JOURNAL EXCERPT: May 9, Tues. 1978 9:45 PM

"G. came back today. I helped him unpack all his furniture etc."

Manhood Redo: I'm surprised that such a big event merited such little text. I don't even sound the least little excited. Given the kind of loneliness I was experiencing and have written about in earlier blog entries, you'd think I would have been thrilled, overjoyed, ebullient. But G.'s move back sounds routine, almost something to take for granted.

Sometimes I resent the hell out of masculinity - for instance, when it tamps down joy I might be feeling, and I mean a silly, happy, almost giddy joy about people and events. I've kept the full extent of my emotions - both exhilaration and sorrow - under wraps for so long that it still can be hard to not only express them but also to find a way into them. Someone at work told me I'm hard to excite; maybe that's true based on what I'm seeing today in this journal excerpt. Although it might be more the case that I have excitement bubbling up in me and am cautious about expressing it. I'm trying to think about both what forms of excitement are sanctioned by traditional masculinity and what aren't. Obviously, it's okay to get excited about sports if you're a guy. You can yell and scream and jump up and down and cry if your team loses. But had I jumped up and down and screamed in excitement about G. moving back to Lubbock, I can't help but think that people would've looked at me either like I was crazy or thought I was gay. So even in the journal I was keeping at the time, even in a personal and private space where I might have felt free to express what I didn't feel free to express elsewhere, I'm restrained.

Let me try to be a little unrestrained now. The last time I saw G. was maybe 20 or so years ago in Lubbock. I had tried to track him down a couple times over the web but never had any success - until about a month ago. He had been on my mind, perhaps because of this blog, so I just on the spur of the moment decided to try one more time since it had been quite a few years since the last time I checked the web. I had little in the way of expectations, so I was shocked when a photo of him turned up. He looked just about the same, except his hair had turned completely gray. He's in a covers band now. When we were friends years ago, he dabbled with the piano, and the two of us would sing Beatles tunes along with his car cassette player as we drove back and forth from Lubbock and San Antonio, but I never would've predicted he'd be playing keyboard and sharing lead vocals, singing anything from the Texas Tornadoes to the Temptations. I don't know if he sings lead on "YMCA" but that I would like to hear, maybe even dance to.

He's in the Southwest but no longer in Lubbock; he hasn't been there for a long while. I'm not sure what will come of our getting back in touch since we're far apart, there is a lot that's happened since we last saw each other, and we're both busy, but it's exciting to have him in my life again, even if only in a minimal way. He's someone who's had a significant impact on my life. I was best man at his wedding. We worked on a comic strip together and tried to syndicate it. We went camping for almost three weeks, driving from Texas to Oregon and back. We shared and critiqued our creative writing. We read our favorite poems to each other.

JOURNAL EXCERPT: April 28, Fri 1978 7:55 PM Part 2

The journal entry on this date was long, so this is part 2...

"I also recorded [on a cassette] a Bugs Bunny record that Mom says she used to listen to when she was little. I had to switch the speed to 78 and the needle to 78 records to record all these records. I forgot to switch the needle on the first two and had to record them over. I also recorded just a bunch of old 78s my mother used to listen to: 'Rhapsody,' 'Charleston.' God, that's all I can remember. I hadn't heard of almost all of them. The record with 'Rhapsody' on it was unique. It is called a picture record and was blue with an overhead view of a white piano and two women in white gowns sitting at the piano, on both sides. It was difficult to tell where the grooves started and ended."

"I'm reading A Death in the Family by James Agee. It's very realistic. The man had extreme power with words. I wish I could write as well."

MANHOOD REDO: In the age of the iPod, it's hard to take in the physicality of these records. I have a vague memory of the 'Rhapsody' record and it was stunning. The blue was that pure blue you see in a mountain lake. A--, my wife, misses the artwork that used to accompany records; the 'Rhapsody' artwork didn't accompany the album, it was the album.

I don't quite understand my mother's relationship with music. As a girl, she studied to be an opera singer, although she was pushed in that direction by my grandmother, who wanted it to be her ticket to security and status, I think. She chose to marry my father instead, giving up any pretensions of pursuing a musical future. I remember her listening to albums during my youth; two artists come to mind: the Jackie Gleason Orchestra and Tom Jones. And she used to sing fairly regularly, with what seemed to me a beautiful voice. I was not blessed with her singing genes but instead inherited my father's. During my teen years, I would passionately sing along with the records playing on the stereo in my bedroom, and everyone outside the room would make fun of me.

I imagine Mom in her bedroom playing what were at the time popular records like 'Rhapsody,' and not opera records. Sometimes I think about what it would have been like if she had had a passion for opera, if she had both married my father and insisted on pursuing an operatic career. How would my life as a boy have differed, how would my masculinity be different?

JOURNAL EXCERPT: April 22, Sat. 1978

"L-- [my sister] and I are the only people in our house. The rest of the family has gone to Wichita Falls for the district track meet. I thought I was finally going to be able to turn my stereo up with the parents gone, so I turned it up loud, and L-- knocks on my door and yells, "Turn down your stereo. I can't hear the TV."

MANHOOD REDO: I remember being furious at her, primarily because it felt like I ought to be able to turn up my music. My parents might have had more power and control in the household than me, but she didn't.

Now, it makes me think about men, masculinity, and sharing space. Traditionally, we're socialized to take up space, whether it's in conversation or in the way we sit. Women for years have complained about men interrupting them. The man who makes the most noise is the alpha male, the one who gets heard, who has his way. And riding the metro, I've seen few women (maybe none) sitting with their legs spread so far apart you have to squeeze into the open seat next to them.

Since I've spent almost 25 years living together with my wife, my attitudes and assumptions about taking up space have changed somewhat. I usually check with her before I turn the music up.

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

MANHOOD REDO: Consider this part two of the previous blog since I mentioned at the end of it writing about music and dance. When I was in ninth grade and my sister in eighth, she would dance a little while doing the dishes if music was on, and I remember thinking no way I'm doing that. Unless I could look cool dancing, there was no point in attempting it, especially since the opposite seemed likely - looking like an idiot. But a friend of my sister's yanked on my arm and refused to let go during my junior year when I was standing around in the garage of someone in my class, a jukebox blaring and some people moving to the music. When it became clear that she had no intention of giving up, I decided to try since I knew the issue wouldn't go away anytime soon. So the first song I ever danced to was Grand Funk's "We're an American Band."

And I did okay, at least according to her, and I sort of felt that way too. So I kept dancing. In fact, she unleashed a dancing fool. I've never been one to more formally pursue dancing, learning particular steps - it's always seemed like too much work - but put me out on a dance floor and give me some funk, soul, rock 'n' roll, and I'll take off. By the time the junior/senior banquet rolled around the year after my first steps in the garage, I danced the entire time music blasted out of the deejay's speakers, about two hours, and not with my date, because I didn't take one. I danced mostly with a friend's date.

Now, I've had to learn to dance more with my arms and shoulders and hips since my knees can't take the moves I used to do when I was younger. And I don't worry too much about looking cool. In fact, I sometimes intentionally put on silly moves, following in the footsteps of one of my favorite dance scenes: Kevin Kline's character in "I Love You to Death." I figure if he can look ridiculous, so can I. If traditional masculinity is all about "cool" as it relates to image, performance, and control, then letting music move you in whatever way feels fun and enjoyable is a way to break the stifling hold "cool" has over us.

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.