The Mind of the American Male

I have been thinking a lot about men lately. I have been reading books about raising boys. It’s been pretty eye opening. I never realized boys were so cruel to one another.

Then the other night I was driving home from my AA meeting when an NPR show came on about the “Mind of the American Male”. Even a couple of years ago, I would have thought, “Men own everything, and now we have to know what they think too?!” However, a little American male is now the center of my existence, and I was rather interested to know what men had to say for themselves. I drove around Boston listening to the program even though I had a sweet wife and ice cream at home waiting for me. (100% aside- Boston is not a fun city to just drive around in. Even at night. When I was young and living in Arizona, I would drive for miles. Those generous open highways! There was the beautiful desert and the dark sky that went on for days. A girl could really get her head together driving around Black Canyon Highway).

What really interested me about the program was that men seemed really anxious to join the discussion, and there were a lot of strong feelings expressed. However, the complaints struck me as kind of vague. There was the standard complaint that feminism has redefined the sex roles and now men don’t know what their role is. This is undoubtedly true. But wasn’t the height of the feminist movement in the 70’s. Like thirty years ago. You would have thought men would have figured something out by now. I think there has been some foot dragging.

There were discussion of girlfriends who had left them, and how hard it is to make a living. But nowhere in the discussion did anyone say something so insightful that I thought, “This is the heart of the matter.”

Now, I have dated men and women. In my judgment, there is little difference between them. And what is different gets exaggerated, my guess is for political purposes. I do think boys are raised in a manner that forces them to pigeon hole themselves into acceptable masculine personas. Just this year, I have observed boys being acutely discourage from expressing feelings and interests that would be considered unmasculine. I think some men take these lessons to heart more than others. Some men do this so thoroughly that they become dulled and completely cut off from parts of themselves. In some cases, the most interesting parts.

Comments left on my blog have been mostly from women, however, if a boy should happen to pass this way, I would be really interested to know your thoughts are on any of this. So please, consider this a written invitation to comment. Don’t worry if you are not a boy, I still would love to hear from you.

My lil' sugar booger

Many thanks to Keith @ sickofffood.com for giving us his old digital. So its back to posting pictures!

I waited a bit to update the blog. I wanted to be in a better mood. I'm sure those of you out in blogland were a little tired of hearing about how lousy I felt, and how my life was completly falling apart.

I do feel little better. I'm doing a fifth step with my sponsor this afternoon. And I have a job interview tomorrow with an organization I am generally interested in. I would tell you who, but I don't want to jinx it. So wish me luck and I will let everyone know how it goes.

I'm in a pissy mood, and I can't get a hold of my AA sponsor

I am in a super duper crappy mood. A guy calls me for an interview earlier this week, and I start out today with a whole hour to get across town. The interview wasn’t in a different city, it was just in another neighborhood. But after staying home for a year, I am totally unprepared for rush hour traffic. I was 20 minutes late, and you can imagine what they thought of that.

This whole job search has been a study in what not to do. I came really close to getting an offer with one job, but I am pretty sure that they found their way to this blog (based on my web stats), and that was the end of that. Somehow in the course of my short job search, I have managed to alienate every web design firm in Boston. I am beginning to think that I will never code in this town again.

On another note, I wanted to thank the people at this web site
http://tips.dennyhalim.com/2006/11/socialize-your-blogger-beta.html
for information on putting social bookmarks on the new blogger. Don’t they look cool?

Bring on the straight jacket

Boston Maggie tagged me with this Meme: 6 weird things about yourself

I'm pretty weird, so I'm not sure if she knew what she got herself into, but here it goes:

Six weird things about me

1. I am not a vegetarian, but chicken completely skeeves me out. I won’t touch it or eat it. However, if it is in a dish, and I don’t know it, I usually like the way it tastes.
   
2. I totally love this ridiculous blog: http://www.cuteoverload.com/
   
3. I use to belly dance. At the height of my belly dancing career, I danced in front of 200 hundred lesbians. They screamed and hollered and stood on chairs during the performance. People tell me that I looked perfectly calm, but I was scared to death that I was about to get mauled by a bunch of sexed up lesbos.
   
4. When I was very young and very drunk, I got a really large tattoo on my hip. It’s a tough looking tattoo of a woman’s head that is the handle of a sword. Her neck elongates out into the blade. I immediately regretted it when I sobered up.
   
5. Per my wife – Every night, I get into bed, and then get out of bed to put on socks, and then get back in, then get out of bed to put on pants, and then get into bed, and then get out of bed to take the pants off. Eventually, I kick off the socks too. I do this every night.
   
6. The very weirdest thing about me is that I have an alternative life that runs in my head. I mean it actually plays like a movie, and I feel like I have very little control of it. In my alternate life, I was adopted by a couple of gay men and grew up in the Castro district of San Francisco.
   

I am suppose to tag six people. Here are four to start. I think of a couple more:
I am going to tag Keith at http://www.sickoffood.com/ and

Rhea at the Boomer Chronicles

Kim at Madd Babies

Robin at the Other Mother

Tomorrow

You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

I have entered a free fall financially and spiritually. I haven’t been able to pay my bills in weeks. Normally, this would upset me, but I am feeling an eerie calm about it. I had a bunch of interviews, but don’t have any lined up for next week.

I feel a bit like I have fallen off the face of the earth.

I did some meditating last night, and even a bit of bible reading. I couldn’t sleep, and I finished off the very interesting book on Rwanda, and decided to read from the Book of James. I believe that is where we get the One Day at a Time slogan from in AA. It says something to the affect of “you don’t know what will happen from one day to the next so stop pretending like your plans mean anything.” Or some such.

In my heart, I am an agnostic. But I have been contemplating giving some space in my head to the idea that there maybe a spiritual solution to my present problems. I will always have doubt. But I have a little bit of faith too. Maybe I need to let Faith have a run at things for a while

BTW – in an effort to get a project out the door for a client, I gave my son the digital camera. He’s very interested in it, and it keeps him quiet. He was very well behaved as he slammed that camera on the floor several times. You may not being seeing any more pictures of him until I go back to work and can buy a new one.

Disaster Narrowly Averted

Or avoided by a mile. My son had been throwing up in the morning, just once, and then going on like nothing happened. I thought it was strange, but didn’t think much of it. This went on for three days when my wife, the neuro nurse, mentioned that morning vomiting was a symptom of brain tumors. I panicked, and dashed to get the pediatrician on the phone.

Meanwhile, pandemonium has broken out in my city. As you probably know, a little bit too creative ad for a cartoon caused the city to come to a standstill because the authorities thought they were bombs. Normally, this would create a dramatic reaction from me. I am one of those people who have a disaster kit in their basement, though it’s unclear to me what the duct tape is for. After 911 I tried to get my doctor to prescribe antibiotics for me. I wanted them on hand in case there was a bio terror attack. She refused.

But I completely missed the chaos yesterday because I was trying to get the nice nurse at the pediatrician’s office to take my son’s situation seriously. I wanted a CAT scan. She thought he needed chicken soup. Medical personnel are so unhelpful.

BTW – the vomiting ceased this morning.

What it means to be a boy

I never realized how into gender people were until I had a baby. It starts in utereo. Once word got out that I was having a boy, my house started to fill up with baby blue onesies with footballs on them.

Now that he is a little older and beginning to show interest in things, I can’t help but feel that serious gender molding has begun. For instance, he is very interested in wheels of all sorts. He’s fascinated by them. If there is a toy with wheels on them, he crawls over to it and immediately starts maneuvering it. He likes to see things move. He turns the toys over to observe the wheels. He seems to be doing mini experiments like blocking the objects path to see what will happen.

Family and friends have observed this and delightfully exclaimed, “Look at that. He loves trucks!” They have shown their support by filling our house with plastic dump trucks.

However, I really think it’s the wheels and not the trucks that he is interested in. I think he would be just as fascinated with a pink Barbie convertible as with a Pick up truck. I have a friend who is in a wheelchair, and he seems just as interested in her chair as he does his trucks.

But boys liking trucks is socially acceptable, and I can’t help but wonder if he doesn’t respond to their approval. I also have an inkling that our family and friends are relieved that a couple of lesbians are raising a boy who likes boyish things. I wonder if this is how gender imprinting starts.

My life isn't so bad...

Robin at the Other Mother is sort of my blogging idol. She is always coming up with creative ideas from her blog, which I relentlessly rip off. I have wanted to copy her booklist for a while, and have finally gotten around to it.

So you, lucky reader, can now see what is currently off the bookshelf and on my nightstand.

I am reading a very interesting book titled “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families”. It’s about the Rwandan genocides. Its hard to wrap you mind around an entire country shutting down in order to extinguish a minority population. Nearly a million people were hacked to death by their neighbors in a matter of weeks.

What was really interesting to me was the response of the UN and other relief agencies. By having a policy of neutrality in the face of unrelenting evil, they became enablers of the killing. Not only did blue helmeted UN soldiers stand by while with loaded guns as people were being slaughtered, in some cases, they ended up aiding the people who had perpetuated the genocide.

You might be wondering why I am reading something like this. It’s because my sister has spent a couple of years in Africa. She is now in grad school at Columbia, and has left a bunch of boxes in my basement. When she was here for lil’ guys birthday, she encouraged me to read this book, and so I am.

As interesting as watching paint dry, but...

I am having a lot of anxiety these days. I really didn’t sleep at all last night.

Meanwhile, our money problems persist. One client of mine made out the check to the wrong name. Another sent out two checks by accident, and then cancelled one. Of course, I deposited the wrong check.

I’m sure this is pretty boring to you out in blog land, but it’s what’s on my mind.

Furthermore, BU has told me I should file my FAFSA. But I am confused about my taxes, and of course, I haven’t received my W2s yet. So I am stressed that my chances for financial aid are slipping away daily.

Plus there is all of the stress around getting my boy into day care.

This would be a pretty convenient time to believe in God.

I do have one funny thing to share. I have a second interview with the DOD funded place. And you will never guess what the gentleman’s first name is – Dyke. That’s right. The dyke has an interview with Dyke.

Wish me luck.

A million things to do, and I am updating my blog

Blog for Choice was very exciting. I found some new blogs, and was delighted that a couple of new people stopped by.

Also, Mrs. Happy Housewife found her way to my site as well. As you can see from her comments, she is lovely and gracious. Her post reminded me of when my son was just born. My wife would play Sinead O’Connor’s My Darling Child as I breastfed.
I got the pictorial year in review idea from Madd Babies, but I added my own take on it.

Here are some of the lyrics:

My darling child
My darling baby

My darling child
You gave life to me

My darling child
My darling baby

My darling child
You came and saved me

My darling child
My darling baby

My darling child
God gave you to me

Me little ninja
My little dancer

Me little streetfighter
Me little chancer

Me lovely boy
Me lovely babby

My pride and joy
Me little puppy

Why I am Pro-Choice

Growing up, my mom’s best friend was from Manchester, England. Carol seemed exotic with that British accent, yet still familiar.

My mom and she would visit nearly every day. They would drink tea, smoke cigarettes, and roar around the house in laughter. She wasn’t religious or particularly conservative, so I am not sure what she thought of my mother’s proclivity for Limbaughesque monologues.

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I was raised in a steep ideological environment. Only Catholics went to heaven. Women who had abortions did so because they were selfish and could not control themselves sexually. Men never stayed with woman after having sex with them, and certainly not after an abortion. I was sent to a Catholic school, and lived in a Catholic neighborhood. The gardens of our neighborhood were graced with statues of the Virgin stepping on a serpent. I was surrounded by people who believed, more or less, the same thing. I never had any reason to doubt what my parents were telling me.

When my parents would go out of town, Carol would baby sit us. She had kids of her own. I am not sure who was taking care of them when she took care of us. I was in junior high when we got to talking one night while my parents were away. We were standing over the kitchen sink while I did the dishes and she smoked. She confided to me that she had an abortion. Actually, I think she told me she had three. There were illegal. She went to a woman who pounded on her stomach until she aborted.

“Don’t tell your mother,” she commanded, “She’ll pray for me.”

Of course I wouldn’t tell my mother. The experience was remarkable. It was the first time in my very controlled environment that I got a glimpse outside of my parents’ reality. Carol wasn’t selfish. She didn’t seem particularly sexual either. Moreover, it was her husband who had impregnated her before they were married.

I’m not saying that I changed my mind about abortion then and there, but it gave me pause. My vision became a bit wider than it had before. Also, it was strange to have a secret from my mother. I kept Carol’s confidence, and never told my mom about it.

Today, there are a host of reasons why I support choice. Mainly, I believe that the anti-abortion position is fundamentally a religious one. It relies on a belief that life begins at conception. However, there is no scientific agreement on that question. The constitution guarantees us separation of church and state, so I don’t think one religious view should constrict other people’s choices. Also, now that I am a parent and know how much it changes your life, I really believe that it needs to be a free and clear choice.

I think the episode with Carol was seminal. I was struck with how physically painful an illegal abortion must be. Somewhere in my indoctrinated brain, it occurred to me that anyone who would agree to something like that must be desperate. The thought flashed across my mind that their might be substantial reasons for wanting to terminate a pregnancy.

Having been brought up in the Pro-life movement, I have respect for people who are anti-choice. However, I am proud of my support for Choice. And I will fight tooth and nail to keep that choice legally available.

The Happy and the Pissed Off Housewife

First off, I am not mocking you Pissed Off Housewife. I read your posts because I think you’re awesome. AND, it takes more than a Republican voting record and an NRA membership to scare me off. I am from Arizona. However, tell me you are into Precious Moments figurines, and I will start to back away slowly.

Second, by reading POH’s blog, I have a new obsession in my life. This woman:
Mrs. Happy Housewife

Mrs Happy Housewife is my polar opposite, and I find her fascinating. She is a pro-life, Christian Homeschooler who posts pictures of her craft projects and daily schedule. Her schedule is peppered with “tidying up” “daily chores” and “Bible reading”. My schedule is punctuated with watching The View and daily readings of the Anarchist Cookbook.

She has her house separated into zones which she rotates cleaning. She seems interested in Victorian literature.

I kept wondering why I was so drawn to her web site. I even tried to sign up for her members only section, but her web site smelled an imposter and wouldn’t let me.

Then I realized, she reminds me of my mother. In fact, she is exactly like my mother, only my mom was Catholic. One big difference is that my mom didn’t homeschool, but other than that, they are really alike. My mom was pro-life, Republican and anti-feminist. She spent her days organizing the house, the kids, reading Jane Austen and sewing.

So this got me to thinking about my mom who died ten years ago. When I was growing up, my mother was against:
Women who worked outside of the home, abortion, birth control, gun control, Democrats, Protestants, Feminist, Liberals, divorce, sex on television, sex in the movies, sex on the radio, gays and atheists.

She cried uncontrollably when Reagan was shot.

Then after 5 kids and 20 years of marriage, my dad divorced her. You would have thought she would take it hard, but she took to divorce like a fish to water. She got a job and quit going to church. We stopped having a curfew and could watch whatever we wanted on T.V. She was a teacher and she worked in a poor neighborhood. She accepted that two of her daughters were gay. She voted for Clinton, twice. Before she died, she confided to me that she was sure God was woman.

She what is real? Was she really a pro-life Christian woman, or was that an act for my Dad? Did divorce free the real her? Or was a matter of her thinking evolving due to her life circumstances? There was one constant however, to her dying day, her floors were immaculate and her sock drawer organized.

First Birthday

I have been away from blogging because we had a busy weekend. We had a 1 year party for my little guy. That means dealing with the in laws. Honestly, they are a great family, but they are cut from an entirely different cloth than my “get drunk and let everyone know what you think about them” relatives. They communicate in a waspy code I haven’t yet been able to decipher. They tiptoe around making seemingly mild statements. I later learn that these gentle musings are packed with layers of meaning. For instance, my mother-in-law will say innocuously, “The baby is getting so good at walking.” I later learn from my wife that translates to, “Your son is not wearing appropriate shoes. And why not? Because you don’t have a job and can’t afford them. I know you want to stay home with the baby, but I want a straight daughter. Looks like nobody is going to get what they want.”

I have a hard time navigating this world. I should have paid better attention in English Lit when we were reading Edith Wharton. Part of the reason I have a hard time is that I don’t know when to shut up. And there are a whole host of things that shouldn’t be talked about. My wife forgets that I don’t speak Wasp, and forgets to warn me not to talk about certain things. For instance, law school. Apparently, we were supposed to keep my law school attendance a secret until I graduated. Boy, wouldn’t they have been surprise.

Another secret? Chili. My wife and I love my chili. I was brought up in the Southwest, and I can make a bowl of chili. But my father in law has a recipe as well. Its heart healthy, and doesn’t taste at all like it should. I’m sorry, but if there is no bacon grease or beef, you don’t have chili. You have some sort of northeastern bean stew. So when I was talking to my mother in law about the party, she asked me what we were serving.

“Cold cuts,” I said, “oh, and chili.”
“We can bring the chili,” she said.
“That’s ok. We can make it here.”
“Everybody loves Warren’s chili.”

And I knew I had lost.

“Why did you tell her we were having chili?” my wife asked.
“I didn’t know it was a secret.”
“Now we have to have their chili.”
“I just want to be able to talk to them honestly. You know, tell them we prefer our chili.”
“Sorry, it’s complicated.” Translation: “My mother wants a straight daughter, and she’s not going to get that any more than you are going to get to eat your own chili. Looks like nobody is going to get what they want.”

Figure it out

My life has become a Rubriks cube, of sorts. If one part of my life lines up, then all the other sides get jumbled.

Right now I am not working, and am able to spend a lot of time with my son. That makes me happy. However, this has been accompanied by a lot of hand wringing over money. My wife is a dyke of the Waspish variety, and it is not like her to come out and say what she thinks. So every month, I hear some variation of, “I just wanted to let you know that we aren’t going to be able to pay all of our bills this month.” I have been married long enough to know that means, “Would you go out and get a job already, you’re KILLING me.”

If I get a job in my old industry, it would probably solve our financial problems, BUT it means working long hours. I won’t be able to see my son much, and that’s not ok. If I get a part time job, I will make less money, and I am not sure the expense of daycare would be justified. However, if I don’t work at all, we continue to have financial problems. See what I mean? I can’t get the situation to work!

I was so desperate that I actually called up my last employer to inquire about getting my job back. This is the job where I dragged my humongous, pregnant belly out the door, spitting and screaming, head turning a 180, spewing venom. I was a little pissed because I was pregnant, and they were doing construction on the building. I was genuinely afraid of lead and asbestos, and maybe being a little dramatic for affect. At any rate, they wouldn’t hire me back. Go figure.

First Year Check Up

My tough guy didn't even cry when he got his shots! He doesn't get his stoicism from me. Here he is with the pediatrician.

Blogger

There is something whacked about blogger today. Half my template is gone and Madd Babies is totally MIA.

BTW, pissed off housewife, I put your link up in my blog roll. I am a little nervous that you might piss off some of my readers. I was worried about that with Tricia Shore's Comic Mom's blog as well.

I guess this is a good of time as any to say that I don't agree with everything that is said in the blogs that I have linked. Actually, I almost completly disagree with everything that Comic Mom has to say. However, all of the blogs in my links are blogs that make me think, and that I visit nearly every day. The only time I take off a blog is if it appears that the it has been discontinued (I am looking at you Left O Center).

You, gentle reader, can visit them and make up your own mind.

Spiritual Beliefs other mumbo jumbo

Over the last couple of months, I have met more than one person who tagged themselves as spiritual. It irritates me. Probably because I haven’t quite come to terms with my own beliefs, and the spiritual moniker strikes me as a little presumptuous. I think the term spiritual should come with some sacrifice. Go walk around with a hair shirt and live in a cave, and then maybe.

At the same time, I have felt pressure to come to terms with God. I have a kid, and I am going to have to tell him something. Right now, my religious/spiritual beliefs are this mixed bag of wishy washy mumbo jumbo musings. It would be a whole lot easier if I were religious. However, I can’t stand the idea of telling him something I don’t 100% believe in.

When I was growing up, I desperately wanted to be a nun. This strikes some people as odd, but in my Catholic neighborhood, the nuns had the most exciting lives around. They went off on missions to places like Africa and Australia. I contrasted that to the women in my neighborhood that had 8 kids and were beaten on Saturday nights. Joining a convent sounded pretty good.

Alcoholism runs in my family, and by the time I was in high school, I had developed a fine case of it. Along with that, I became, how shall we say this, sexually adventuresome. The convent idea was becoming less viable.

By the time I hit my twenties, I was very sick from drugs and alcohol and entered recovery. By this time, I had no beliefs at all. I wasn’t an atheist. I just didn’t think the question was really important. I was told to pray for a day of sobriety in the morning, and say a prayer of gratitude at night. I was told that it didn’t matter if I believed it or not, to just do it. Remarkably, this worked. I haven’t had a drink or a drug in ten years.

You would think this would be the end of it, but yet, the doubt had never completely vanished from my mind. I was raised Christian, and the whole drama, the virgin birth, the miracles, the rising from the dead, just seem so unlikely.

However, I am a foxhole believer. When things get tough in my life, I do revert back to my childhood faith. I have to admit that things have always worked out, the last Con Con not withstanding.

So where does this leave me? And how do I communicate to my boy that there may be a God, and if there is, surely it is the most important fact of our existence. However, it’s hard to know?

When I was newly sober, an old timer said to me that it isn’t so important whether there is a God or not. What is important is my willingness to believe. I think that this is one of the most profound things I have ever heard. Maybe it’s not so important whether or not Jesus was the Savior, as the idea that we can be Saved.

And these are the two who saved me.

Speaking of staying alive

One of my wife’s favorite uncles is in the hospital. He had a heart attack. Normally, I would be pretty upset about this. However, after last week’s Con Con, I decided to go over to Know Thy Neighbor.org to see if I knew anyone who had signed the petition to ban gay marriage. I hadn’t really thought through what I would do with the information. And wouldn’t you know it, this man who had always been so kind to us, had come to our wedding and wished us well, had signed the petition. Its true that there has been some fraudulent activity. But I talked about it with my wife, and she thinks he probably did sign it.

I was going to confront him on it, but then he had triple bypass surgery. Even my wife says that what he gets for signing that petition.

Staying alive

After little guy hit his first birthday, more than one person said to me, “Congratulations – you have made it for a whole year without killing your baby!” I thought it too. On Friday morning, I mused, “how bad of mothers could we be, he’s still alive.” In fact, I think keeping your baby alive is one of the main skill sets of being a mom. And it’s not a sure thing either.

It starts in your pregnancy when you start reading those “What to expect books”. They should really be called, “Everything that could possibly go wrong.” I used to be a girl who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and could stay up for days at a time doing shots. Suddenly, I was terrified of brie.

Once the baby is born, there is the scariest of all possibilities – SIDS. You make it past the first six months, and you feel a little bit better. Maybe you don't have to check their breathing every ten minutes. Then they start moving around, and the potential for fatal accidents is increased. It took a long time to get it through my head that my little guy has no reasoning abilities. I thought he would stop crawling at the edge of a bed, because obviously there was no bed there. There have been a few trips to the doctors.

So through luck, wisdom and a hard head, we are all still alive. I am grateful.


It is getting harder to take pictures of him, because as soon as he sees the camera, he tries to grab it.

But what’s more fun than a camera? A stove, of course.

Happy Birthday Googie Baba!