Feckless
1.
Was I feckless?
She cheated on me and reported back, saying “When I argued with him over trivial things, I found that I had missed out on having someone disagree with me. All those years, and I never really had an argument with you. It was edifying to have someone violently disagree with me for once.” And we dissolved our marriage on those words. She said more and worse--indictments of my perception of myself as a husband. No response from me, like always. Too gutless to fight back.
I am still unpacking and repacking that last conversation, years later, to weigh it for truth.
2.
In the fourth grade, my best acquaintance told me I fought like a girl, and I spent the night dreaming about myself in a dress. Only brutality and nastiness would win me the right to be a boy, I decided, and a few weeks later I told the least popular girl in my grade that she was ugly and that I didn’t want to work with her for group work. I’ll never forget the way she sighed and said, “I know.” It’s worth remembering how terrible I was at that moment so that I never treat someone that way again.
I fought a boy who was shyer than me for a place in line in the fifth grade, and he bloodied my head with his lunch box. I’ll never forget. It’s worth remembering that I am not a fighter. I’m too squishy.
In a new town, on the first day of middle school, before school even started, I slipped in the rain while trying to join a soccer game, knocking the wind out of my lungs. The sound I made trying to get my air back was like a wounded dog. All the arm-wrestling I won at lunch tables for two years couldn’t outweigh my apparent crying on the first day of school; I had more bullies than fingers. I’ll never forget.
My dad taught me to tell myself “water off a duck’s back,” which is like saying that all of these things people do to me are as transient as any other hour of the day. It’s also a way to yield to abuse.
3.
You get names when you give your female partner any authority in your relationship. My dad called me “pussy-whipped” when I told him that I was moving in with my girlfriend. They don’t really have names like that for people who blindly obey their fathers.
“I’ll consider you to be a full grown man when you have kids,” he said, when I told him I wasn’t having kids and carefully explained it.
He privately said, when I told him months later that I’d be marrying her, “The sex must be amazing, huh?” I didn’t reply, and he apologized later. I often forgive, but I rarely forget.
“That was pretty ballsy, when you stood up to me and married her,” he’d tell me nine years later, after she and I had divorced.
If the goalposts on what it takes to be a man are always moving or being decided by someone else, maybe it is a fake goal. Jack White said it in one of his songs: “I never said I ever wanted to be a man.”
Maybe striving to be “a man” at all is a big joke.
4.
I had some friends who invited me for Thanksgiving a few years ago. I came to their house, occasionally, to play games and pet their cats and drink. They had a big, fluffy Maine Coon named Charlie. He was a very shy cat, but he would come out for me.
“He likes you because you’re gentle. You don’t pet too hard, you don’t chase after him, and you don’t expect more of him than he’s willing to give. We’ve started calling you ‘The Gentle Human’ because Charlie won’t come out for any other stranger.”
I was almost thirty years old, and it was honestly the first time I’d been flattered to have someone call me “gentle.”
5.
A few weeks ago, I paid the remaining five dollars on someone’s purchase after their food stamp money ran out. I was next in line. They didn’t know me, but they asked me to help out. Five dollars is not make-or-break for me right now, so I agreed to help.
The check-out attendant was baffled that I would help or that I was even asked. “That lady brought way more up here than she could afford. Did she not think to do the math? She’s up here all the time asking for help.”
I said, “I’ve never been in a situation where I had to ask for help. I’m not sure what it would take to make me feel that, so I can’t really judge.”
The clerk told me that I’d definitely get paid back in karma or some such for the deed. Whatever. Feeling like my response to a situation was a morally good response is a good reward. It’s not like I can say I reacted in a positive way about many things.
6.
I want to say that I show my age now by making choices that dignify my inner sense of right and wrong and that feel good later, but this is like a hallway with parallel facing mirrors, and the image of who I was in the past reflects back into the present every time, if a little smaller than before.
In spite of this, I can still say that cowardice and avoidance of conflict don’t define my life, but being gentle and striving to be a genuine, kind person do. If that means that I’m not a good fit for someone horrible like my ex, then I’m probably doing better than I feel like I am, no matter how much I second-guess myself.
I would not say that I’m feckless. Not anymore. I think, refecktively, I have a fair amount of feck. I’m quite feckund. My feck runneth over. And I’m going to laugh at anyone who tries to undermine my sense of myself again.