1974

Prologue - > We are fortunate to live in a time, or so it is said, when we of the future no longer feel the burden of gender to such a degree as in previous ages; nowadays there is no pre-established norm or "role" for us to perform or hold onto like a chain about the neck. There was a time, of course, and not so long ago, when men were de facto expected to be tough strong, resilient, athletic, assertive...and which to judge by the role models in movies and popular culture which we could add on silent, stoical, protective, while no great shock was registered if there should be a woman or more than one who in some degree was known (also through popular culture, movies, novels, songs, etc. in comparison with her male counterparts) as:  soft, demure,  flirtatious, sociable, wise,  and to which one might add on: practical, prescient, intuitive, gregarious, solicitous, nurturing and perhaps multi-tasking,  socially-aware, loyal, resilient.  With regard to the males, unfair allowances were always made for some degree of excessive testosterone leading to wayward outcomes. Along with the aforementioned qualities, society accustomed itself to some degree of excess, to wild, wanton, rough, brazen, obnoxious, cold,  callous, destructive energies all taken as the price of maturity, of boys turning into men. Such prejudices were, alas, still in force back in the 1970s...In that bygone era, stereotypes were still prevalent of men in general as the designated builders and tinkerers, cowboys, soldiers, cops, aviators, action heroes; men were the inventors, explorers, entrepreneurs, men whose bailiwick was to argue, fight, jostle, compete in a cutthroat man's world, men who had once hunted and killed, conquered and tamed the wilderness, men who had automatic places set aside for themselves, who assumed arrogant pinnacles of leadership in various capacities...These outworn myths of male-dom - leaving women excluded from x,y and z - chained to the private realm of domesticity, hearth, home, family circle, circle of friends, children, marriage, courtship, romance, patronage of the arts and the vagaries of a restless imagination. And to make matters worse, one sex was said to admire said qualities among their counterparts and to be aghast at all manner of slight deviations from the oppressive norm - Oh, I know, I know....such confinements, such insurmountable walls, such entrenched burdens placed upon the young ...Well, those days are over thank goodness...Nowadays the boat is left to be built and navigated by the lone individual (breaking out of any and all molds) and woe be to that person who has a problem with that...But... once upon a time - those of a certain age had such roles to perform, found ourselves locked into such expectations which kept us anxious and unsure, and gave us the script for how our entire lives should play out... The Story Itself - > It was California in the 1970s, a time of change and transition, where trends came to be born; this was a time when the questions were just beginning to swirl and manifest themselves more tangibly (perhaps) than for prior generations, questions of women's role in society...and secondarily questions of what was expected of men...New possibilities for women, new forms of gender expression, new types of masculinity...all these things entering the discussion by way of books and university lectures,  articles in women's magazines, edgy, controversial movies from Europe, debonair academics appearing on television...We were young then and we still had our marching orders...The conversation may have been swirling above our heads, but that did not change the conditions of life on the playground or in the gym or later at the shopping center or the drive-thru. We were accepting of a certain level of under the table, conflict resolution back then especially in the case of bullies...That was the year of entering junior high for me, with an irritating feeling of uprootedness from grade school, abrupt changes in mood and vocal cords, an unsought metamorphosis of the body...And at such a vulnerable time, a plethora of bullies roaming about  from RCC down to the plaza...And Robert J. Boyd - alias "Robbie" who stole my bike that one October...A rakish blond aspiring hoodlum with hair down to his waist, a chain around his neck, large brush in his back pocket and  pack o cigs in front pocket...The names that guy would hurl at me to test my mettle...The relish he got from toying with me like a bug - not even worth dismembering. As with all bullies, he had that calm, collective sure-fire way of instilling fear...Hey there buddy boy...Look alert, my man...Hey there...Yo, chief, why are you such a little fa_? No really - such a goody-goody push-over fa_? Hey guys....do you this little pushover knows how to have any fun? Don't you ever wanna get high, big T? Hey fellas...... (He was politely, I suppose, as much as was possible for him, calling attention to my squishy, weak-willed, non-threatening lankiness - a body type not even worth fighting with - so many bones would break at one swipe...) He always said stuff like that in front of Roger and Geoff... Just to make me look bad...and then ride off on his shiny motocross bike... Roger, my older and more muscular neighbor would get that look of utter disgust on his face at those moments and his features would crinkle up....I hate that guy...I hope he rots in jail some day... He's a damn thief...stole Eddie Morgan's skateboard last year...stole Linda Markman's bike...Bart Fairview said he's selling them to people out of his garage... What are we gonna do in the meantime, asked Geoff...I mean we're stuck with him for now -....A guy like that right down the street from us...said Roger...What if 'e throws a brick through my window - I worried out loud. Yeah - he might. I wouldn't put it past him. You're on the front lines, T.... Someone needs to kick his ass...There's more of us than there are of him... So night after night I perseverated - anticipating the worst possible scenarios and lamenting my woeful lack of masculinity...It reminded me of the time two years before when I had spent much of my time on the playground avoiding or running away from Wayne - that stone-faced, take-no-prisoners sixth grade monolith who loved to watch the underling underclassmen squirm...Just the look of him brought mortal fear...just one of many phobias from back then...Fear of snakes, rats, the wind, fire, earthquakes...And big hulking older boys who I thought would ransack the house after the wind, fire and earthquake had done their damage. You got it all wrong, my mother told me one day -trying to set me straight...Your father could make mince-meat out of that guy's father...He's no threat to you...Your letting your imagination run wild again...What a pathetic specimen was I - for my mother to be intervening like that, with a pep talk reminiscent of a boys club movie...Disgraceful...There was no option...other than to get a grip....snap out of it...It should not have been like this, I tell you...that i should have ended up such a neurotic by the time i was thirteen... Our bunch in that neighborhood had started off  tough enough, at least as tough as anybody else.. ...We had grown up with the usual masculine arts - street football, baseball, tackle scrums in the mud, dirt-clod fights, G.I. Joe inspired war games. Like all kids we venerated the idea of combat and did not shy away from the physicality of exploration...running up and down the hillside down from the vacant lot, building forts, chasing and wrestling one another...We saw boxing, rugby, hockey highlights on television and listened for the sound of bone-crunching helmet-to-helmet contact every Sunday... How had I become the weak link after years of being chosen to play QB? Over time, it must have been those damned episodes got the best of me - that cursed "sensitivity" that I was pegged with early on and which I was unable to shake at such times when my emotions would overcome me for no reason...That was simply unacceptable and harder to hide as time went on...The phobias didn't help either - nor the notion that nonviolent resistance as a higher principle could be applied to school-ground situations arising in that contentious decade...