Part Four:

The New Man. What’s Up with That?

 

LS: It gives me such freedom. I feel like I can tell you about how and what the relationship was I had with my dad, what I learned from it, what my relationship is with my children, what I’ve learned about it, and I’m still learning what the challenges are and recognizing the challenges that you, Malcolm, are talking about. My dad was an avid reader as well, a very quiet man. My mother was a very warm, gregarious woman. But, I’m the first in the family to graduate from college. My mother came from eight brothers and sisters. My dad had nine. They were country people. I wasn’t country ever.

From the time of the eighth grade it never occurred to me not to go to college. I began saving for college when I was in the eighth grade. Because I knew I wouldn’t go to college unless I had the money. I got a scholarship and I saved money all the way through and worked 40 hours a week, I went to school 18 to 21 hours and I graduated from school in four years. Hard? Yeah, but not that tough.

I’m now a Ph.D. candidate at LSU. Just started. In fact Monday’s my first class. But, an exciting career for me. Cason’s in graduate school, I’ve got a son who is in his second year of law school. All the other kids are in college. And I’d love to get a Ph.D., it sounds like a lot of fun. Pure fun. There’s no other drive than I want to have a good time.

And then I get a chance to talk to Cason about it and that relationship shifts a bit because, one comment he made was: "You’re going to get your degree before I do." And that puts a different pressure on me.

ML: Probably Cason as well.

LS: Probably. But I want his confidence in his success, and I think he feels confidence in his own success, that is separate of my achievements. I want that separate. His achievements in life are his achievements and they are of enormous pride for me because then I get a chance to say to my friends: "Yes, my son is in graduate school or yes, my children are in college." I take a lot of pride in that, and I don’t believe that pride is a sinful thing. And that pride carries a risk in itself, because when you speak of that pride the question that comes back is "And how are they?" And I’m not them. They have the right to quit, to fail, to change their mind, to do whatever. But I have inexorably linked my success with theirs.

CS: And that is the worst burden in the entire universe to bear. I don’t know if you know that, but that makes every...a tremendous fear of not doing...of doing something that for which you will not feel pride.

LS: Oh, you see, I don’t feel that problem at all.

CS: Oh, the tremendous amount of pressure and fear that I’ve put on myself to ensure that I do something that you’d feel proud of so you can speak to your friends and speak highly of me and I can’t think of anything I’ve done that actually fits that description that you could actually be proud of.

LS: Oh, I think I’m proud of everything.

CS: But I can’t think of a single thing...yes, I have my own business, but it’s not like I’m some guru or I’m some hot shot in any arena.

LS: But I have nothing to put into the other category. This is an amazing revelation. I have nothing to put in the other category at all.

CS: Okay, I’m married, I have a wonderful marriage. I have my own business. I’m going to school and I’m perennially a student. I didn’t necessarily start my own business, in the sense that a business was given to me.

LS: (To Yves and Malcolm) Do you know that the woman GAVE this guy a business? Do you know of anyone that’s GIVEN a business? I know of no one who has ever accomplished that.

ML: It’s quite a gift.

CS: Short story is here, that I worked for a woman doing computer technical support for a line of accounting software for a company and she got bored with it, their family had megabucks in real estate in this area. She said that she was ready to be done with it, didn’t want to do it anymore so she gave it to me: Here’s the business, here’s all the clients, here’s all the software. You’re doing a great job, you’re taking care of the clients, the clients love you, you’re doing a great job, here it is. So, I didn’t build the business. It was mine to create from being, I’m simply sustaining the business.

And Dad says that it’s a tremendous source of pride, and I live in constant fear that what I do or what is interesting about me is of such no interest to him and a source of...not necessarily not pride or not shame , but a source of pain that I have tremendous interest in the arts and non-profits and he sees that as almost abysmal. And here it is his son who has such business acumen who has such business promise who is such a hot shot in the business world that he prefers the virtually non-paying arts and being in arts administration. How could he prefer that if he has such a possibility of being something else.

So I go, "Okay, what I do and what is interesting to me and is a source of joy to me is frustrating to me because I don’t get paid for it. But, joy to me in the arts and in arts administration is hard to translate to your friends or to you as a source of pride. "If my son has accomplished something or has done something with his life..." THAT is it. THAT IS IT. Father’s want their sons to do SOMETHING with their lives and that something is defined by what is important to THEM.

LS: You see, I’m much more lenient in my view of you than I am of my view of myself. I’m much more harsh in my view of what I have accomplished in life, but, my god, I mean, I would wish that I could have accomplished as much as you have accomplished in the time that you have been on earth.

CS: Dad, by 26 you had raised a sales territory from 500,000 to 40 million. You lived in a huge house, you had one child and you were living in a house in North Carolina. I’m living my life I have no children. I’ve fucked off, basically. I’ve had a great time, and I’ve learned a whole lot, but I have built nothing, comparatively. Comparatively speaking, in the time that I’ve been alive--

ML: You feel like this because you didn’t build your own business you had it handed to you?

CS: There is no achievement in that.

ML: Because it was a gimme?

CS: Yeah.

LS: COME ON!!

CS: I was given a business and I have extended the business in no way beyond...

LS: How do you think it got given to you? Do you think someone would just say "Here, here’s a business?"

CS: Because I’m charming. No, that is my one thing in life. If you’ve got one thing in life that you’re good at, one thing that you do better than anything, I’ve determined that what I’m good at is being charming. Especially for women. And this woman I worked for--I’m a very loving person, I’m a very gentle person and I’m a very caring person. So, the charming part, people just give stuff to you if you’re charming and so I was charming and so she gave something to me, and that to me is not an achievement. What would be an achievement would be building on that and I have not. I mean, I’ve had the business for a year and a half and I haven’t built it for shit. I’ve had fun.

LS: You have a business that’s profitable before the end of one year.

CS: But I didn’t have to build the clientele.

LS: (Incredulous) Would you give me... Look, how many businesses do you know of that were profitable before five years? Very few. Very few.

YJ: I’m in a state of grace with my parents right now.

CS: You’ve got this waiting period until you’re about 30.

YJ: I’ve been a terrible disappointment to them many, many times. Particularly them being European. When you go to school, if you go to college you just finish, right? You don’t mess around, you just finish.

CS: Four years and you’re out.

YJ: After two years I realized I had a lot of angst. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I didn’t see any purpose being there when I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I left. And it was really good for me personally. I went and I got a job and I saved money and I went and lived in Europe for a year. But when I left school my parents were so extremely disappointed in me. I mean, they had helped me in school and they said "If you leave we will never help you again."

CS: Jesus. Shit.

LS: Talk about pressure.

YJ: But, you know, when you’re 20 years old you say "Yeah, fine, go ahead, I’m outta here." It’s funny to be at this point, where I’ve gone back to school and I’m finishing up and I have this great wife, we have this kid. My mother is so happy that we have progeny, so now it’s just really intriguing to be in this total state of grace. And then there’s my sister who is still wild and everything and she’s not in that same state of grace.

CS: But there are expectations that are unspoken, particularly with guys.

YJ: Maybe we’ve just by chance fulfilled a lot of their expectations. And it’s particularly funny to see my father, he’s a really good grandfather to Marcel. He plays with him a lot, they have a great time together. And I’m not really sure but it makes me wonder back when I was little. I think that perhaps my father really was a good father when I was little. I remember us doing a LOT of stuff together. And I think that in a lot of ways he’s very similar to the way that I was, and I think that there was a point when he went to school to get his masters and so on that he started having to absent himself. And when he finished up some four years later he didn’t know who I was anymore, and at that point I was 11 or 12 and I think he felt an inability to hoist me into manhood, like that ritual passage.

LS: He didn’t know how.

YJ: Yeah, because he wasn’t sure who I was anymore because he lost all that time and I don’t think all of that happened on purpose. But I think that he was really great when I was young, but that he had than inability to hoist me into manhood at that point and that’s from where I think our dislocation probably stems.

LS: Are you the oldest?

YJ: Yeah, there’s just me and then my sister.

LS: Are you the oldest?

ML: I’m the youngest, I have a sister who’s two years older than I.

LS: Cason’s the oldest and I’m the oldest. It’s just me and my sisters. There was no question that if it was to be achieved, "you the man." And that was it. My sister and I are not close. At all. I have spent maybe three hours continuous time with my sister, that’s about the longest we have every spent together. Three hours together in a car, just the two of us, and her primary comments are the things that I remember most: "I hated following you in school because everyone had said "Well, you’re not as smart as Larry," or "You don’t make as good a grade as Larry."

YJ: My sister has said the same thing about me.

LS: She said "I hated you." I said, "Look, I am not you."

CS: She’s spent her whole life being not you.

LS: I said, "I never expected you to be me." But we never had a relationship. And we never, ever were at risk with one another.

As I said to you guys, it never occurred to me not to go to college, I don’t have any idea why, other than the fact that somebody, somewhere, in my background said "You’re never going to get anywhere unless you go to college."

CS: What’s interesting is that boys, men, are expected to achieve and yet increasingly denied the tools that have been used to achieve in the past. So, where we’re still expected to achieve whatever it is that those who we regard expect to achieve without the tools that they used to achieve. Which is the tools of coercion, persuasion, domination and whatever it is that it takes, you know, the power of control.

YJ: Buddy systems...

CS: Yeah, whatever it is, good ol’ boy networks. Whatever it is, it is no longer acceptable. For whatever reason or whoever said so, that’s no longer acceptable as a means of achieving. So the expectation is still there and yet we don’t know. I know that I don’t know how to achieve whatever it is that I’m supposed to achieve. I don’t know how to go through and say "I’m supposed to achieve and whatever it is that I do. But yet, achieving itself only goes to exacerbate the belief that only males achieve. So if I achieve it only serves as fuel for the fire of "I must have done something heinous to have achieved what I have achieved. So achievement is the double-edged sword.

YJ: It cuts both ways. That’s the thing is that anyone who is not a white male and who achieves, then the assumption is that they’ve achieved due to things in the system such as Affirmative Action and so on.

CS: So, achievement has come not of one’s own volition or of one’s own ability.

LS: (Referring to Cason) Well, you see the business was given to him.

(A silent tension so thick a chainsaw couldn’t get through it.)

CS: You motherfuckers.

LS: But why is that not prideful?

CS: There is no pride in achievement anymore.

LS: Take advantage of the circumstances. You have a woman who gave you a business, take advantage of it.

CS: It feels like cheating.

LS: It isn’t at all. It is taking advantage of the circumstances. What if you’ve got a business and you’ve worked in it and I’ll give you a bonus that it’ll be your business if you do this kind of a job for this period of time? (To Cason) Which is exactly what you did. You kept going to the well ten billion times telling this woman how to build her business and she kept going "But I don’t want to build a business," so many times that she said "You’re so damn smart, why don’t you do it yourself."

CS: But that was given up front. I guess what it is that I mean is that I read the tales of woe and the trials and tribulations of (adopts an elderly masculine voice) "We sweated for five years and this thing never made any money, and I worked it and I finally got there."

ML: (To Cason) We can help you. You wanna sweat? You wanna toil? Well, there’s this magazine we’re starting up from absolutely nothing. And everyone knows we don’t have any money right now. "We’d love to help!" We don’t have any money right now. "It doesn’t matter, we’d love to help!"

CS: That IS, if anything, that IS the American male dream. Own your own business.

YJ: I think actually that this Jeep ad says it all right here, you can just exchange the word "jeep" for "men." "There are still a few places on the planet that you won’t find a man. But barring the vast expanse of oceans and endless miles of seas, a man will take you virtually anywhere you want to go."

LS: That’s it.

CS: You know, it is that wild west, frontier thing.

Part Five: The New Man. What's up with that?