 141

Management skills learned in men's

Milgram, Joel, 83

clubs, 85

Miller, Chris,

84

Man and Superman (Shaw), 21

Miller,

Man-to-man talks,

Montagu, Ashley, 101

Norman, 78

Moore, Dudley, 142

see Heart-to-heart talks

Markus,Hazel,76,78

Morin, Dr. Steve, 121-122, 126

Marmor,Judd, 128

Moustaches, 104

Maruyama, Geoffrey, 78

Movies, media heroes from, 137-141

Masai

Muni, Paul, 139

initiation rites,

M*A*S*H,

87

My Life East and West (Hart), 139

140, 141

Masters and Johnson, 127

Media heroes as mentors, 50-5 1

,

1

29-

Napoleon, 121

145

National Institute of Mental Health,

from advertisements, 1 30- 1 32

78

from books, 1 34- 1 37

Newman,Paul,

from magazines, 132-134 message of, 129-130

New York Medical College, 2 New York Times, The, 2, 35

from the movies, 137-141

Nicholson,Jack,140,141

the

new anti-hero, 141-143

The New Media Image Makers, 143-

140, 141, 142

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 65 Nigeria, 36

145

Medoff,Mark,43

Occupation of brothers, 69-70

Mellen,Joan,137,138,140

Odysseus, 16, 50, 149

Memoirs (Anderson), 29

Oedipus complex, 17,41

Men in Groups (Tiger), 13, 88

Oedipus Rex, 23

Men's clubs, see Clubs, men's

Of Time and the River (Wolfe),61 Ohio State University, 2 Old Testament, 68-69, 80, 120- 12 One-upmanship, 11-12,92

Mens Lives,

143

Mentors, 49-66 of an American businessman, 54-

57

see also

173

Competition

3

1

1

IN

A MAN'S

Osherson, Sam, 1,3

1

,

WORLD Revolt:

against mentor, 53, 6 1 -63, 64-66

Outsider, see Stranger

against older brother, 80

ofsons,21-25,26

Pacino,Al, 142 Paige, Jeffrey,

Paige,

Reynolds, Burt, 140, 142-143

36

Rites of passage, 16, 36, 42, 85-86, 86-

Karen Ericson, 36

Patricide, 23, 74- 75

88

psychological, 24, 25

Roberts, Will, 143

symbolic, 24

Robinson, Edward G., 139, 140

Pauling, Linus, 59

Rocky, 142

Pennebaker, James, 1-2

Rogers, Michael, 132

Perkins, Maxwell, 59-63

Rolling Stone, 132

Pfouts, Dr. Jane, 67-68, 70

Ross, Helgola, 73

Philosophy ofNietzsche, The, 9 1

Ross, John

Plato,

Munder, 24, 28, 3

Rudd, Bill, 54-57

50

Pleck, Joseph, 2-3, 34

Russell, Cazzie, 106

POG-ParentsofGays, 122 Post, Henry, 131,132

Saturday Night Fever, 1 42

Power, 16,50,89,92,99

Scribner's Sons, Charles, 59, 62

Seasons of a Mans Life, The (Levin-

father's, 18

grandfather's, 43, 44

son), 50, 93

learned by sons from fathers, 37-

Secret societies, see Clubs, men's

39 see also

Self-reliance:

Competition

initiation rites calling for,

Pregnancy, 33

lesson of, taught

Psychology Today, 76,

1 1

9,

1

88

by father, 38, 40

Sex, 99- 100, 132

33

Purdue University, 81

See also

Homophobia; Homo-

sexuality

Questionnaire,

Sex- role identification, 17, 18-19

1

Shaving, 104 Raft,

Shaw, George Bernard, 2

George, 138

Razors, 104

Shepard, Sam, 72

Reagan, Ronald, 133

Short men, 102, 103

Reconciliation, 148

Siblings, see Brothers

between brothers, 80-8

Smokey and the Bandit, 1 43

with one's mentor, 53-54, 63, 66

Social stature, 103-104

of son with father, 25-27, 42, 145,

Society for the Psychological Study of

148

Social Issues, 128

Redford, Robert, 140, 141, 142

Socrates, 50

Respect, 116

Southern Methodist University,

Reverence:

1

147

of father, 16-17

Sports, 105-108

of mentor, 51-53, 59-60, 63-64

Stallone, Sylvester, 139,142

of older brother, 80

Stanford University, 78

Stanford Longitudinal Project, 78

174

\ndex Star

and the Nerd, 109-112

Voight,John,140,141

Starting Over, 143

Wayne, John,

Star Wars, 16 Sting, The,

140

129, 133, 138, 140

Welles, Chris, 104

Wellesley College, Male Role Pro-

Stranger:

gram, 2

father as, 28-32

Streetcar Named Desire, 139

What Price Glory, 140 Wilson, Edmund, 32

Sudden Impact, 140

Wolfe, Thomas, 59-63

grandfather

Superego,

1

8,

as,

45

Woolf,Bob,106

25

W W and the Dixie Dancekings, 143

Sutherland, Donald, 140

Swearing, 100-101

You Cant Go Home Again, (Wolfe), 62 Talese, Gay,

Yurupary Indians, 87

40

Talmud, 147 Zarathustra (Nietzche),65

Task Force on Homosexuality, 127-

Zibergeld, Bernie, 99

128

Team situations,

1

Telemachus, 16,50

Thy Neighbor's Wife (Talese), 40 Tiger, Lionel, 13,88,89,148

Timber (Johnson), 22 Time magazine, 127 Tomakava, 28 Totem and Taboo (Freud), 74-75 Transkei region of South Africa, 36

Transparent Self, The ( Jourard) 94, ,

147

Travolta,John,141,142

Trobriand Islands, 28

TrueWest,72 Trust, 116

Turgenev, Ivan, 25

UltimateMan, The (Post), 131 University of Cincinnati, 73, 78 University of Michigan,

2,

76

University of North Carolina, 67-68 University of Pennsylvania, 39 University of Southern California, 78

Updike, John, 32

"Value homophily," 108

Vasectomy, 24 Verdict, The,

142

175

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