YOU'RE
STILL WRONG
POST
MRR COLUMNS
Post
MRR Column 11
“Are We Not Men?”
“Are We Not Men?”
by
Mykel Board
“To
trust in men is itself to let oneself be killed a little.”-- Celine
Every
guy worth his weight in foreskins knows that the best place to pick
up girls is a homobar. Usually sitting on an empty bar stool, they'll
be waiting to talk to you... to find out about your history... to
mother you... to show you that girls are nothing to be afraid of...
to show you that if you try it... you'll see it's not so bad.
You
put on your I've-never-done-this-before-so-be-gentle-with-me face,
and before you know it, you're at her place, listening to... (maybe),
“You're so good. I can't believe you've never done this before.”
or (more likely) “Don't worry. You'll learn. It takes time.”
I
write this in the lobby of the McGreggor building at Detroit's Wayne
State University. I'm here for the AMC (Allied
Media Conference) The conference is NOT punk. It IS homo. A huge
gay bar... waiting for me to confess I've-never-done-this
before-so-be-gentle-with-me. NOT!
I
can hardly talk to any of these people, let alone pick one up for a
roll in the Haymarket. Conference attendees are so
self-absorbed, insular and identity-based, it reminds me of of those
Mens Liberation groups I've
heard about... where the members get in a big circle, hug each other,
and scream WE ARE MEN. WE ARE BROTHERS. WE ARE MEN. Oy
vey!
I've
come to Detroit with a second motive... a fantasy.... news reports of
a deserted city... empty... cultureless... depopulated. After
Clinton's NAFTA killed the American auto industry, there was nothing
left. Kill City again... like the 70s... a blank slate... move here
and you can do anything. If you fail, it won't cost you much to try
again.
I
have a (low-paying) job I like in NYC. I have a (tiny) cheap
apartment. I have the freedom to take a (non-paid) week... month...
year... off work and have a job when I return. As long as that
remains, I'm not going anywhere. But what if it changes? If I lose my
job, my apartment, my benefits, where'm I gonna go? Detroit?
FLASH
TO THE LAGUARDIA AIRPORT: At the gate, I survey the waiting
crowd. They look like anybody anywhere. More fat people than you'd
see on a typical NYC street, but otherwise... no... there's one
girl... dyed black hair... tattoos... skinny... Hoooeee! She might be
on my flight. I walk over... take a seat as close as I can to the
sexy girl. Close enough to read the Bob Dylan quote in her tattoo. I
gave her my heart, she wanted my soul.
Holy cow, lesbo too! I'm in love!
I'm
wearing my THORAZINE t-shirt, the one where Alice holds a smoking
gun... the white rabbit lying dead at her feet.
“I
love your t-shirt,” this girl's gonna say. “I know Thorazine from
Philly.” Those words will make me come.
Doesn't
happen.
FLASH
TO DETROIT: I've pick up my rental and am off to my
couch-surfing hosts. I end up in a neighborhood someplace. The
streets don't have lights, but the houses are big... like mansions...
huge
white columns... a historic district... next to Henry Ford's
historic home. That's where my scummy couch-surfing hosts are. Huh?
More
about the neighborhood-- and people later. I drop my bags off and go
to meet Dennis, another couch-surfer... in the burbs. He's invited me
to dinner with some friends.
Dennis
sits in the back yard of his house... a suburban-looking place in a
suburb whose name I forget. I pull into the driveway next to the back
yard. He waves to me, but doesn't stand up. We shake hands. He's a
man about my own age, short cropped gray hair, shorts and sandals.
“Sit
down, Mykel,” he says. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Wachya
got?” I ask.
“I
got water, juice, may have a beer,” he says.
“A
beer'd be great,” I tell him.
When he
gets up, I see that he walks with a limp... stepping ahead with one
leg and dragging the other behind. In a few minutes, he limps back
with my first can of Michigan beer. [Aside: during this week I'll
have a ton of Michigan beers. Not a bad one in the bunch. Two
especially good ones, Nicie
Spicie and Ghettoblaster,
are better than The
Beer Advocate says.]
“Glad
you could make it,” he says, “and you're coming to dinner with my
friends, right? My church friends... Unitarian Universalist... you
saw the church in Detroit?”
“I
passed it coming here,” I tell him. Maybe I'm telling the truth.
Detroit
churches are so ubiquitous-- and so beautiful-- that I've been
looking at them since I arrived. And I THINK I saw the Unitarian one.
After
the beer: “Okay, let's go to my friend's house-- church brethren--
for dinner.”
FLASH
TO THE LIVING ROOM OF THE SECOND SUBURBAN HOUSEHOLD: A half
dozen of us around at table: Dennis, Me, the host/cook, a guy who
looks like a truck driver-- baseball hat, beard, a fourth who looks
like a TV sportscaster-- clean-cut as a Mormon, and one guy who looks
slightly... off... a bit chubby... doesn't look at you... quiet... he
rocks a bit when he's eating.
After
dinner, we sit around a fire burning in a huge concrete cauldron in
the back yard. The sun is just dipping into the horizon. Dennis
starts talking , his face lit by the glow of the fire and the setting
sun.
“My
wife has done it again,” he says. “She's demanded that I stop
having people over. She won't talk to my friends... Last week it was
worse. She got out of the car... at a stoplight... she just opened
the door and ran.”
The
other guys shake their collective heads. Then, the next man speaks...
the trucker.
“My
wife has been treating me like dirt,” he says, and he continues to
talk about his better half in a not better-half-friendly way.
One-by-one,
the men talk. They talk about their wives... in one case a
girlfriend... they complain... seek sympathy... get it. Eventually,
it's my turn.
“I
don't really know what to say,” I tell them, “I'm single. Never
been married. I'm here for an Alternative Media Conference.”
“Why
aren't you married, Mykel?” asks the host, a round-faced man with
a farmer's tan and Alfred Hitchcock belly.
“Once
in my life I asked a girl to marry me,” I answer. “She said no
and immediately became a lesbian.”
Instead
of the laughter that line usually brings, I get tsk-tsks and
head shakes. The quiet, slightly-off guy looks at me. His eyes
glisten. “I have two kids,” he says, “a daughter and a son.
Both of them are gay. How do you figure it?”
“Tell
us about the shirt,” the trucker says to me. “I know Thorazine...
it's a drug. Had it forced on me in the hospital once. But I don't
get the picture.”
“Thorazine
is a band... from Philadelphia,” I tell him. “I like the picture.
I figured I could wear it at this conference. It's got a slightly
feminist message, you know?”
Silence.
The
metaphorical speaking stick passes to the last guy in the circle...
the Mormon. He talks about how he's forced to work two jobs to pay
for what his wife spends “willy-nilly on whatever she wants.”
After
he speaks, we stand. I figure we're leaving. I figure wrong.
“Mykel,”
says Dennis, “come and join us.”
The
group has formed a standing circle... arms over each other's
shoulders.
“Together,”
says Dennis, “WE ARE MEN. WE ARE BROTHERS. WE ARE MEN.”
We
group hug. Then get into our individual cars and go off. I head back
to downtown Detroit and my couch-surfed home.
ENDNOTES:
[Contact: You can email me at god@mykelboard.com.
For postal contact (send those... er... private DVDs..or music or
zines... or anything else-- legal only!) write to: Mykel Board, POB
137, New York, NY 10012-0003 If you like my writing, I can tell you
when anything new is available. (I also have a travel blog and some
other stuff.) Join the MYKEL'S READERS YAHOO GROUP
readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]
-->Every
little bit helps dept:
Heeb
Magazine reports
that the GENESIS
PRIZE,
is given by a group of wealthy Jews to other Jews who “help inspire
a new generation of Jewish leaders.” Last year, the $1,000,000
prize was given to: Michael Bloomberg... a billionaire 17 times over.
Yeah,
that sure inspires!
-->War
Crimes Dept: Anjolina Jouli has
been active in convening a United Nations group to make it illegal to
use rape or sexual violence as a weapon of war. She was joined in her
activism by British foreign secretary, William Hague. The focus was
punishing those “war criminals” guilty of sexual violence.
Hmmmm,
seems to me, torture and murder are more important war crimes than
sexual ones... but that would be helping when the victims are MEN. We
wouldn't want that, would we... BROTHERS?
-->Thought
Crimes Dept: A man in Olathe, Kansas, was prosecuted for
possession of child pornography. He had pasted a photo of a young
person's face onto a larger nude picture of an adult woman "with
the intent to satisfy his sexual desires." The man was
acquitted, but only because the judge could not determine beyond
a reasonable doubt that the face in the picture was of a child
under 18. Despite his acquittal, the court would not release the
man's book of pictures of girls taken from legal catalogs and
magazines, nor his diary which chronicled his dreams, including some
of young girls.
-->Tit
Crimes Dept: The Galveston,
Texas City Council drafted an ordinance that would prohibit the
baring of women's breasts, “real or in image.” The law would make
it illegal to wear novelty vests embossed with bare breasts and
asses, or tee shirts with photos or drawings of bare breasts or
asses. City Attorney Barbara Roberts assured the City Council that a
similar Fort Worth law had been constitutionally tested and upheld.
-->Keeping
the Pressure on Dept:
I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring
Back Mykel effort
directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll. Send your comments-- to
mrr@maximumrocknroll.com
with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL. Let me know how they answer.
-->And:
I'm on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs,
cassettes, VHS videos, and a few CDs. Just pay separate shipping and
handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway
-end-