JOURNAL EXCERPT: May 5, Fri. 1978

"I am at work, standing by the ramp. J. B., the only woman country truck driver, walks up to me. I didn't feel like talking to anyone.

"'Hey, Pat,' she says. 'I was gonna bring you some paperbacks tonight, but I forgot about 'em.'

"I think I said, 'Really?'

"'I went into my bedroom to get 'em, and I forgot what I went in there foar when I got there. There was these paperbacks on the dresser.'

"I couldn't think of anything to say.

"W. W., another truck driver, said, 'I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that does that.'

"'I don't do it all the time, ' J. says. 'But I went in there and forgot what I went in there foar. I'll bring 'em sometime.'

"I still couldn't think of anything to say.

"She walks off."

MANHOOD REDO: This excerpt seems like a follow up to the previous one where I tried to tape country truck drivers talking on the Avalanche Journal newspaper dock without them knowing it, only instead of recording on a cassette, I'm recording the conversation on paper from memory. Like a number of journal entries, this one's a little embarrassing to read, partly because of the "foar," which appears twice and sticks out like a sore thumb. It more than anything else takes the dialogue in a direction I would avoid now, playing as it does on the stereotypes of hillbilly dialect that signal a lack of education. In my memory J. was just about as nice as could be, always thinking of others, as this excerpt suggests, and yet what I wrote seems to carry some unspoken disdain for her. Replace the "foar" with "for" and I think you have dialogue that's more internally consistent and coherent - and less judgmental.

Not only do I think the above journal excerpt has to do with the insecurities of my own newly found desire to be "educated" (I had dropped out of college after the second year and reapplied for admission to Texas Tech University just a little over a week before I wrote down the conversation), it probably had something to do with the fact that J. was the only female country truck driver. She worked in a very masculine world and held her own, but to my my twenty-something self she always seemed a little out of place, providing me with another reason to dismiss her.

I never bothered to find out why she was working on the grave yard shift driving miles and miles by herself most nights of the week delivering bundles of newspapers to small towns in the region around Lubbock.

My loss.

JOURNAL EXCERPT: May 3, Wed. 1978

"Took a cassette player to work to try and record some dialogue. Didn't work too well. I didn't want anyone to know I was recording them, because it might have made them nervous, so I hid it in my coat. Didn't work too well at all."

MANHOOD REDO: I suppose I was intending to use the cassette player as a means of advancing my creative writing skills by studying actual moments of conversation so that I could better write dialogue in my short stories. I'm wondering, though, whether my disinclination to let anyone on the newspaper dock know I was recording them really had anything to do with making them nervous, implying that they might not talk like they normally do and I wouldn't capture their normal style of talking. That was probably just a crap excuse I used since I knew that if I was open about documenting their conversations on tape, I would've needed to get their permission, and they might not have consented, especially since most people don't like to hear their voices.

I don't particularly like to hear mine. When I was teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago as a graduate student, I recorded on cassette two of the classes I was teaching, and they were godawful - all the uhs, and stops, and starts, and sentences trailing off. Plus, I just didn't like the sound of my voice. I wanted it deeper and more distinctive - more masculine, I suppose. An American version of Sean Connery. I can only imagine how I would've felt if I found out that a student had brought a recorder to the class and later found out she or he had secretly taped me without my permission.

I had to know I was disregarding people's feelings in order to go ahead and do whatever I damn well wanted to advance my own agenda - something I associate with traditional masculinity. Fortunately, my coat got in the way.

JOURNAL EXCERPT: April 14, Fri. 1978 8:30 PM

When I was typing the title of this blog entry, I initially wrote "JOURNEY" instead of "JOURNAL." Not sure whether that's because I deejayed a People's Dance Party on Saturday night in Greenbelt, MD and someone brought up the band, Journey, at one point -- a group whose heyday took place during the late 70s, the time I was writing this particular journal -- or because the journal and this blog are a journey in and of themselves. Probably a combination. I was pretty indifferent to the band Journey. "Anyway You Want It" and "Don't Stop Believing" seemed like kind of bland power pop ballads. There were a number of bands producing a lot of music like that at the time -- Kansas, Boston, etc.

Clearly music played a big role in my life during the 70s. The cassette deck keeps popping up again and again:

"I was paid today. $214 dollars. Put $150 in the bank.

"Bought 3 blank cassettes for my recorder, and Linda and I went to the Book Rack."

MANHOOD REDO: Before I bought the cassette deck, I would go out to the South Plains Mall every paycheck and buy an album or albums -- whatever looked interesting or was on sale. By the late 70s I had around 500 or so. I know that music often reinforces and perpetuates traditional masculinity, and I would say that about all music, not just rap and hip hop, which have become the stand ins for anything and everything sexist and violent in the music world. Rock 'n' roll, alternative, country music, and so on all have their sexist elements.

But I want to focus on another aspect, namely a couple ways music in my life has challenged traditional masculinity. It's one place where there's room for emotions that are typically outlawed for men, where you can sing about tears, mourn loss, and embrace tenderness. I mentioned the Beatles in an earlier blog. For me, their "Here, There, and Everyone" is one of the most beautiful love songs I've ever heard. Lyrics like these validated my desires for connection and relationship:

"I want her everywhere
and if she's beside me I know I need never care.
But to love her is to need her

"Everywhere, knowing that love is to share
each one believing that love never dies
watching her eyes and hoping I'm always there."

Or what about George Harrison's "Beware of Darkness":

"Beware of sadness
It can hit you
It can hurt you
Make you sore and what is more
That is not what you are here for"

It is a song that acknowledges the loneliness and probably sadness I was feeling at the time of this journal but wouldn't let me stay stuck there, reminding me of my desire for connection and relationship in an even larger, expanded sense than "Here, There, and Everywhere."

And then there's dance, but I'll have to deal with that in the next blog.

JOURNAL EXCERPT: March 30, 1978 8:25 pm

"I did not draw or write again today, and I feel guilty about it as usual. I learned last night at work that J--, a young black man that used to work at the Avalanche Journal [newspaper], was killed in a motorcycle wreck. C-- told me and I was shocked by the crude way he related it. He asked, "Did ya hear 'bout James?" while smacking his fist into his other hand and saying, "splat!" Fortunately, B-- had told me minutes before about the accident, so I wasn't too shocked by C--'s insensitive communication. I liked J-- and was sorry to hear he was killed. Once again, I am aware of how fragile a thing life can be, while at the same time, humans are able to endure extreme physical tragedies. A contradiction, I know."

MANHOOD REDO: What about the end of this excerpt where at the age of twenty-two I present myself as wise and knowledgeable about death and the human condition? It seems I was trying to approximate what I thought was a literary, writerly voice, but much like traditional masculinity, it was a performance. I undoubtedly felt pressure to sound more erudite than I was, just as with manhood there's pressure to perform toughness and control.

Why didn't I write about a priest who was a close friend of our family, who would come over every week to drink scotch, smoke cigars, and play cards with us, who would shower everyone with compliments and generosity, who would buy German sausage and bring it over to fix, who would play basketball with me in our driveway and ping pong in the garage, who talked with me about my music and shared his, who was the best gift-giver I've ever known, who was one of the most important role models in my life and still is, who never said anything negative about anyone - until he became sick with cancer. He was a big man and lost a lot of weight, his hair turning gray. When he was in the hospital and I sat alone in the room with him, he asked me to empty his full catheter bag, which I did. I found the task unpleasant, and yet I never felt closer to him than at that moment.

He had passed away sometime during the year before I wrote the above journal entry excerpt. I couldn't produce any tears when my mother called and told me, stuck as I was in the cliche that men don't cry. I jumped in my Custom Ford and drove around Lubbock, angry, beating the steering wheel, yelling and cursing at the top of my lungs, until I grew hoarse. Now, as I write about it, though, I'm starting to tear up.

What if we men stopped performing? Wouldn't it be a relief?