35 Years

 

Monday night was our annual Men’s Group dinner out. Except that we had it “in” instead. We have enjoyed the decades of getting out into the world to different restaurants every December and the last eight or so at Zazie’s Restaurant on Cole Street, always on Tuesday when they offer a no-corkage fee. But the combination of the still-rising extravagant bill for food that is not wholly fabulous for this vegetarian and a noise level increasingly difficult to navigate, I suggested a new idea: a potluck at one of our houses. It was enthusiastically received and offered an extra perk as the member who hosted it recently split up with his partner and was feeling lonely in his large empty house. So we filled it with our good cheer and saved hundreds of dollars at the same time. With better food, I might add—these men are all good cooks!

 

“The good cheer” was not as cheerful as it might be, as now about to begin our 36^th year together, our check-ins almost always include the “organ-recital” of our declining physical bodies. I’m the youngest at 73 and the oldest member is 84 and for all practical purposes, not an active member of the group, living now in a home in Marin County in his 8^th year of Parkinsons. (Needless to say, he didn’t attend the dinner.) Another (82) was getting a new stint in his heart, I reported on my wisdom tooth extraction and Vestibular Hypo-function situation, another is having knee issues and so it goes. 

Then there were the reports of sadness from the relationship break-up, the daily visits with a 102-year-old neighbor who wants to die but can’t, the darkness of the season, the darkness of the political landscape (a topic we expressly forbid for the evening) and so on. 

 

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. There were the reports of visiting grandchildren, the progress on an addition to a house that will serve as a “retirement home” as one of the kids will take over the main house, the upcoming visit to Germany to visit a daughter and grandson. There were some genuine moments of laughter, helped by good wine and cognac and at the end, I suggested people share a favorite Holiday memory and there were some sweet and poignant stories. 

 

So things have changed since we began all those years back sharing the trials and tribulations of what it means to be a man. We reflected on how we have been wounded by the Patriarchy, how we have refused some of it and been caught by some of it. Alongside the human tragedy and comedy of our work, our marriages, our successes, our failures, our anxieties, our pleasures. Nine straight middle-class white men gathering every two weeks to try to share a bit deeper than the sports talk at the bar. We started in 1990 with ten of us, in the next decade, three dropped out and one committed suicide, around 2002 two “new” men joined and just last year, another man who we all had known joined. 

 

And so we go on. We have failed miserably to dismantle toxic masculinity in the world but have made sincere efforts to heal some of it in ourselves. The sheer longevity is reason enough for celebration and just to sit in a room with other men with the expectation that we will talk about things and in ways our gender is not trained in is a victory of sorts. We are painfully aware of the losses that lie ahead and make jokes about who will be the last man standing, but meanwhile, here we are, still upright and breathing. 

 

On to year 36!