JOURNAL EXCERPT: March 29, 1978, 9:20 PM

"Today was another unproductive day. I wrote nothing; I drew nothing, although I was in a fairly good mood for most of the day. I sent off a letter to I-- G-- [I'm using letters for first and last names] last night before going to work. I went out with I-- while visiting T-- and G-- in San Antonio. She is twenty-eight, six years older than me. She was quiet on the date and to a degree, very unresponsive to me. Personally, I thought I was very funny most of the night, but I am sure she can't help but think of me as a youngster. She lives at home and is not working right now. How in the world does she spend her time. I believe I would go crazy. She wrote her address on a paper napkin from one of the clubs we were at. I didn't even ask her for her address. Gilbert told her I would be too shy to ask her for it, so when I came back from the bathroom, I asked her what she was writing. She handed me her address. Good ol' G--."

Manhood Redo: The photo to the lower right is me now, presenting to Western State College of Colorado football players as part of my work at Men Can Stop Rape. At 52, it's hard to go back some 30 years and revisit myself at 22. The above excerpt is from the first journal entry in the first journal I kept. It was written on a yellow legal notepad, usually at night sometime between 8 - 9 pm since I had to leave for the Lubbock Avalanche Journal newspaper, where I worked the graveyard shift on the dock. I had dropped out of Texas Tech University after two years because I couldn't make sense of why I was there; the 'unproductive day' comment at the beginning refers to the fact that I fancied myself a burgeoning writer and tried to put pen to paper every day, although I had never written much of anything before except comic strips and a poem about pirates in fourth grade.

Later in the entry I write "I keep listening for Paul McCartney's new song 'With a Little Luck' on the radio, but rarely hear it." I suppose in some sense the Beatles were my masculine role models; I discovered them late, about the time they broke up, and remember watching the 1971 Grammys because "Let It Be" was nominated. Paul went up to the podium to receive the award dressed in a dark T-shirt, suit, and tennis shoes, and I thought, "That's how I want to be." I knew people would look at me and never think, "He's a guy's guy. Good looking, athletic, and confident." You can read the above journal excerpt and that's immediately clear. I tried a stint of flag football in seventh grade, but after getting in for one play as a defensive end and the ball carrier running away from my side of the field, I gave up pigskin aspirations. And after three years of playing high school basketball as the "sixth man" at Christ the King High School in Lubbock (there were something like 60 or 70 students in the entire high school), it became clear to me that I didn't have a college career on the court.

So, I suppose I thought I had a better shot at a masculinity that's embodied by an irreverent, cool wittiness. I drew cartoons, which made me at least marginally cool and funny, if I managed to come up with some good strips (I drew for the high school newspaper and in the early 80s, created two strips for the Texas Tech student newspaper).

But at 22, I wasn't accomplished or polished or poised, like Paul, John, George, and Ringo. I was still very much struggling to figure out what kind of man I could be and wanted to be, although I doubt I would have admitted that to anyone, had I even been conscious enough of this struggle to articulate it.

My struggle now is to find ways to be friends with that 22-year old who would write something like, "Good ol' G--."