The Strong, Silent Type Will Not Shut Up |
We are in the throes of a culture-wide freak-out over what is and is not masculine. You may have noticed that many of us are not taking it well. In fact, can someone please check on David Mamet? The tough guys are claiming victimhood; the men who mock you for talking about your feelings are yelling about theirs. The strong, silent type simply will not shut up. The New York Times did a roundtable with conservative men this spring, one of whom complained that America is too weak; another said he's personally affronted when he sees a man in insufficiently masculine clothing. It's weird in here right now, and it has been since at least a few months before a news network told guys to sunburn their sacks so they don't end up like me. We live in a nation of talkers, braggers, yellers, and criers. When our best idea is to irradiate our scrotums to keep us mean, maybe it's worth being quiet for a while. Standing in the way of evolution does not make anyone a man. It doesn't make them a woman, either. It makes them a child. The chair arrived last month. The guy carried it to the front porch, shook my hand, and drove off, leaving my boyfriend, Ben, and me to bring it into the house. It wouldn't fit through the front door. We had to go the back way, through the carport, in through the double doors, up over my desk, and into the corner I'd cleared out for it. It's too big for the space. I have to hurdle the ottoman so I can get behind my desk. It belongs in a very serious man's office, so it sticks out in here, underneath the framed ads for new-wave records. |
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'How Can You Still Be a Christian?' He Asked. It's...Complicated. |
A guy at work recently asked why I'm Christian. It's not something I am particularly vocal about, but it's also not something I'm not vocal about, you know? In some ways, I think of it as doing improv or supporting the Patriots: If you talk about it in public, get ready for eyes to roll. But I'd been trained for moments like this. It's been years since I've considered myself evangelical, but the indoctrination is hard to shake. The party line is that the only way to the afterlife is through Jesus, and the only way to Jesus? Well, it could be through me. I could practically hear the youth pastors from my past speak in unison, "How blessed to be in this moment, provided through the grace of God, where this young man has queried you about your faith." As we stood there, chatting over a cubicle wall and sipping on expensive promotional liquor in CVS plastic cups, my colleague said, in what amounted to nothing short of an invitation to put evangelicalism in action, "I just don't understand how someone could believe in that." Former me would have mounted a spirited reply, but I'm not former me. I understand why you'd ask the question. How can someone believe in that? For my every East Tennessee impulse to defend my faith, I have what is now an equally strong New York impulse to talk on past these moments. But the side of me that is Christian—the word I use most easily to describe myself—stumbled over my words, trying to find one specific anecdote that would make that question make sense. |
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On the night of May 29, 2006, after seeing the documentary An Inconvenient Truth in Manhattan, Jeff Gross drove home from the Staten Island ferry to Ganas, a communal-living experiment he'd spent decades building. He climbed the steep steps up to the group's cluster of houses scattered among leafy walkways and squinted his way through uncut shrubs and poor lighting. As Jeff approached his porch, a figure stepped from the shadows and raised a handgun. "What do you want?" Jeff shouted, and then, "No, no, don't do it!" Shots pop-pop-popped as the shooter unloaded six rounds into his hip, stomach, arm, and neck. Jeff fell to the ground, blood pumping from his wounds. His assailant stepped over him and fled. A neighbor who heard the shooting knelt beside Jeff and shouted for towels to stanch the bleeding. Many moments had delivered Jeff to this one. Since 1980, Ganas had been a community that embraced all manner of new-agey life. But his relationship with the group—particularly with its charismatic and often abusive leader, Mildred Gordon—had become unrecognizable since their early days. He'd signed over a small fortune, endured thousands of hours of "feedback" sessions, and entered a four-way marriage. And now he was bleeding out in the back of an ambulance. How had Jeff gotten into this mess? And why had he stayed? |
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I Tried Everything. Then I Tried Ayahuasca. |
Six months ago, I sat outside, on a wooden deck in the mountains, across from a white dude with a man bun. "Do you actually think this can fix me?" I asked him. The man went by "Kapétt," a name he picked up while studying indigenous culture in a Peruvian forest, though his legal name was John Thomas Caldwell III, and he was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. "I can't promise that," said Kapétt/John III, moving his left leg to cross under his right. "But I've seen people speak with their deceased loved ones. Others who've had their depression instantly cleared. Things you wouldn't believe." Neither of those possibilities interested me. I'm not depressed and I don't believe in ghosts or God or an after-life. When we die, we turn off, at least I think so. And if I'm wrong, and my dead relatives do exist, I have no desire to hear from them—loud Jews from the world beyond, floating around my bedroom, judging me for the gay-leaning porn I consume when I believe I'm alone. But regardless, I, at 31, came to this retreat because of a vestibular balance issue I'd been dealing with for three years—something wrong with my left ear. Every moment that I'd been awake, on a first date or a job interview, on a run, or in a chair, drunk at a concert or sober in bed, standing up or upside down, I'd been mildly dizzy. |
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The 60 Best Father's Day Gifts For the Coolest Dad Around |
We all know a thing or two about dad. He might occasionally let some awkward dad jokes slip out, wear the occasional cringe-inducing T-shirt, or waste time muttering aloud to himself about the state of the world while scrolling through Apple News. But deep down, you know he's a cool dad with great taste who's probably ushered you into a life of drinking nice whiskey, handling nifty gadgets, or stocking up on luxury accessories. Hence, every year, you always come up short in unique Father's Day gift ideas to get dad's approving nod. But we have the tools right here to help you finally switch things up this Father's Day. The trick is to get him a gift that's equally as cool as it is thoughtful,—i.e., an equally nice whiskey, an equally nifty gadget, or an equally luxury accessory that he's schooled you in the art of. Here, we've rounded up the 60 best Father's Day gifts for every kind of dad so you can get that smile from him this time around. You deserve it. |
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Confessions of a Not-Bad Dad |
It's not clear why parenthood was such a surprise to me. By the time our son Raffi was born, I was 40 years old. I knew what a baby was and how one was made. Many of my friends had them. My wife, Emily, even gave me a book to read, The Birth Partner, to prepare me for the big event. I didn't read it. And I didn't visit my friends who had kids. I thought they had entered a different world. I imagined them disapproving of me and my frivolous life. And I, in turn, found them boring. They were obsessed with their tiny little children, with what they ate and where they'd go to school. What did it matter? Though children were all around me, I avoided them. Then our son was born. It was terrifying. He could die! That was the number-one fact about him: He was tiny and fragile. When he was an infant, I carried him like a football, his butt in my hand, his legs draped over my wrist, his head in the crook of my elbow. I was convinced that I would trip while holding him and his head would smash against the ground. There was nothing to prevent this from happening and a lot of things to encourage it. Yet it never happened. He fell down some stairs once and another time almost drowned in a small koi pond, but aside from that, more or less, he emerged from his infancy unscathed. |
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