The men I know try to avoid fights. Chains and tire irons are unpleasant. But, now and then, the occasion arises when a brawl is a real possibility. There's a degree of anonymity driving in traffic that sets men up for rage that could be lethal.
Yesterday, I was on my way to an auto parts shop with an oil dump. I change the oil in our two cars because it takes less time than waiting in line and saves a few bucks. I wanted to make a left turn into the strip mall against oncoming traffic. About the time I saw an opening, another car turned out headed my direction. I could have waited, but I turned in front of the oncoming car, close enough to disturb the driver's sense of justice. He was accelerating and blasted his horn, like fighter jet zeroing in on a target.
I didn't have to do that. It was rude, and I wasn't in a hurry. I parked the car in front of the auto shop and started to unload the oil drain pan and a bag of greasy, used filters from the hatch back of my wife's SUV.
But the other driver was more aggrieved than seemed proportionate to my offense. He had gone around the block and come back for a confrontation. I didn't notice until he hit the brakes behind me.
He was red in the face and yelling insults that did not reflect well on my mother or me. "Why don't you learn how to drive?"
"Is that a rhetorical question?" I replied, trying to humor him.
"Idiot! You cut me off..."
"If you didn't have such a lead foot on the gas, you could have saved yourself a headache this afternoon."
This wasn't what he wanted to hear. "I'll give you a headache." He swung open the door of his not-so-well-detailed muscle car. When he started taking off his alpha-male sport coat, I dropped the bag of oil filters I was holding on the pavement.
He was sizing me up for a fight. I lift weights and run every day, and I was dressed for a scuffle in the old clothes I'd worn to crawl under the car. He wasn't in good shape, but he was enraged enough to come on strong. He kicked the bag of oil filters and spilled oil on the asphalt and on his shoes. When he pulled out a tissue to wipe his shoes, I reached into the hatch back and picked up a tire iron.
Guys inside the auto parts shop who heard him yelling were lining up behind the display windows to watch. Maybe this stand-off was going to be relief from boredom at their cash registers.
I tightened my grip on the tire iron, but said, "Look, I'm sorry I cut in front of you, but lighten up. If you want to raise hell, join Antifa."
A guy from inside the shop evidently had the sense to try to stop this. He came out the front door and yelled, "Are you two going to break it up, or am I going to call the police?"
This was a face-saving way out for my tough-guy antagonist. Muttering, he got back in his car and left.
I picked up my oil filters and container of used oil. Inside nobody seemed to notice that I was one of the contenders in an aborted parking-lot fight. I signed the register to dump the oil and filters. An attendant took them into the employees-only section of the store. While he dumped the oil, I bought two new five-quart jugs of 5-20 weight oil and filters for the next oil changes on our cars. How does a chore so mundane turn into a dangerous battle of egos?
An episode like that is only one example of what is now called toxic masculinity. I work in technology where competition and networking don't entirely subdue the violence harbored in men’s souls. Problems are as often human factors as technical complexity. There have been times when the scapegoating that covers incompetence is worse than gangsterism.
The auto parts shop is less than a mile from home, so I didn’t have much time to settle my indigestion before parking the car back in our garage. It was time for our afternoon exercise. My wife is a lovely flower who has, at times, been able to leg press nearly as much as I do on our Nautilus machine. While we’re taking turns pumping sets of bench press and rowing on the machine, it begins to sink in just how close I was to ruining what we’ve worked hard to accomplish over the past thirty five years.
We own our home. I have a job that pays more than I ever expected to earn with my degrees in English lit and philosophy. After a finally disastrous first marriage, by the grace of God, I married a woman who loves me and is good to everybody. By the time we met, it was a bit late to have children. Our parents are deceased and other family far away. We have each other but few close friends.
She encourages me between sets on the machine. With her cheek against mine I have to wonder what I could have been thinking when I turned in front of that car an hour ago. For a delay of less than a minute I was foolish enough to risk antagonizing another driver enough to start a fight? My wife and I depend on each other for so much, and I jeopardized our place in the sun in a moment of belligerence.
She makes friends everywhere. She knows the checkers and baristas at the supermarket. She comes home with stories and links to web sites. A photographer she knows from QFC posts marvelous images online that I see because she got to know him week by week at his day job. Some women have a way... . Her smile could be dangerous. A guy at Home Depot told her that she should not go out in public unaccompanied by her husband.
I can fix her computer when she’s confounded by things that don’t work the way they’re supposed to work. I tell her she could have done worse than marrying me, and she smacks me for being facetious. But, I could not do worse than messing up our lives by being a jerk. Had I not married her, and had she not civilized me to the degree it was possible against my bohemian profligacy, who knows where I'd be. I’m making a living as a technical writer instead of sending manuscripts to editors who already have too much artistic hubris in front of them. We have a home with a view. Without her I might be living in an Econoline van someplace in Idaho.
It's becoming clearer all the time that I shouldn't go out in public or anywhere without the woman who makes me a better man.
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