JOURNAL EXCERPT: May 2, Tues. 1978 8:25 PM

"It's damn cold today. It's 39 degrees now, and rain has fallen most of the day. I woke up about 11:30 AM to the sound of thunder and rain. I wouldn't mind the wet weather if it wasn't so cold. What's going on with our weather? It's awful strange. I'm going to have to wear my heavy coat tonight, and I haven't worn it for a month now."

MANHOOD REDO: I looked online yesterday at the weather prediction for the next 10 days in Lubbock: 80s and 90s for the highs. So 39 degrees at the beginning of May was odd. But then West Texas is known for its odd weather, especially during the spring when there are typically wild fluctuations. It's a time of almost daily tornado watches and ominous thunderstorms. I've never seen more stunning lightning displays than in West Texas, where the land is so flat that the sky looms over you. One day it will be in the 90s, the next in the 60s. And the dust can kick up, billowing up miles high so that if you're outside the city you can watch a wall of dirt making its way across the landscape. It's a place of harsh extremes.

It's interesting to me to think about masculinity in connection with the the landscape, the geography of a place. Nowadays, people are so mobile, this concept might not hold much merit in anyone's mind, but I know that when I moved from Niles, Michigan to Lubbock, Texas at the age of 11, I was immediately confronted with what seemed to me to be a harsher masculinity. My first day of class, I knew that I might be in trouble when the teacher announced my name, and all the boys in the class started laughing, most of them indicating they'd never heard of anyone being named "Pat."

JOURNAL EXCERPT: April 21, Friday 1978 11:30 PM

"I've just been over to F-- H--'s house. Glad I went to see him again. He hasn't changed much in a couple years....He looks a little more muscular than he used to. I showed him my cartoon strip. He's getting married Aug. 5 in Oregon, where he's attending college. I told him G-- and I would come to his wedding as we were going to Colorado anyway. We might as well go to Oregon. He'll be the first member of our graduating high school class to get married. J--, the girl he's marrying, is very nice. They're leaving town tomorrow.

"I had to pick up all the kids from school today, so I didn't get any writing done."

MANHOOD REDO: F-- had a white car with an eight track that we road around in together, listening to Steely Dan. I think it was his grandfather who owned a ranch somewhere in Texas, so his roots traveled back to the world of the cowboy. One of his brothers went up to Montana to work cattle but couldn't stand the cold and came back to Texas. F-- always had artistic aspirations, and so he turned his back on ranching to become a medical illustrator - at least last I heard that was his career path. He tried to convince me to become one too, but I was never one to find detail in drawing particularly engaging. My stuff was always more conceptual. It was in his garage with the jukebox that I first danced (written about in an earlier blog). I lived with him in an apartment somewhere in Lubbock after we graduated from high school, and all I can remember is that he was never there, so sharing living space didn't last too long - only a few months.

I can't recall why, but the two of us worked up a dance routine in his bedroom to some song, and while we were intending to perform it in public, I don't think we ever did.

In my mind, F-- is an example of how masculine stereotypes are reductive; they always fail to capture the entirety of a person. It would have been easy to slot F-- into the West Texas redneck shitkicker category whose masculinity is defined on the one hand by politeness, "Yes, Mam," "Yes, Sir," and on the other hand by a bullheadedness (example: the current president). A West Texas good ol' boy would never plan out some dance routine in his bedroom with me.