The early morning charade among macho men January 4, 1985

 


Freud would have had a field day with Dan, the Wildman of Willowbrook Mall – at least in predicting the man’s tendency to fail.

Dan, a member of the mall’s night crew, perpetuates his misery. He hates women, making wish I knew more about his upbringing to understand why. From time to time, he mentions his wife and betrayal, but not in detail.

“I can live without her,” he tells me.

Bitter to a fault, he tells me he doesn’t need any of them in his life, claiming they’ll all no good, always reading to betray him.

He’s not particularly happy with his fellow workers either.

He seems to think he’s unworthy of having friends and gets annoyed when I won’t get too close to him. I suspect he wants more from me than friendship, even though he knows I’m not gay.

This morning he got annoyed with other mall workers, especially Mickey, when Mickey made a pornographic display out of some of the donuts. Another guard noted that one of the muffins reminded him of some female parts just after losing her virginity.

All of the other men laughed – except Dan – when one of the male workers from the donut shop poured glaze on the muffin Mickey had mentioned, then put a cruller next to it with two munchkins near the other end as if intimation of the male sexual organ and it being responsible for the glaze dripping from the female looking muffin.

Dan looked particularly uncomfortable, even though he desperately needs to be one of the boys.

Last week, when a number of women attended this early morning ritual, Dan got rude with them, trying to make it clear he was the power broker here and that they needed him.

Later, after the women had gone, Dan called them sluts, because of the way they kept looking at Mickey – though Dan often looked at Mickey in the very same way.

Sometimes, the whole scene seemed like a gay ritual, working class men gathering together in a mutual attraction none of us would ever admit, Spartan males flexing our muscles amongst each other, talking about the women we’ve made love to, while ogling each other as if all of these sexual innuendos, these donut charades meant something else.

I’m not sure why this charade bothers me – if it actually bothers me at all – I’m just surprised I’ve never noticed it before, this attraction among males, this odd ritual we must go through to deny something we would never admit to, even to ourselves.



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