When You're a Man

One day when I was in a bad neighborhood of Minneapolis, I overheard a young urban youth - maybe fourteen or fifteen - trying to pick up on girls. None of them seemed to want to give him the time of day and in frustration he yelled: "Hey, I'm a man. I've been to jail."

Whoa. It made me think, that one did. Could it true that in some sub-cultures incarceration is considered a rite of passage into manhood, rather than a blot on your character? This young boy obviously thought so and he probably wasn't the only one who did, either. I'd suppose it's like a test of sorts. If you can survive that type of environment you're tough, and therefore a man. To my mind, though - not. Most people do, in fact, survive - perhaps not very well, but they do. And who says it makes you a man? Being in the gentle custody of the corrections system means you're a criminal (or suspected) and it also means you're lousy at it because you go caught. Does being a lousy criminal equate with masculinity?

That's the problem with being a man in America. There's no one ritual or test that means you've crossed that magical line into adult-hood. We have any number of informal yardsticks, for sure. For instance, if you manage to talk your way into some teen-age girl's pants that's widely thought to mean you've grown. Although, again, I would tend to disagree since there are no real manly skills - other than lying - that are required to seal the deal.

Around where I live hunting is the big thing. When you're old enough to be trusted out in the woods with your own shotgun, then you're one of the guys. After your first kill somebody, probably your father, will take some of the blood from the dead animal you just created and they rub it on your face. You're 'blooded'. Not everybody subscribes to that ritual, but a whole bunch do.

For me it was Navy Boot Camp. Getting through that and then being fully qualified to defend my country was quite an accomplishment. It just would have been nicer if there weren't so much explicit homo-eroticism in the experience. Like in the chow line the company commanders would scrunch you together so the line would be shorter and they would do this by yelling: "Nut to Butt! Nut to Butt! Make the man in front of you smile!" Now, what exactly did they mean by that? How was I supposed to make the man in front of me smile ... unless they meant ... No! Not the Navy!

In other cultures they have very well-defined manhood rituals. When you're a certain age the village elders will kidnap you and the other pre-man boys and then they take you into the jungle in the middle of the night, dance around with big scary masks and throw mangoes at you. Or whatever makes sense to them, because what happens isn't so important as the fact that it does and everybody knows what it means.

This is what our country really needs. We need one clear manhood ritual at a clear certain time in a boy's life and everybody should subscribe to it. That way guys wouldn't have to commit crimes so they could go to jail to prove themselves, or be smeared with raccoon blood by their dads, or even join the Navy. I imagine the American Manhood Ritual would involve reciting sports statistics while lighting farts on fire or peeing on trees or something like that. The details don't matter so much as we all agree on it and do it, and once you're done with it, then you are a man.