The metal net snapped as the basketball hit it squarely with plenty of backspin. Shirt off, I had launched the ball during a friendly early morning game of horse with my 11-year-old son. His hair was surfer-blond like mine, only with a smattering of red hues. The court had to be one of very few in the country that had such a commanding view of the Pacific; right on the beach. The hills of Laguna Beach rose directly out of the ocean at an almost impossibly steep pitch, with homes held up by stilts hanging out over the cliff.

“That’s game, brother,” I said, putting my sweaty arm around my boy. “We gotta get you packed up.”

“Just a little longer, dad?”

“Nah, Seamus. We really have to get going.”

We walked down to the wet sand. Big waves boomed and rushed at us. A couple of surfers paddled in the distance. The beach was still empty, except for early morning walkers and a group of older women doing martial arts in slow motion silence. I looked at the ladies, wondering why I had never seen this daily ritual back east.

My son, ex-wife, current wife, 13 year-old daughter by the first marriage, and 5 year-old son by the second–we all lived within a mile of each other back in Boston. Together with Elena, my second wife, I had rented a house for three weeks in order to escape the thick snow, now turned to dirty slush. Whereas I had been less than successful in my personal life, I had made enough money to travel to pretty much wherever I wanted.

Seamus was a head shorter than I was, but we shared more than an abundance of surfer-dude blond hair. We were both long and lean and today we walked with a similar casual gait, toes pointed outward, staring into space. Neither of us was talking.

As we approached the rented SUV, the quiet was broken by a loud “Pssssssst!” Water sprayed up in the air not more than fifty yards offshore.

“Look at that, Seamus!” I said, as I squinted to see through the glare emanating from the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

Just as Seamus looked up, Nikes and basketball in hand, he saw the whale breach. “Cool, dad! That thing’s HUGE!”

“I’ve never seen one that close to shore,” Seamus continued.

“Neither have I. March must be some sort of migration season for them.”

We watched for a few minutes longer. After filling its lungs, the whale disappeared into the depths of the clear green ocean.

In the car, I couldn’t help thinking about the hours I’d spent as a boy with my own dad, an English Professor, reading Moby Dick out loud and being dragged to whaling museums in Nantucket and New Bedford. I had learned about scurvy, the monotony of being at sea for months, and the bravery of men in tiny boats attempting to kill giant beasts. I could see the spool of rope, just as my dad had described it, spinning as the whale ran. The rope tore down the center of the whaling boat, men on either side rowing to try to keep up with the beast, and one sailor whose only job was to pour water on the spool to keep it from catching fire. In the car, if I inhaled deeply, I could almost smell the stench of blubber being boiled when the battle was over.

Beyond the mythic men of whaling, however, seeing the whale so close reminded me of my father’s fascination with the animals themselves. As a child, my dad had been nicknamed “Whale” for his ability to stay under water for minutes at a time. Sometimes, in the car, he would listen to eerie recordings of screeching whales communicating with one another. As a Quaker, my dad had been fascinated by the violence of whaling, just like he had become a Civil War buff; as if his pacifism led him to see the noble flaw in men who killed man or beast out of fear or hatred or for survival. However, it was the whales he loved most deeply; it was of them that he seemed most in awe.

That’s what I was thinking about as I drove Seamus up the hill. I tried to remember the last time I had talked to my dad about anything of real importance. And I couldn’t remember.

“Dad, I forgot my ball down on the beach,” Seamus mumbled, as we pulled into the driveway. “I’m really sorry.”

I fought off the impulse to snap. “It’s okay. We’ll go looking for it on the way out of town,” I said.

“Hopefully, the neighborhood kids didn’t take it. That was a really nice leather ball.”

With Seamus’s bags finally packed, it was time to head to LAX. He wasn’t looking forward to going home, back to school and the cold, but at least he could focus on and look forward to the NCAA tournament. Just before leaving, Seamus and I sat down at the computer one last time and logged into my Yahoo account. I had agreed to let him enter one set of brackets into a pool run by an investment banking buddy. The entry fee was $100, with the winner taking home a few thousand bucks. I had agreed to front him the money on the condition that half of any winnings would go to charity. Seamus pulled up the pool. The sweet sixteen would start today and his entry was currently in fifth place.

“That’s it, dad. That’s the winning bracket right there! Boston College is going to go all the way this year!”

“I sure hope so,” I said, looking at my watch. “We gotta get going now. We miss this flight, we’re both in big trouble. And we gotta find that lost ball down on the beach.”

We had both become accustomed to goodbyes. As father and son, we had long ago reached a male understanding that a certain amount of emotion was a good thing. Too much was bad–very bad, in fact. The ease of being together could easily turn ugly if the pain of our situation was spoken out loud. We didn’t live together and never would. This was as good as it was going to get. We both knew this, but never wanted to say it out loud–as if the silence would somehow diminish the hurt.

“There it is!” Seamus shouted when we pulled into the lot on the beach. “Those guys are playing with my ball.” A full-court game was in progress, shirts and skins, with high school aged kids running hard; one bent over catching his breath while a foul call was hotly disputed. Rubber basketballs had been strewn at half court in favor of the leather Spalding ball.

“Stay here,” I told Seamus, wanting to make sure that the extraction was quick and easy.

“Guys,” I said, as I approached the court, my 6′3″ frame puffed out just slightly to make sure my words were not ignored. “The ball is mine. Sorry.”

The reaction was immediate–leather flying into my hands. “Thanks,” I muttered, before getting back into the car and handing Seamus the lost ball.

As we drove to the airport, I spoke brightly about the tournament and about Seamus’s sixth-grade team, attempting in vain to fill the void just ahead. I was, in fact, unable to fight off the impending storm cloud. I was sinking; missing my son before he had even left.

I checked Seamus in at First Class. By now, I knew the questions on the unaccompanied minor form by heart. I carefully placed Seamus’s ticket into a clear plastic pouch held in place by a string around his neck.

“How come I always feel like a jackass with this thing on, dad? How am I supposed to pick up chicks on the plane?”

Seamus asked with a wry smile.

“If the loser badge keeps the girls away for a few more years, that’d be just fine by me,” I said with a smile.

At the gate, I looked into my son’s eyes. We had waited until everyone else got on the plane before Seamus boarded. But the time had come.

“I love you Seamus,” I said, giving him a bear hug. I felt how my little baby boy had become almost a man; substantial now where before he had been so tiny and fragile. I noticed Seamus’s stuffed dog, Pal, sticking out of his backpack. Maybe he’s not all grown up just yet, I thought. For a moment, I flashed back to all the times I’d scoured my apartment to make sure that Pal had not been lost. I held onto those memories, and to Pal, as tightly as I held my son at this point.

“I love you too, dad,” Seamus said, holding on a few moments longer than usual. “I’ll text you as soon as I hit the ground at Logan.” Then he turned and walked down the jetway with one of the flight attendants. He wore leather Reef flip flops, baggy black cord shorts that reached down to his shins, and a mustard Volcom sweatshirt. Except for the basketball under his arm, he was pure surfer dude. I hadn’t had the heart to force him to change into clothes for the snowy weather predicted back east. He turned one last time to pound his chest and flash a peace sign at me, his dad, sticking two fingers in the air with a weak smile. I did the same. Then my son was gone.

Driving home from LAX, I had to again remind myself why going back to court to get equal time with my kids would be a bad idea for Seamus and his sister Kerry; why at this point I would lose; and why just loving my kids, despite the heartache of long periods of separation, was the best thing I could do. I had been kicked out of the house when Seamus was less than a year old and Kerry was just two. Despite taking a large company public, then selling it for billions, I had been a drunk and in no position to demand joint physical custody.

In the years since, I had devoted myself to becoming a decent father but had repeatedly sought legal advice regarding the way my time with my kids was doled out by my ex-wife Colleen; only to be told that changing a custody arrangement after years of precedents would require proving that it was in the best interests of the children. I had never had the courage to call Colleen on her bluff that I was a bad father and not worthy of equal custody. The arrangement ate away at me, but I hadn’t been willing to reopen the wound. Whether that was to protect the kids or to protect myself, I wasn’t sure.

In the car on the way back to Laguna Beach, I felt, along with a growing sense of loss, at least a tiny sense of relief. The visit had gone well. I always worried that Seamus would be bored or would decide he was too old to be hanging around with his dad on vacation. We had hit some amusement parks, shot hoops, eaten great food, sat in the sun, and talked. It had been fun and relaxed. I was happy to have the mission accomplished.

Elena, Cole, and I went to the playground. I climbed a huge rocket ship with my son and sat him on my lap to blast down a long slide, landing in the sand at the bottom, both of us laughing. Elena and I held hands on the way home; we were both tall and slender with blond hair. Cole urged us on from the stroller as we pushed him up the hill. “Faster daddy, faster!” Like Seamus, he had his dad’s hair. But he had his mom’s bright blue eyes.

I thought about another day at the playground. It was Father’s Day, when Seamus had been just three months old–one of the last times we had been together before the end. That day, I had a plane to catch–a private jet actually–as I was taking my company public and needed to be in London that night for a presentation. A black limousine awaited us outside the front of the house that Colleen and I had just built on a cul-de-sac in Barrington, Rhode Island. As I left, a bag containing my blue suit, white shirt, and a red tie slung over my shoulder, Colleen had ripped into me for being a shitty father. I had not responded. I’d just kept my head down as her words made their way into my heart; daggers with truth serum intended to inflict pain.

Back at the house, I finally sat down at the computer and pulled up the American Airlines website. Flight number 159 had just taken off for Boston. Seamus was in the air. I noticed that, at the top of the website, the airline was reporting delays in New York and Philadelphia, but didn’t think much of it. I went back to the TV room to watch The Backyardigans with Cole, who snuggled into my neck and quickly fell asleep. I thought about the first time I’d had Seamus overnight at my apartment; how, in a certain sense, I had been lost myself until I’d held my son in my arms, fed him a bottle, and inhaled the smell of him. That’s when I knew that being a dad was the thing I most wanted in the world; the thing that I had missed for all the deal making. By the time Elena came to check on us, we were both snoring.

I awoke with a start. The sunlight outside was already beginning to fade. My Blackberry buzzed with a new voice message. It was Colleen. I hit the voicemail button and listened.

“It’s snowing really hard here,” she started. “I know the flight took off so they must have thought it was going to be okay. But I just got off the phone with Logan and they are already down to one runway and his flight doesn’t get in for another hour and a half. I’m really worried about Seamus. Call me or email me.” Click. She had hung up abruptly, as always. But the message was troubling, even with a hefty Colleen-hysteria discount factored in.

At the computer, I pulled up the map of the United States on the American Airlines site. Flight 159 was a little dot hovering around Buffalo in western New York. When I moved the cursor to the dot and right-clicked the mouse, the flight information popped up: “Estimated time of arrival Logan Airport: 9:53 p.m.” I looked at my watch. It was just past six, west coast time, so he should be landing in forty-five minutes. I decided against returning Colleen’s call. Email was always better when dealing with an angry or scared ex-wife, even in a crisis. I typed a message on my Blackberry, saying that American Airlines had Seamus landing shortly, even though his flight was now over an hour delayed.

Thirty seconds later, Colleen replied,

“He has been circling Logan for the last hour.The plane is near Buffalo to avoid the storm until they can clear the runway. This airport is shut down completely. Even the security guys have gone home.”

That didn’t sound good. I looked out at the beautiful sunset over the Pacific Ocean. Our rental, with its expansive view, sat up high on the hill, just behind the Pacific Coast Highway. From our bed, Elena and I watched the lights of tankers passing miles offshore from one horizon to the other. Why anyone would ever leave this for snow, ice, and bitter cold wind was beyond me. I tried to remain calm as I picked up the landline to call the after-hours service at American Express Travel. I knew that trying to get through to American Airlines directly would be useless. The website was the best I was going to do as far as communicating with the airline.

“This is Jeremy at American Express emergency services. How can I help you tonight?”

“Look, I have a problem,” I said, trying to sound calm. “My son, Seamus Matlack, is on American flight 159 to Boston. He’s a minor. I am really worried about him. I’m wondering if they’re going to land.”

“That’s no fun. What a way to end spring break, huh? Let’s see what I can find out for you.”

“I’m sure he’ll be okay. He’s my oldest son.”

“I understand. Says here that his plane is headed for Hartford. The storm has passed through there already. Logan won’t be open until the morning.”

“Shit!” I said, forgetting momentarily–or perhaps no longer caring–that I was speaking to the customer service rep and not an old school friend in a bar, “Do ya think his mom can pick him up there?”

“If she can get through. Otherwise the airline will supervise him overnight; get him back to Boston first thing in the morning.”
“His mother isn’t going to let him stay by himself with strangers,” I said.

“Happens all the time, Mr. Matlack. Your son’s going to be fine.”

“He’s probably scared shitless, but let’s hope you’re right. Thanks,” I said, before hanging up.

I emailed Colleen, “FLIGHT HAS BEEN DIVERTED TO HARTFORD. YOU CAN TRY TO PICK HIM UP THERE OR THEY WILL FLY HIM HOME FIRST THING IN THE MORNING.” I hit ’send’ and waited for the shit storm to hit.

The response was terse and, thankfully, brief. “IN CAR. ON WAY TO HARTFORD.”

I went back to the computer to refresh the American Airlines screen. The dot came up over Albany. When I clicked, it showed arrival in Hartford in half an hour. I went out on the deck to look at the ocean, trying to figure out what I could possibly do 3,000 miles away from my son. I took out my Blackberry and decided to leave him a message so that he would call as soon as he landed.

I got his voicemail. “This is Seamus. Please leave me a message.”

“Seamus, it’s dad. I know your flight has been diverted to Hartford. Your mom’s on her way. She will get there as soon as she can. Call me when you can. Sorry for the hassle, but this will be fine. Love ya. Peace out, dude.” I clicked the phone off, then texted him as well, “SEAMUS. YOUR MOM IS ON HER WAY. CALL ME. DAD.”

I went back inside to watch the basketball tournament and to try to take my mind off my son. Twenty minutes later, my Blackberry was beeping again. I was hoping it was Seamus, but it was Colleen. “Shit!” I muttered to myself. Her message read, “STATE POLICE STOPPED ME ON MASS PIKE. ROAD CLOSED. HAVE TO TURN AROUND. HAVE YOU TALKED TO SEAMUS? HIS PLANE SHOULD HAVE LANDED BY NOW.”

I hit redial on my Blackberry and again got voicemail, “This is Seamus…”

“FUCK!” I shouted, slamming the phone down. For the first time, panic set in. How could I let this happen? Why the fuck hadn’t I checked the weather before putting my son on that plane? He had to be scared by now. Why wasn’t he answering his damn phone?

I went back to the computer and clicked ‘refresh.’ The dot settled on Hartford. I clicked again. The computer blinked at me, “LANDED.”

I furiously typed yet another message on my Blackberry, “CALL ME!” I went back outside to look at the Pacific Ocean and to try to talk myself down. Seamus is not dead. He’s not even sick. The airline is responsible for his safety and even though they can’t get most flights to arrive on time, this is different. They take this shit seriously. The crew members on that plane must be parents too. They must know what it’s like to have your kid stranded somewhere you can’t reach him.

I went back inside and hit redial again. “This is Seamus…”

My Blackberry rang. It was Colleen. I had to pick it up now. “What do you know?” she blurted out.

“Nothing. I haven’t been able to talk to him yet. His plane’s on the ground but he is probably just getting his luggage. This is all going to be fine, Colleen. He’ll be home in no time,” I said, trying desperately to maintain an even tone.

“I can barely see the road. Call me when you hear anything,” Colleen said before hanging up.

I went back outside on the deck and paced; then went back inside and tried to watch a tournament game that had gone into overtime. I tried to get involved in the game. I actually went back to the computer to check who Seamus had in his bracket. The phone rang.

I ran to the kitchen to pick it up. “Hey pops, you see that finish?” Seamus asked.

“Man, am I glad to hear your voice, Seamus!” I said, letting go of the pocket of air that had been buried deep in my chest all afternoon.

“No big deal, dad. They set us up at a Holiday Inn. This stewardess Annie is in the next room. She just bought me a cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate milkshake. Getting ready for the Boston College tip-off. They’re going to dominate,” Seamus said.

“You’re too much, kid. Is this Annie treating you okay?”

“Definitely. You wanna talk to her?” Seamus replied.

“Please.”

“Here she is,” Seamus said. There was shuffling on the phone. A woman’s voice eventually came on.

“This is Annie. You have one special boy here, Mr. Matlack. He kept the whole crew entertained at baggage claim with his Harlem Globetrotters routine.”

“Annie, I don’t know how to thank you enough for taking such good care of my son,” I said.

“Don’t mention it. I’m a divorced parent too. I would want the same for my little girl if she got stuck somewhere. Besides, your son never panicked. He kept telling us all what a great adventure this was, when we were getting ready to poke our own eyes out with the delays.”

“Well, thanks. Can I talk to him again?”

Seamus came back on the phone and spoke in a whisper. “Dad, Annie is kind of hot.”

“Son, she sounds about twenty years older than you. Be thankful she’s takin’ such good care of you and don’t get fresh with her!” I said, in mock anger.

“I was just kidding, dad. I’ll give you a call after the Boston College game. We can watch it together on text. Let me know what you think along the way. Okay?”

“Okay. Peace out. Love ya, son.”

“Love ya too, dad.”

I then went into the TV room, turned the television off, and sat in the dark. After a few moments, I emailed Colleen. “TALKED TO SEAMUS. A-OK.”

The next morning, Cole woke us up early but Elena let me sleep. Boston College had won in a blowout. Seamus had called midway through the second half to announce the game officially over. At 10:30 in the morning, my Blackberry was buzzing again. It was an email from Colleen: “SEAMUS HOME.”

“There’s one!” Seamus shouted, pointing into the pool of salt water under the rock he had just flipped over. Cole’s little fingers grasped for the tiny hermit crab as it scurried across the sand. He caught it and placed it gently in a yellow plastic bucket, joining a dozen others.

Elena and I lounged on the beach nearby, watching the boys and holding hands. Sailboats dotted the Atlantic Ocean. Down the beach, we could see the house that we had built sitting high up on a bluff just over the Massachusetts and Rhode Island border. As a girl, Elena had come to Westport Harbor for the first time with her family. Twenty-five years later, she had convinced me to come back to rent. All her childhood friends were still there. It had become a cocoon in our lives; a home and a respite from the stormy weather.

Seamus and I swam out to a massive rock shaped like an elephant, a few hundred yards out in the ocean. For generations, kids had jumped off the head, shoulder, and rump of the elephant, then pulled themselves up and across barnacles to lay on the rock and warm up.

“Dad, I can’t believe we won four hundred bucks for our bracket. That was cool.” Seamus had finished second, only a loss in the final separating him from the grand prize. At Elena’s suggestion we had all gone to Boston Medical Center and used half the money to buy car seats for homeless moms.

“Yeah, next year we’re going all the way,” I said, getting up. I ran off the rock and plunged thirty feet into the cold, green water, coming back to the surface just in time to see my son follow my lead.

—–

Tom Matlack’s story “Lost and Found” has been adapted into a short film. Watch it here:

Lost and Found from GoodMenProject on Vimeo.

By: REGIE O’HARE GIBSON

I am nine. It’s a typical Chicago summer, hot and urban, with the smell of barbecue and hot sauce spanking the air as though it were a disobedient three-year-old. My younger brother, Ron, and I are in Mother’s beauty shop, Gibson’s House of Styles. Today is Saturday, the day she sculpts the heathen heads of women into shapes God will accept in church tomorrow morning. Today my mother is a conjure woman, hard at work on her customers’ illusions. Her eye of newt and toe of frog? Sulfur 8 and lanolin shampoo. Her wool of bat and tongue of dog? Dark and Lovely and #8 black rinse. We watch as hair, once as unreasonable as a slumlord on the eighth of the month, surrenders to the merciless teeth of the black straightening comb––instrument of torture, agent of beauty.

I can remember every one of these women’s names: Miss Dorthee, Miss Moshell, Miss Dareese… They are every sepia shade imaginable. Some are as wide as a Sunday-morning church hat. Some are as skinny as they swear they will make their men’s wallets come Monday.

You damn right, I’m my own woman! I don’t need no man to take care of me.

I know what you mean girl! I’d do alright by myself too, and believe me my man better know it! And my man know that he better be payin’ for what’s on this head if he wants what’s in these pants…

Their collective laughter is fever-pitched in the blow-dried air. Livening their mouths are momentary glints of gold or silver teeth, giving away the Mississippi they came from.

If a man don’t wanna put clothes on your back then you don’t let him put you on yours!

Girl, you sho’ is right about that! Some say it’s what’s up front that counts, but if a man ain’t got dollars then bein’ with him just don’t make no sense.

I look up at my mother’s hands. They are busy hexing a head of hair. I look at myself, look over at my brother. He is staring at the television, lost in Saturday morning animation. But I am living the cartoon.

Is this what women really think, or are they just saying these things to get a laugh? Is this the way it really is between men and women? Did any of the men know this? Oh no, is my mother like them?

So how have these childhood memories and experiences affected me as a man and, subsequently, my relationship with women?

I can understand if you’ve drawn the conclusion that I don’t have a very high opinion of the women in the beauty shop. But that’s untrue. These women always treated me well. They were both formidable and kind. They handled their homes and children well, and despite their weekly reaming-of-the-man ritual, most of the women took care of the men in their lives in a loving, albeit heavy-handed, fashion. Still, I’ve been distrustful of women, fearing that one day a woman might give kisses on the face and on another day a knife in the back, and that women are materialistic and selfish and are only out for what they can get.

However, my closest friends have been women. Perhaps my confusion over what I call my “beauty-shop moments” has caused me to seek out genuine friendships with women. When I have related some of my fears to my women friends, more than a handful have said that they have sometimes felt the need to reduce a relationship to things monetary to compensate for a relationship’s lack of intimacy, communication, and simple courtesy.

So I have learned to conduct periodic “relationship check-ins” with the women in my life––whether the relationship is familial, romantic, or platonic. I don’t care what a man says; if he is honest, he will admit that a large part of his self-image hinges upon how he is perceived by the women around him.

And I have learned a few things about becoming a better husband, father, and man. I have learned the importance of preparing my home to receive a woman; this shows respect for her and for myself. I have learned to ask questions at least as much as I make statements, to be careful about raising my voice in anger—far too many women have experienced yelling as a prelude to violence—and to show strength and sensitivity. That is, to be respectful of women but not a fool for them. Yes, this might be fortune-cookie stuff, but it’s still good advice.

Confronting the question honestly has become part of a psychological journey that has been delightful and disturbing, nostalgic and nasty––but also necessary in my ongoing quest to understand this ever-shifting thing called manhood.

—

Regie O’Hare Gibson is one of the thirty-one original author/contributors in The Good Men Project anthology. A poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator and educator, Gibson and his work appear in the New Line Cinema film Love Jones, which is based largely on events in his life. His poem “Brother to the Night (A Blues for Nina)” is on the movie’s soundtrack and is performed by the film’s star, Larenz Tate. In the film, Gibson performs “Hey Nappyhead” with world-renowned percussionist and composer Kahil El Zabar, who wrote the score for the musical The Lion King.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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!

As I sit down with Matt Weiner in his office at Los Angeles Center Studios, he proudly shows me a tray on display that was a wedding gift to his parents. This tray became a key prop on his Golden Globe-winning show Mad Men when one of the lead characters, Pete, traded it for a rifle.

Weiner is obsessed with the stylistic authenticity of Mad Men, his critically acclaimed television drama. Set in 1960, when Madison Avenue advertising executives were seen as masters of the universe, the show is both a brilliantly conceived period piece and a whole lot more. Weiner, not yet born in 1960, knows the era: its fashions and hairstyles, its haze of cigarette smoke and three-martini lunches in amber-lit bars, its electric typewriters, and its attitude. It was a time of brash assertion when ad men believed they could shape public opinion, like gods toying with mortals.

“There were seven deadly sins practiced at the dawn of the 1960s: smoking, drinking, adultery, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism,” writes New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley. “In its first few minutes, Mad Men on AMC taps into all of them.”

Mad Men is Weiner’s creation, and he’s at the top of his game after writing 12 episodes of the Sopranos and becoming executive producer to creator David Chase. Wearing pristine white pants, he walks back into his office from the writers’ room having given his team their marching orders.

Weiner talks fast, becoming more and more animated as he recalls his grandfather Max, a fur dresser born near Kiev, Russia. Max worked in Manhattan’s garment district.

“Grandpa Max was always a natty dresser,” Weiner says. “When he died, he left me his sharkskin suits, skinny ties, two-toned shirts, and multi-colored socks. I wore them to high school and then through Wesleyan.”

In high school Weiner found an academic mentor in Suzy Moser, a chain-smoking teacher who had an advanced degree in social thought from the University of Chicago. At a dinner, Moser introduced Weiner to a visiting poet, W.S. Merwin, who told him that he could be a writer. It was a formative moment and encouraged Weiner to pursue poetry.

While his academic record in high school didn’t distinguish Weiner, the sense of humor he had inherited from Max did. His peers selected him as their commencement speaker. He gave a witty speech that caught the attention of a classmate’s father, Allan Burns, the creator of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and a legendary TV writer. “That was really something,” Burns told him. The two kept in touch and Burns would eventually get Weiner his first job in Hollywood.

Weiner has always understood what it means not to fit in. He grew up a Jew in a non-Jewish neighborhood. He attended Wesleyan to be a poet, but his work wasn’t deemed good enough to get him into a writing class. For three years after he got married, his only financial contribution to the household budget was $16,000 in prize money he won on the game show Jeopardy! And yet not fitting in has been his key talent as a writer, along with a keen sense of irony.

“Remember the mirror can be your best friend or your worst enemy,” says Joan, the voluptuous head secretary.

Meanwhile the men of the office take inventory behind a one-way mirror. Only Joan knows they are looking.

“Has no taste, ugly dress, horrible wig.”

“They’re brainstorming.”

“I wouldn’t expect more than a few sprinkles.”

“I love it when they do that, my little blow-fish.” A woman is puckering in the mirror.

“Anybody mind if I take my pants off?”

Finally Joan bends forward over a table provocatively to show off her curves, knowing the men are watching, causing one to exclaim, “I want to stand and salute that!” And he does.

Weiner is surprised by the idea that he, or his show, is sexist. “The treatment of women on Mad Men is the point,” he says emphatically. “The women characters are informed not only by my mother, an attorney, and two older sisters, an attorney and a doctor, but by the philosophical underpinnings of what I learned at Wesleyan. It’s right out of The Feminine Mystique. My show is saying ‘This is not right.’”

“The most exciting ideas on campus involved feminism,” Weiner says. His eyes light up when he talks about the impact of his freshman poetry course taught by Professor of English Gertrude Hughes. He was one of two men in the class. “Like Emily Dickinson, I was drawn to the hormonal teenage experience of loneliness, of the reality of death, and of sexual awakening.” In the poems of women—from Dickinson to Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, and Denise Levertov—he discovered a form for his exploration of the outsider who tries to don a mask of acceptability, but often fails.

The enduring hope in the world of Mad Men is embodied in the women and children, not the men, Weiner contends. Peggy (the “new girl” at the office) “shows that a good idea, in the end, will overcome sex, race, everything.” Glenn, the young son of a divorced mother, is the other innocent. Glenn, played by Weiner’s real son Marten, walks in on a woman in the bathroom and then asks her for a lock of her hair. “That really happened in Baltimore when I was 7 or 8 years old,” Weiner says. “I had a crush on my babysitter and wanted to see her naked.”

When viewers started saying the character of Glenn was odd, Weiner told his son that the bathroom scene was true. Ten-year-old Marten replied, “Dad, that’s weird.”

At Wesleyan, Weiner became obsessed with his dreams. They were so vivid that he sometimes recalled them as real. He dreamed about walking around campus at noon only to find it deserted; he dreamed about talking to his late Grandpa Max, about talking to an amalgamation of people in a single body, about talking to the sun.

Professor of Psychology J.J. Conley took him on in an independent study course to explore the biology, psychology, and literary explanations for his sleeping visions.

A decade and a half later, Weiner worked with David Chase on Chase’s now famous 22-minute dream sequence in which Tony Soprano points a gun at his high school football coach, who berates him for the company he keeps, the life choices he’s made, and his lack of preparedness. When Tony pulls the trigger, the gun’s silencer goes limp; he pulls it again and the clip falls out. Just before he wakes up, the coach tells him, “You’ll never shut me up.”

For Weiner, Tony’s sordid life of murder and prostitutes would inevitably lead to the vivid dreams that reflected the turmoil in his subconscious mind and the feelings of inadequacy that echoed Weiner’s own experience.

Although Weiner wrote poetry daily at Wesleyan, he couldn’t convince faculty members that his work was good enough to get into a class. Finally, he took his poems to Professor of Letters Franklin Reeve, father of Christopher, for an independent study. Their first meeting was rocky. Reeve found much to criticize, but he was also amused by Weiner’s sense of irony.

“Matt never quite fit,” Reeve said in a phone interview. “He had a spunky original streak that meant his writing wasn’t successful the way others were. He was determined to reinvent the wheel in a wonderful way, which made him a stimulating and rewarding student to work with.”

Reeve agreed to take Weiner on in the spring of his sophomore year. They continued working together throughout his junior year and then on his senior thesis for the College of Letters. For Weiner, Reeve was a larger-than-life figure, handsome and robust. He lived in Vermont and split logs. “He had been Robert Frost’s translator in Russia, so I always suspected he was some sort of spy. He was a romantic in the best sense of the word and I loved him for that.

“He made me understand that my writing came from inside. It was embarrassing to expose myself but he was the first to tell me, ‘That is good! When you embarrass yourself, you’re engaging the audience; you’re being honest.’” Like his teacher Suzy Moser, Reeve gave Weiner license to be himself as an artist. In fact, he demanded it.

Weiner never believed Reeve had a high opinion of him. “I always thought I disappointed him in some way,” he says. When told what Reeve said, Weiner responds with a shocked, “Really?”

After graduation Weiner went to film school at USC, met and married Linda Brettler, and tried to write. Linda, an architect, supported him until he finally landed a job at A&E writing biographies and then became a writer on the sitcom Party Girl. He still considers himself to be a comedy writer.

He began to research the advertising industry from the era of Max’s beautiful clothes. During the summer hiatus between seasons of working on comedy, he sat down and wrote the pilot of Mad Men.

At about that time, Linda pushed him to watch an episode of The Sopranos. He remembers it as a religious experience. “Tony strangles someone who has a kid. It showed that the writers were actually going to follow through on the dramatic premise of the character. Viewers were going to be compelled to live with this guy as he drove his own daughter to college after committing the murder.” This was the kind of rule-breaking that Weiner had been looking for on TV.

After seeing The Sopranos, Weiner tried for months to get HBO to read his Mad Men pilot. Finally, he begged his agent to get Chase to read the pilot since they were both represented by United Talent Agency. The script sat at the agency for two years before they finally sent it to Chase. During a Halloween party for his children, a car pulled up to Weiner’s house to take him to the Los Angeles airport for an interview in New York. “I had never been flown anywhere, never been put up in a hotel, never had a car waiting for me,” Weiner says.

In November of 2002, Weiner began work on The Sopranos. His auditory memory and knack for dialogue set him apart from other writers. He also understood Chase’s preference for subtext. Weiner writes obliquely, preferring to use dialogue to hint at underlying tension rather than address it directly: “I don’t like people talking about the real subject because people never do.”

He worked on The Sopranos for four and a half years, but he continued to think about Mad Men. “That was where I lived. I just wanted to make that show.” As The Sopranos headed towards its conclusion and television history, Christina Wayne at AMC read the Mad Men script and fell in love with Weiner’s highly stylized and edgy approach to a forgotten era. She was looking for a way to brand the channel with original content and believed Mad Men was the perfect vehicle.

One of the inspirations for the 1960 Madison Avenue setting of Mad Men was a College of Letters class with Howard Needler on the cyclical patterns of history. Weiner was deeply influenced by the Marxist concept of history predicated on the conflict between opposed material and social forces.

The election of John Kennedy in 1960 signified an inflection in the play of social forces. World War II had not yet faded into history, and Vietnam was just around the corner. A revolution in technology was accelerating. Unheard of prosperity mixed with vivid memories of the Great Depression. Jim Crow discrimination was giving way to civil rights. The same secretaries who were working for advertising executives would soon be marching for equal rights. The men who comfortably ruled over these secretaries, like men who rule in any period of upheaval, had reason to be anxious about change.

Don Draper, the lead ad exec on Mad Men, suffers from a deep, existential ache. Although the period-piece atmosphere of Mad Men fixes the show in time, Draper’s alienation is timeless. “There are no primary causes, there are no rules, your morality is your own, no one is keeping score, and your behavior is to be judged on its own merits,” says Weiner.

“I remember the first time I was a pallbearer,” Don confesses to his mistress Rachel as he tries to seduce her. “I’d seen dead bodies before, must have been fifteen, my aunt. I remember thinking, They’re letting me carry the box, they’re letting me be this close to it. No one is hiding anything from me now. And then I looked over and I saw all the old people waiting together by the grave. And I remember thinking, ‘I’ve just moved up a notch.’’’

“I’ve never heard you talk that much before.”

“Rachel.”

“What do you want from me?”

“You know. I know you do; you know everything about me.”

“I don’t.”

Don tries to kiss Rachel.

“You don’t want to do this, you have a wife. You should go to her.”

“Jesus, Rachel. This is it. This is all there is. I feel like it’s slipping through my fingers like a handful of sand. This is it. This is all there is.”

“That’s just an excuse for bad behavior.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

Don kisses Rachel passionately. She responds. He stops.

“No. Unless you tell me you want this.”

“Yes, please,” she says.

Weiner slowly reveals Don Draper as an imposter. Born to a prostitute who died in childbirth, he was handed over to his mean-spirited father and his wife. When his drunken father died, the wife took up with another man. “I was raised by those two sorry people,” he admits to Rachel. He went into the army to escape his family. When enemy fire killed his lieutenant, he switched dog tags. He came home as Don Draper, the dead lieutenant.

Throughout the first season, flashbacks foreshadow the discovery of Don’s past. But when Pete, Don’s subordinate, finds out the truth and brings it to the head of the firm, he gets an indifferent reception. “This country was built and run by men with worse stories than whatever you’ve imagined here,” the founder says.

The violence of Tony Soprano and swagger of Don Draper are a cover for the quiet desperation Weiner sees in all of us. They are liars who want to be what they are not. They represent the duplicitous side he believes lurks in each of us.

The crew of Mad Men reports that Weiner shows unbridled joy at having his dream on the screen. “Matt’s passion ends up being a beautiful and generous thing,” Sopranos and Mad Men director Taylor says. “Dealing with his own emotions and obsessions passionately, inspires everyone.”

The effort also has taken its toll. During the first season, he was in a fog, a ghost in his house. His four sons had to accept that “daddy’s on a different planet.” But the payoff to him as an artist was huge. “When we finished filming the first season, I felt we had done something great. I’d never had that experience in my life.”

In a television era dominated by American Idol, the storytelling and cinematic beauty of Weiner’s work stand out for the quality of craftsmanship. The real power of his writing, however, emerges from his honest connection with the alienated person struggling for acceptance in a hostile world. Weiner, like his leading men, has strived mightily to fill the existential void. He has survived creative purgatory. But as the creator and show runner of a successful television drama, he has done something remarkable. He has fulfilled Franklin Reeve’s call to write from the inside out.

“Bailiff, this one is a bit young, isn’t he?” the judge said with a laugh on a fall day in 1973.  At eight years old I was the youngest person in the room by at least a decade.  I was standing in a gloomy courtroom in Chicopee, Massachusetts, after having spent the day in jail with my dad and fifty other protesters, contemplating how to plead on charges of disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace.

That morning, the police separated the men from the women when we arrived at the county jail.  Led into the holding cell, I was desperate to go to the bathroom.  It had been several hours since we’d left our home in nearby Amherst.  I stared at the bottom of the single, filthy toilet, without a seat, for a good two minutes before finally being able to relieve myself in front of such a large group.

In the cell, Dad explained to me, “The great men in the history of this country, like Martin Luther King Jr., and in the history of the world, like Gandhi, refused to plead guilty to the crimes they did not believe they committed.  They broke the law out of a higher moral calling, standing up for what they believed was right.  They took the punishment exactly to prove that the laws were unjust.  They didn’t have to commit acts of violence to make their point, just disobey in a calm and dignified way.  That is what is called civil disobedience.” 

I wanted to get the hell out of lockdown.  But I was also trying to figure out how to be a man, even in the fourth grade.  What does it mean to act with courage?  Is it manlier to respond to violence with violence or restraint?   Not exactly the typical eight-year-old’s dilemma, but given the situation, I needed some answers in a hurry.

At dawn, Dad and I had driven to Westover Air Force Base.  Dad told me about the B-52 bombers-which used to fly over our house in Amherst on training runs-that were at that very moment carpet bombing innocent Vietnamese civilians.  We parked our car and walked toward the guard station at the entry point to the base. “We can’t go on the base or it will be a federal crime,” Dad explained.  “Let’s wait here until everyone is together.”

The group gathered around Dad with their homemade signs of outrage.  “We are going to move into the road and sit in a semicircle,” he told everyone.  “We want to stay on this side of the guard station.  The police are waiting for us.  You can choose to cooperate with them or not, as you are so moved.  Please do not fight with them. If you decide not to cooperate, just go limp and force them to carry you.  Let’s try to remember why we are here.  Think of the Vietnamese people that our country has victimized by invading their country-the women and children we have killed.”

With that, he closed his eyes.  In a low gravelly voice, wildly out of tune but determined nevertheless, he sang “We Shall Overcome.”  The crowd joined him.  We filed out into the street.  A light rain formed puddles in the road.  It was dark and ominous.  It was only a few steps but I got lost, not sure where to go or what to do.  Dad held my hand as he sang.  Cars waiting to get onto the air base beeped loudly.  We were distinctly not welcome here.   The thought crossed my mind:  How many other kids from the Wildwood Elementary School were taking the day off to get arrested?  None.  That made me either wildly mature for my age or a freak or potentially both. 

The singing voices increased in volume, determined to drown out the angry horns.  As soon as the circle was formed, we sat down in the road.  I was surprised by how cold and uncomfortable the blacktop felt under my rear end.  Wet sand stuck to my Sears husky jeans.  “Oh, deep in my heart / I do believe / We shall overcome some day.”  It was silent for a moment.  The cars stopped honking, giving up for the time being.  Twenty police officers approached, wearing rain slickers, helmets, and stern looks on their faces.  I tried to figure out if the headgear was specifically for riots or part of the everyday uniform.  Each was holding a black billy club with the handle in one hand and the blunt end in the other.   I looked down at the loose sand on the road and tried to keep breathing.

“We’re going to give you people one warning and one warning only,” the sergeant in charge barked in a matter-of-fact tone of disgust.  “You’re breaking the law by blocking traffic here today.  If you do not immediately cease and desist we’ll be forced to read you your rights and arrest you.”  No one moved.  Dad’s voice again, low and persistent: “All we are saying / Is give peace a chance…”  Quietly the group followed in song.  The voices betrayed nerves.  Several of the demonstrators, even with their heads down, peeked at the police officers to see what was going to happen next.

While we continued singing, the sergeant read us our rights.  “You have the right to remain silent.  Anything you say will be used against you in a court of law.  You have the right to an attorney…”  An officer approached a wild-haired college student, no more than twenty, to whisper in his ear.  The student didn’t move.  The officer reached down to place his arms through the student’s armpits, putting his hands at the back of the student’s head and lifting his body up while forcing his head down hard.  The student reacted in pain and went limp, making the cop lift and drag him over to a waiting police van.  Several other demonstrators were treated in the same rough manner.  “Tom, it’s time to go,” Dad told me firmly.  We stood as he began the next song and we walked over to a waiting bus, voluntarily climbing on.  Once the bus filled up, they drove us to court.

After waiting in jail, we were finally led out into the courtroom itself.  The judge asked us to stand as he read out the charges and explained the penalty for a guilty plea and the process should we want to plead not guilty.  He asked all those who would like to plead guilty to please step forward.  My mother had forced my father to promise that on this day he would plead guilty, as would I.  He was no stranger to prison, but not this time.  I stepped forward with all the pride of Martin Luther King himself, ready to receive the punishment that would prove that my act of conscience had indeed been registered and made a difference.  “I’m against killing innocent children, just like me, in Vietnam,” I thought at that moment.

The judge looked down the line of protesters and stopped at me.  He laughed, dropped his head and gave it a tiny shake.  I was not sure if he thought this was some kind of joke, but before I knew what was going on the bailiff escorted me to a holding room, away from the rest of the protesters, to wait for my father.

I was humiliated to have gone through my own act of civil disobedience only to be dismissed by the judge as incapable of purposeful action.  As we left the courthouse, Dad explained that the protesters who pleaded innocent faced a week in prison.  I noticed a plastic jug being passed around for those who elected to go to trial.  It had dollar bills jammed into it and the words “Defense Fund” penned on a piece of masking tape on the side.  -TOM MATLACK

 ****

Two and a half months prior to the Boston-New York game, friends and family gathered to give a tribute to my father, who had recently passed away.  I spoke about how I had the privilege of getting to know my father through his love of language and how his love of the bon mot defined an aspect of him and an aspect of our relationship.  Sports also came into play.

Dad had a love-hate relationship with the English idiom, which is not surprising as English was his third language after Arabic and French.   Almost a “tea totaler,” Dad might become “topsy-tipsy” after a couple glasses of his favorite sherry. A man of depth, he could tell that some things were only “the bottom of the iceberg.” A man of principles, he could tell when someone was “shooting from below the belt.” 

In addition to the idiom errors that slipped into his spoken English, Dad could also deliberately skewer idioms.  His low regard for football and baseball came out when he’d shout “touchdown” after a home run or “home run” after a touchdown.  Usually, his distain for spectator sports was confined to the safety of the house, but far from always.   

A few times, all memorable in their own ways, my father took my brother and me to baseball games.  At an unusual New York Mets game – Tom Seaver made a rare relief appearance coming back from an injury – my father rooted for the visiting Montreal Expos.  His exhortations were not based on loyalty to the team, but on a sense of hospitality the likes of which had rarely, if ever, been seen before at a major league stadium, much less Shea.  An old lady, no doubt concerned with the outcome of the game, heard my father exhort the visiting with “well struck,” “bien fait,” and “touchdown,” leaned over, brandished her blue and orange umbrella, and instructed my father, “Know your baseball, Mister.”  Silently, my brother and I shared her concern regarding the outcome of the game and my father’s, well, willful ignorance of the national pastime. 

When we lived in Tampa, Dad would take us to Tampa Bay Rowdies games and thoroughly enjoy himself reading whatever book he brought with him.  He would emerge from his book from time to time, to inquire what might have prompted a particular roar from the crowd or to find out how much time was left in the game.

****   

These moments of father-son sports embarrassments pained me growing up, but they later became a source of amusement.  Although we never discussed it explicitly, sports was another in a series of areas where my father and I had an uneasy truce as he sought to stay true to his roots as an Arab immigrant and I pursued my life as a native American. 

There were also some less humorous but brilliant moments of sports concord.   In the late sixties, Dad was strongly sympathetic with the anti-war students.  Perhaps inspired by those students, one beautiful evening after work he showed up in our backyard with a Frisbee and, with various degrees of success, my father, my brother and I taught ourselves to throw it.  While my father and I, to the best of my recollection, never had a Field of Dreams moment playing catch with baseball and mitt, the Frisbee evening was a fine sports bond.

Similarly, in 1970, through my father’s friendship with a German family down the street, I was introduced to the brilliance of Pele.  Although the expected matchup between Pele and Beckenbauer never materialized, it was a wonderful introduction to the mysteries of “real” football at its finest.

 ****

The end of the month, my brother and I will travel to Citi Field to join some friends for a weekend of Yankee-Met rivalry.  We will be rooting for the Mets, and we will extend the Yankees no moral support or hospitality.  Should a Met hit a spectacularly long fair ball, I will rise, arms raised toward the heavens, and shout, “Touchdown!”    No doubt I will be alone in doing so.  At least in the stands.  -Philip Azar