Shedding tears on inaugural eve
.
At some point last night I found myself calculating backward, figuring how many years had passed since I experienced the dread of Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in a classroom at Flint Central High my junior year of high school. It was twenty-four years ago. And thinking that the old soft-spoken Gipper wasn't able to do as much damage as we all had feared offers no solace for this day, when George W ("W" for "fuckWad") Bush commences his four years of evil mischief to secure his goddam presidential legacy.
When I got home after getting off at the usual 2 a.m. (followed part of the way down Packard by an Ann Arbor Police cruiser, all the while rehearsing words I'd never actually say: "I just got off work, officer. I'm on my way to drink, not on my way from drinking..."), I lingered awake in the living room, as I often do on worknights when I don't have class the next day, enjoying one or two glasses of Three Buck Chuck, listening to music in a DiscMan so as to not wake Rick.
And the CD I happened to nab off the shelf was Joe Jackson's Night and Day from 1982, so as to hear the song "Real Men":
Take your mind back - I don't know when
Sometime when it always seemed
To be just us and them
Girls that wore pink
And boys that wore blue
Boys that always grew up better men
Than me and you
What's a man now - what's a man mean
Is he rough or is he rugged
Is he cultural and clean
Now it's all change - it's got to change more
'cause we think it's getting better
But nobody's really sure
And so it goes - go round again
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
See the nice boys - dancing in pairs
Golden earring golden tan
Blow-wave in the hair
Sure they're all straight - straight as a line
All the gays are macho
Can't you see their leather shine
You don't want to sound dumb - don't want to offend
So don't call me a faggot
Not unless you are a friend
Then if you're tall and handsome and strong
You can wear the uniform and I could play along
And so it goes - go round again
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
Time to get scared - time to change plan
Don't know how to treat a lady
Don't know how to be a man
Time to admit - what you call defeat
'cause there's women running past you now
And you just drag your feet
Man makes a gun - man goes to war
Man can kill and man can drink
And man can take a whore
Kill all the blacks - kill all the reds
And if there's war between the sexes
Then there'll be no people left
And so it goes - go round again
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
I have a very specific associations with the song, from my early, troubled coming out in Flint. During the spring and summer of '83, I hung out some at the El Matador on Harrison, a bar attached to what had been Uncle Bob's Diner, with a funky mix of pseudo-punk, pre-goth, and proto-androgynous kids around my age, some even still in high school. It was quite popular, particularly since the bartender was lax about carding. It's where I was first exposed to music outside Casey Kasem's top 40 crap and the white kid's rock like KISS my brother used to blare. The DJs played stuff like Bowie's "Cat People" or "Rock Lobster" by the B52s, throwing in "The Limbo" once a night. And on occasion, they'd play "Real Men." When they did, like ritual, a dozen or so guys would form a circle, arm-in-arm, and sway to the song, as if it were a temporary refuge.
Playing the song last night, I remembered some of the guys that used to join the huddle, some straight boys who were simply not uptight about comaraderie, others who I would later learn were gay. Don't know what ever happened to Jimmy Smith, who was my first time, or Kevin Emigh, one of the theater crowd at UM-Flint. Brian McDonald and Michael Barto are dead. I was recently in email contact with Joe Feliciano, who's in Chicago. And remembering these moments of group embrace as I listened to the lyrics, I thought about how much had transpired and yet how much else has not changed. "Man makes a gun - man goes to war / Man can kill and man can drink / And man can take a whore."
It was like my early twenties under Reagan and my early forties under George W ("W" for "fuckWad") Bush had somehow fused. And I started weeping my sad little eyes out.
.
At some point last night I found myself calculating backward, figuring how many years had passed since I experienced the dread of Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in a classroom at Flint Central High my junior year of high school. It was twenty-four years ago. And thinking that the old soft-spoken Gipper wasn't able to do as much damage as we all had feared offers no solace for this day, when George W ("W" for "fuckWad") Bush commences his four years of evil mischief to secure his goddam presidential legacy.
When I got home after getting off at the usual 2 a.m. (followed part of the way down Packard by an Ann Arbor Police cruiser, all the while rehearsing words I'd never actually say: "I just got off work, officer. I'm on my way to drink, not on my way from drinking..."), I lingered awake in the living room, as I often do on worknights when I don't have class the next day, enjoying one or two glasses of Three Buck Chuck, listening to music in a DiscMan so as to not wake Rick.
And the CD I happened to nab off the shelf was Joe Jackson's Night and Day from 1982, so as to hear the song "Real Men":
Take your mind back - I don't know when
Sometime when it always seemed
To be just us and them
Girls that wore pink
And boys that wore blue
Boys that always grew up better men
Than me and you
What's a man now - what's a man mean
Is he rough or is he rugged
Is he cultural and clean
Now it's all change - it's got to change more
'cause we think it's getting better
But nobody's really sure
And so it goes - go round again
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
See the nice boys - dancing in pairs
Golden earring golden tan
Blow-wave in the hair
Sure they're all straight - straight as a line
All the gays are macho
Can't you see their leather shine
You don't want to sound dumb - don't want to offend
So don't call me a faggot
Not unless you are a friend
Then if you're tall and handsome and strong
You can wear the uniform and I could play along
And so it goes - go round again
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
Time to get scared - time to change plan
Don't know how to treat a lady
Don't know how to be a man
Time to admit - what you call defeat
'cause there's women running past you now
And you just drag your feet
Man makes a gun - man goes to war
Man can kill and man can drink
And man can take a whore
Kill all the blacks - kill all the reds
And if there's war between the sexes
Then there'll be no people left
And so it goes - go round again
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
I have a very specific associations with the song, from my early, troubled coming out in Flint. During the spring and summer of '83, I hung out some at the El Matador on Harrison, a bar attached to what had been Uncle Bob's Diner, with a funky mix of pseudo-punk, pre-goth, and proto-androgynous kids around my age, some even still in high school. It was quite popular, particularly since the bartender was lax about carding. It's where I was first exposed to music outside Casey Kasem's top 40 crap and the white kid's rock like KISS my brother used to blare. The DJs played stuff like Bowie's "Cat People" or "Rock Lobster" by the B52s, throwing in "The Limbo" once a night. And on occasion, they'd play "Real Men." When they did, like ritual, a dozen or so guys would form a circle, arm-in-arm, and sway to the song, as if it were a temporary refuge.
Playing the song last night, I remembered some of the guys that used to join the huddle, some straight boys who were simply not uptight about comaraderie, others who I would later learn were gay. Don't know what ever happened to Jimmy Smith, who was my first time, or Kevin Emigh, one of the theater crowd at UM-Flint. Brian McDonald and Michael Barto are dead. I was recently in email contact with Joe Feliciano, who's in Chicago. And remembering these moments of group embrace as I listened to the lyrics, I thought about how much had transpired and yet how much else has not changed. "Man makes a gun - man goes to war / Man can kill and man can drink / And man can take a whore."
It was like my early twenties under Reagan and my early forties under George W ("W" for "fuckWad") Bush had somehow fused. And I started weeping my sad little eyes out.
.