Manhood for Amateurs, Part 2

I saw Michael Chabon last night. He’s touring to support Manhood for Amateurs and spoke at the Chicago Public Library. He read two pieces from the book, answered questions, and then signed books. I had a really nice time. Three notable impressions: (1) the guy can read, and by that I don’t just mean he’s literate, which of course he is, but that he really does a superb job reading his essays, possibly the best I’ve heard live; (2) he’s very funny and charming when answering questions and interacting with the audience; and (3) he’s very attractive in a sort of bookish “cute” way, I can see why the ladies would be into him, and why some gay men really wished he was gay. If he comes to your town, I recommend seeing him.

The Loser’s Club

The first essay in Manhood for Amateurs is called The Loser’s Club (I’d like to avoid spoiling the essays for those who haven’t read them, so I won’t do thorough summaries, but I’ve got to set it up, right?). He writes about the time when he was 10 and started a comic book club, complete with a newsletter that he did the layout for and typed using nothing but a typewriter (he even made columns and sidebars!). He rents a room at a community center and advertises the first meeting. His mom helps him set the room up and then leaves him there. Only one person shows up, a young boy, but he leaves almost immediately after seeing no one but a lone, lonely boy and his newsletters.

Carver and I visited my mom and sister and pretty much the entire maternal side of my family about two months ago. We drove into Neah Bay for Makah Days, my tribe’s annual celebration. As we were looking for a place to park, I saw a pair of kids running a lemonade stand in a very bad location, business wise. I pointed them out and asked my mom if she remembered the time my friends Chad, Sheri, and I set up a lemonade stand at the bottom of our cul-de-sac, which is quite possibly the least trafficked spot in the entire city. In the few hours we sat down there I think we saw one car, which did not stop, and one pedestrian who was nice enough to act excited about the lemonade and suggest he’d come back if he could scrounge up some money. My mom admitted, for the first time, that she hated it when we did “things like that,” admitting that she always knew they’d be horrible failures but also not wanting to be discouraging.

Chabon says that this failed comic book club meeting was when he began to think of himself as a failure, and that no one gets past age 10 without learning that the glory of success is always trumped by the pains of failure, that a criticism is not evened out by a compliment. But when I think about that lemonade stand, I don’t remember ever being disappointed. I don’t remember feeling like we failed. In fact, if memory serves, we actually did it again. Granted, we were under Chabon’s designated failure-recognizing age of 10, so maybe that had something to do with it. I certainly have a fear of failure now, and I’ve had it for a long time.

I had a birthday party when I turned six but didn’t have another until my dad decided to throw one for me when I turned 21. I never wanted to have a party, because I didn’t want it to fail. To this day I’m very unlikely to throw a party or host a dinner because I’m convinced no one will show, and it’ll hurt, it’ll be undeniable evidence that people don’t care about me. Without that evidence I can go on thinking otherwise.

While I have my means of trying to protect myself, flawed as they are, I don’t know what to do when it comes to my son—I certainly don’t want to raise another me. At this point I suppose the best thing to do is what Chabon’s mom did when she rented the room and helped him set up chairs, and as my parents did when they didn’t discourage my lemonade stand. I want him to try, to put himself out there when he’s ready, but I also can’t stand the idea of him getting hurt and becoming jaded, of his dreams being crushed.

My friend Matthew once mentioned to me how during a trip they took with a group of friends his son first experienced another person being consistently very mean to him, and how hard that was to watch. Now that I have a child of my own I know what Matthew meant, and when that day comes for Carver, when someone is cruel to him, it’ll break my heart. Which is why I’m worried about how to deal with his lemonade stand and comic book club aspirations. It’ll break my heart the first time life is cruel to him too.