Of Lions and Men represents a strand of my ongoing quest to both understand the nature of masculinity in the past, including the traditional methods of a man's individual and collective self-cultivation, and also identify the current means of the diminishment of the socialized and alienated human male. Some clues to the latter have a way of cropping up in the most unlikely circumstances.
The Logistics of Urban Toil
The MTA, [Maryland Transit Authority] is a notoriously poor mass transportation provider. I have this on good authority from every pedestrian I know who has lived in Baltimore and other cities. I also know this from experience. For instance, Wednesday Night into Thursday Morning, attempting to take a bus a distance that I have walked in 2.5 hours, I spent 5.5 hours getting to work by bus. This was an anomaly, with the trip normally taking, from door to door, 1.5 hours. Two hours into my wait the notion to walk hit me, but I did not want to have that fool feeling wash over me after starting to walk and then having the late bus blow by, the tired souls on the bus looking down and me and thinking, “I’m so glad I’m not the unlucky bastard!” Then, after 3 hours standing and sitting on concrete, I was too tired to make the walk, and then work 10 hours, so continued to wait…
Something was wrong with the normally lame MTA. Most likely the heat causing buses to break down, and the propensity for drivers to call out since the recent riots, had something to do with it. Then, I recalled the many signs I have been seeing on the interior of MTA buses for ‘employment opportunities’ as ‘Bus Operators’ with ‘great benefits’ ‘good pay’ and ‘excellent job security.’ The craziest thing about these ads is they are targeting potential white male employees. The taboo race-gender of evil is being courted by the very system set up to counter the practice, effects and legacy of white oppression!
What gives in Gomorrah?
Friday Night
For now, I decided that my transport problem was a lack of bus drivers, and, as my own commander, tasked with the cognizant exploration of this dying human ethnosystem, I made the command decision to take the main lines, the #19 downtown, and the #23 out of town. Most likely the #55 has been getting diverted at Towson to pick up the slack on the #8 line, the busiest in the system. The #23 is the second busiest. So I was confident it would be running.
[Note: Yesterday, after starting this article, I was on a dying bus, the #3 chugging up and over hills as the female passengers cussed at the driver for nor moving faster. I stood and told him, “Sir, this bus is moving two miles per hour faster than I walk and I am not sweating on this brutally hot day. So I thank you.” I offloaded, and the bus died, the women threatening the driver in the background as I headed to the gym a mere block away.]
The #19 was running, but was behind. It was packed with mostly working people, just under capacity, with a sprinkling of hoodlums, one of which I sat next to as he discussed the important matters of life on an earpiece phone. These matters all revolved around drinking, getting high and “being real,” whatever that entails. As this fellow dropped an empty malt liquor can out the window, and cracked open another, I was serenaded by the voice of our civic goddess. Overhead, the female voice of the MTA oracle proclaimed in perfect Orwellian synchronicity with the denizens of the coach, “We all like the feeling of being a good neighbor. But don’t lend your smart phone and other electronic devices to strangers. The MTA wants to keep you and your property safe at all times.”
Seemingly heedless of the commands of our autogoddess, my good neighbor was taking a swig of Steel Reserve as he continued his conversation with some fellow by the name of ‘Ma Nigga’ via the earpiece, “Hells yes, Ma Nigga! I slapped the shit outta dat bitchass nigga fo’ smokin’ ma smoke—Yo feel me, Yo?”
The Block
I got off at 11:55 at Baltimore Street and went to stand on the saliva and gum patina that is the sidewalk at this bus stop. A young lady with her tiny infant baby had been there for an hour. A mentally handicapped white man was watching over her, looking out for the bus, making sure the whores and Johns of the red light district known as The Block did not bump into them. By 12:05 with one bus having failed to arrive and the other late he took the last bus to his destination, remanding her to my care with a “please, mister” look.
She smiled at me and made small talk. She was out of place as a young black woman. The razor blade, gun, and memorial tattoos were absent. The gaudy jewelry was absent. The slut clothing, revealing her every curve, was absent. She did not speak ebonics, but English. I had been standing with my back to the wall to keep anyone from getting behind me, but had to stand off so that the skittering two-inch long roaches would not decide that I was part of their habitat. They were so big that I was warned of their presence by the sound of them crawling.
The foot traffic for a summer Friday night in Baltimore’s center was about half of normal. The automobile traffic was below 50%, with normal police presence and with a lower than normal ratio of cabs. This was my first trip into the bowels of Harm City since the late April Purge. It seems like the recent unrest was bad for business and still is, including even the sordid business that transpires on The Block, which has recently been the target of federal raids targeting “human trafficking” rather than prostitution.
Now, as I stood by the little mother, the bus arrived at 12:41, packed to well over capacity and rocking at a fast walking pace. I boarded ahead of her to squeeze into the back as the driver made room for her and her baby to sit next to the two other mothers up front, both of whom were dressed according to the current ethos, like strippers on the stage.
The Crawl Out of Hell
The majority of the passengers were still wearing their wait staff and kitchen attire from work. One gigantic black man had managed to wrap himself around the pole by the rear door and had become a part of the bus. Behind him were the two other white guys, a rough looking tattooed skinhead and a large and obviously emotionally disturbed young man with loads of nerd baggage, looking like he has just come from the comic book shop. There were a few Latinos and Asians, but it was mostly a mass of polite, worn out, black humanity, who all had the look of suburban folks who could not wait to get out of the city after a long day at work. If you wished to film the faces of a beat up military unit being pulled out of combat and rotated back to a rest area while they were still being shelled, these people would do, with their worn looks of woe.
Then, across from the main Police Precinct, an unrepentant slice of the ghetto boarded. She was large, rounded like a stack of beach balls, dressed in tight but not revealing brightly colored clothes, and wore four inch hooped earrings beneath her glossy pile of grown-in-Asia hair. As she bumped little ‘mens’ out of the way, told them off, and shouldered her way to the mother-child seating area, she produced a fragrance-spraying device and asked the mothers in a hurried tone, “Is you babies okay with spray. This won’t bring them to sneezing and wheezing, will it? Will it?”
The muscular half-dressed woman with the shaved head and the largest baby hugged it more tightly and shook her head “No” with a disbelieving look in her eyes. The other two mothers shrugged their shoulders, dumfounded, with slight smiles. The very animated large woman, seeming to be in her mid-twenties, then sighed loudly and groaned, “Thank the Lord, cuz’ I about ta cut loose up in here!”
The eyes of the seated mothers got big. Some folks towards the back, including two fast food clerks, opened their mouths in shock, and the old bald white man with the backpack and umbrella began to shoulder his way through the hitherto unmovable mass of humanity in the aisle. The loud ghetto girl was spraying her fragrance bottle, which kind of made a snare drum hiss as the polyester base drum lower on her kit made its ominous rumble.
“Oh no, Yo!” came one voice as the woman reached over the second mother and cracked open the window with an apology, “Sorry y’all. It cain’t be helped. Been ready ta pop fo’ hours.”
Mind you, that they were seated and she was standing. Realizing this one patron stood to give her a seat.
More wind-breaking and spraying and groaning faded into my rear as the wall of cringing bodies behind me blocked the scents of the ghetto that now engulfed Little Mama and her tiny six-pound baby. One of the fast food employees—both women—said to the other, “Oh this shit’s bout to reek up in here! You see how big that stupid bitch is? She really lets loose its gonna get wrong—I don’t need this shit, or hers either.”
The other woman mused, “Think the driver ‘ill put her ass off?”
The first speaker smacked her lips and countered, “His narrow ass en who’s army?”
“Just sayin’ Yo—oo no, what crawled up in her and died?”
Further back I pushed until I was near the back door, under the overhanging arms of the ebony giant, who looked like he could have been trying to keep the bus from being crushed by some force of nature in a disaster movie.
The bus rocked through the streets of East Baltimore. Finally, the loud wind-breaking woman simply became loud, involved in a discussion over directions with someone on her smart phone as she yelled into it, eventually handing the phone off to a complete stranger to speak with the other person and make sure she got off at the correct stop. And, lo and behold, she did finally get off the bus to a collective sigh of relief.
Sammy
At last, as we pulled out of Greek Town and into Bay View Hospital a seat opened up next to a skinny old cook just on the back deck. The slight boy across the aisle—seated next to the large white man who had a disturbed cast to his features—darted into the more spacious seat. I dutifully sat half on the seat available, as this fellow’s thighs were so thick I only had about a foot width of seating.
The large fellow continued to look straight ahead as he hugged his backpack and cloth handbag and said, “It’s a tight fit, but it’s better than standing.”
His voice had the hollow, drawling, dreamy quality of a heroin addict. But by all other appearances he was not a heroin user. I suspected a victim of our mental health system. I was not taking notes and was not familiar with his style of speech, so can reconstruct little of his extensive dialogue as quotes. Except for a few brief passages I will narrate his points. The dream-like quality of his speech, considered, detached and groping, drew this listener in. This man, with the look of a lost soul, was not speaking with an agenda in mind. As he blinked slowly in contemplation, trying to rack his brain, and then spoke openly, well above a whisper, of the most private things, I soon realized that this was the most alienated soul I had encountered in some time.
As the bus slowed near the layover point, he blinked and prayed, “Oh, God, please don’t let this be a layover.”
I quipped, “That would be the crowning inconvenience of the night.”
“This is such an inefficient transit system,” he opined. “How long have you been out?”
“Two and a half hours now. You?”
“All day. My dog is going to be climbing the walls when I get home.” He then gave me the day’s shopping itinerary, and kissed a religious pendent on his key chain as the bus cruised on by the layover point.
He expressed a deep desire for sleep then appraised me as if to determine if I would be subject to dosing off. “Are you headed to the end of the line?”
“I’m getting off at the transfer point in Middle River.”
“If I nod off could you wake me, please?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’re headed into work, aren’t you?”
“Yes, a couple hours late I’m afraid, but I work for good people. As long as I get my job done, I’m okay.”
He thanked me, let his eyelids grow heavy as he hugged his belongings, and then opened them with a start, as if he had encountered something unexpected and would not pass up a chance of examining it. He appraised me again and extended his hand into our cramped space and introduced himself as Sammy, and inquired as to my name and destination. It then turned out that I work with his younger brother, and he lives a stone’s throw from my place of employment.
He dug into his bag and began showing me the treasures of the day, a number of books he had acquired through the library and a book store. He discussed his favorite book find locations and his favorite authors. I began quizzing him as to his literary preferences, as his 20-35 year old demographic is one that I understand I have failed to reach. I have been blaming this on these fellows playing video games, but was about to find out that there is much more to my failure to connect—and the failure of male authors going back to Jack London to engage our current youth—then a drop in male reading habits. Sammy had an impressive reading rate that hinted at unemployment.
The fascinating development was that the rough looking bald tattooed guy with the hairy shoulders and muscle shirt standing just beneath us on the lower deck became involved in the conversation. These guys had read all of the same stuff, had the same tastes. And as they discussed their literary diversions—for nonfiction was not on their mental menu—I noticed the narrow little man of perhaps 20 composing—seriously and quietly composing—rap lines in the seat next to us. This had the effect of listening to civilized fantasists discussing mythology in a garden while a savage seer evoked his ancestors in the surrounding jungle. You must remember that us three had been—a mere two months ago—hunted through the bus stops in this area by gangs of blacks. Sammy brought this up, about how the purge had messed with his reading rate as one could not read constantly while in transit among predatory packs.
As these fellows discussed their reading preference I realized that I had failed to correlate the contents of my mind where young male readership was concerned. Indeed, four young men at work who do read, are repelled by the masculine nature of my fiction, and read according to the same preferences discussed by these men. There is also a further correlation that I will discuss below.
As these two discussed their canon and I began to place other discussions of reading preferences with 20-35 year old male readers in the context of this conversation, the parameters for enjoyable immersive fiction reading for men of this generation developed into the following categories, from most to least read:
1. Predominantly light dystopian prose series by female authors focusing on in-group politics and the peer acceptance concerns of female protagonists
2. Secondarily light magical fantasy prose series of a verbose nature by female authors featuring an emasculated male lead and focusing on in-group social realization
3. The only male authors read are comic authors, in which the triumphs and personal foibles of superheroes constitute the subject matter.
4. My questions concerning reading classic, or older authors, elicit answers that take us only so far back as Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire, the premier in-group conflict fantasy that ignited postmodern feminine angst literature. Tolkien, even, is no longer read, simply enjoyed on DVD.
The astonishing thing about the fiction reading list of all six of these young men, taken in total, is that virtually everything they read is of recent composition. With the beginning of literary time being at about 1980, and nothing read with any regularity written before 2000, what emerges is a picture of a chronologically isolated generation of readers. This seems even more pronounced when one considers the absolute aversion to reading non-fiction. I do not mean to make a big leap based on this one conversation with two alienated nerds and my revaluation of the reading preferences of my food clerk coworkers. What struck me is how their preferences fall perfectly into line with the material on the book shelves at Barnes & Noble, which is even more pronounced if one looks at best selling material. These guys only read best sellers. Nothing obscure or in variance with the mainstream is sought out or even entertained.
In terms of fiction, the reality has been staring me in the face every time I go to the book store and find out what book in the science-fiction and fantasy genres is being optioned for a movie. The fact is our young men are reading fiction that is produced almost exclusively by women. What is more, this is both escapist and dystopian fiction in the main, where one’s place in society is the focus, and in which the protagonist is almost always a woman. There is no literary link to earlier generations of male writers, with the sole exception of the deeply emasculated H. P. Lovecraft, raised, like all of these readers, by a lone mother. And, like a doomed Lovecraft character, I failed to correlate all of this evidence in my mind until Sammy embodied it all down to his obsession with the sentimental artifacts of his life.
Walking in the Garden of the Lotus Eaters
I was beginning to feel like Conan, in the Devil in Iron, when he discovers that the city he thought was deserted was actually occupied by people living in a dreamy slumber even as the savage tribes that menace them creep over the walls of their civilization to extinguish it.
Sammy pulled out his key chain, choked with baubles, and began looking at the teardrop shaped key light and mumbling, “This is out of place. This does not belong. This doesn’t deserve to be on my key chain. You see this key chain? This is the most important thing in my life. It gains me entry into my house—the dog will surely jump all over me.”
Sammy then pleaded with me to take the accursed key light, promising that it will serve me well, but would weigh upon him if kept upon his chain of memories. I thanked Sammy for the light, which I have on my desk before me, and is actually a purple replica of a gas can.
His key chain, first and foremost, is the place where his grandmother’s religious prayer medallion is kept. There is no grandfather in his past.
The metal brand stamp from his first pair of sneakers, and from his favorite pair of sneakers, his class ring and his employee of the month pendent from five years ago, just before he got fired, are all on there, to chart the progress of his life.
The keys to the various places he has access to were there, including the most important key, the one to his safe, which indicates he lives with untrusted people, probably addicts.
I mentioned to Sammy that his key chain was a totemic object, similar to a Native American medicine pouch, or a Micronesian kulla string. He seemed pleased with this suggestion and nodded in a thankful way.
Most painfully, and most treasured, is the ring given him by his brother, which he has on the chain, and causes him great pain, as his brother is shunning him. I express sympathy for his lost brotherly connection and he became optimistic that he will be able to mend fences with his brother, and also noted that this was the point of his most recent discussion with his latest of seven psychiatrists who have treated his various mental disorders. The rift between Sammy and his brother was born of the circumstance of their childhood, which I shall summarize below, though Sammy spent ten minutes on the subject. He admitted—out of nowhere—to eating large quantities of "pills" at one phase in his life.
Sammy and his two half brothers were born of the thoughtlessly planted seeds of three different uncaring men by the same drug addicted mother. The head of the family was the maternal grandmother, which is the case with many white families in the Essex area, where drug addiction has claimed most white women and alcoholism most white men. The resulting dysfunctional linier extended family structure mirrors that of the fragmented urban black family, except for the fact that violence and violent crime is rarely evidenced by the sons. The white response to this similar fragmentation of the family seems to be a sorrowful retreat into fantasy rather than a projection of rage.
Sammy was the eldest of the three brothers. Mom lived at home with the three boys but was stoned all of the time. So Sammy did all of the things for his brothers that a mother would do, from hygiene, to packing school lunches, to meeting with teachers, etc. His grandmother taught him how to be a good mother to his brothers.
The only man in Sammy’s life was his second brother’s father, who, along with his drinking buddies, gang raped Sammy on more than one occasion at the ages of 5-7. Three years of molestation and rape has weighed heavily on him ever since. The toughest part of Sammy’s family life was that as soon as his brothers could fend for themselves his mother’s health began to fail and he became her nurse. The current rift between Sammy and his second brother is related to the assertion of his that his brother’s father raped him.
Sammy eventually made his way into the workplace, working for a supermarket chain I know well. Unsuited for the traditional male job descriptions, Sammy excelled at the register, with the female staff, where he was promoted and awarded. This brought the ire of a more senior woman he was promoted over, who made up a story that Sammy planned on vandalizing the store. Security—including a goon I once punked out, and who behaved to Sammy in the exact same manner I remember him behaving to intimidated female staff—locked Sammy in a room and threatened and brow beat him into resigning without unemployment benefits.
This extended life story took us off the bus, and two miles out into Middle River. Between 1:30 and 1:50, Sammy whined like a woman does about her work, and alternately salvaged some vestige of masculinity in his soul, and apologized for his rambling, as well as thanking me for listening. It was not all complaining. Sammy also went on and one like a woman about his favorite prepared foods, what place had the best cheesy fries, and why they were the best and the deep pleasure one had eating them. This reminded me of many a conversation with women who were sensually involved with food.
Alternately he complained like a woman about the heat. This complete lack of tolerance for temperature variation is something I have noticed is a universal characteristic of women, which makes sense, as they are the nesting and therefore comfort-seeking gender. Another feminine quality I have noticed among the current crop of young men is the inability to fast, the almost complete intolerance for an empty belly. The discipline of starving and becoming one with his hunger is a hallmark of the primitive warrior and prizefighter, and is completely lacking in our current crop of intensively domesticated males.
As we walked across Middle River, and Sammy mentioned how the new bridge design unfortunately did not favor web-building spiders, it occurred to me that Sammy had in common with the other readers of sissy fantasy that I know in his age group, an affinity for the mother over the father. This is combined with the circumstance of living from childhood the life of a hunted person, preyed upon by the blacks, who are the sons of the invaders from the ghetto that Sammy’s father’s generation of white men ceded their turf to without a fight, as they sunk into drunken oblivion. What you get is a sorrowful dreamy state, a sense of ennui similar to that afflicting aboriginal people living among the ruins of a culture destroyed by their civilized conquerors.
As we reached the store, I promised Sammy I’d send him some books through his brother. We shook hands, with him instantaneously transforming into a masculine figure. As we parted he quickly and quite visibly reacquired his beaten down posture and went on his dreamy way across the lot, seemingly looking for items of interest on the asphalt.
As I entered the refrigerated store with sweat pouring off of me I was well aware that I had just made friends with a walking, suffering, but thankfully yet dreaming, case study in emasculation. Sammy embodied the many threads of emasculation that run through our society—including an aversion to realism in fiction and combat—in one suffering mind, and has hopefully set me on a path toward finding a way to connect with such readers and perhaps lure them into the world of men.
The one sensation I have not been able to clear from my mind since meeting Sammy, is that I’m walking through a Robert E. Howard story as the interloping adventurer, observing the dreamy dissipation of a once dynamic conquering people into a den of slumbering addicts, even as the barbarians which their kind had formerly oppressed steal on them in the night with knives out.
>What you get is a sorrowful dreamy state, a sense of ennui similar to that afflicting aboriginal people living among the ruins of a culture destroyed by their civilized conquerors.
Right, it's a state of learned helplessness.
The natural response to a situation where you are about to be brutalized and can do nothing to prevent it is a numbing and emotional dissociation. This allows you to save your energy for recovery, assuming you will not be murdered, and if you are about to be murdered, allows you to go out easy.
The problem is that this is a passive state, and if the opportunity to escape or fight back arises, you will not be in a situation to seize it. Such an opportunity can't arise when you are small, but the issue is that when you grow up you will have learned to allow yourself to be brutalized. To unlearn learned helplessness takes a lot of effort and training.
"She smiled at me and made small talk. She was out of place as a young black woman. The razor blade, gun, and memorial tattoos were absent. The gaudy jewelry was absent. The slut clothing, revealing her every curve, was absent. She did not speak ebonics, but English."
More on this unicorn please. Was she from Africa proper?
Sammy is the archetypal Millennial male. He has had no positive male influences. Some of these Millennials become withdrawn and passive. Others react with promiscuity and violence. Almost every one of my friends growing up has failed to make progress in the workforce.
You will not find a large market amongst 20-35 year-old males. I'm pretty much it.
Glad tom have you PR!
The Unicorn was about 5 foot 2 and perhaps 110 pounds. Her baby was tiny—six pounds at about three weeks. She was not African but did not have a Baltimore accent. I'm guessing she was from the north somewhere. She had a demure smile and I would ay she was plainly pretty. She brought out the ebst I everyone. the sluts posed two doors down. the gigantic amazon whores smiled at her and complimented her baby. Two thugs just handed her a bus pass and asked nothing, Not a, 'Hey Boo," or anything.
I could tell she was smart and had calculated that I did not strike up a conversation so as not to appear to be coming on to her, so she aid just enough to make me comfortable. After she did this I stood closer.
Whoever she was she made that sour slice of the wretched world a better place.