The Good Men Project

"Meaty. Worth second and third and fourth looks."

Carlo Rotella

author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights

January 26, 2010

Male Bonding, Part 2

Filed under: Childhood, Coming of Age, Fatherhood, Guest Blogger — Tags: , — tmatlack @ 6:00 am

By TODD MAULDIN

As men we pay a heavy price to teach the lessons that must be taught. And basketball is often involvedand a little violence, and love.

When I was a young man of 13, I used to play my father in backyard basketball games. My dad wasn’t very good, but he was always game, and our matches often got heated because no matter how I tried, I couldn’t dominate him like I wanted to, like the gap between our skill levels should have allowed me to.

I’m convinced now that my dad looked on these games as bonding experiences. At the time, I considered them combat. I wanted to humble him. I wanted to prove I was more man at 13 than he was at any age.

One day, during one of our games, things were getting rough as usual. A lot of fouls were going uncalled. As the tension rose, my dad fouled me hard while I went for a layup. I turned around and slugged him in the arm, ostensibly because he fucked up my shot, but it was really about him refusing to let me be the Man.

Now, let me say that my dad didn’t do the spanking thing. He was never physically aggressive to me or anybody, really. I’d heard stories of him being a delinquent back in his teenage years but never believed them. His punished me only by giving me long, long talkings to for transgressions, and occasionally he grounded me from stuff I liked to do.

So the blank look I saw on his face when I punched him, the far-away eyes, wide nostrils, and furrowed brow were completely foreign to me. He announced in a voice barely containing his fury that he was going to kick my ass. He whipped his baseball cap off his head and began to thrash me with it about the head and shoulders in a flurry of stinging blows that left me feeling as though I was in a cloud of hornets.

He chased me off the court, past the pump house, down the side of the house, and back to the backdoor. He never hit me with his hands (thank God), never left a mark, but he soundly kicked my ass in such a way that I knewI knewwho the Man was.

He’s 70 now, and I’m 43, and we’ve never had another fight. He’s frail and old, and I still don’t want to fight him, no matter how much he annoys me, challenges me, or frustrates me. He’s still the hand of God. Ive remained unafraid to fight anybody except women, the police, or my dad. He showed me where the line was, and were I belonged relative to it.

A while ago, my nephew, who I’ve been raising like my son for the last few years, was 12 or 13 and had just hit puberty. He had always been an angry child, partly by genetics, partly by what he’d been through over his life. He and my wife were in the kitchen one day, arguing about something, when he behaved very aggressively toward her. He made a threat. He’s big for his age and doesn’t know how strong he is. I decided it was time to show him where the line was, just like my dad showed me.

I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him into my backyard. I told him that he must think he is a man now so I’d treat him like one. And if he had hair on his nuts enough to talk shit to my woman, then I’d treat him like I’d treat any man who threatened my wife.

I made him stand in the backyard and watch me take my rings and watch off. I told him we were going to fight, and I didn’t want to cut him all up. After I got ready, I shoved him, yelled at him, told him to take a swing.

He wouldn’t fight. Again, thank God, because there was no way I was going to hit this young man, but I couldn’t let him know it. There was a newspaper in the backyard, left from the morning’s coffee we sometimes took on the back patio. So I rolled up the paper and unleashed a flurry of whomps on top of his head. And I told him that if he wasn’t going to fight he better go find someplace to think about acting like an asshole to my wife again.

Then I left him, went in the bathroom, got in the shower, and cried for about 25 minutes. I cried because of what I’d just done. I cried because of the risk I took with our relationship. I cried because I was afraid of the anger in me and in him. And I cried because I remembered what my dad had done that day with me to show me where the line was.

I guess it worked. My nephew is a good young man, now 16 with straight As, a plan for the future, friends, faith, a job, and outside interestsand a healthy disinclination toward beating women, fucking with cops, or fighting Dad (me). But it sho nuff cost me a price.

My dad paid the price and gave me the gift, and I paid it for my nephew. And hell pay it for his guy, God willing.

I need to go tell my dad thanks for loving me enough to tangle with me and show me what it takes to tangle.

*****

Todd Mauldin is a bluesman who performs with his partner Jack D. Doyle as The Hellbusters. He also leads the A-Men Mens Ministry at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Reno, Nevada. In his spare time hes an account manager for a large telecommunications concern, a youth soccer coach, a dad, husband, uncle, cousin, friend and son.

[Image bydaveynin]

 

January 4, 2010

Fate Like a Reservoir

Filed under: Childhood, Guest Blogger — Tags: , — tmatlack @ 8:00 am

The author (left) with his brother, Doug.

Guest Blog by Gregory H. Robson

I was upstairs, burying my head in a geometry textbook, while my sister was across the hall, working on a geology assignment. We didnt know that downstairs, in the kitchen, my brother was holding a knife against my mothers throat.

My sister and I had heard the slamming of drawers and my brothers rage-induced epithets, but we had heard these many times before. We figured our mother would say something softly, as she always did, and hed settle down on the couch or storm outside and walk around the block to compose himself. This was the way it worked.

But after a few minutes, the house became eerily quiet. Id been through this too many times to know this was not the way it went. I closed my textbook, stood up from my chair, and cautiously entered the hallway.

I felt panicked. For all I knew he could have been behind the bathroom door with a knife, terror in his eyes, ready to surge toward me. He had threatened all of us before. There was no limit to what he could or might do.

I tiptoed into my sisters room and asked her if she thought we should check downstairs. She shrugged her shoulders and turned back to her assignment. Why does he always do this when I have a big test the next day? she said. It’s like he knows or something.

I was too scared to make conversation, so I just shrugged and said, I’m going to see whats going on.

I intended to approach the kitchen gingerly, while looking out of the corners of my eyes to see where he might be lurking. But adrenaline and anxiety overtook me and I bounded down the stairs. In some ways I was hoping he heard me thundering downstairs.

Within seconds we were face to face. He looked maniacal, crazed. This was not the older brother I had admired for the past 14 years. This was a total stranger. My mother’s frail body was pressed against his chest and the sterling piece of cutlery was lodged against her throat. My mother looked haggard, shaken, and distraught. Her eyes were moist and her face was flushed.

Don’t come near me. I’ll fucking do it, he said. I’m not fucking kidding.

My mother took a big gulp and swallowed. I tried to find the calming words she had used so many times before, but nothing came to me. My mother gulped again and closed her eyes. Her face became pale, and he tightened the blade against her throat.

God, please stop, Doug, I said. He didnt move. I stomped my foot. Just please, stop it.

I contemplated lurching toward him, but when I closed my eyes, all I could see was bloodblood on my hands, blood on his hands, blood on my mothers throat.

I stamped my foot one last time, shouted Stop! and ran to get my sister. I said a quick Hail Mary and she and I raced down the stairs. But when we got to the kitchen, he was gone; the door slammed behind him. My mom was perched on the Formica countertop, and the knife was on the floor.

He had calmed down when he returned three hours later, but over the course of the next two years his repeated fits of rage plagued our home in suburban Long Island in such a profound way that we had no choice but to send him away.

Almost three years to that day he held a knife to my mothers throat, we celebrated Christmas in the sterile, white confines of the psych ward at North Shore University Hospital. How do you tell someone Merry Christmas when they havent stepped outside or eaten a home-cooked meal in three weeks? Doug sat withdrawn and expressionless, almost catatonic. Was this really the same older brother who took me to the horse track, drove me to the record store, and taught me to throw a football?

After more than five years of visiting with a psychiatrist, this is where he was: drugged up and confined to the four rooms of a hospital psych ward.

Two months after the Christmas that wasnt, Doug was sent upstate to a supervised living facility for people with severe mental health issues. While the facility gave him some semblance of freedom and flexibility, it also put a wedge between us. The psych ward had allowed us to visit him daily, but this new place limited our visits to once a month.

The brother I remembered from childhood became more and more distant. Our bond was reduced to 10-minute phone calls about horse racing and monthly visits that never lasted longer than a couple hours. And yet, for all the pain and rage he was battling, he always did his best to be cordial, often introducing us to friends and staff members and taking the time to talk about the Mets, Seinfeld, or horse racing. For every solemn and sullen visit there was another that was spirited and silly.

While I couldn’t see it at the time, my visits were his solace. Sometimes they were the only thing that kept him going forward. Even though I was just his little brother, I was his only brother.

As he continued to progress, the facility director allowed us to visit every weekend. It wasnt the daily routine of the psych ward, but it was all we had, and we put everything into every minute.

Back at home on Long Island my social life was taking a hit. I was becoming withdrawn and focused only on homework and running. When I wasnt doing one of those, I was writing my brother letters or finding articles to send to him.

With each visit, Doug seemed to be connecting. The conversations became less awkward and less strained. Seinfeld and baseball were replaced by a myriad of topics, including history and geography. He seemed more engaged and more focused. His therapist even acknowledged that he was indeed turning a corner.

Dougs battle with his own frailties forced me to analyze mine. I returned to the church, joining the Newman Society in college and spending much of my free time in various service projects and church-related activities. A selfish and spendthrift person by nature, I was gradually learning to let go of those deficiencies. My brothers determination led me to this new point in my life.

I spent the last few weeks of my freshman year in college in dedicated vocational discernment, analyzing whether or not to join the priesthood. The new bond my brother and I had formed made me want to be closer to God. Becoming a priest felt like the right thing to do.

I returned home that summer, ecstatic about the prospect of making weekend trips upstate to visit my brother. Within days we planned a trip to Saratoga, an event that his therapist endorsed. It would give me a chance to catch up on lost time with Doug.

During the trip we managed to revisit and rekindle some of our best childhood memories. Neither of us won a dollar at the track, but he smiled more than I had seem him smile in years, and he laughed with the glee and gleam of a toddler.

When I returned back to campus that fall, the Newman Society asked about my discernment decision. I politely declined. I didnt need the seminary to be closer to God. Fate, like a reservoir, was stored up in stolen moments standing next to my brother that summer. For all the rage and fear of his maddening days, I had found my faith in him. Then again, I always will. Were brothers after all.

*****

Greg Robson, a 2003 Elon University graduate, is a journalist living and working on Long Island, N.Y. More of his writing can be found at Resident Media Pundit, Step Inside This House, and at AbsolutePunk.

 

December 23, 2009

The Day Christmas Changed

Filed under: Childhood, Fatherhood, Guest Blogger, Moments — Tags: , — tmatlack @ 8:01 am

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Guest blog by Roger L. Durham

I was downstairs, lighting a fire in the fireplace, turning on the Christmas lights, checking to see if Santa had paid a visit. My two boys, 3 and 5 years old, were sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting, with their mother. I came around the corner, with camera in hand, ready to capture the moment.

But when I turned the corner and saw the look on their faces, I was transported, as if by some twist of time, and I was the one sitting at the top of the stairs, looking down into the smiling face of my father as he snapped a Polaroid and said, He was here. Santa was here!

I didnt get the photograph that Christmas morning. I was too startled by the wonder I saw in my boys eyes. It was as if I was looking into a mirror that erased 25 years. I saw my own wonder in those bright, young faces that so resembled my own. Before I could raise the camera, my sons brushed past me and rounded the corner to see what Santa had left them. And Christmas has never been the same for me since.

In that moment, I realized the gift that my father had given me, over the course of my life. In that time-shattering moment, I finally captured what my father had been teaching me all along, about what it means to be a dad. Maybe the lesson had been building gradually before that, but from that moment on, I looked at my dad, and myself, through an entirely different lens.

I remembered the vacations we had taken, and realized what sacrifices dad had to make in order to afford them. I remembered the Saturdays in the yard, raking leaves, and I realized the lessons of responsibility and hard work my dad had been instilling in me. I remembered the rounds on the golf course, and I understood what he had been teaching me about competition and perseverance and sportsmanship. I remembered watching him read and enjoy classical music and tend, in his quiet way, to my mother, and I realized that he was teaching me about what was important in life.

We never had conversations about money and marriage and career. That was not Dads style. He was not that direct. Other friends had dads who were, and I thought I was missing something by not having a dad who would talk to me about things like that. But that Christmas morning, I realized the thing I had missed was the way Dad was teaching me.

What had escaped me previously were the lessons I had learned from him without even knowing it. All along, at every turn, my dad had been teaching me life lessons. But he was so subtle about it, so quiet and unassuming, that I had missed the fact that he had been teaching meuntil that Christmas morning, when I saw myself in the wonder of my own sons faces.

Christmas is different now. I look forward to givingnot so much the what of giving as the how. Thats what my dad taught me: the quiet, humble, gracious way in which he gave. The older I become, the less I need or want. But the act of giving remains important. And the art of receiving is as much a part of the gift as the giving. So I find myself focusing on those things. And I think of my dad. And I look for ways to give that will mean something to someone.

This year, Christmas came a little early for me. I am part of two mens groups. We meet monthly to discuss issues of importance and enjoy some man time together. This year, both groups decided to do something for Christmas. One group volunteered to serve a meal at a homeless shelter. Nine guys left their well-paying jobs and their homes on the comfortable side of town and drove into the city to serve hot meals to 300 men and women who otherwise would not have eaten that night. One member of the group donated the food, and the rest helped serve it. To a man, each was struck by the simple joy of serving and the powerful significance of giving some part of himself in a way that was so meaningful to grateful recipients.

The other group looked for a family to adopt this Christmas. There are lots of groups helping lots of people with gifts, but there are families who are not the typical recipients of such generosity, families who have fallen on hard times and fallen under the net of care at Christmas time. They have braced themselves for a lean Christmas.

We found two such families and decided to help both. The local Catholic church identified the families for us, and Sister Mary graciously helped coordinate the efforts. We gave gift cards and cash to both families, so they could buy the gifts for the children themselves, a gesture Sister Mary found very touching. We wanted the gifts to be anonymous. We wanted these families to know that there were people wishing them well.

I mentioned to my mother what my friends and I were doing. She looked at me with a look I didnt quite recognize. She got up from her chair, went into the other room of her two-room apartment at the retirement communitymy father died several years agoand she came back with two stuffed animals that she received earlier that day from a group that had come to entertain the old people, as she fondly refers to herself and her friends. I am so proud of you and your friends, she said. Please take these and include them in the gifts to the families.

She wanted to be part of the gift; she wanted to give to those families as well. As for that look on her face, I realized it must have been much like the look on my face that Christmas morning when I looked up the stairs into the wonder-filled faces of my sons. I think my mother was seeing a reflection of my dad, in the eyes of her son, who had learned the lesson, after all, that her beloved had tried to teach. I cant say for sure, but if I could have read her mind, I think I would have heard her saying, You understood your dad, didnt you. You learned what he so wanted to teach you.

*****

Roger L. Durham is an ordained Presbyterian minister currently working as a client development manager for Summit Energy Services in Louisville, Kentucky. As a student of culture, faith and men’s issues, Roger works with men’s groups in Louisville. He has a BA in psychology from Wake Forest University and a doctor of ministry degree from Union Seminary in Virginia.

 

September 9, 2009

Guest Blog: The Way of Boys

Filed under: Childhood, Guest Blogger — tmatlack @ 5:31 am

Way of Boys Cover

Where Have I Seen this Before?

(Excerpted from The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World by Dr. Anthony Rao and Michelle Seaton)

Moms ask me when their sons will stop freaking out over every frustration. The short answer is: Probably never. For all our strutting and muscle flexing, we guys tip over easily when it comes to emotions.

Moms ask me, “Why does he break down so easily?” I tell them it happens to most men, myself included, but it’s at a less visible level in adults. Moms are often surprised to learn that even as a psychologist, I often can’t see my emotions coming.

A lot of men feel that their feelings hit them from behind. Our minds can be like fuses and they just short out for a moment. It’s as though our mouths are temporarily disconnected from our brains, taking away our ability to put feelings into words. It would be great if men could better sense the emotions building inside them or could better signal their feelings and vent them with words, but often they don’t. Part of this is how we’re raised and part of this is how we’re wired. What’s true for many men is even more true for little boys.

Moms who struggle with boys who short out frequently in late toddlerhood and early grade school sometimes notice that their husbands do the same thing. One mom I know, Cindy, told me about a situation she had recently with her son Aaron, who is four. Aaron was playing, not quite happily, in the living room one morning. He was trying to balance a robot on top of a beach ball with predictable results. Cindy was at her wits’ end. “He tries to do these things that are impossible,” she told me. “No toy is going to balance on a beach ball. Then he just freaks out and screams every time it falls off.”

Cindy was rushing back and forth between the kitchen, which she was trying to clean up, and the living room, where she was trying to help Aaron calm down. Meanwhile, her husband, Chris, was rushing around, trying to get packed for a business trip.

Cindy dumped some wilted vegetables into the sink and turned on the garbage disposal and nothing happened. She causally said to her husband, “Where are the instructions for this thing?”

Instead of finding the instructions, Chris dropped his luggage and attacked the problem. Every time Cindy said, “Honey, you’ll be late. I’ll take care of this,” he answered, “I don’t have time for this.” She said, “Honey, go. It’s okay.” He said, “I have to fix this.” He was at this point red-faced and enraged.

Cindy told me that at this exact moment Aaron had a huge meltdown in the living room. He punched the beach ball and broke apart the robot, and began screaming. Cindy felt completely torn. She wanted to stay in the kitchen and hover over her husband to encourage him to make the right choice to catch his train. And she wanted to rush into the living room and soothe Aaron with hugs and reassurances.

Instead, she had an epiphany. She left the kitchen without saying another word to her husband. “I thought. He’s a grown up. Let him do what he’s going to do,” she said. She went to the living room, retrieved the half-deflated beach ball and the broken robot and said to Aaron, “These are mine, now.” She put them on a high shelf, which sent Aaron into a stronger screaming outrage. She stepped over him and left the room. She gave him no lectures, no reassurances, no good reasons why he should calm down. Instead, she gave him no choice but to calm down.

“I’m not feeding the tantrum monster anymore,” she said to me. “In either of them.” She went to the bedroom with a magazine and left them, father and son, alone with their problems.

Within two minutes, the house was quiet again. Chris had figured out how to fix the disposal and was feeling good about himself, and Aaron had forgotten about the beach ball and had picked another toy to play with.

Sounds good to me. Sometimes, withholding the urge to mother, to reassure, to fix, to talk through things is the best type of empathy you can offer your boy or partner.

In fact, by taking the toy away, this mom has created a tiny connection in her son’s mind between having a tantrum and losing the toy. It’s a small connection, and this lesson will likely be repeated a few hundred times over many different toys, computer games, scooters, bikes, and, finally, the car. But the connection will grow each time and over time he will learn that continuing to freak out leads to something bad, while disengaging and asserting self-control leads to something more positive. It’s a lesson Cindy wishes her husband had learned when he was a boy.

 

July 13, 2009

Guest Blog: David Tayabji

Filed under: Childhood, Fatherhood, Guest Blogger — tmatlack @ 5:53 am

tanzimages

I will never forget the day. My world shattered. I was all alone. My mom had just passed away. The year was 1973.

She was everything to me. Instinctively knew how I felt, what I needed and always there for me. Now, me and my father, all alone in our home in Africa. I was the baby in the family. My siblings had all moved away, being much older than me. I was 17. I loved my father for he was the kindest, most generous individual I have ever met. But I hardly knew him. My father had to sacrifice his needs to care for the family.

You see, my grandparents had moved their families from India to Africa to create better opportunities. Fast forward, my father was a merchant and established a business in a small, rural town, miles away from the capital of Dar-es-Salaam which is where my mom and siblings were residing for our schooling. At that time, there was no electricity or phone service in the villages in Africa, let alone in most parts of the cities. It’s like being on a safari, but without the amenities.

Life was tough, having to safeguard property and body unlike anything here. Most of the population in Tanzania is hard-working but it’s not a rich country. Hence, you didn’t dare step outside the house in Kidugalo at night what with no lights or police presence.

Then it happened. He was aroused from his sleep and dragged from my aunt’s house to his shop about 200 yards away. They were dressed in military fatigues. They looted the store of almost everything. But that was not all. They beat him almost to death, all night, with gun butts and walking canes he sold in the store. Then they doused him with gasoline. But then a miracle-they either thought he was done or they had to scramble to make their escape. We got the news that he was in the hospital, in critical condition. My family is known for prayers, even for the slightest trouble. I can imagine my mom and sister promising all sorts of things to HIM if only my father would recover. We moved him to the city for better care and to help with his rehab. In the meantime,my mother and the kids convinced him to move back permanently to the city and give up the store. We convinced him
that my older siblings could provide for all of us. My mom spent the better part of one year caring for him and helping him to walk again after the severe beating he took. Just as they would now spend the rest of their lives together, my mom passed away from ulcerative colitis. It shouldn’t have happened but that’s another story.

We were well to do. When I was younger. We had a car, a luxury at that time in Africa, and a cook and full time housekeepers. By the time the decision was made that I would join my brother in the States, we had very little money. You see, besides the looting, and the employee theft which he ignored for the most part, my father had become a humanitarian. He would give food and clothes to the villagers, just on their word that they would make it up to him when they could. They would barter their chicken or eggs with him, and inevitably he would give them more than he received. By the time he retired, we were living hand to mouth. However, I am convinced that the local villagers prayers helped my father survive the ordeal. I wish I had appreciated him then as much as I do now. What he sacrificed so that his family and all his his friends in the village would do well.  That was a
different era. He was a good man!

Happy Father’s day to all and may all our Father’s inspire all of us to be Good Men and here’s hoping that we in turn inspire our sons to be Good Men!

 

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