Snow and Dudes

Well here I am, in the middle of my second new england blizzard! Everyone keeps congratulating me. “This is it! You’re having a new england winter!” So far it is fairly okay, especially since they mainly keep happening during what is my weekend. The snow plows are out in force, and soon the men who part of our rent pays to keep our driveway and walkways clear will arrive; our snow fairies. If you listen closely you can hear them come in the night sometimes. We leave them lunchmeat and king-size snickers on the mantel. One morning very early, like 4:00, my old man got up for a glass of water and stood and watched a man sitting in a snow plow outside our house, in zero degree weather, in the pitch dark, with only the light in his cab casting an eerie glow, as he slowly peeled a banana, looked at it for a long time, and then contemplatively ate it. “It just doesn’t get any better than this”

They keep canceling school too, which is half-fun and half-a-pain. It would be cooler to have snow days later in the semester, not literally in the first week of class when you’re trying to get things going. How’m I supposed to get these grad students excited about Lord Byron if I only see them every other week or something? Anyway who cares.

It’s now two full weeks into the semester and every day I still get emails from students who literally say “I’m considering taking your class, but before I decide, could you tell me a bit about the workload?” It is so funny to imagine them suddenly understanding how ABSURDLY RUDE AND STUPID writing an email like that is!!! Ah, youth

We decided impulsively to go watch the second half of the super bowl last night. My old man has been intrigued by this divey bar in the village near our house where he once used the ATM, so we went there. It was completely packed with enormous men all wearing Tom Brady jerseys. Literally within 10 seconds of walking in, something happened in the game, and they all erupted in actual screaming. One guy started pounding his table with both his fists over and over again like a gorilla and shrieking “YES! MOTHERFUCKING PUSSIES! YOU FUCKING PUSSIES!” and doing that dude thing where they slam their head forward rhythmically? Literally because they are behaving like an animal? Until his friend told him to “cool it on the F-bombs.” To say nothing of the p-bombs! Which nobody considers an upsetting word, amazingly. I would rather listen to a thousand F-bombs than a single P-bomb but nobody’s asking for my opinion, that’s for sure.

It was surreal because up until maybe one hour prior to this I had been focused intently on charting all the ways the form of a symphony I’m trying to write about has been understood by scholars since 1839. I’d been doing this for almost 8 full hours. My neck and back were killing me and my ears hurt from wearing headphones all day. I went from that mental environment, where I was translating 19th century French criticism of Shakespeare, into the bar with the huge men screaming female slurs all around me. I went to order a drink and something else happened in the game and the three dudes standing all around me literally crushed me between them as they embraced one another and pounded one another on the back. I was holding onto the bar and just sort of hoping nothing worse than that happened. They didn’t acknowledge me in any way! Just rammed their bodies against mine for several seconds. Then I ordered an old brown dog and when she asked if I wanted to keep the tab open I said “no” because I was imagining needing to run out of there in a hurry.

I get it, it’s their scene, it’s not like they all need to make sure their gross football bar party is hospitable to any diminutive female nerd who happens to waltz in. It’s fine! I was just thinking so much about that kind of dude culture. The need a certain kind of dude has for that kind of display of dudeness. I guess it’s similar in some ways to the really egregious display of girl culture, like your really hideous bachelorette party or something. Really most loud, aggressive displays of gender essentialisms stress me out, to be fair. So many people seem so uptight about their gender, like at my family reunion when my weird fifth-cousin was playing the movie game and whenever a question about a romantic comedy came up he had to loudly be like “HA HA OBVIOUSLY I HAVEN’T SEEN THIS MOVIE BUT I SOMEHOW DO KNOW THE TITLE, PROBABLY BECAUSE IT CAME UP IN A GOOGLE SEARCH WHILE I WAS SEARCHING FOR REALLY STUPID MOVIES THAT MEN DON’T WATCH HA HA HA HA HA.” I finally told him he seemed “really anxious about [his] masculinity” which is why I am such a hit at family reunions

I wish everyone could just be whatever person they were, without feeling uptight about letting everyone know whether or not they have a penis. My fifth-cousin obviously has seen and enjoyed all those romantic comedies.

I’m such a dork it took my husband explaining the geography of America to me before I understood that of course they were all Patriots fans. And we were there, of course, to half-heartedly root for the Seahawks, only because Tom Brady strikes me as creepy and my husband says the Patriots are cheaters, which I dimly remembered noticing something going around Twitter about awhile ago. There was nowhere to sit but then we noticed a set of stairs going up, and we went up them, and there was a huge empty room with one small TV playing the game!! It was like God had answered my wish. So we sat up there and he was able to explain what was happening in the game to me without us getting beat up. A few times a very drunk person would come up there to use the bathroom, and they’d always be like “you guys have it figured out! It’s quiet up here, ha ha!” and they’d stand there with us for a minute and then get very antsy and creeped out and then go back downstairs.

Dudeness! It reminded me of when we went to the river last summer and all these horrible dudes were playing football and screaming and the football was landing in other people’s faces and they were kicking sand everywhere and generally just monumentally ruining the vibe. Katy was so bummed but then I said they behave that way because secretly they know their time in the sun is coming to an end, and she was cheered, and so was I. I do think we are living in the beginning of the end of Masculinity Culture (or really Gender Culture generally), and dudes like this secretly know it, and hate it, and are afraid. That’s why there’s such a word as “misandry” that dudes on Facebook ceaselessly shriek about. So if you think of it that way, the hysterical dude culture of America becomes sort of poignant and sweet. Until you’re on the losing end of it, I guess, and you get hate-crimed or raped or shot by some idiot or just caught in the crossfire of dude-rage in one way or another.

Periodically the sound of the the Dudes screaming would waft up the staircase to us. Then came the halftime show, and to be fair, I must admit that the Dudes were also very into Katy Perry, many of them loudly commenting “THAT WAS A GREAT SHOW.” I also heard one of them joyfully yell THAT’S MISSY ELLIOTT which frankly was very endearing. So I guess everyone has their upsides and their downsides. And, credit where it’s due, none of them actually threatened or otherwise molested us. Kudos!

My favorite commercial was the one where the guy is such a good father that he deserves a cool car to take his daughter to the airport so she can go murder people and/or get murdered in the army.

After the Doritos flying pig one my husband very sincerely said “what was that? what just happened”

My other favorite thing was hearing Woody Guthrie’s powerful anthem–about how communism is better for the world and its peoples than capitalism–sung movingly over a Jeep commercial

Whenever I watch something like the Superbowl I feel like a mini DFW; I can only see the absurdities of it and how it is all logical conclusions of crazy systems put into place eons ago. Katy Perry on that flying star.

When the Patriots won, the Dudes erupted. You would have thought someone had been shot ten times in the skull. It was screaming like I haven’t heard since I lived in dread Iowa. We had to walk through them to get out the door but my old man wasn’t scared. He said at worst, in times like these, he’s worried he might get “shoved.” It made me wonder what I am so afraid of, in this kind of environment? Logically of course I know that none of those dudes is going to punch me or rape me right there. They aren’t even aware of my existence at all! So what is it about being in the middle of a bunch of huge, drunk, screaming men that makes my heart pound? Maybe it’s just animal stuff–I’m small and weak and they are big, strong, and riled up. Maybe what I’m afraid of in that moment is just the culture of dudeness; maybe it’s like moments like that really dramatize and make present the fact that you live in a patriarchy where dudes don’t consider you fully human, in various ways. It certainly didn’t help that they kept screaming female slurs at the TV; it’s instructive that when men are excited or angry they denigrate women and female body parts. I get it! My body is disgusting and you don’t want me here!

Or, I was also wondering if my fear is for my scrawny dork of a husband, like, is one of these dudes going to decide he doesn’t like my husband’s attitude or his hair or something? I think MEN in this situation as a rule have a lot more to be scared of than women, in terms of real-world violence. None of those dudes is going to punch me in the face but they could easily decide to punch my old man. Then what would happen, I’d be ineffectually screaming and one punch would destroy my husband’s painstakingly-reconstructed facial bone structure and we don’t have the money to get it fixed, that’s what I’d be thinking. “HIS CHEEKBONES ARE MADE OF METAL AND WIRES, DON’T TOUCH HIM” I’d scream