Yes, I know I’ve commented on this before. However, I got to thinking about what would knock me backwards and send me shocked through sheets of lightning if it ever happened. So I came up with this, A Father’s Day Fantasy, published yesterday on The Good Men Project.
You should share it with the other dads in your life.
Photo by sigma316
Just taking a moment to point out that Asado Coffee Roasters make the best damn cup of coffee in North America. This is a small Chicago business to become addicted to. I was so excited the first time I drank their coffee that I felt compelled to take my clothes off right there in the cafe. Only Chicagoland sex laws prevented this tragedy.
They’re on Irving Park and now finally on the West Side, Chicago Avenue, 1651 West Chicago to be exact. Drink their espresso daily.
“Your full name is Karolis Gintaras Žukauskas?” the man asked. “If I were you, I’d change my name. This is America. It’s too hard to spell. I wouldn’t want to spell that name all the time. And all the forms we have to fill out these days. It probably takes you so long to fill out those forms. I wouldn’t want to do that.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Lane.”
“That’s easy.” I waited. “What about your surname?”
“Stevenson.”
“Lane Stevenson?”
“That’s right. That’s my name. I’m Lane Stevenson.”
“So…when you have kids, are you going to name them something like Shoulder Stevenson? Or Median Stevenson? It’ll be cool if your daughter, Median, marries some guy named Bo Dan Ryan. Then she could be Median Stevenson-Dan Ryan. Or if her husband’s Joe Edens, and she turns out to be old school, she’ll be Median Edens.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yes. But my name is 1000 years old, and it doesn’t mean ‘Strip of Asphalt Between County Line Road and Lake Shore Drive.’”
For those of you who don’t get this joke (or those of you who just think it’s bad), here’s a picture of beautiful women chewing on a rubber chicken:
Photo by Twisted Oak.
This can’t be denied: there is something about the perfect hat that announces a man’s adulthood and confidence. If you deny this, it’s because you have trouble with hats.
You know who you are.
My recent Good Men Project, Becoming a Man Who is Ready For Love, has been shared over 400 times on Facebook and continues to be read today. I hope you’ll take a look at it. It’s about a pathetic relationship I had a with a girl when I was in college, and what I learned in the introspective aftermath.
The piece is short and tells only part of the story, as these things do. There’s actually quite a bit more to tell: I’d have to cast characters like psilocybin and mescaline into the narrative, and retell a long conversation I had with a former roommate. I’m saving all these things for the memoir I’m writing.
I do want to fill in one gap and tell you about a lecture I heard at the University of Illinois when I was taking a course on Shakespeare, one of the more important classes I have ever taken. We certainly learned all the things one learns—all the important questions about psychology—when you read a load of Shakespeare’s plays. There were also unexpected, empowering lessons.
We were studying Othello. Here’s a layman’s summary of the play’s plot that I found on a therapist’s website:
Well there was this guy, a military guy. Othello. He was a black general and he was very successful. And the world at that time was dominated by whites. Anyway, he had a beautiful wife called Desdemona and there was this evil guy called Iago who tried to make Othello believe that Desdemona was having an affair. He stole her handkerchief and then Othello got really jealous and he was so convinced [of Desdemona's affair] that he killed her.
Of course, in our study, many questions about race and political power came up. Most of the students were used to them and anticipated what the professor was going to do. Towards the end of our time with Othello, however, the professor invited a graduate student, a feminist only a few years older than me, to give a lecture on her study of Othello. What she said planted an important seed that left me rethinking what I believed I knew about human emotions and romantic relationships between women and men.
She analyzed Othello’s motivations, and she claimed that Othello killed Desdamona not because he was jealous or even because he was sexually possessive. Othello had been projecting himself onto Desdamona, and determining his own personal value through his marriage to her, a beautiful woman who should have been (indeed, she was) “true” to him. This is an important distinction. The student didn’t believe Othello was simply seething with rage because he’d been betrayed. He was seething because his peers would judge him for being unable to satisfy and control his wife. But he was also seeing his identity crumble. What was he? In large part he was the husband to the fair Desdemona. And if Desdemona were not fair, than that husband no longer existed. He didn’t love her as a person. He loved what she made him out to appear. It’s vain and dehumanizing.
Psychologically, I had been doing something very similar in the relationship to “Lucy”, the figure I draw in the article. I had not been dating her because I had any interest in her. I was interested in what status I gained by showing up places with a beautiful girl. That’s not love. It’s (a very flawed kind of) self-inflation. Tragically, I was only partially aware of it, and I never got the status I desired except from total strangers in places like cafes, people seated at neighboring tables.
As a side note, part of the reason I believe great literature should be taught in schools, and people who understand literature should be asked to present their findings to young people, is exactly because of this kind of moment. I had hundreds of them as a literature student, and I continue to have them as I read great books.
What I would love on Father’s Day is to wake up early, take a shower, ride the elevated train to a neighborhood in Chicago where I’d bring only a book, a pen and my journal. I’d be free from cell phone conversations, orders or requests, complaints or e-mail messages of any kind. I’d read for as long as I want, take a walk if I wish, and go home after the sun had set. Just a day to myself without anyone dumping their issue on me. That would be a dream.
The most challenging thing about being a parent is the necessary patience. I’m constantly solving someone else’s problem, both at work and at home, and I usually wake up with some plan on how I’ll take care of *that* problem today. While I’m in the process of dealing with it, I’ll get one or two more requests. I’m nowhere near finished with the first one and here are two more that I need to deal with. People dump them on you with the assumption that this is what you’re there for.
There’s this fantasy that I’ll finally fix all the problems, set up the machine, then sit back and watch it hum. It will never happen. That fantasy is torture.
What is my idea of torture on Father’s Day? Getting dragged some place where I’ll have to be patient with a waitstaff that has no interest in serving anyone, and with guests who come to the place only out of a sense of obligation and duty, a mass of waste left on the table in the end. That’s the kind of thing that leaves me fantasizing of self-immolation. I could set myself on fire and jump in a hey stack.
Father’s Day, as a gesture, is quite kind. It’s interesting that it exists. I’d be interested in conducting a study to see what percentage of dads wake up on Father’s Day to be told what they’ll be doing for Father’s Day.
(Does anyone remember the days when you’d leave the house an NO ONE could call you. When I was in college, I could have announced that I’m driving to Arizona, then gone to the woods to shoot myself and no one would have known for four days. On the fifth, maybe someone would have started wondering what was wrong. By that time, the crows would have finished pecking my carcass off.)
This Father’s Day, let’s throw all cell phones in a burning barn.
People don’t understand what it takes to win the Stanley Cup. However, I do, and I need to start taking some credit here and giving credit where it’s due. I wore my lucky shirt today, something I forgot to do during Game 3, and I did not shower or change my underwear. I also found the socks I was wearing during Game 5 of the second round (they were in the hamper) when the Blackhawks turned the entire series around. So a lot of this has to do with me.
Kudos to all the other Blackhawks’ fans out there who pulled their fucking weight by keeping their underwear out of the wash, wearing their lucky shirts/jerseys and avoiding showers. We achieved the necessary critical mass, the necessary collective energy to get over these LA skimp-swags. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be that guy in LA who put on his crusty drawers only to learn that his neighbor had taken a shower. What an asshole.
Go Blackhawks. Original 6 match-up in the finals.
