March, March, March into April

The Column: 04.11.25

I lay on a table 95% naked last month while my dermatologist Allison examined me for growths and blemishes that might need to be snipped off and biopsied and as she did so, she told me that she had been a fan of my radio show in her childhood and she was curious about a song I once sang, “I ride an old paint, I lead an old dan, I’m going to Montana to throw the hoolihan,” and was curious about the meaning of “old paint,” “old dan,” and “hoolihan,” and had I written the song myself.

This is the sort of thing that makes a man grateful to have gone into broadcasting years ago. I took a radio job in order to come in out of the cold — it was Minnesota, I was a parking lot attendant at a huge lot on the Mississippi bluff — but here I was, almost naked, explaining a traditional cowboy song to a doctor, a free exchange of information. Life is good.

None of my classmates were Allisons. I come from the era of Barbaras and Carols and Sharons, plain names given by Depression-era parents in hopes of some future employment, but a new generation came in with aspirational names like Arabella, Olivia, Olympia, that opened doors previously closed. It wasn’t DEI; it was the ambition of the parents giving baby girls names suitable for actresses and opera stars. The fabulousness of Renée Fleming’s voice will help hundreds of young Renées become cancer researchers and rocket scientists instead of drive-up window clerks at McDonald’s.

My parents intended for me to become a carpenter like my dad and they named me Gary but I, in the eighth grade, decided to be a writer and gave myself the name Garrison, which is more authoritative, and it worked out okay. In fear of winding up in construction, pouring concrete, nailing up studs, I developed incompetence and now I need to ask my wife to tighten a hinge or loosen a flange, I am a complete stranger to the toolbox, and as a result, she takes the manly role in our household, she manages the finances, she drives the car (I have double vision), she makes basic repairs, she takes positions on foreign affairs and domestic issues and I am only required to be charming. As a Gary, I’d be replacing spark plugs and installing a new showerhead. Instead, I do this, what I’m doing now. I’m in the business of nattering.

Allison was a pro. She showed off her expertise by rattling off the scientific names for my various abnormalities and she snipped some flesh and sent it to the lab (nothing cancerous, it turns out) and as she examined me, I wrote a limerick for her in my head. (My form of carpentry.)

Dermatologists must have good skin
And are probably comely and thin
With no pimples or cysts
Or scars on their wrists,
And named Allison, not Marilyn. 

It cheered me up, being asked about “I Ride an Old Paint” and I got dressed and she came in and gave me a big hug. I was brought up by people who hardly ever hugged except maybe children ten or under and maybe mothers on their deathbeds. Hugging was considered sensuous. And sensuality can lead to sexuality. Men my age don’t hug each other; some X and Z men do but we avoid them. If you, dear reader, throw your arms around your laptop as you read this, okay, but don’t do it to me should we meet someday. Allison’s embrace, however, was heartfelt, as you’d expect for a man who’d sung to her as a child. I doubt she’d give that sort of hug to a carpenter who’d just nailed together some shelving.

So I walked out East 72^nd Street feeling lighthearted, even though it was March and a cold wind was blowing and I had read in the waiting room an article titled “Interrupted Sleep Patterns May Lead to Early Dementia,” which is not what a man my age wants to think about, and the nation is in the hands of a deranged executive out to punish enemies and wreak carnage in Washington, but spring is coming, I am mobile, my skin looks good, and when I die, they’ll take my saddle from the wall, put it on my pony, lead him out of his stall, tie my bones to his back turn our faces to the west, and we’ll ride the prairie that I love the best. A man can ask for no more.

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