Poles Apart (9 page)

“If you were only listening to him you’d think nothing happened. He’s just the same crusty, off-colour, sexist …”

“I know what’s he like, Ev, I was married to him,” she interrupted.

“Right. Well, mentally he’s just as socially stunted as he always was, but physically, he’s kind of in rough shape.”

“How rough?”

“Right now, his left leg is really just dead weight. He just drags it along behind him. I’m sure his right leg is getting nicely toned because it’s working harder than it should be to compensate. And his left hand is not what it used to be. He’ll never be able to cut
the cards with that hand alone. His fine motor control is virtually nonexistent at this stage. So his dream of learning the violin and playing at Carnegie Hall is out the window.”

“Oh, God.”

“Mom, he’s going to be okay by the end of all this. We’re working on his walking every day. And he spends the rest of his time in physio and squeezing these two little black balls in his left hand to regain his strength and control. It’s going to take some time, but he can and will recover from this. He can do it. We can do it.”

“How much has he improved in the last week or so?”

“Like I said, it’s going to take some time, but he’ll get there.”

“So, there’s been no improvement? None at all?”

“I’ve lost four pounds if that counts, and Dad is able to drag his left leg faster than he could before,” I said. “Mom, we’re going to get there.”

“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m moving down for a while, so I can help out, too,” she said.

“Mom, you don’t need to do that. I’ve got it under control. You’ve got a company to run.”

“Relax, Ev. It’s really company business that’s bringing me down. We’re finally breaking ground on a big new resort across from Disney. I’ve been working on the deal for the last two years, and it’s time to put shovels in the ground. So I’m coming down. I don’t trust our jackasses down there to get it right. So I’m doing it myself.”

“I didn’t know your duties included putting shovels in the ground.”

“I’m supervising. I’ll be the one wearing the white hard hat. The white hats do a lot of standing around and issuing orders. It’s right up my alley.”

“I see.”

“And when I’m there, I’ll drop in on your father, now and then. And you and I can see more of one another, too.”

“That would be great, Mom. But be prepared for a less than effusive reaction from Dad. You might be cramping his style at the hospital. He’s been on the prowl since he got there, if you can prowl with only one good leg. There seem to be more women patients than men.”

“Just the way your father likes it. Don’t worry, I won’t be staying long.”

“By the way, Mom, have you ever heard of a guy named Mason Bennington?”

“I was hoping never to hear that name again,” she replied. “Yes, regrettably, I have come across him.”

“How? Why?”

“We had some discussions with him about locating one of his fancy clubs in one of our adult-oriented resorts. I found him to be ruthless, conceited, and of questionable moral fibre. But we turned him down in the end, so who cares.”

“Good for you, Mom. You made the right call,” I said. “Thanks for saying no to an exercise in misogyny.”

“I couldn’t care less about misogyny. We turned him down because the numbers weren’t there for us. We said no to an exercise in losing money.”

“I’m so proud.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Regardless, you still made the right call.”

I tried to sleep, but my mind was still whirring from my talk with Beverley. I downloaded
The Subjection of Women
and read a good chunk of it. Beautiful, if ornate, writing, but with a real mission. I set it aside to try again to sleep. I tossed and turned for a while. Then I switched it up and tried turning and then tossing for a while, to no avail. I tried to identify what I was feeling, why I couldn’t sleep. Eventually I decided I was excited. Yes, excited. Talking with Beverley had rekindled feelings that had been submerged since my days in student politics. I realized, in hindsight, that I had never felt more alive, never felt more needed, never felt more focused, than I had while working in the student movement, particularly on gender equality issues. I’d also never felt more angry than when I realized the extent to which society favoured men over women, and always had. I remember being utterly outraged when the full force of the history and ubiquity of women’s inequality sank in. Yes, I was a serious young man back then. I was lots of fun to be around in those days.

I was mad because I began to see my chosen injustice everywhere around me, every day. In advertising, media stories,
TV
shows, movies, and books. I heard it in daily conversations with my own family, friends, colleagues, professors, and perfect strangers. It was everywhere. I was immersed in it. Society was immersed in it. I perhaps became a little too invested in the cause. Friends started avoiding me or censoring what they said around me, lest they offend my precious principles. My male friends stopped commenting on attractive women when we were together. In hindsight, I was not great company for a time back then. Come to think of it, my three most recent girlfriends might suggest that all these years later, I’m still not much fun to be around.

I know this all seems a little strange, a little weird. I know it seems far too earnest – that I’m far too earnest. It often feels that way to me, too. But that’s how I felt back then, how I still feel today. I can’t help it. I can’t just turn off anger over an inequality that is so insidious and pervasive yet is accepted by so many. And it bothers me that society considers a man’s feminism to be so strange, to be so aberrant. If I were as deeply committed to environmental protection, or nuclear disarmament, or animal rights, it would not be weird at all. But a man who feels deeply about women’s equality is immediately suspect – “He must have ulterior motives.” “He must be trying to meet women.” A staunchly feminist man simply does not fit within the accepted order of the universe. But there you have it.

I still couldn’t believe I’d met and spoken with Beverley Tanner
in a rehab hospital in Orlando. I replayed our conversations in my mind. She seemed to have tapped a spring of beliefs and emotions that, while not exactly dormant, had not been this close to the surface for some years. (I had botched three relationships in the last two years with women who certainly wouldn’t consider my opinions on the topic to have been anywhere near dormant. But everything is relative. On the other hand, I’d spent the last few years writing stories for cosmetic magazines. Go figure.) One seldom has an awakening like the one I had while at university. Having a second, eighteen years later, seemed even rarer.

I lay in bed, not sleeping. It was close to three in the morning and I was unable to shut down my brain. I couldn’t stop thinking about the aging feminist icon rehabbing quietly and trading barbs with my sophomoric father in an Orlando hospital. I thought it must be a sign – meeting Beverley, I mean, not my sophomoric father. As unusual as it was for a youngish man like me to have gravitated toward women’s equality as a cause so many years ago, I liked the feeling that came with this renewed sense of purpose, this renewed sense of mission. But I was no longer in the student movement, surrounded by equally committed people who could muster a protest rally and devise creative chants in the perfect marching cadence, all on a moment’s notice. Those days were gone. That was years ago. I’m on my own now.

So how to seize this moment before it slips away, and act on the interest and energy Beverley seemed to have reignited? How can I capitalize on it? How can I contribute, now? What
can I do? Those were the questions swirling in my head as I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

And when I snapped awake again just a few minutes later, I found the answers sitting right there, waiting for me. Only one question remained unanswered: Why the hell was there a giant nut and bolt coming up through my kitchen floor?

I’m a writer. So I’ll write. That was the answer. Simple and clear. Still, it took me a while to figure out what it actually meant. I cycled through the possibilities. I could write articles and submit them to newspapers and magazines where they would surely be rejected and never run. A feminist man writing about women’s equality was kind of a “man bites dog” story, but still a little too strange to yield much traction in the mainstream media. No. I guess I could write a collection of essays or even a book on the issues as I saw them and then join the ranks of millions searching in vain for a literary agent or publisher. No. Wait, I could always self-publish it. Yes, I suppose I could, but then what? Selling self-published books is extremely difficult, even one as captivating and scintillating as the tome I would write about gender equality. No bookstores would stock it. No one would know about it. I’m pretty sure my parents would enjoy the book. Hang on, come to think of it, I’m really not sure my parents
would even read the book, let alone enjoy it. So, no. What else have I got?

It took some web surfing for the idea to land. I probably should have thought of it sooner. I turned it over in my mind, considering the opportunity, examining it from various angles. Hmmm, it might just work. Why not a blog? Yes, a blog. I could write a blog exploring women’s equality. Blogs are increasingly popular and influential, drawing a growing number of subscribers. It was a nimble platform that would allow me to make timely comment on current events and related issues in the news. A blog. Yes, that might be just the ticket.

You might be wondering what made me think I could write blog posts that would be of interest to anyone. There were other feminist bloggers out there. Lots of them. Lots of really good ones. What could I contribute that was different, more compelling, more meaningful, more effective, more powerful than what already existed in the online world? Well, the obvious short answer was, I had no freakin’ idea. I really didn’t. I certainly wasn’t convinced I had anything more or anything different to offer than that which was already out there. But I wanted to try. I felt I needed to try. I was eager to recapture the passion of my university years, when I felt I belonged to something. And I wanted to staunch the feeling of drift and ennui that accompanied a career that had not panned out the way I’d wanted. I was motivated again. I feared that if I didn’t leap now, my rekindled ardour might flag. I needed to act. In the end, the idea was rooted in my desire to
get off the sidelines and do something. It was really to satisfy me. I had no expectations that anyone would read my blog, let alone consider it a worthy contribution to the feminist ferment. I just wanted to do it, to do something, even if it were just for me.

My mind turned again to Beverley Tanner as the digits on my bedside clock approached 4:30. I decided to try to take a page from her playbook. I liked the notion of humour as a weapon in the fight. I would try to leaven anger with humour. There still wasn’t a great deal of “funny” in the women’s movement. I’d try to laugh at patriarchy to weaken it. I’d write short, thoughtful, balanced, reasonable, readable posts about a range of equality issues in the hopes of building support among men and women who perhaps didn’t think of themselves as feminists, even though they probably were. The idea would be to motivate the silent majority of feminists to do more than privately support equal rights. So in each post, I’d try to have some kind of a simple, personal call to action. In my wildest dreams, I wanted my writing to spur even a modest behavioural change in my readers, or at least cause them to think, if only for a moment or two. That was the extent of the plan. It was clearly an “easier said than done” moment, or perhaps even an “are you crazy, you’ll be crucified” moment.

But do I sign my name to it? Do I shove myself forward as the blogger? This wasn’t easy. I went back and forth on it. I knew that in the blogosphere – yes, that’s what they call it – the idea of transparency was important. On the other hand, I didn’t want the fact that I was a man writing a feminist blog to overshadow
what I was writing. Without going all Marshall McLuhan on you, as the medium, I didn’t want to become the message. Besides, the anatomy of the blogger shouldn’t be important or even relevant. Rather, it’s all about the words, the message, the cause. Secondly, I truly believed that a man should not be seen to be out front on feminism. That would be just like a man to try to take over the women’s movement. We’d taken over everything else in history, in society, in the world, why not feminism, too? No, I don’t think so.

So I made the call. It would be an anonymous blog. No one would know I was the author. I wasn’t after recognition. I just wanted back that feeling I’d had years earlier. I just wanted to help move the yardsticks toward the goal of gender equality. Oops, check that. I wanted to help “make some gains” toward the goal of gender equality. I was obviously rusty after my fifteen-year hiatus from the movement. Never, ever, should one employ football metaphors in the service of women’s equality, particularly when the Lingerie Football League is still with us (I’m not kidding). Never.