Archive for the 'Memories' Category

“I’m sorry, Mayor Eastwood isn’t in at the moment”: working night shift at City Hall in 1986

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 5, 2008
in Memories and Working
. 1 Comment

Just because, here’s a memory about working:

I’ve had far fewer jobs than most folks in their early forties. I’ve been teaching here at Pasadena City College since 1993, when I was 26. Before that, most of my paid jobs were in grad school at UCLA: editor, athletic tutor, teaching assistant, researcher. But I did work summer jobs during my undergrad years, and I found myself thinking this morning about what I did for eight weeks twenty-two years ago.

In late May 1986, after my freshman year at Berkeley, I moved back home to Carmel. Jobs in my hometown tend to be centered around the tourist industry, but for any number of reasons, I had a hard time finding a job waiting tables or working in a shop. Responding to an ad in the Monterey Herald, I took a position as a “night janitor” working for the Carmel by-the-Sea public works department.

The hours were very strange: 2:00AM to 10:00AM, Monday through Friday. It’s the only time in my life where I’ve worked such a schedule, and even now, twenty-one years later, I can remember how grueling it was. I was paid $5.25 an hour (well above the then minimum wage of $3.35), and I got to drive the department’s brand new Ford Aerostar around town. My job was to perform janitorial services at the City Hall and the library for the first four hours, and in the second four hours to assist the department’s senior maintenance supervisor with his work around town. Continue reading ‘“I’m sorry, Mayor Eastwood isn’t in at the moment”: working night shift at City Hall in 1986′

The Pill, autonomy, male responsibility, and the virtues of body sovereignty

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 2, 2008
in Birth control and contraception, Memories and Teaching
. 27 Comments

As noted on Friday, historian (and fellow UCLA Ph.D.) Elaine Tyler May is looking for stories about the Pill.

Since she asks for stories from men whose partners have used the Pill, I’ll take the invitation to offer some thoughts.

I lecture on birth control every semester in my women’s history class. I always begin the same way, by talking about semantics, namely to make what ought to be an obvious point: “birth” control is not identical to contraception. The very names make clear the difference: birth control encompasses a wide variety of methods to give women control over their entire (or nearly entire) reproductive process; contraception is, evidently, limited to those methods designed to prevent conception. Contraception, in other words, is a subset of but never a synonym for birth control. One key feminist goal remains ensuring safe and reliable access not merely to contraceptive technology but to birth control.

Invariably, some students get confused, largely because the phrase “birth control” in their minds has come to mean only the Pill. When they hear an expression such as “Mary’s on birth control”, they assume that means oral contraceptives. This equation of birth control with the Pill hasn’t changed noticeably since I first started teaching fifteen years ago. Nearly five decades after it first appeared on the market, the Pill continues to exercise a powerful hold on the language — as well, of course, on the bodies — of women young enough to be the granddaughters of the first generation to use it. Continue reading ‘The Pill, autonomy, male responsibility, and the virtues of body sovereignty’

Birthday memories

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 22, 2008
in Age and Memories
. 3 Comments

Today, newly forty-one, I’m not nearly as reflective as I was a year ago. Forty is a milestone, and for me, ’twas a happy one to reach. Forty-one has less epic resonance, though I do note that today marks the 20th anniversary of my first legal drinking experience. And soon I will mark the tenth anniversary since my last drink.

I’m thinking this morning not about my age, but about past birthdays. Here are a few that stick in my mind:

1970 (age 3); The first birthday I remember, and one of my very first memories. I attended the “Humpty-Dumpty Nursery School” in Santa Barbara, and I had a very fine cake.

1975 (age 8): My birthday fell on a weekend, and my mother arranged a party on Carmel River State Beach. The theme was “pirates”, and we barbecued hot dogs and flew a pirate flag. We had invited most of my class, but only a small handful of boys came. It was momentarily disappointing, but as I recall, one of those who did come was Brett, perhaps the most popular boy in school. He had never paid me much attention before, but he spent a few hours with me that afternoon, playing in the sand. I was very happy. Continue reading ‘Birthday memories’

Trojan Traurigkeit

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 11, 2008
in Academia and Memories
. 16 Comments

So, we’ve been having a battle royale in the feminist blogosphere this week. If you read the blogs, you know about it. Heck, I’ve had over 100 190 comments on a post for the first time since last fall, before my readership dropped during my January hiatus.

But other things matter, like Russell Arben Fox’s outstanding post about “treating cultists right”. It’s about the Fundamentalist LDS church in Texas and the government’s raid thereupon; Russell is a first-rate Mormon intellectual, and his piece is most welcome.

I was very unhappy to read this in the Los Angeles Times this morning: USC Will Disband German Department. Apparently demand has fallen for German language and literature courses, and a university that aspires to be one of the premier research institutions in the country has decided to axe the program. Current majors will be allowed to finish their degrees, but questions remain about how doctoral students in other departments who need German as one of their languages will complete that requirement.

I minored in German as an undergraduate. Indeed, I am but two courses short of a bachelor’s degree in German, even though I never achieved complete fluency in the language that was my father’s native tongue. (I visit my German-speaking relatives every few years, but otherwise, I hardly ever speak it anymore). I took plenty of literature courses, particularly on 19th century novels and short plays. I developed a particular fascination with Heinrich von Kleist, and wrote — on my old manual typewriter — one of the best papers I ever produced in college about his masterful Die Marquise von O. And yeah, the fact that he killed himself and his girlfriend in a suicide pact made him especially compelling to me.

My background in German language enriched my work as a graduate student in church history immensely. So many of the secondary sources I read were in German only. Much of my dissertation was influenced by Friedrich Prinz’s wonderful Klerus und Krieg im früheren Mittelalter.

I think lots of folks should do minors in a language. Though I sometimes wish now, two decades later, that I had majored in women’s studies instead of history, I have never regretted minoring in German. It enhanced and enriched my undergraduate experience immensely, and even now, I sometimes surprise people by being able to drop a line or two from Schnitzler or Goethe in the original. I’ve forgotten so much of what I learned, as I never use it anymore in this new life — but honestly, I am a better man today for having known it once.

Modern universities began in German-speaking lands. For a university like USC, richly endowed and increasingly academically respectable, to drop such a vital program is appalling. It represents a rejection of one of the foundation stones of Western heritage, and I fervently hope that the decision is soon reversed.

I’ll be speaking with my Trojan wife, a proud ‘SC alumna, and ask her to enclose a little note with her next check. Vielleicht auf Deutsch.

Humiliation and becoming human: how erectile dysfunction made me a better man, husband, and person

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 14, 2008
in Body, Favorite Posts 2008, Memories, Men and Masculinity, Penis, Relationships, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 31 Comments

I count fellow Angeleno and men’s rights advocate Glenn Sacks as a friend, even though he and I are likely to disagree on virtually every issue. I winced a bit, however, at his rather snarky linking to my re-post in praise of erectile dysfunction. Glenn writes:

I guess if it’s humiliating to men, it must be good. Feminist professor/blogger Hugo Schwyzer recently wrote a blog post “in praise of ED.” Schwyzer writes:

“In my Humanities class on the ‘body’ yesterday, I noted in passing that there was much to be said for erectile dysfunction. I have always maintained that men would be far more insufferable than they otherwise are trained to be if the penis was, in fact, a muscle entirely under their control….ED literally softens the penis; it can also figuratively soften a man by forcing him to rethink his allegiance to a cruel and unattainable standard.”

In light of this, it kind of reminds me of an odd interaction I had with Hugo when he was on my radio show a couple years ago. We were discussing something related to sex–I can’t remember what–and I said something like “Of course, Hugo, men’s perspectives change as they get older. Like me, I’m sure you’re not quite the stallion you used to be.”

Hugo is a very nice guy, and it’s hard to get him angry over anything, but he was not happy over this remark. I was surprised, and didn’t quite know what to make of it. Any amateur psychologists out there have any ideas?

Uh, amateur psychologists? Leave your remarks over at Glenn’s place, please.

But my praise of periodic bouts of ED is not rooted in the internalized misandry of which I — and all other male feminists — are regularly accused. It’s rooted in many things, not least my own experience, about which more (because there’s a fair amount of TMI) below the cut. Continue reading ‘Humiliation and becoming human: how erectile dysfunction made me a better man, husband, and person’

“Not a Presby, nor a Luth’ran” — an old Episcopal youth camp song

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 20, 2008
in Christianity, Fun, Memories and Music
. 7 Comments

On an entirely different note, this song came into my head today. My mother sang it to me when I was a child. She learned it from her roommate at Vassar in the mid-1950s; her roommate had sung it at an Episcopalian youth camp. I’ve sung it myself for many of my Episcopalian friends (including priests and the current bishop of Los Angeles), and to my amazement, none of them know it. So here it is, and it is to be sung to the tune of “God Bless America”:

I am an Anglican,
I am C.E.:
Neither high church
Nor low church,
I am Protestant and Catholic and Free!

Not a Presby,
Nor a Luth’ran
Nor a Baptist, white with foam;
I am an Anglican –
Just one step from Rome!
I am an Anglican —
Just one step from Rome!

Whether it’s theologically true any longer is debatable, but the bit about the Baptist is pretty darned good.

February 14 memories…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 14, 2008
in Holidays and Memories
. 1 Comment

My wife and I will have a quiet Valentine’s evening in tonight; it’s our sixth as a couple and our third as husband and wife. Local restaurants that are normally accomodating to vegans are notably less so on big holidays like tonight’s; we’re better off curling up at home.

This afternoon it hit me with a shock that at forty, I have so few memories of being single on Valentine’s Day. This is the twenty-fourth Valentine’s Day that’s come around since I was seventeen and in my first romantic relationship — and I’ve been married or otherwise seriously partnered for twenty-one of them. By my reckoning, I spent Valentine’s Day alone in 1987, 1993, and 1998, and was with a partner of one kind or another for all the others. In ‘87, I went hiking with single friends on the Marin Headlands; in ‘93 I spent hours and hours exercising in the gym; in ‘98, I worked on my dissertation and drank too much.

Oddly, I have a hard time remembering what I did with ex-wives or lovers on Valentine’s days past. Restaurants and florists all blur together after a while! What comes to my mind tonight, as I wait for my wife to get home from work, are the last five February 14ths we’ve spent together. (We were in Paris last year, and it’ll be hard to top that again.)

But I also remember that hike in 1987. We were a mixed group of boys and girls, all frosh or sophomores at Cal; we were all single and to varying degrees, unhappy about it. We spent the day on BART and on buses, hiking and laughing and singing the Cal fight song from a bluff overlooking the San Francisco Bay. We bought wine with a fake ID on the way home, and walked back to our co-ops and apartments arm-in-arm, locked together in that sweet sentimental solidarity of singleness and late adolescence, none of us wanting to let go…

Next to these past five years, it’s my favorite Valentine’s memory.

On “settling” and the indispensability of passion: a reply to Lori Gottlieb

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 9, 2008
in Divorce, Favorite Posts 2008, Marriage, Memories, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 33 Comments

The March 2008 issue of The Atlantic has one of those sure-to-start-a-heated-discussion pieces: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. The author, Lori Gottlieb, is exactly my age: forty, on the nose. She’s a single parent, having conceived her young son with donor sperm. Lori begins:

About six months after my son was born, he and I were sitting on a blanket at the park with a close friend and her daughter. It was a sunny summer weekend, and other parents and their kids picnicked nearby—mothers munching berries and lounging on the grass, fathers tossing balls with their giddy toddlers. My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr. Right yet, surveyed the idyllic scene.

“Ah, this is the dream,” I said, and we nodded in silence for a minute, then burst out laughing. In some ways, I meant it: we’d both dreamed of motherhood, and here we were, picnicking in the park with our children. But it was also decidedly not the dream. The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

Gottlieb anticipates that this last sentence will arouse howls of indignation, but she pushes blithely ahead. She’s writing, it seems for younger women, and she’s offering what is only a slightly different spin on the by-now ubiquitous bromide that “feminism hurts women by suggesting that happiness is possible without a man.” I mean, it’s not as if there aren’t dozens of books and articles out there aimed at headstrong young women warning that if they don’t get hitched and start breeding early, they’ll miss their chance at the deepest and most satisfying source of happiness that the be-ovaried can ever know. It’s an old trope: the wiser older sister figure presenting her own story of woe as a cautionary tale. (And yeah, I know I sometimes do a similar thing here on this blog.) What’s interesting — and particularly galling — is Gottlieb’s hook: she urges smart young women to marry “Mr. Good Enough”. Continue reading ‘On “settling” and the indispensability of passion: a reply to Lori Gottlieb’

“Becoming available for the miracle”: in defense of psychotropics

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 15, 2008
in Addiction and mental illness and Memories
. 28 Comments

The discussion of medication, specifically anti-depressants, has made its way back into the blogosphere. Kactus posted on December 20 at Feministe about her relief at finding a good anti-anxiety medication. More than 120 comments followed, many critical of the pharmaceutical industry — and others questioning the usefulness of medication for depression or anxiety.

Responding to Kactus, my fellow vegan feminist Elaine Vigneault takes a fairly strong anti-medication tack, largely rooted in her own experience.

Yesterday, Daisy summed up the whole kerfuffle at her place.

I was on one form or another of psychotropic drugs (all prescribed, though at times abused) from 1987 to 1998. After my first hospitalization at age 19, I was put on Elavil, an old-fashioned anti-depressant that left me teary and sleeping 12 hours a day. I was a first-generation Prozac kid (from 1989-1992). As micro-psychotic episodes began to appear, I was put on lithium as well — and spent eighteen months on that drug. Others followed, from Anafranil to Wellbutrin to Klonopin. I became seriously addicted to the last of these; of all the substances I ever put in my body, none was as compelling and intoxicating as Klonopin. Continue reading ‘“Becoming available for the miracle”: in defense of psychotropics’

A very long post on how to rebuild trust

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 28, 2007
in Addiction and mental illness, Family, Memories and Relationships
. 17 Comments

I insisted on inflicting my Top Ten posts of 2007 on my readers. Not everyone is so unkind; many bloggers have managed to provide only their single best post of the year for public consideration. Jon Swift has compiled an excellent list, having invited his entire blogroll to send him a link to what each writer considered his or her finest offering from these past twelve months. Warning: it’s a time-suck, as the kids say these days.

A regular reader asks:

I do have a question for you that you may be able to answer. I am wondering if it is possible to reconcile with a person where trust has been broken and be able to rebuild the trust back again. Have you any personal experience in this area that you can shed wisdom on?

I’m not a relationship expert: three divorces by age 35 are proof of that. That doesn’t stop me from offering advice and reflections, and it doesn’t stop people from asking. So with the standard caveat that my opinion is only that, an opinion, here goes.

I’m going to assume my reader is writing about reconciling with a romantic partner. When trust is shattered in a sexual relationship, it’s usually qualitatively different than it is in other friendships or among family members. But I’d like to touch on the loss — and the restoration — of trust in a variety of relationships, because I’ve got a considerable amount of hard-earned experience in this area.

I had my first major mental breakdown in April 1987, shortly before I turned 20. I had my last (God willing) in the summer of 1998, shortly after turning 31. Over that eleven-year period, I was hospitalized more than half a dozen times. I also struggled very publicly with a host of addictions. And I know full well that addicts break the hearts of those who love them, over and over again. My mother, father, brother, and sisters suffered more than anyone. None of my friends, lovers, or wives were part of my life for that entire period; I very successfully chased everyone who wasn’t bound to me by blood out of my life.

My lies were the standard ones: “I’m sober”, I would say — when I wasn’t. “I’m seeing a great therapist” — when I cancelled all my appointments. “The meds are helping” — when they weren’t. Above all, my most consistent lie was “I’m fine.” Anglo-Saxon reticence, and the concomitant dissembling it requires, were part of my family culture. I spent many years on the stage as a child, and my acting skills came in handy when it came time to cover up the pain, the despair, and the appalling acting-out behavior that characterized my life in my late teens and twenties. Continue reading ‘A very long post on how to rebuild trust’

Dan Fogelberg, 1951-2007

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 17, 2007
in Memories and Music
. 7 Comments

Trusting that most folks observe the de mortuis nihil nisi bonum rule, let me note with sadness the passing of Dan Fogelberg. His Greatest Hits album was one I listened to constantly my sophomore year of high school. I was very much into punk at the same time, listening to mainstream bands like the Clash and more obscure artists ranging from Stiff Little Fingers to Johnny Thunders. But though I pretended to share my friends’ enthusiasm for say, Jodie Foster’s Army, I played my Fogelberg cassette in secret in my room. I wasn’t a popular kid when I was fifteen, of course; but admitting that I teared up everytime I heard “Run for the Roses” would have been the end of whatever social credibility I enjoyed.

I’ve been listening, on the verge of weepiness, to “Same Old Lang Syne” over and over again the last two days. Dear readers, think of the confidence it takes to admit to this!

Do wait for future posts paying tribute to David Gates and Bread; Seals and Crofts; and Helen Reddy.

Ten years ago today…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 13, 2007
in Body and Memories
. 5 Comments

… I got my tongue pierced. (I had had the nipples pierced the year earlier.) The barbell was enlarged a few times over the next six months, but after I cracked two teeth with it in the fall of 1998, I took the darn thing out for good, less than eleven months after I first put it in. It was fun while it lasted.

How long ago it seems.

Now I must go buy garbage bags: a note on “doing the NEXT right thing”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 12, 2007
in Addiction and mental illness and Memories
. 10 Comments

In my post on Monday about teachers who had touched my life, I left out — quite accidentally — the two “sponsors” who guided me through the Twelve-Step program over many years. “Jenia B.” and “Jack K.” loved me, nurtured me, and talked sense to me. it was through them that I learned some basic tools for how to live.

I was thinking about Jenia and Jack this morning as I read through John Spragge’s comments beneath this post. John writes:

Seriously, I don’t object to the notion of changing our thinking and behaviour; I only object to the notion that you or anyone else can tell us how to think and feel. Tell us what works for you, if you like, but don’t indulge the illusion that it will work for everyone else.

I have several problems with what John says here, but I’ve already addressed some of them in this post.

What John reminded me of is something my old sponsor Jack K. was fond of saying to me: “Hugo, just do the next right thing.” Not just the “right thing”, but the “next right thing.” Early on in my recovery, this was a vital tool. During the summer of 1998, for example, when I was just days and weeks removed from a serious suicide attempt and on the cusp of a dramatic conversion, I told myself to “do the next right thing” at least a dozen times a day.

During that strange, marvelous summer — the summer where I once and for all made the decision to live rather than to die — I had to think through the smallest actions. When the alarm went off in the morning, and I had to decide whether to get up and go to an early Twelve Step meeting or stay in bed, I would ask myself “Hugo, what is the next right thing to do?” And the answer usually was: “Get out of bed, put on some clothes, make some coffee, go to the meeting.” Once or twice it was: “Today, you’re exhausted. Stay in bed.”

When I found myself in a “slippery situation”, I asked myself the same question. During that summer and fall of ‘98, I took the first vow of voluntary celibacy of my adult life. A few weeks into that period, I ran into an old “friend with benefits” on the street. Every corpuscle in my system longed to “connect” with her in the familiar way. And I asked myself, almost frantically, what the “next right thing” to do was — and found, to my amazement, that I was able to excuse myself from our flirtatious conversation and complete my errands. The next right thing that day had been to go and buy garbage bags, and the thought “Now I must go buy garbage bags” was what enabled me to walk away from a very tempting situation.

It’s been nearly a decade since I first relied on this tool to survive. These days, my inner compass is much more reliable, and my susceptability to stupid, self-destructive decisions is much lower. But I still use the “next right thing” tool to get me through. Now, it’s less about avoiding drugs, alcohol, and unethical sex than it is about making justice-based choices. When I go to the market, I ask myself: “what is the next right thing to buy?” I know, for example, that I really want coffee. I like certain kinds of coffee, so my own wants are part of the “right” decision. I also know that I want to spend my money as “rightly” as possible, and that means buying coffee that has been certified free-trade, shade-grown, and so forth. Thus the “next right thing” is to find the place where my wants and the world’s needs intersect.

I look for this intersection in every aspect of my life: how I eat, how I teach, how I interact with others in personal relationships. Sometimes, what I want and what the right thing to do is have no easy intersection. When I’m tired and a student asks me a really appallingly dumb question, I want to wring his or her neck — or at least make a witty and cruel remark. But most of the time, I swallow that anger and exasperation and find something supportive to say instead. The “next right thing” is often about redirecting certain of my impulses; it’s usually about being slightly less selfish and a bit more generous.

The “next right thing” is thus not about self-denial. It’s about finding that sweet spot between my deepest desires and the needs of the other creatures with whom I interact. It does require a certain amount of self-awareness, as well as a willingness to ask others to point out “blind spots”. But I can’t help but feel that the world would be a good deal better off if we all applied the “next right thing” model to our lives.

Every dollar I spend is a vote for the kind of world I want to see. Every word I speak, every action I take, has an impact — however slight — on others. Constant mindfulness is a tool for change. And I’m comfortable exhorting others to be equally mindful, even if they end up seeing the “next right thing” as something very different. This isn’t Puritanical self-absorbtion; rather’s it’s a tool for living justly and kindly. And it’s a tool that honors individual perspectives about what the “next right thing” is.

Teachers, heroes, mentors: a meme

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 10, 2007
in Memories and Teaching
. 7 Comments

The newest carnival of the feminists is up here.

J.K Gayle at Speakeristic tags me with a meme: name the thirteen teachers or mentors who most influenced your life, and offer a brief explanation of how they did so. The teachers can be professors, parents, or long-dead writers whose work has shaped you. Here goes:

1. E. Alison Moore Schwyzer, my mother. I see so much of the world through her eyes still; she gave me a love of poetry, a love of history, and a love of the spoken word. Hers were the first lectures I heard (on long car trips, she gave her two boys and their dachsund the same lectures she gave to her classes at Monterey Peninsula College), and I still often find myself imitating her style.

2. Hubert Rudolf Georg Schwyzer, my late father. He taught me many things, but mostly that masculinity and gentleness are indeed deeply compatible, and that in the end, decency and beauty and love are what matter most. I sat in on many of his lectures at UCSB and elsewhere over the years, and some of his mannerisms have made it into my style.

3. Margaret Roeding Moore Chickering, my maternal grandmother. “Peggy”, as she was known, was a renaissance woman. She taught me how to write sincere and witty thank-you notes; how to load and shoot a .22 rifle; how to plant bulbs; how to master a complex table setting. Equally at home riding trails on horseback or hosting a Junior League tea, she taught me that duty and joy were not mutually exclusive. And that’s a wonderful lesson to learn.

4. Elisabeth von Schuh Schwyzer, my paternal grandmother. “Elsa” was born in Vienna at the dawn of the twentieth century. She was a relentless bundle of energy and of shifting opinions, an impetuous, inexhaustible woman, she had been a passionate adolescent Communist; a close and devoted lifelong friend to the philosopher Karl Popper; a farm wife who milked cows and raised hogs in rural England. She wasn’t Jewish, but she married my grandfather, who was. His conversion to Catholicism wasn’t enough to protect the family after Hitler’s takeover of Austria, and it was her determination that enabled them to make their way to safe haven in Britain. She returned to Vienna after the war, and worked as a teacher into her late 80s. Continue reading ‘Teachers, heroes, mentors: a meme’

Losing my first action hero

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2007
in Memories and People
. 6 Comments

Evel Knievel has died. I was seven when he hit the apex of his fame, trying to jump Snake River Canyon. In the year after he made that doomed attempt, I remember riding my Schwinn through the streets of Carmel, building little jumps with other children and playing a game that we simply called “Evel Knievel.” When I saw he died today, I had a sudden flashback to a time — nearly thirty-five years ago — when he was the hero of every kid in my school. I had a little plastic Evel Knievel motorcycle with a plastic action figure, and when I wasn’t building small wooden ramps out of particle board to do jumps on my bike, I was playing with that darned doll.

For someone who writes as much about masculinity as I do, it’s odd I don’t refer more often to the cultural icons of my childhood. Three public figures from the mid-’70s were, for me, the ultimate “men’s men”: O.J. Simpson, Evel Knievel, and the actor Tom Laughlin, who starred in The Trial of Billy Jack, an utterly forgettable film that was perhaps the first grown-up movie I saw in the theater (age eight). Another post for another time about these three very different men and their influence on a very young Hugo.