Amateur
Page 13
I have only ever known one father, and I knew he was hoping for my forgiveness, but I couldn’t find that quite yet. So I told him, in my Before body, that I was so sorry that it had happened to him.
He looked surprised, the difference between us so clear in that moment. I never forgot it because it felt like the foundation I could build a life on: despite everything, I believed that as long as he was alive, he could change.
I still do.
• • •
The desert night made spooky sounds, and the air felt electric with so much that I could not see in the dark. Soon, I would head inside and go to sleep on this strange bed and wake up to this same landscape, bathed in light. I thought about the Stanford race historian Allyson Hobbs, who had written the book on passing. She and I had spoken for hours, sharing a communion that spanned far beyond the materials of our work, searching for hope while not turning our eyes away from this America, now.
“The tide will turn, and then we’ll move into another moment, and then that moment will have its own historical significance and historical particularities,” she said. “That’s what I say to my students, but in my own heart, I feel so pessimistic right now because I just feel that so much of what’s happening is not—it really is unprecedented. How do you explain all of this?”
It’s a paradox, to know we need a future that we can’t yet imagine.
Like being a man, lying on the roof of my car in the desert, inhabiting the same skin I’d had back in high school. As a teenager, I often drove out to the old, abandoned airfield beyond the airport. I used these same eyes to watch the planes take off for hours, envisioning with this same brain the life I would someday live in New York, or Los Angeles, or Tokyo, confusing freedom with escaping the past.
But we need a clear-eyed sense of our history, even the ugly parts, because without it we are mindless actors in stories we never agreed to. I thought of my mom, and how she’d envisioned a life for me and then created it. I thought of the night I’d spent recently in Washington, DC, alone in her old stomping grounds. I’d wandered late one Saturday past the Washington Monument and the White House, Constitution Gardens and the monument for fallen soldiers, until I’d arrived at the Lincoln Memorial. I could see her, an aspiring scientist, full of potential as this country we share, watching Martin Luther King Jr. say that he had a dream that one day we would realize it.
I did not care if this man was my dad, I realized, on the roof of the car in the desert, because this was never a story about fathers. I am, and always will be, only ever my mother’s son.
Just then, out in the desert, two coyotes—those wounded-looking tricksters—ran past me, giving me a shiver. They paused and turned back, and sure, I was scared a little, but as we looked at one another I unbuttoned my shirt and faced whatever was to come, with my invented chest and arms wide-open.
Acknowledgment
* * *
My dear friend Emily Carlson’s clear-eyed kindness and poetic sensibility in both life and writing enriched each draft of this book. My work here was sustained by her and other generous readers, among them Anisse Gross, Julie Greicus, Annie Mebane, and Lauren Morelli, who have each taught me so much about how to tell a better story, especially this one.
I am grateful to the editors I’ve worked with over the years, whose insights helped shape my writing here: Isaac Fitzgerald, Tyler Trykowski, Heather Landy, Indrani Sen, and especially Xana Antunes, who did a beautiful job editing the story I wrote for Quartz, “Why Men Fight,” upon which this book is based. I am so thankful to everyone at Quartz for helping me hone these ideas, and allowed me the time and space to pursue them, especially Kevin Delaney, who greenlit the original boxing story, and Zach Seward, who could not have been a better boss.
I am indebted to the experts I spoke to who patiently and graciously engaged my “beginner’s mind.” Sarah Helweg DiMuccio, whose work with Danish men elegantly highlighted the incredible impact of cultural narratives on masculinity. Allyson Hobbs, whose thoughtful scholarship on racial passing gave me a much more visceral understanding of that subject, among many others. Many thanks to Michael Kimmel for his grounding, richly resourced perspective on masculinities, and his generosity in connecting me to his vast network. Nell Irvin Painter’s work on whiteness was critical to this book, and I still find myself thinking most days about our conversation on race and masculinity, which truly changed how I saw everything. I am grateful to Robert Sapolsky and Barry Starr for helping me understand the ins and outs of testosterone. Caroline Simard’s fascinating scholarship on unconscious bias was foundational to the chapter on work. R. Tyson Smith’s perspective on masculinity and violence, and his own interest in why men fight, taught me quite a bit about the sociology of gender. And Niobe Way’s brilliant work with adolescents, along with our many conversations about “good” and “bad” men, finally gave me a language for the “shadow” I’d spent years attempting to name.
Additional thanks to people I spoke to for chapters I didn’t ultimately include in the book, but who contributed to this book, and gave me a lot to think about, nonetheless: Tiffany Apcynski, Marcie Bianco, June Carbone, Mike Castle, Anna Marie Clifton, Joelle Emerson, Abby Ferber, Ellen Healy, Caroline Heldman, Aaron Hess, Dacher Keltner, C.J. Pascoe, Andrew Reiner, Tagart Cain Sobotka, Sabastian Caine Roy, Neo L. Sandja, Beth Scheer, Dawn Sharifan, Maxine Williams, and the team at Here Be Dragons. Special thanks to Gaines Blasdel and Cordelia Fine.
I am lucky to have friends who were patient enough to entertain hours of conversation about the world of this book, especially Rae Tutera, Carmel Lobello, and Emily Molina. I am grateful always to Michelle Tea, who is a national treasure. I am indebted to many writers who have supported my work, especially Ann Friedman, Roxane Gay, Garth Greenwell, Saeed Jones, and Liz Plank.
I am grateful for the cover of this book, designed by Xavier Schipani, an incredible talent who I am lucky to also call a friend.
Infinite thanks to my excellent editor at Scribner, Sally Howe, whose faith and sharp vision got me through my hardest moments, and who always (as my mom would say) kept things in perspective. Thanks also to the entire team at Scribner who have worked so hard on behalf of this book; as well as all the lovely and tenacious crew at my publisher across the pond, Canongate.
Thanks to my formidable and brilliant agent, Lindsay Edgecombe, for her excellent guidance on this project, and whose fierce and abiding faith taught me a lot about fighting too.
I am grateful to Chris Lewarne, Andrew Myerson, and Julie Anne Kelly at Haymakers for Hope for welcoming me into their wild and beautiful world. Thanks to Stephen Cash and all the fighters I trained with, for showing me a new way to love and be loved.
I owe much to my coach, Danny Mangual, for teaching me how to come forward, and for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself. Thanks, especially, for being the friend I didn’t know how much I needed.
Thank you to my small but mighty family. My sister, Clare, her husband, Dan, my brother, Brett, his wife, Cristina, and my nephews, Ronin and Sebastian. Special thanks to Clare and Brett for sharing their own journeys so candidly, and for always having my back. Brett, I hope to someday be half as good a father as you are. Clare, thank you for showing me how, and why, to fight. You have always been the wisest person I know.
I am so grateful for my mom, for teaching me to see everything, even gender, with a beginner’s mind. Her golden core shines on and on.
And thank you to my wife, Jessica Bloom, for showing me the adventure in everything, especially the hard parts, and for being a brave and honest collaborator in life and art. Let’s never stop.
Further Reading
* * *
These were the most useful works I read as I wrote my own. Without these writers, this book would not exist.
June Carbone, Marriage Markets: How Inequality Is Remaking the American Family
Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender
Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing
in American Life
Dacher Keltner, The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence
Michael Kimmel, Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era
Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People
C.J. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School
Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
R. Tyson Smith, Fighting for Recognition: Identity, Masculinity, and the Act of Violence in Professional Wrestling
Niobe Way, Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection
And:
Bill Buford, Among the Thugs
Raewyn Connell, Masculinities
James Gilligan, Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic
bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
I’ve read too many excellent articles in print and online to list here, but I especially recommend (and I’m particularly indebted to) the work and thinking of Susan Chira, Lindy West, and Amanda Hess at the New York Times; Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic; Ann Friedman and Roxane Gay across many publications; and Saeed Jones at BuzzFeed and beyond.
About the Author
* * *
© AMOS MAC
Thomas Page McBee was the first transgender man to ever box in Madison Square Garden. He is the author of an award-winning memoir, Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man, which was named a best book of 2014 by NPR Books, BuzzFeed, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly. His essays and reportage have appeared in the New York Times, Playboy, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, Pacific Standard, Glamour, and Quartz. He has given talks on rethinking masculinity to colleges and organizations around the country. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.
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Also by Thomas Page McBee
Man Alive: A True Story of Violence,
Forgiveness and Becoming a Man
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Interior design by Erich Hobbing
Jacket Illustration by Xavier Schipani
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McBee, Thomas Page, author.
Title: Amateur : a true story about what makes a man / Thomas Page McBee.
Description: New York : Scribner, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017061731 | ISBN 9781501168741 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501168758 (tp) | ISBN 9781501168765 (eISBN)
Subjects: LCSH: Men—Identity. | Masculinity—Social aspects. | Men—Psychology. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Men’s Studies. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General.
Classification: LCC HQ1090 .M394 2018 | DDC 155.3/32—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017061731
ISBN 978-1-5011-6874-1
ISBN 978-1-5011-6876-5 (ebook)