We old Anglo guys have a bad habit of grabbing the check after lunch and I realize it’s a macho power move, dismissive, marginalizing, elitist, sexist, oppressive, colonialist, and a number of women have told me over the years, “You shouldn’t have done that,” but I notice, now that I’m old and slow and not so grabby, that they don’t reach for the check and it sits there in plain sight for several minutes before Anglo Man picks it up, when perhaps a woman says, “Won’t you let me contribute something?” and I say, “It’s my pleasure,” which they take to mean, No. End of story.
I’m not complaining. I enjoy inconsistencies and people who say one thing and mean another. My father, whom I knew as solemn and righteous, could be very funny and charming around young women. My mother, though a devout evangelical, adored comedians. I, though I may appear capable, am lost without my wife and after a week of separation I fall into a black hole and am incapable of doing business.
In my grievous isolation, missing her voice, her hand on my shoulder, I put on a CD of the Bethel Gospel Quartet, a male quartet from Bethel AME church in Mobile, Alabama, who recorded for Victor in the late Twenties, and listened to them sing “We shall walk through the valley in peace” and was stunned by the gorgeousness of their singing, the big bass, the baritone lead, the two tenors, unaccompanied singing, the stateliness and the joy of it, four men weaving brilliant harmonic turns. And then I was blown away by:
The blind man stood in the road and cried, The blind man stood in the road and cried, Crying, “Oh Lord, show me the way, Show me the way to go home.”
Four lines that sum up my whole situation so beautifully, sung by four Black men in Alabama who clearly love singing together, who are living in a cruel society where they must walk a careful line, avoiding missteps that could easily lead to lynching, but none of that is in their music. In their music, they are free as angels. I suppose Victor paid them some money for the recording session, and then they went back to being stonemasons or cooks or drivers, and here they are in full glory on my CD player in 2021, and the racists who stood ready to kill them have left nothing behind and are wholly and deservedly forgotten.
I am a white guy, except for some reddish patches and brownish hair, and I admit to being privileged. One privilege is the fact that you are reading what I’ve written. I admit that I sometimes fly first class, which I feel sheepish about because I’m from Minnesota where we are brought up to be self-effacing to the point of invisibility, and when I stride down the express lane past the mile-long queue of peasants in the Economy line, I feel apologetic, and want to hand out cards that say, “I fly first class because I have a painful back injury suffered while rescuing small children from the upper story of a burning orphanage,” but I walk along, eyes averted, face mask pulled up, and through the X-ray and I board the plane.
I am all in favor of diversity and inclusivity in theory, but when the pilot comes on the horn and welcomes us from the cockpit, I want to feel that he or she is a Republican. I want to hear authority in the voice, a growliness that comes from having shouted orders at people. I do not want my pilot to come on singing “Off we go into the wild blue yonder” and if he does, I’m off the plane. If it’s a woman pilot, I want her to be crisp and chill, not warm and caring. If she mentions turbulent conditions ahead, I don’t want to hear concern in her voice. I do not want her to thank us for flying — that’s for the flight attendants. I prefer my pilot to be a Republican with military service, preferably at the rank of captain or higher, preferably as an aviator, not in the Quartermaster Corps. I’m a Democrat and I’d be leery of a progressive Democrat pilot whose concern about air pollution might make him reluctant to use full power on takeoff. I don’t want anyone like me up front. No deep thinkers. A high-flier, please.
*******************************************************************
THE BACK ROOM archive is growing. Join our paid subscription newsletter group and enjoy some full show videos, serialized books (A CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD beginning this Saturday), 20% off in our little shop, monologue from the 80’s (one posted every Sunday), and chapters from Garrison’s new book BOOM TOWN (coming out in March). Consider giving a gift subscription too.
"Walking a careful line, avoiding missteps that could easily lead to lynching..." There was one thing they had, then, though - their society was stable, and they knew where the lines were. In these days of flux, I imagine it's pretty hard for all of us, sometimes, to figure out exactly where a person of an exterior gender lies, in terms of being "WOKE." If that check had laid on a table with a group of women from my professional organization at a convention, we would have gotten our pencils out, done a little math, and put piles of money on the table.
For me, I run into it at glass doors a lot. A man opens the door and holds it. I stand there and say "I'm capable of opening my own doors, even though I have the help of a cane." The usual reply is "My mother trained me to open doors for women." Once, the man on the other side said "I have muscular dystrophy, and it actually is hard for me to hold this door for you." I felt ashamed of making a big deal of it, then. His "handicap" topped my social handicap - looking like a "weak female," so I unrooted myself from the floor and walked through.
Perhaps, with the check situation, you might jokingly ask if the woman was "Liberated" or "Old Style?" If she says "Liberated," then you could pull out pen and paper and figure your own share, then put the money on the table. She'd get the point, I think. In a few years, a decade, perhaps, we'll have gender equality worked out more or less. Then, whoever arrives at the door first will go through and hold it open for the other person to catch and deal with. Pencils or pens will come out at paying up time after meals, etc.
Breaking old conventions can take time, but it can be done!
Dear Garrison, a particular question has been dogging me for many years. Are there any lawyers in Lake Woebegon? While we are at it, I have a lawyer joke for you. When my son was about 3 he had a hearing problem. He was a fan of He-Man and his warriors (who battled Skeletor and his warriors). One day he said “You know why He-Man always wins? It’s because he has more lawyers,” mistaking “warriors” for “lawyers.” Later he refined his assessment and said He-Man won because he had BETTER lawyers. I told this joke to a stone-faced federal judge one day and I swear he smiled, albeit just a little. Now my son is 42 and is a lawyer, too. Keep up the good work!
Julian Karpoff
Lewes, DE