by Dave Hill
As a result of my bizzare Chinatown encounter, things have even started to seem kind of messed up at home lately, which is especially strange since I live alone. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder how that whole scenario might have worked out differently. But I guess the real question here is does any of it really matter when it comes to the true measure of a man? This may be convenient thinking on my part, but I tend to think what makes a man a man more than anything else—far more than an interest in sports, an affinity for stuff that runs on gasoline, or even a complete lack of female genitalia, regardless of how good or bad it smells—is his ability to have someone else’s back in a tough situation, what in simpler times was known as “manning up.” And, truth be told, this doesn’t even have to involve a knife fight necessarily (though, once again, knifeplay is preferable).
Manning up can be as simple as walking on the outside of the sidewalk to protect your companion from being trampled by wayward horses or splattered with the contents of chamber pots being emptied from overhead.5 Manning up can also mean doing your damnedest to return a lost wallet to its rightful owner even though the easier thing would be to just stuff it in your pocket like it was your own. And, of course, manning up can also mean letting your friends know that the ornery-looking guy who just walked into the bar in search of cheap booze, loose women, and trouble has a knife fastened to the tip of his right cowboy boot just before you totally kick his and all his friends’ asses, not unlike Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse, a film that continues to both shape and define us as a people to this day.
It turns out that manning up is also something you can do as you ride on a crowded subway headed for Brooklyn during evening rush hour, minding your own business and totally not expecting to have to man up at all at any point during the journey. Let me break it down for you:
It was a rainy night, which only added to the foul mood of commuters forced to press up against one another in the name of getting from one place to another. I did my best to block it all out by reading a book held eye-strainingly close to my face, something by one of the more butch Brontës I think.
As the train swelled with more people at one of the stops, a couple of feisty male cross-dressers pushed and shoved their way onto the train, sending several passengers flying across the car, one of whom was an attractive young lady who just so happened to slam right into my chest. Naturally, my sturdy frame stopped her in her tracks. The poor gal must have felt like she’d just hit an especially sexy brick wall or something.
“Sorry,” the winsome superfox offered while casting a disapproving yet sexy glance at the Feisty Cross-dressers.
“It’s okay,” I said to her in the way that a man who has absolutely no problem with having a pretty young thing slam right into his chest might.
As the attractive woman composed herself, a damp, middle-aged man began to chastise the Feisty Cross-dressers for so rudely shoving their way onto the train. He was swearing and everything and, as is often the case with Feisty Cross-dressers, they were not having it.
“That’s just plain rude,” the man said. “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
“No you di-in’t,” one of the Feisty Cross-dressers snapped predictably in return.
“Actually, yes, I did.”
“No, you di-in’t!”
Things were heating up pretty quickly as the Feisty Cross-dressers continued to insist that everything the man had just said or done had not actually happened at all despite the fact that—by all accounts—it clearly had. Were it not for the four or five passengers pressed between them, it seemed as if the middle-aged man and the Feisty Cross-dressers might have come to blows. The war of words continued for a couple more stops as everyone near them looked around uncomfortably, as if they thought a bomb might go off at any minute unless Hollywood’s Wesley Snipes6 were able to come to the rescue and quickly diffuse it.
Eventually, the train pulled into the station closest to wherever the Feisty Cross-dressers were headed and they pushed and shoved their way off the train, sending all in their path stumbling around the subway car and struggling for both balance and decency once again. Once the Feisty Cross-dressers were off the train, everyone on board heaved a sigh of relief. Everyone except for me, that is. As the train sat in the station with its doors still wide open, I intuitively sensed that the trouble had only just begun.
“This ain’t over,” I thought. “This ain’t7 anywhere near over!”
Now I was getting worked up. But, like any seasoned crime-fighter would, I pretended to be oblivious to my surroundings and continued reading my book. Meanwhile, the man who had been arguing with the Feisty Cross-dressers stood in the doorway with his back to the platform while the pretty lady remained next to me, still marveling at my rock-hard yet welcoming frame while I subtly stood guard on the opposite side of the doorway.
Of course my intuition was spot-on. And as the train idled in the station just long enough to incite groans of frustration from its passengers, the Feisty Cross-dressers appeared once again, this time wielding a large closed umbrella. Then, as one hung back a few feet, the other swung the umbrella in the direction of the middle-aged man’s head. It is at this point that the attractive woman stopped contemplating my chest and, presumably, our potential future together and gasped along with everyone else near the doorway at the sight of what would undoubtedly lead to bloodshed (and ultimately the cover of the New York Post) in a matter of milliseconds. As for me, well, I continued pretending to read my book while taking in the entire scene in my peripheral vision.
As you might expect, this whole scenario was all happening in slow motion for me. So, for dramatic effect, I waited until the umbrella was just about to connect with the oblivious middle-aged man’s head before I slowly lowered my book and deftly reached out with a single hand to catch the umbrella just before it ripped the man’s skull wide open. The sound of the umbrella hitting my hand was like a thunderclap, echoing throughout the station and probably some other stations like an alarm of justice.
Since the middle-aged man had his back to his would-be assailants, he was totally oblivious to what had just taken place. For all he knew, I had just mysteriously thrust my hand directly behind his head like some sort of crazy person. And, perhaps exhausted from arguing with the Feisty Cross-dressers earlier, he didn’t even bother to question it. I imagine I could have explained to him how I had just saved his life, but, of course, that sort of thing goes against the hero code.
As for the Feisty Cross-dressers, one might expect them to have become enraged at me for foiling their attack, and reasonably so. But as I caught their umbrella in my hand, the look on both their faces instead seemed to say, “Wow, we were really hoping to split that damp, middle-aged guy’s skull wide fucking open, but we gotta admit, what you did just now, well, that was pretty awesome! And while, sure, your delicate features and wavy locks do suggest the kind of femininity we strive to attain on a daily basis, we can honestly say, on behalf of all men who go to great lengths to give the outward appearance that they are, in fact, fully functioning women with lady parts and everything, that you, sir, are one of the manliest men we’ve seen in our entire gender-bending lives.” And with that, they slowly backed away, presumably to reconsider the true meaning of the word fierce.
“But, Dave, what about the hot young superfox who couldn’t stop thinking about your chest and probably other parts of your scorching-hot bod?”
And to that I say, calm down. I was just about to get to that.
As the subway doors finally closed and the train lurched out of the station with order restored, the hot young superfox slowly looked up at me with her big doe eyes and half-whispered, “Wow, you’re good.”
“Yeah, I know.” I smiled back at her thoughtfully yet sexily.
Then I went back to reading my book, only this time for real. Then, as fate would have it, the seriously attractive young woman and I both got off at the next station.
“I wonder if she’ll ask me to come direct
ly back to her apartment to ravage me or if she’ll want to stop off for dinner and sexy drinks first,” I thought as she headed for the station exit just a few feet ahead of me, the clicking of her high heels echoing throughout the station like a goddamn mating call.
I waited what felt like an eternity for the seriously attractive young woman to finally turn around and say something, anything to me, but instead she just kept on walking out of that station and into the rainy yet sultry night.
I know, I can’t believe it, either. I also never saw her again.
Sometimes I wonder if maybe I was the one who was supposed to say something before she disappeared into the night like that. Or maybe she took one look at my scar and decided being friends was just about all she could handle. It’s hard to say, really. One thing I know for sure, though, is that it’s not always easy being a real man. But guys like me—we don’t have much of a choice now, do we?
The Lord’s Work
There’s a phrase my friends in the the UK often use that I just can’t get enough of—“could do,” a seemingly innocuous pair of words that British people say to let someone down gently after they’ve suggested doing something that’s pretty much guaranteed to suck. For example, if your friend Marty asks if you want take a bus across town with him to visit his incontinent great-uncle and help him finish up some expired cold cuts before taking turns wrestling him shirtless in his basement, you just say “could do” and you’re usually off the hook. Sure, it sounds like the suggestion of possibility is there, almost like you’re seriously considering it, but what you’re really saying is something more along the lines of “Look, Marty, I recognize that what you’ve just asked me is indeed physically possible, but there’s no way in hell I’ll have any part of it—not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Seriously. No. F-ing. Way. Mention it again and I’ll stab you.… Hey, we’re still friends, right, Marty?”
“Could do”—it really packs a wallop.
One reason I like the phrase so much is because I’ve never quite gotten the hang of saying “no.” As a result, I’ve found myself in countless situations I wouldn’t wish on a Nazi or any other jerk, either, everything from having to sit through a community theater production of Nunsense in the middle of Long Island to catching last call with a friend of a friend of a friend at a bar called the Fat Cock in the East Village that, as it turned out, wasn’t nearly as chicken-themed as I was originally led to believe. Couple my inability to say the word “no” with my mother’s inability to hear that same word and the results could be tragic.
This is the story of one of those many, many tragedies.
Shortly after my thirtieth birthday, at a time when most adults are out having lives and stuff, I had a date with my mother—one of our regular mother-son outings—another night of ice-skating at the local rink, all-you-can-drink instant hot chocolate, an organ player, and no one under sixty on the ice except for me. After a couple of hours of this, my mother was driving me back to my sister Miriam’s house, where I had been living for the past few months while “plotting my next move.” As we pulled into Miriam’s driveway, I gathered my skates up from the floor of the car. Then my mother cut off the engine and slowly started to smile.
“There’s going to be a benefit for retired nuns and priests at the new hotel downtown in a couple of weeks,” she said. “I thought you might like to go.”
“That doesn’t sound like my kind of thing,” I told her.
“Really?” she said. “There’s going to be a nice buffet and there will be actual retired nuns and priests at the event.”
She said that last part as if we had just won the lottery or a crime-solving monkey or something.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“But, Davey, you haven’t heard the best part yet,” my mom said with a glimmer in her eye.
“It gets better?”
“A lot better. There’s going to be a concert after lunch featuring none other than Maureen … McGovern,” my mom said wide-eyed, the “F” word1 in between “Maureen” and “McGovern” implied.
“Who’s that?”
“‘Who’s that?’ You’re kidding, right? I thought you were into music.”
It turned out Maureen McGovern is the fiery chanteuse perhaps best known for singing the theme from The Poseidon Adventure and whatever other show tunes she could get her jazzy hands on. My mom was convinced Maureen McGovern was right up there with the Stones.
“I think I’m busy then,” I lied.
“Okay. I guess you’ll just let me know.”
“I really don’t think so, Mom.”
“Well, you need to let me know soon because I need to make sure there’ll be tickets left.”
I’m not sure which was more disturbing, the fact that my mom was totally ignoring me or the notion that benefit luncheons for retired clergy followed by an afternoon of wall-to-wall show tunes actually had sellout potential. I kissed her on the cheek and jumped out of the car, something I should have done as soon as she slowed down to about ten miles per hour.
Not being an older Catholic lady, I didn’t give much thought to the benefit after that. But a couple of days later, my mother called.
“Hi, Davey. Guess who I ran into up at church today—Father Aberdeen!”
Father Aberdeen was the priest in charge of music at the school masses back in high school. Since I played guitar, I’d play at mass because I could get out of class to practice acoustic renditions of songs like “On Eagle’s Wings” and other church hits. It was awesome, almost like having an ejector seat I could use to get out of anything I didn’t feel like doing during school hours.
“That’s nice. Tell him I said hello next time you see him.”
“You should tell him yourself. He’d love to catch up. In fact, I mentioned the benefit for the nuns and priests and he seemed really into it. Turns out he’s a huge McGovern fan, too, maybe the biggest.”
Then she paused and said, “Hey, Davey, I have an idea. What if you and Father Aberdeen went to the benefit together?”
I know she wanted it to sound like it was an idea she had just come up with on the spot, but it sounded more like she was reading it off cue cards she had written up the night before and been practicing with all morning. I saw through her little plan right away. As far as I was concerned, she was just trying to get me to spend some quality one-on-one time with a priest in hopes that I might become more “holy” or something. Older Catholic ladies live for that kind of crap.
“Uh-oh, that’s the doorbell,” I lied. “Gotta go.”
“So I guess I’ll just plan on it unless I hear otherwise,” I heard my mom say as I pulled the receiver away from my ear. “Your father and I need to run a couple of errands before the benefit anyway, so it’ll work out great if you and Father Aberdeen just head down there together. Thanks, Davey. This’ll be fun!”
I suddenly felt like a shop owner in a mob movie who tells some henchman how he really doesn’t need any protection and then the guy shows up to collect with a baseball bat the next week anyway. I tried to just put the whole thing behind me, but sure enough my mom called again the next day, asking if I’d had a chance to call Father Aberdeen.
“No,” I told her through clenched teeth.
“He’s expecting your call.”
“Why would he be expecting my call?”
“Because I told him you’d be calling,” my mom said as if we had just had this conversation moments earlier and I had a head injury and sometimes needed to hear things twice. “What am I supposed to do when I see Father Aberdeen at church and he asks me why you haven’t called him yet? It’ll be embarrassing. He’ll think I’m some sort of crazy person!”
“And he wouldn’t be alone on that one,” I thought. Still, there was no denying this woman was good. Real good.
Reluctantly, I called Father Aberdeen the next day. I’d always liked the guy back in high school so it was actually nice to hear his voice and catch up. It turned out he’d recently been assigned
to the church near my parents’ house, the one I went to every Sunday as a kid. He was recovering from back-to-back heart attacks. And, as we spoke, he definitely sounded weary in that way one tends to get after having your ass handed to you like that.
“I ran into your mother after mass on Sunday,” Father Aberdeen said. “She said you might be taking me to a benefit next week for retired nuns and priests followed by a concert by Maureen McGovern?”
“Um, uh, yeah, sure,” I stammered, masking my rage.
“It sounds like it’ll be very nice. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even ask you to break out your guitar and play your famous rendition of ‘On Eagle’s Wings’ from back in high school! Ha ha!”
“Ha ha! That would be both humorous and unexpected, Father. I can’t even imagine! Ha ha!”
Panic began to set in as Father Aberdeen and I spoke for a few more minutes. Then I immediately called my mother to suss out how, despite my earlier unambiguous protests, it now seemed I, a thirty-year-old man with his whole life ahead of him, was attending a benefit for clergy followed by a Maureen F-ing McGovern concert with an actual priest who, from the sound of things, might very well have a third heart attack right in front of me.
“Father Aberdeen really wants to go,” my mom said. “You can’t not take him!”
“Yeah, I can.”
“Great. So you’ll do it!” my mom bulldozed. “Thanks, Davey!”
I was trapped.
My mother then started calling me every day about the benefit as if she were masterminding an elaborate air strike. There were a lot of details to hash out: what car would I be driving to pick up Father Aberdeen and would I be getting that car cleaned beforehand, what was I going to wear to the benefit and would I be getting that cleaned beforehand, did I need a haircut and, if so, would I be getting that beforehand, etc. And since he was trying to recover from those two heart attacks, Father Aberdeen had more dietary restrictions than a diabetic supermodel.