Recent discussions surrounding nature and manhood have gotten me to thinking about what it is that makes a man. What is it that causes people to think “Now there walks a fine man!”
Since I can only draw on my own experiences, I can only dissect the manliness of the men who play a significant role in my life. This is bound to be long, possibly non-sensical. I tend to do that.
~~*~~
Dad – my first male influence: My dad could be plunked in the middle of the wilderness, like Survivorman, and come out a month later, exhilarated and ready to go again. He’s a countrified, beer-drinking, Harley-loving, hard-working, patriotic good ol’ boy.
At 18, he enlisted in the Marines. Did one tour in Vietnam, made it out alive. Volunteered for another tour and was sent home, minus an internal organ or two. He came home to an unfaithful wife who left him shortly after.
She left him, abandoning three boys under the age of 4, leaving them to him to raise. One of the boys he knew for a fact wasn’t his, one he was pretty sure wasn’t his, and one he thought might actually be his.
He was around 23 or 24 years old.
He didn’t pansy around with paternity tests like some men might have, or dump the kids on someone else. He bought a house, got a job and settled about taking care of business.
40 years later he still doesn’t know with any certainty if any of those boys are biologically his, nor does he care. Fatherhood, he says, isn’t determined by genetics alone.
A few years after his wife left, he met my mother. She was 31 years old, recently divorced and raising six kids of her own. When they got married, my dad was 29 years old.
29 years old, and the father-figure to nine kids ranging in age from 6 to 16. Eight of whom, or maybe even all nine, were not biologically his.
He worked a factory job that started at 5am. For 40 years. He often picked up side jobs, after work and weekends, farm work mostly, for extra money. He bought an old, rickety, scheduled-to-be-demolished farmhouse because it was cheap; a house that I used to hate and was ashamed of as a kid, a house with holes in the floor, no furnace, pipes that froze in the winter and a leaky roof.
Then he rebuilt it. By himself. ALL by himself, while we lived in it. After work and on weekends, wall by wall, floor by floor. That house that they bought for less than 10 grand would probably appraise for 10 times that now. The house that had a dead racoon in one of the bedrooms at our first walk-through was pieced together– hand-painted board by hand-painted board, over a span of almost 30 years, and never once has any workman or hired help set foot in it.
The house was, and is still, heated by wood. Wood that he chops, splits, and stacks by himself. Has done so by himself for the last 30 years.
He’s 62 now, retired from the factory but still working 40 hours on a buddy’s farm. He’s still fixing odd bits of that house. He flies an American flag every day, a Marine flag, and a POW/MIA flag.
A purple heart hangs in a case on the wall, right next to several etchings of his dead friends names taken from the Vietnam Wall.
Does he measure up to being a man? Has he earned his manhood?
I’ll tell you one more thing about my dad before you decide that.
He is NOT the dominant partner in my parent’s marriage. Hasn’t been since the day they met. My mother is.
Oh, not in any formal way, I don’t think. Nothing labeled or practiced in the way that Master and I do. Probably, if asked, my mother would hasten to assure you they have an equal partnership.
But they don’t.
My mom calls the shots and runs the show. My dad is happy to let her. She controls the money, she controls his time, where he spends it and what he does. She tells him when he’s had enough to drink. She dictated the acceptable employment he could take, the hours he could work, the friends he could have. She plans, or unplans, his free time.
She is ‘The Boss’.
Is he still a man? Does he still measure up?
~~*~~
Ex-husband: my second male influence. This account will be much shorter than the first. 
My ex-husband is your typical red-neck man’s man. He’s quite well known in the area we grew up, got married and had our kids in. He’s tv’s Cheers’ Norm character, the one everyone calls out to when he walks in any of the local taverns.
In high school he lettered in wrestling, raced a souped-up ’57 chevy at the drag strip on Saturday nights, snuck beer out of his dad’s garage.
He watches Nascar, follows football. He’s rough and tough, never backs down from a fight. He’s the one you want on your side in a dark alley. A scrapper, mean and stocky.
Lovable guy in the bar though. Plays poker in the backroom, shoots pool like a pro. He’s the party-guy, the DJ, center of attention, seems to pull people to him like a magnet. He knows where to get “things”.
He’s a lady’s man, God only knows why. Women and the irresistable pull of the “bad boy”, the one they are going to tame. Lord knows I fell for it. The one that you want only because everyone else wants him too. I remember those nights in the bars after we were married, when he was really getting into DJ’ing. There were two ways that women looked at him. One was that lustful stare, you could almost see them planning how to move in for the kill. The other look was smug, aimed more at me than him. Those girls had already had him and they wanted me to know it.
Certainly by most accounts in that crowd, he measured up to manhood. He had all the right manly hobbies and abilities, he certainly advertised his manly sexual adventures. Other men were openly envious, women were openly enticed.
He definitely ruled his roost, ruled me. He was ‘The Boss’.
A man? I suppose they thought so.
Of course they didn’t know him as I did. As I still do.
They didn’t know he often gambled away his paycheck before diapers or groceries. Or that he liked to “talk” more with his fist than his mouth. They weren’t there when the house was foreclosed on or to watch the car be repossessed.
They probably didn’t know that he skipped his daughter’s first Christmas for a dart tournament, or that he passed out in a chair at the hospital- watching his second daughter being born through a drunken haze.
They can’t know that he continuously misspells his son’s name or that he argued, incorrectly, with his daughter over when her birthday was.
I’m sure the little chippy he lives with thinks he’s a man. I wonder, sometimes, what body part he uses to talk to her. I figure that’s her mess, but she’s a nice girl and I know the spell she’s under… and I wonder.
~~*~~
Master: saved the best for last, I did. The final male influence.
Sometimes I think Master has more in common with my 13 year old son than with the other “men” in my life. He plays xbox, he plays star wars miniatures, he sneaks up behind people to scream “BOO!”, he rolls around on the floor with the dog.
He plays hide and seek with the dog, for that matter.
He likes to go sledding, he still thinks cookies and milk are yummy, he cries at sappy movies (and then tries to hide it) and wants ice cream before bed.
He whines when he’s sick. And admits it.
He doesn’t posture, or chest-beat. He doesn’t pick fights, is a peacekeeper over an instigator. He doesn’t really care for the bar scene, male-bonding, “scoring” women, or sports.
No sports. Like, at all.
He wears glasses, reads more than he talks, keeps his hair well-trimmed, dresses in khaki pants and button-down shirts and is fiercely protective of his sister.
Not your typical he-man behaviors?
He also has stepped up where another man has stepped down. Taken on 3 kids, 3 often-ungrateful, sometimes un-loveable, always-difficult teenagers that he is not obligated to take care of.
He works, 5, sometimes 6 and 7, days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. In the cold, the wind, he comes home dirty and tired, yet he always has time for conversation and hugs.
He insists that “his” kids have the best, from cell phones to clothes, to love and opportunities. Yet, he balances it out with making sure they learn the value of earning what you have, caring for your possessions, responsibility for your actions.
He’s educated, brilliant in many things. He’s strong, big – both in size and personality. He’s outgoing, friendly, humble (mostly), has nothing to prove to anyone, ever.
He took me out of a place where I was wasting away and put me in a place where I thrive and grow. He’s bettered me, taught me, improved me- in more ways than I can list.
He’s stable and solid, predictable, forceful but not overbearing, dominant but not domineering, keeps me in my place while simultaneously lifting me up.
He is, also, The Boss.
Is that what makes a man? Being The Boss(tm)?
If it’s being dominant that measures a man, is my ex-husband just as much, or as good of, a man as Master?
If so, does that mean Master’s xbox war fighting trump my dad’s purple heart, if only because Master dominates what my dad submits to?
Are my dad’s accomplishments negated because he is in the role of the “submissive” husband?
Certainly there are men that I know that other people find to be the epitome of manliness who I find dispicable, worthless (like my ex, for instance).
Sometimes I compare Master to my dad -probably a lot of girls do, how can you not compare the differences between the two most powerful men in your life?
It is only occasionally that, when mentally comparing the two, Master comes up short. Usually that’s when I’m outside shovelling or hauling in groceries, thinking how my dad would never make my mom do this, that it would violate his sense of male chivalry or some such thing – you know, those times when I catch myself thinking more like a wife than a slave.
I’ve never compared them on a dominant level. Never found my dad to be lacking in manliness based on being the meeker of the two, never scored Master as “more manly” because he *is* dominant.
I compare actions, I suppose. I score integrity, honor, commitment. I value character, morals, ethics…
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” -Martin Luther King Jr.
My dad stood in front of a grenade.
Master stands up for me and my kids.
One is dominant, one is submissive – both are men.
My dominant ex-husband?
Is a waste of oxygen.
*nods*
Uncategorized | kaya | 
Tuesday March 31st, 2009 7:49am | 
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