Baseline

 "You're not even close to baseline"

[Baseline Tests, Bladerunner 2049]

A number of coworkers and I went out for a supper a few months ago, during which I was engaged in a conversation with a woman about toxic masculinity.  She has teenage sons, and posited a situation along the lines of the following:   

'If I'm lying on top of my bed, reading a book, it's not unusual for one of my boys to come in and lie down next to me and cuddle up beside me.  And I know that it's something that in our generation, boys would have been told it's not appropriate, but if my boys have and display an affection for their mother, why would I ever want to discourage that?'

It was like a splinter in my mind, the sort I love to inject into others.  It was the sort of thing one mulls over and that lingers and inspires the kind of introspective thought that finds realization and change.

Last week, riding along in the car together, Liza-Ann raised a question about Dan with regards to some sort of benchmark for acceptable male behaviour at his age, to which I said I didn't really have an answer, that I had no opinion and would have to think about it.

I'm sure it is just as much a shock to any of my readers as it was to her, the notion of me not having an opinion about something.

But, as I explained then to LA, that little mind-splinter, combined with many other related little mind-splinters and a lot of retrospection over the last few years, have finally led me to the conclusion that I'm... "not even close to baseline".  

 A parent's benchmarks largely reside in what they experienced in their youth, the lessons of their parents and the society that raised them.  But my benchmarks and instincts, I've decided, are largely not to be trusted.  Society is changing for the better, and many of the lessons of yesteryear cannot and should not apply.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not trying to turn my childhood into some sort of revisionist history where I get to play the victim.  It was what it was and I got through it.  Sure.  But I've come to realize it was not without a lot of discomfort and even trauma that I swept under the rug in the name of growing up and moving on.  I've always told myself it was all fine.  I've reminded myself I had it better than many others around me in many ways.  I had a great family and a home free of abuse, which is something a lot of the kids in my neighbourhood probably couldn't claim.  So I endured, and along the way convinced myself that it was basically the same everywhere for everyone.  This was life, you see.  It was what it was.

So as a man self-aware enough to notice how my gut instinct to many situations is so clearly informed by the toxic masculinity of the culture in which I was so strongly steeped, I have come to realize how extreme certain elements of my childhood were.  Don't worry, I'm not out there calling anyone "pussy" or punching someone in the face over the slightest offense.  I just know I still possess the instinct.

As a parent, speaking with other parents about their childhood and reflecting on my own, I have come to realize how useless my baseline has become in comparison to the current social evolution.

When Dan reached about 13, I marveled over the fact that he'd never been in a fist fight.  I have to remind myself not only that's a good thing, but also, the fact that I'd been in several by then was neither a good thing nor normal, and that the instinctive pride I feel bringing that up is actually... pretty fucked up.

It may have been normal for my particular school and neighbourhood in that particular era.  But it's not normal.  Or if it was normal, it certainly shouldn't be.  It's shit.  Getting jumped by three guys is not an experience every childhood should contain.

Granted, not everything gets discarded.  I had great parents, and most of the lessons that came from them, in the home, still apply.  I carry their spirits within me, and it informs much of the parenting I do.

But as a parent, three years ago my child rocked my world and our little family began a journey into the unknown.  In doing so, Dan gave me the gift of opening my mind to a whole different world of possibilities, and spawned in me an introspective growth that hasn't stopped.  The world is not what I thought it was.  Another veil was lifted, and since then, more veils.  Gibran taught me that true words are seldom beautiful and beautiful words seldom true.  Eastern philosophy has taught me that the lotus grows in the mud.  The discoveries these journeys inward uncover will not always be pleasant ones, but I still wouldn't trade this path forward for anything.

Team Contuckyard for the win, ever forward, and may I never be complete.

"I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, 

and frankly speaking, between you and me, 

I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.”
["High Fidelity", Nick Hornby]

For Kenny

"So hold my hand as I'm leaving
Hoped my pain would be enough reason
I'll see you on the other side of the Blue Ridge sky
But now I'm going
Hate to tell you goodbye"

["Goodbye Carolina", The Marcus King Band]

On June 11th, 2019, we received word that one of Liza-Ann's nephews, Kenny, had died suddenly at home.  No one saw this coming.  It was one of those random, out of the blue things.  After a certain point in life, having had to say goodbye to a few loved ones, one tends to contemplate the mortality of other people in your life from time to time.  The focus, of course, is always on the ones older than you.  No one ever expects someone younger to be taken from them.

Kenny was only 31.  He leaves behind a brilliant, beautiful 3-year-old daughter,  an incredible wife whose love for him could not be overstated, a loving family and friends numerous enough to pack not only the funeral home but the parking lot too.

When the family came together to mourn, there were a lot of hugs, a lot of crying, and a lot of nothing much one can say to make sense of such an unexpected loss.  I really... for all my wishing and wanting of something, anything to say... I just couldn't find words.  So much sadness and nothing I could say.  It was surreal.  It all felt like walking through a lucid nightmare with the constant expectation of waking.  Most days it still feels that way.

Kenny and I weren't particularly close.  We didn't know each other especially well.  Saw each other a half dozen times a year.  But while most of my grief may be for seeing the hurt devastating Liza-Ann's family around me, it still comes with a deep sense of personal loss too. It's been days now and I've just pushed down the sadness to remain clear-headed and supportive as best I could for those around me who needed it.  "Staggered breaths".  But it's lurking there in the background, waiting for moments of weakness when I remember it's all too real and it sneaks up and overwhelms me.  I did have a good cry when I started my first draft of this post, the day after he died.  I've welled up at work but managed to maintain my composure.

I met Kenny 14 years ago when Liza-Ann and I got together.  He was a brash young buck, 17 years old.  And I thought of him as much as 30-somethings think of brash young bucks they barely know:  not much.  We didn't have much common ground.  We didn't interact much.  We got along fine on the various family occasions.  He was polite.  Honest.  Candid.  Very candid.  I liked that.

Some time passed, and he was in his early 20s, making the sort of stupid, foolish, and irresponsible choices that men in their early 20s make.  So at first I thought him stupid, foolish, and irresponsible, but on reflection, remembering my own stupid, foolish, and irresponsible choices, I knew I had to cut him some slack.  We continued to get on fine at the various family occasions.  We still didn't seem to have that much to talk about, though I think we both tried.

Then he made an important decision about his future that reminded me of a difficult choice I'd once made in my life, and I saw within him a little piece of myself.  I never discussed it with him, it was just something that has always stuck in the back of my mind over the years.  It was a little something we shared, sort of, even if he never knew it.

Over the last half of our time knowing each other, things between us changed.  I watched him as he passed out of his early 20s, finally got together with the woman he was destined to marry (he really was - it's a wonderful tale), started a career, bought a house, began raising a young daughter.  My respect for him grew considerably.  He'd gone from boy to man, and he was a good man.  Over time, little by little, we uncovered things we did have in common.  We discovered shared musical tastes, a love of computers, some video games and television programs we were both keen on... we didn't interact much outside family gatherings, but I looked forward to the chance to chat with him as each of these occasions rolled around.  In fact, the last time he came to the house, he was one of the ones I was most looking forward to catching up with.

Simply put: I liked him.

But I never told him that.  As I write this, I find myself filled with regret.  I'd grown to love and respect him and I wish I'd told him so.  I should have told him so.  People deserve to know.

I will forever carry with me two strong memories of Kenny.

The first of these memories is the last conversation we ever had.

This past Easter, toward the end of the family gathering, he and I had a one-on-one chat in the hallway outside the living room, and discovered another connection, another shared experience.  We both have strong body-clocks, and as early-risers - as much as we love our partners, child, lives, etc. - enjoy that special tranquility of waking up in the early morning on a day off, slipping out of bed to go sit and recharge in our solitude, while the house, the whole world around us it feels like, gently sleeps.  It's a simple thing, I know, and not all that unique.  But there was something special about that conversation to me.  It wasn't simply liking the same band or album or TV show.  It was a little something about our lives, about ourselves, that we shared.  It was a common thread that connected us as people.  Long before the tragic news of his death came, this was something I'd already bookmarked in my mind as worth remembering.

The second memory is from his wedding day.

We've all seen those sweet couples.  We all seen the look young people in love give one another.  And I've been fortunate in my life to see eyes directed at me filled with the kind of love that elevates the soul.  I've seen it in Liza-Ann's.  But the look Robyn had for Kenny on their wedding day was a kind of unmistakably pure bliss that transcends description.  I remember wondering to myself 'Does he know how lucky he is?'  But it's not about luck.  It's never about luck.  It's about decisions and commitment.  It all stemmed from that difficult decision he'd once made about his future, that one that resonated in my mind.  He wasn't lucky.  He earned it.

So at the same time my heart breaks for Robyn's loss, it swells at the thought of the life he chose for himself those years ago.  Lives are not measured in quantity, but in quality.  His - while shorter than we'd all have liked - was beautiful and bright.

I should have told him.  But I didn't.  So instead I'll tell everyone else.

"Read you all the letters I wrote but never sent"

["Goodbye Carolina", The Marcus King Band]

v47

"No apologies ever need be made
I know you better than you fake it, to see"
["1979", The Smashing Pumpkins]

I wonder:  if my mother were still alive today, would I call her "Mom", or would I call her "Betty"?

Dear Mom...

Over a year ago, when I wrote v46, Liza-Ann read it and said something like "I think you freed yourself from that cage long ago".  We didn't discuss it much further at the time.  She was largely right.  But nothing is ever 100% black and white.  It's why the Taijitu ("Yin Yang symbol") has the little dots.  I have, in past years, continued on my journey of self-discovery to find lots of little remaining bits of bad programming and pull them out by the roots where I can.  It's like fixing small but persistent bugs in old software.  I imagine programmers find that somewhat satisfying.  This is certainly satisfying, even if it isn't in ways always obvious.

And the last year has continued to see my views on life, the world, myself, relationships, just about everything really, grow and change and evolve in what I hope to always be in positive directions.  But if anything, it's not a small number of big, clear changes, so much as a more numerous blurring of lines.  I think things will continue to become more comfortable and liberating to me in time (said as someone with incredible privilege and freedom, I know), but as someone who has spent his life so obsessed with precision, if there's one thing that could be said to be significant, it's that I could say I've found ways in which I've still been clinging to some bad habits that I'm getting better at not white-knuckling.

These changes haven't been without their growing pains.  I grew apart from a friend of 25+ years enough that it was necessary for us to part ways.  I miss him from time to time but firmly believe we're better off apart.  It should have happened sooner, if anything.

And while I consider it obvious, and think I've made it obvious, in case it wasn't already as crystal clear as it always should have been:  my child coming out as trans lead me down a road of self-discovery and awakening that I truly believe has made me a better person, and my life richer for it.

That's it in one sentence.  It really was the catalyst for a whole new period of evolution in who I am, at a time when I thought I'd become who I was meant to be.  Frankly, feeling that I'm not done learning and growing was at first a tiresome idea, which is I suppose why so many people are resistant to change.  Now, instead, the thought of continuously becoming a better person is invigorating.  It's like a gift I've been given that I want to share with anyone willing to sit and discuss.

Let me never be complete. (Tyler Durden)

I plan to someday write about that journey.  I see it in others going through similar experiences.  I don't know if they see it in themselves.  And, incidentally, one of the best, simplest pieces of parenting advice I've ever been given was from a young trans adult with no children, and it wasn't just good advice for 'parents of trans', it was good advice for all, simple and plain.  I alluded recently to how I feel about the good the LGBTQ+ movement is doing for the human condition that helps us all - even the cis straight white ones - in enormous ways that go unseen.

Mom...

If you were alive today, I know you'd love Dan and appreciate his many great qualities.  I think you and Liza-Ann would get along like gangbusters.  And let's be honest, you didn't approve of all my girlfriends in the past, and now, older, I can see there were good reasons why, reasons that become more obvious with age but blinded back then by youthful naivety.  But Liza-Ann, I think you two would have many things to bond over.

I think you would have been proud of the man I was a few years ago, but prouder still of the man I'm becoming.

At the same time, Betty...

My thinking or knowing that isn't nearly as important to me as it once would have been.  (And then, perhaps ironically, "meta meta", you'd be prouder still knowing that.)

I'd have loved to have a conversation with you about mid-life existentialism.  The great divide in our religious views would have made it interesting.  It's something I think about from time to time, but my thoughts are not yet really cogent enough to even begin to write, largely because there's enough fear in me still to keep me from seriously contemplating it.  I know you saw yourself first and foremost as a mother, a nurturer.  This much was obvious to anyone and everyone who knew you.  But what I would love to know most is:  what was next?  You were too intelligent a person to have confined yourself to a single purpose.  What would be your second great love had you been healthier and lived longer?

Work has been both good and bad for me of late.  The past few months have seen me under more stress than I've experienced since my youth and early 20s, and I underestimated the tricky nature of human memory in preparing myself for the challenges I faced.  I thought I was readier than I was.  Nonetheless, I've lumbered through, and recently feel like I've turned a bit of a corner.  I was experiencing night-time anxiety for the first time in my life, waking at 4am with my mind abuzz about Email and what I had to do the next day.  But that's slowly wearing off, and now I mostly just need to re-adjust my sleep schedule by an hour so I can be awake past 10pm.  I want to enjoy more of my evening one-on-one time with Liza-Ann, which has been the biggest price in this struggle.  She has been a rock throughout, and patient.  How did I ever get so lucky?

I should also point out that it has also been rewarding, along with the challenges.  I've done good work.  I generally perform well under pressure.  Advancement has come too, and opportunities - rewarding and challenging ones - are presenting themselves.  There are things to look forward to.

It's winter, of course, and that means a lot of cold weekends indoors and not as much socializing as I'd like.  Dungeons & Dragons and board games are both experiencing a bit of a "golden age", which is great for me, but there are other friends I'd like to see more often, and I never seem to find the energy to make that happen, or at least not as often as I'd like.  Perhaps once we get through March, and particularly as I near the end of my current contract at work, I can look forward to that changing.  My doctor tells me my iron is back to normal, so my current energy levels are more about mental than physical health.

I miss you and, in a way, more than I used to.  In the past I contented myself with the idea that "I know what she'd say" to most questions that arose in my mind.  But as I grow older, the questions I have change, and the topics are things you and I never talked about.  It's no longer about an opportunity lost - to speak with my mother - but about an opportunity never had - to get know to Betty.

I suspect she's someone I'd have found fascinating.  I don't think she'd have ever stopped growing either.

Hugs

"He was one of those guys who'd pronounce
I'm a hugger as he came at you,
neglecting to ask if the feeling was mutual.” 
[Gillian Flynn, "Gone Girl"]

So, a while back, I was speaking at a public event.  It was a very emotional experience.  As it was winding up, one of the other speakers, someone I've known casually for a couple of years, approached me and asked if I was 'a hugger', and if it would be ok to hug me. 

It was the first time someone ever asked me that question.  And from the calm, friendly way in which he asked, it was abundantly clear to me that "no" was an acceptable answer to the question.  It was up to me.  It was merely an offer, and the decision was mine to make.  I had all the agency.  It was about respect.  It was about personal space.  It was about consent.  And it was a strange new experience.

Many years ago, I remember crossing an airport to greet my friend Geoff.  I reached to shake his hand.  He wasn't having it.  He grabbed me and pulled me in tight and gave me the biggest, best kind of bear hug.  It was a long time ago, but I remember back then thinking it was awkward, such a public display of affection between men.  'They'll think we're gay,' I thought.  And then, there in his arms, wrapped up as if in a big warm blanket, 'I don't care.  Why should I?  This is not wrong.'

From that day forward, I made a point of doing the same thing to other men.  At every such opportunity, I would turn a handshake into a hug.  I did it because I thought that, in the bigger picture, I was pushing back against homophobia and making a point that men should be free to express their feelings for one another.  (Something which I've recently learned was common until the 20th century, and is still quite common in other parts of the world.)  I wasn't aggressive like that with women, with whom I'm always very cautious about personal space and touching.  (In my early 20s, the military was VERY clear about harassment policies to the point of making me paranoid.)

In the last number of years, particularly this past year with the #metoo movement, I've become even more self-aware with regards to the nature of my physical contact with people.  But it wasn't until someone asked permission to hug me that I realized that while I was respecting the personal space of women, I wasn't respecting the personal space of men.  I was forcing my ideas about appropriate expressions of affection on them.  Maybe they're not all ok with it?

And in that moment when I was asked, I realized this.  And I also realized something else that's quite important too.

This was just one of a number of small, odd encounters or questions or statements that have, over time, slowly brought me to a realization that I don't think most men of privilege understand:  that feminism and the LBGTQ+ movement is, at its heart, about everyone.  As a cis-gender, straight, white male, it's easy to stand on the outside looking in and think it's about women, or minorities, or gays and lesbians, and so on.  That there's nothing in it "for me".  The small-minded even go so far as to think it's somehow something being taken away from them.  ('Rights are not pie.  You won't get a smaller piece.')  But being an ally does not have to be magnanimous, even for a cis, straight, white male.  Notions of respect and fair treatment benefit everyone.  

As an instructor at cadet camps in the last 80s/early 90s, in any given group of about 15 boys, there was almost always at least one kid that wasn't comfortable showering in those big public shower rooms with the other boys.  They wanted to shower in a stall, or at a different time from the others.  They were accustomed to more privacy than those big rooms, and for whatever reason, it made them feel very uncomfortable.  Why?  I didn't always know.  I didn't care to know.  I didn't need to know.  As best we could, we'd make small adjustments to try to provide them that privacy.  Really, it's not that big an accommodation to make.  Nowadays, whenever the subject of change rooms and bathrooms comes up - usually within the context of gender-neutral facilities in public buildings - I always think back to that time, and try to point out that it doesn't really even have to be about gender, just about privacy, about an individual's right to have a little privacy, regardless what their reason might be.

Rights, respect, fair treatment:  it's about everyone.  Feminism is about fair treatment for all.  If, that day, I wasn't ok with being hugged on that occasion, or by that person, or in general... the choice was mine.  I was offered that agency.  (By someone clearly a better feminist than me, but I'm learning.)

Yes, I am a hugger.  Very much.  Can't get enough.  Seldom turn one away.

Yes, I happily accepted his hug. 

In fact, I'd wanted to give him a 'thank you' hug for ages, but being so conscious these days about only hugging those who I think are comfortable with it, I just never knew how to approach it.  I haven't yet found a graceful way to ask.  (He made it seem so damn easy.)  Instead, I find myself hugging fewer and fewer people, even some friends and family, unless they reach out first.  I consider this unfortunate, but only until such time as we all learn each others' boundaries and how to respect them.

When we reach a place, as a society, where we can better, more openly, and more casually speak in terms of consent, not just sexual consent, but all forms of consent... after that, those who enjoy hugs can have them, those who don't won't have to endure them, and we can all live a little more comfortably and enjoy a little more mutual respect.

Proviso

"I am the man, that's what I am
I'm a straight shooter, with a master plan
I am the man, that's why I'm here
I am the man, I am the man"
["I am the Man", The Philosopher Kings]

Last April, a few friends and I gathered in my basement to tune into a webinar by The White Ribbon Campaign.  In one part of the presentation, they were talking about toxic masculinity and they showed a list of words they use as discussion points about some of the ideals that it can impose on boys and young men, shaping their notions of what's required of their gender as they get older.  Most of the words on the list were completely unsurprising and now forgettable, the stuff you'd expect to see - stoic, macho - that sort of thing.  But one word stood out and caught me off guard and I'd certainly never have thought of it if I'd been asked to build the list.

Provider.

And for the rest of the presentation, and now nearly a year later, it still doesn't sit quite right with me, though recent months have certainly helped me better understand.

Today, on the sixth anniversary of my father's death, it came quickly to mind, because my father is the reason I have such a struggle with the word.  When I think of Dad, the word provider always springs immediately to mind.  When you get to really know people, when you begin to see what motivates or excites them, and you read between the lines and understand how they see themselves, you come to recognize the identity they've constructed for themselves.  I consider this an important exercise in trying to understand and empathize with close friends and family.  When you truly understand how someone sees themselves, you can be of far more assistance and comfort.  You understand why they do what they do, why they want what they want, and stop bringing to the table what you'd want if you were them, but rather, what they need because they are them.

In my adult years, as Dad was aging and having progressively more and more trouble taking care of himself, as I spent more time around him as an adult, and not as his child, I began to grow a deeper appreciation for just how he saw himself:  as a provider.  Throughout my childhood he worked all the overtime he could manage 'to put food on the table and clothes on our backs'.  It was really who he was and how he saw himself.  As myself and my siblings went through various life events, like a job or relationship ending, he was always there to remind us we were welcome to move back in, because he'd always give us a bed to sleep in and put a roof over our heads.

In recent times, in discussing toxic masculinity with Liza-Ann, I've told her there are many things I felt I was taught by society growing up and with which I've readily parted, but that there remain certain elements that are much harder to let go.  Provider is, for me, one of the hardest of those.

Because I have immense respect for a man who considered himself a provider, whom I considered a provider, and largely because he provided.  It is difficult to wrap my head around the idea of provider as a "bad word".  I understand - on an intellectual level - that when it comes to toxic masculinity, there is more nuance to understanding it than that.  It's not really a matter of "good words" and "bad words".  The problem is not in the word or even the concept it describes, but in the idea of its mandatory enforcement.  There's nothing wrong with being a provider.  There is something wrong with taking any segment of society and saying "you must do this" or  "you must be this".

In the last few months, I've been having an especially difficult time at work.  I was offered what I knew would be a very difficult and stressful assignment.  I knew it was something I would find challenging, at which I could probably excel, and for which my particular history and skills were probably an excellent match.  I accepted it.  

I under-estimated just how stressful and trying it would be.  As I've struggled, as I've fought my way through it, I've had the good fortune that the freedom my newfound, less-toxic self has allowed me to speak a little more freely with Liza-Ann, with a few close friends, to get the emotional support I needed to keep pressing on.

But at the times when I truly felt like I was floundering in the dark, desperately looking for something solid to hold onto and looking for a way out, what I found was a set of bars I'd constructed for myself.  My cage still has some bars left, and provider is definitely one of them.  Only then did I begin to understand what White Ribbon was suggesting.  But recognizing it doesn't hand-wave it away either.  Toxic masculinity isn't on an intellectual level; it's a set of instincts borne of years of conditioning.

At the end of the day, what my father did was respectable.  It was a good thing.  Whether he did it out of his own sense of goodness or out of a sense of socially-enforced obligation is both hard to say and perhaps largely irrelevant.  That he did it is something for which I will always remain thankful.  

Are good acts done for bad reasons less good?  A larger philosophical question for another day.

For today, I just know I miss Dad.  He gave great hugs.