by Alex McElroy
Soon death threats infested my inbox. Soon no one would answer my calls—not even my mother, who received dozens of threats every day and was furious at me for acting with such terrible judgment. Soon the men protested outside my apartment. Soon I was fired. Soon I wanted only to sleep. Soon I was living off takeout and dread. Soon there was a knock on my door, and behind it was Dyson and inside his mouth was a promise to make everything right.
what the men needed to know
I started a list of all the things men needed to know to become better men. I had no intention of showing the men the list. The list was a source of solace for me. It was a psychological security blanket. In my alone time, I added to it in response to whatever had happened that day, then read it out loud to myself, as if casting a spell.
All women have names, I wrote to kick off the list. And rarely are their names Sugar or Honey or Sweetie.
Clearing your phlegm is inappropriate in professional settings.
Flatulence is inappropriate in professional settings.
The Atmosphere is a professional setting.
You’re not really very experienced.
Women know when you’re staring.
Shirtsleeves are not napkins.
Don’t make other women your mother. Only your mother’s your mother.
There is nothing brave about killing an animal that cannot shoot a gun.
There are no reasons for guns to exist.
Keep your hands to yourself.
What you consider pain is likely mere inconvenience.
You have never truly been scared.
Your jokes have never been funny.
sixteen
THE MORNING SUN smeared pink light over the tips of the trees. The sheds were boxes of noise: snoring and coughing and grunts loud enough to compete with the birds. Dyson and I had given the trough a thorough bleaching and hosing the night before. But as we stepped out of the woods, vomit was all I could smell.
We had drunk through the night to settle our nerves and now a hangover thickened my thoughts. In the barn, as Dyson outlined plans for the morning, his words wafted away like breaths in the winter. “Uh-huh,” I kept saying. He was kind enough not to ask if I was paying attention.
We set up for breakfast: bowls and spoons on the picnic table, a plastic bin of bran flakes and a carton of tepid rice milk on a table pressed against the fence. Outside, I unlocked the shed doors and blew into a tin whistle. Men lumbered outside. “You have three minutes to dress and convene at the barn,” I said.
No one moved. I blew the whistle again. They scrambled inside.
Dyson and I waited at the head of the table, close to the fence. “Try to stop shaking,” he said. I hadn’t realized I was.
The men entered wearing their tracksuits. They were personalized—names on the tags—and one size smaller than what the men normally wore. They tugged the material out of discomfort, trying to accommodate their stomachs and thighs. The sizes were meant to remind them of the stranglehold of masculinity. It would encourage them to work out harder, to eat less than they wanted. Peter, however, was unbothered by the fit. He wore the smallest available size—a Medium—and the tracksuit made his slender frame appear athletic and muscular.
The men retrieved their bowls and formed a line at the front. They showed signs of the previous day’s exertions: pasty faces, eyes bobbing like boats in their skulls—though I didn’t know them well enough to decide if these were markers of illness or how they naturally looked in the morning.
Dyson poured a cup of bran flakes into each bowl. They shuffled to me for the milk. “This can’t be all we’re getting,” Gerry Simpatico said.
“The bran flakes are enriched with calcium and protein and every vitamin your body requires,” I said. “With none of the excessive sugars or fats you find in processed cereals.”
“Your animal products, your bacon, your steak, and your eggs—they’re all loads on the body,” Dyson said. “You’ve been sold these crazy ideas about what you’re supposed to eat. The food pyramid is a propaganda campaign engineered by agricultural monopolies in service to Big Pharmacy. The more you follow the pyramid, the sicker you get. The sicker you get the more pills you need. We have known this for decades, but the machine keeps chugging along.”
It was all the convincing they needed. The men trusted Dyson. They looked at him with the pride of aging fathers, their trust condescending and fearful. They lifted their bowls for the rice milk with converts’ enthusiasm. Randy was last in line. “Thanks a million, honey,” he said when I poured. He winked. I nearly dug out his eye.
Dyson passed around copies of the daily schedule:
7:00 AM–8:00 AM
Physical Training
8:00 AM–9:00 AM
Breakfast
9:00 AM–12:00 PM
Morning Construction Session
12:00 PM–1:00 PM
Lunch
1:00 PM–2:00 PM
Power In Emotions (PIEs)
2:00 PM–2:15 PM
Job Training
2:15 PM–6:00 PM
Afternoon Construction Session
6:00 PM–7:00 PM
Dinner
7:00 PM–9:00 PM
Lecture Series
9:00 PM
Sleep
“We skipped Physical Training today, but don’t get complacent,” he said. “We’ll be up early tomorrow working your hearts. That’s a promise.”
The men groaned lovingly.
“Remember,” he said, “you men are here to transform your minds and your bodies.”
“How long before we’re in peak physical shape?” Gerry asked.
“You’ll be fit when you are,” Dyson said. “We’re not gonna rush you. Impatience is the seed of sabotage. Like I always tell you, if you want a garden, you need to buy soil, and if you want to buy soil…?” He paused, inviting the men to finish his sentence as one.
Together, they said, “You need to know where to park,” as if reciting scripture.
The aphorism didn’t make any sense. But meaning never mattered to Dyson. In his speeches and lectures, he aimed for the cadence of wisdom, wasted no time striving for content. Cadence was far more important than content. Cadence dug a trench in the mind. Establish cadence and any word you whispered would flow, convincing and clear.
Dyson introduced the ground rules. Each man would receive a personal residence and three meals every day. Each man would have to contribute to the community in exchange for food, education, and housing. Contributions included building ten additional sheds—one for each man—but no one could live alone until all the sheds were completed.
A spoon clanged a bowl. “Back in the bowl,” I said.
“I see you’re hungry,” Dyson said. “But you must delay gratification. It is the gifts we give to ourselves that cause the most pain over time.”
Gerry lowered his spoon.
Dyson outlined the Family Dinners. On Sunday evenings, we would gather for a ceremonial meal prepared by Dyson and me. The men had two responsibilities: to eat and enjoy.
Leon asked, “Will the Family Dinners be like yesterday’s?”
“Similar,” Dyson said. Then, with a laugh: “But maybe a little less messy.”
“Because I feel amazing today,” Gerry said.
“All that stuff about toxins was right on the money,” Leon said.
“Square in the numbers,” said Hughie.
“Sure, I’m a little dazed, but I don’t think I’ve felt so light in a while.”
“Whatever you put in the food,” Gerry said, “we needed it. I had so many toxins infecting my system—”
“So many toxins in my mind,” Leon added.
“My mind’s part of my system, Leon,” said Gerry. “There was so much in my system that needed to get the hell out.”
“I didn’t know they were weighing me down until they were gone,” Peter said.
“I’m light as lingerie now,” Randy said.
Dyson
half-shrugged in my direction. I nodded my approval.
“Absolutely,” he told them. “We plan to maintain the same procedures from yesterday.”
“Emptying Out,” I said. This was what we’d called it as teenagers.
“Emptying Out,” Dyson confirmed. “Keeps your immune systems pure. No matter how healthy we eat and how hard we work, toxins will continue to slip into the body. Some people might find the practice disgusting. Some might say it’s dangerous and unnatural.” He spoke with an enthusiasm that disturbed me, that almost seemed directed toward me, as if he were trying to convince me, even more than the men, of the validity of his words. “Emptying Out is not some arbitrary task. It is the only proven defense against toxicity: both physical and mental.”
“I’m living proof,” Gerry said.
A chorus of Me, toos followed.
Dyson gave the men permission to eat. They rushed the gluey cereal to their mouths.
“Slower,” I said, with my eyes trained on Dyson.
“Learn to savor this time,” he said. “These three meals are yours to reflect on why you are here. Ask yourselves: What do I hope to achieve? Who will I become?”
* * *
After breakfast, the men cleared the barn of the tools and building materials to begin work on the sheds. They asked for blueprints. Dyson advised them to study the shape, integrity, and character of the sheds for at least three hours before starting construction. “Understand before you create,” he told them. He did not tell them he had lost the blueprints for the original sheds. “What you see will guide your construction. Every shed should resemble its father.”
He spoke to them from the door of the barn. I sat at the table watching for signs of discord, for cracks deepening between him and the men, but his body blocked my view of the others. I was angry at him for hiding the job training, and the way he spread his arms across the entrance—to prevent me from seeing the men and their reactions—frustrated me even more. He pulled the door close to his shoulder until he filled the opening fully. I could see only his back, only his thighs, only the white sky in which his head seemed to hover.
seventeen
A TENUOUS PEACE permeated the barn after Dyson left, the sort of calm that follows a storm, or precedes it. My head pulsed to the beat of men slamming hammers. I tried sketching notes for Power In Emotions—or PIEs, the therapy session I would lead that afternoon—but my hangover blotted out every thought. I stretched over the table and crossed my arms into a pillow, then plummeted into sleep. I dreamed of knuckles and fists pounding front doors, thousands of clenched hands drumming down on a plank of wood toothpicked over a hole in the earth.
“Grub time!” someone shouted from outside the barn. “Building sheds all morning. Looking for the grub we deserve.”
I rolled off the table, brushed the sleep out of my eyes. My arms tingled from having been slept on. Saliva caulked my mouth. My stomach was like a vise. I lurched to the door where the men crowded the entrance, sweating and red. Their tracksuits, unzipped to the stomach, exposed forests of curly, graying hair.
Gerry rushed past me. “Where’s he at?” he said. He circled the table twice, ducked down to peer underneath it. Leon hooked his fingers into the fencing and peered inside the pantry.
“Dyson is preparing the evening lecture,” I said.
“I swore I saw him outside,” said someone else. “Coming this way.”
“Not even a minute ago,” Gerry added.
The men scrambled outside but returned disappointed.
“So Dyson’s really not coming?”
“Not even just to say hi?”
“You don’t need Dyson to eat,” I said.
“What’s for lunch?” Randy asked.
I couldn’t remember what we planned to feed them. But the bran flakes and the rice milk remained on the table. “Your stomachs are still very sensitive,” I said. “Please grab a bowl and form a line at the front.”
“You’re kidding me,” said Gerry. He waved in disgust.
“Dyson went over this, Gerry,” said Peter. “The bran flakes are fortified with every nutrient we need to thrive and survive.” Of all the men, only he appeared untouched by the work, hair combed, no dirt on his face, track jacket zipped to the neck. I wanted to thank him but couldn’t. I’d decided to have an adversarial relationship with the men, and although I appreciated Peter’s kindness—though a small, embarrassed part of me found his protectiveness endearing—I didn’t want to complicate the roles we played for each other.
Before I could give the men permission to eat they were already finished, bowls tipped to their mouths as they slurped chunky puddles of milk. They fled the barn without cleaning up. Peter remained at the table. He patiently lifted the spoon to his mouth. “Eat faster,” I told him.
He pointed to his full bowl. “Isn’t this our time to reflect?”
“Please get out,” I said.
“Happy to,” he said.
Alone, I let my resentments tangle and strengthen. I resented the men for ignoring me, for rushing through lunch, I resented Dyson for bringing me here, and, most of all, I resented Lucas Devry for igniting the fuse on my life. PIEs started in twenty minutes. But I didn’t want to lead the session. I had no plan and little headspace to sketch out a plan. Yet canceling would only embolden the men. I couldn’t surrender anything to them.
Dyson kept a box of golf pencils and a legal pad full of recipe notes in a kitchen drawer. I would make them write out their feelings, a simple, introductory task that should prevent them from speaking. I tore out twelve clean sheets of paper, then carried them and the pencils with me to the clearing. The men clustered around the sheds as if they were teenagers smoking. Two men stood on opposite sides of a plywood board tossing a hammer back and forth. Randy awarded points based on the difficulty of the catch. William Gremb—the Yoga Man—squatted and flattened his tongue against the shed’s door. He kept it pressed to the wood as he rose to a stand. Upright, he bowed with his hands in prayer.
After some coaxing, the men formed a circle on a patch of grass. The barn draped its shadow over us. I passed around supplies. “Power In Emotions sessions will parallel your physical and intellectual training, helping uncover unconscious emotional barriers. The body cannot improve without the growth of the heart and the mind.”
Gerry lifted his hand.
“Dyson is working on the evening lecture,” I told him. My eye started twitching.
“Why wasn’t Dyson at lunch?” someone asked without raising his hand.
“We’ve been over this.”
“I’m still hungry.”
“Dinner is five hours away.”
“What does Dyson think of these sessions?”
“We should begin,” I said.
“How long will this last?”
“We were in the middle of Hammers.”
“But Dyson will be here for dinner, right?”
I had no intention of hurting the men. But they had refused my civility. Kindness made them hostile. My passivity only fueled their aggression. “Does everyone have a pencil?” I asked. “Does everyone have a slip of paper?” I could’ve made them write. I could’ve told them to ask themselves why they felt compelled to challenge whatever I said. I tried to feel sympathy for them. These men are depressed, jobless, and broke, possibly suicidal, I thought. They deserve a supportive environment. Looking at them, I didn’t see twelve downtrodden men in need of my help but twelve tormentors trolling me. They were no different from the protestors outside my apartment. Before the men had arrived, during one of our walks in the woods, Dyson told me that all men were raised to believe that pain is necessary for growth. They recognize change only through pain, he said. It’s a pervasive problem for men. A problem, sure, but one we ought to have used to our advantage—we needed every advantage—not all the time, of course, but only during extreme circumstances, such as this one. I was angry at them. And I wanted to hurt them. I believed seeing them hurting might free me of m
y anger, as if justice were some kind of cosmic seesaw in which bringing them down might lift my spirits. This is not justice, however. This is revenge. And there is no end to revenge. That’s the point of it.
“First,” I said, “bunch up your paper and toss it over your shoulder.… I’ll wait.”
They did as I asked, perhaps thinking I would cancel the session.
“Now hold your pencil in your dominant hand… okay? Everyone ready? Peter, I see—okay good. Now—and this is very important—are you listening? Now: take that pencil and jam the point into your nondominant palm.”
The men didn’t move.
“Until it breaks,” I said. “Begin.”
Randy Dent raised his hand.
“Begin,” I said.
Randy said, “You want us to—”
“Begin.”
Randy lowered his hand. One man cautiously tapped the point into his palm. The Cheater Man slipped the pencil through fingers, faked a yelp. A twitch of a hurt crossed a third man’s face when the point hit skin.
Nothing they did satisfied me. They weren’t hurting themselves—they were faking it, trying to protect themselves. “I told you to jam the point until it breaks.”
Hughie, the Sports Man, was the first to do as I asked—perhaps out of some residual impulse to please coaches. He rocketed his pencil into his palm and shouted, “Touchdown!” Leon followed Hughie’s lead, though he shouted, “Hoo-rah!” as the point entered his skin. Dr. Mapplethorpe ground his pencil in, yowling and shuddering.
The pain he brought on himself was more intense than I anticipated. Unconsciously, I winced at the sight of blood in his palm. The men noticed this and seemed pleased by my reaction. My tenderness excited them—here was proof that I could be rattled, proof they could disturb me by hurting themselves. Soon all of them were digging their pencils into their palms, twisting the points deeper and shrieking.
“Softer!” I shouted. It was hard to hear me through their screams.