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: 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: May 1, Mon. 1978 9:00 PM

"I got up around 3:00 PM. Even though I didn't get to bed until about 6:00 AM, that's too late. I should've been up around 2:00 PM. I'm afraid my sleep is going to get screwed up again. There have been a couple time, about a week and a half each time where I haven't been able to sleep but three or four hours a night, and for no other reason than I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. I nearly went crazy during those sleepless periods. I never want to go through something like that again, although I'm sure I will sooner or later. I'm going to set my alarm clock tonight so I don't sleep so late."

"I wrote. Still trying to finish the first copy of the story about Jack. On page 19 now. I'll have to rewrite it as soon as I finish it. Then I'll have to type it. I can't believe Fitzgerald used to write a complete, finished, entire story in a single sitting, the son of a bitch. No, actually he's very important to me, or I should say his writing is. I enjoy his stories much."

MANHOOD REDO: My sleep has never been quite the same since working the graveyard shift, and it's been almost 30 years. During my youth, I slept easily and peacefully, even under difficult circumstances. Now there can be some anxiety attached bedtime. Anybody who has had serious insomnia knows the hell it is. When I wanted to apply to grad school and needed to take the GRE, I was working nights. They only offered the test in the mornings, so I decided to start sleeping from 1 pm until about 8 pm everday a week before the exam in order to be alert the morning it was administered. That worked, but in the days following my sleep cycle was so messed up that I could only sleep for a couple hours a night, and that lasted for weeks. After a while, I lost all sense of time. I would start to phone people at 3 in the morning. At one point I think I hallucinated bugs crawling all over the rug of the house I was living in.

Now, I do okay on seven hours, but less than that starts to wear and tear on me, especially when it takes place consecutive nights. When I'm under stress, I tend to wake up anywhere from 2:30 am to 3:30 am, then find it hard to get back to sleep. Since I'm in my fifties, it's not unusual to have to go to the bathroom. But also, my mind kicks into high gear, sifting through everything, replaying events, task lists, fretting about what's already happened, what's going to happen, what needs to happen. That in itself is exhausting, but then add the anxiety about getting back to sleep, and it's like you're caught in a neverending washing machine cycle, buffeted about by your mind, uncertain when the spinning is going to end. It's hard to rid yourself of the expectation and fear that you won't get back to sleep.

I see sleep as attached to traditional masculinity in various ways. First of all, as a "real man," you're not supposed to let anything get to you. It's a sign that your outer shell is too thin if you wake up and fret when you don't need to; you're too fragile. Also, when you're having trouble sleeping and hence difficulty functioning, it's not something you can really admit to others. All of us men walk around assuming the other men are in control of their sleep cycle, unless their behavior is completely out of control from drug or alcohol addiction. Finally, there are the super sleepless men - those who only need a few hours a night to function perfectly fine; in fact, they are creative, energetic dynamos who use the extra time to get the upper edge on all the other men.

Nancy Kress wrote a series of science fiction books about genetically modified humans who don't need sleep at all. They are superior in many, many ways to sleep-needy humans. They consisted of males and females. But in our popular historical culture, it seems to me that we attribute the myth of productive sleeplessness to men: Leonardo da Vinci, who became the namesake of polyphasic sleeping, or intermitent naps in order sleep less hours and produce more; Benjamin Franklin, who said, "There will be sleeping enough in the grave"; and Thomas Edison, who held sleep in great contempt, instead practicing catnapping.

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 28, Fri. 1978 7;55 PM

"Today was payday. Now I have $363 in savings. I bought 5 blank Certron cassettes. I have to record Spirit and Ram, McCartney on one of them for M-- A--. I recorded some of Mom's old records on one of the cassettes. Recorded a record Grandpa recorded for her. His voice is at the beginning of both sides of the record. He says, 'Hello S--. See how you like this record. I'm doing a lot of fooling around here trying to make a record.' Side 2: 'The other side wasn't very good, and this one'll probably be worse, but let's see how it goes.'

"I'm glad I have this one thing to remember Grandpa by. He died when I was young, and I can't remember a thing about him. He intrigues me for some reason. He was having some trouble with the machinery in spots while recording, getting some feedback or something. I can just imagine him in a recording studio in Charlotte, Michigan, messing around, trying to make a record. I wish I had known him. I wish he would have left something for me to help know him."

MANHOOD REDO: I'm not sure how I knew he was recording in Charlotte, Michigan; I have no idea where exactly Charlotte is in Michigan or how large. I might still have the cassette somewhere, but I can recall his voice without listening to it. He did not sound at all stern or gruff but instead gentle and quiet - a little like Mr. Rogers, sort of comforting and humble. You can tell in his introductory statements on each side of the record that he wasn't especially full of himself. Instead of conveying his mastery of the technology (a standard characteristic of traditional masculinity; how many men were making records for their daughters in the late 1930s or early 1940s?), he calls it "fooling around," and says it isn't "very good."

When I write that he "intrigues me for some reason," I did so because he is what I think of as one of the "ghost men" in my life who have shaped who I am and have served as an invisible role model - not that I could have or would have explained his presence in my life that way in 1978. I've only come to realize as I've gotten older that he was an inherited role model never tangibly present in my life but continually there in unspoken and often unrecognized ways that I still can't fully grasp. My mother, his daughter, speaks of him as gentle, loving, and nonviolent. He never spoke harshly of anyone. He represents for her a positive, caring model of manhood. I believe that the times when she has looked at a photo of him and told me how much I reminded her of him, she was not only associating me with his character and qualities, she was also ever so subtly nuturing the best of him in me.

JOURNAL EXCERPT: April 27, Thurs. 1978 8:10 PM

"I mailed the forms for readmission to [Texas] Tech [University] today. I hope they don't take too long in answering. Didn't get much writing done. Half a page. Mom interrupted me. Wanted me to take her to get a new state inspection sticker on her car. Then we had to go get Jennifer from track practice, then back over to get her car. It was almost 5 o'clock by the time we got home. I ate. Then, since I was being bomarded with little hints, like, 'You haven't mowed the front yard, Pat,' I mowed the front yard. Then I listened to some records (Nilsson and the Beatles). Then I ran. Another exciting and fulfilling day."

MANHOOD REDO: The above excerpt is kind of all over the place, so I'm going to focus on the first couple sentences about reapplying to Tech since I've thought a lot about school and masculinity. It took me a long time to think of myself as an academic, as a learner. Some people saw it before I did. The priest I wrote about earlier who was a close friend of the family told my mother he thought I would do something with my mind. There wasn't much indication of that through high school and on into the first couple years of college; I was the sort of student who when he had a book report due would read the first and last chapters and make up details as filler, hoping that the English teacher either hadn't read the book or had forgotten most of what he or she had read. While I wasn't one of the "bad boys" who sat in the back of the room disrupting the class, I wasn't exactly what you would call a model student. In English, when we were supposed to write a poem, I plagarized lyrics from a Beatles' song, "Doctor Robert," which one of the other students recognized. I worried he would turn me in.

I wrote in an earlier blog about my relationship with school but what I didn't get into were economic class issues and masculinity. My understanding is that the above descriptions would fairly accurately represent my father's relationship with school. He has told me he wasn't a serious student. He became an accountant almost by happenchance. On his walk to a factory job every morning he went by a two year business school and eventually thought he might as well try it, so he became a student and scraped by in the grade department, managing to graduate with a C average. I can't help but think that the poverty he experienced growing up in significant ways shaped his relationship with the educational system and my relationship with it. While he went on to become an excellent accountant in charge of accounting departments and provided his family with a comfortable middle class life, I'm certain I unknowingly harbored some historical residue tied to the lower economic position he occupied earlier in his life. If nothing else, neither he nor my mother could provide much in the way of concrete advice about or insight into college since neither of them had attended a four year institution of higher education. They definitely did everything they could to support my attending college, but I can't help but wonder if that connection with a working class background and the traditional masculine stereotypes that accompany it, almost sabotaged their efforts.

It wasn't until I reapplied to Tech after dropping out for two years following my sophomore year that my attitudes began to change. I've always found it ironic that I taught for eight years at George Washington University, the most expensive private university in the country, and not only would attending it as an undergraduate have been well beyond my economic means, they never would have let me in with my grades.