New in the Horns: "500 Kilometers to Cairo"
Posted: January 26, 2011 Filed under: Fiction Leave a comment
A year ago we capped off BULL’s first International Series with a bonus story of love and tourism by David Ewald, “500 Kilometers to Cairo”. This week we’re posting that story online, and given the protests and general unrest going on there in the past days, it seems all the more appropriate. Part 2 comes next week, we’ll see you then.
Goosed: The TSA Patdown Experience
Posted: January 19, 2011 Filed under: Reviews Leave a commentA BULL review by Max Campbell
I have heard that in this post 9-11 world the most dangerous thing to a nation’s security is a young man from the ages of 20 to 35, unkempt, unmarried, and thereby unanchored to anything that might make him think twice about blowing himself up for a cause. Outwardly, I look the part—I am of those ages; I am unkempt and I certainly don’t look anchored to anything. I also like to go out at night, which means that when I fly somewhere I do so with dark circles under my eyes and a four-day beard on my profile-fitting face.
Needless to say, I’m pretty familiar with airport security procedures. My bags have often been subject to the high-tech Q-Tip that swabs for bomb residue, and I’m definitely no stranger to the good ol’ pat-downs of the past—a light brushing and squeezing of the extremities—nothing disagreeable, maybe even a little bit agreeable.
But over this past holiday season I got a taste of the new TSA measures, the ones causing so much uproar. I’m sure everyone knows the choice travelers are now given: either stand in an X-ray box that purportedly takes X-rated pictures beneath your clothes, or submit to a body search that stops just short of the major cavities.
As fate would have it, on the day of my flight the X-ray machines were broken. Given my track record with airport security, I knew I was destined for a pat-down like none I’ve ever experienced. I took it in stride as I stepped beltless and sock-footed through the metal detectors, and was thereupon diverted to the saddest-looking corner of LAX security, manned by two equally downtrodden officials wearing latex gloves.
“Sir, you have been selected to participate in our enhanced pat-down.”
It was a nice spin on it, I thought: selected to participate. Like I had won something. Or as if Rod Roddy had just invited me to Come on down!
“We will be searching every part of your body. Please spread your legs and hold your arms out at your sides.”
Hearing this, I was at least thankful he wasn’t wielding anything like Bob Barker’s sinister, painfully probe-shaped microphone.
It began as a pat-down pretty much like any other: up and down the arms, in the pit, around the collar and down the chest, up the flanks and back down the back. But these are all areas I’d be hard-pressed to hide anything; I was surprised he didn’t check my belly button—the body’s built-in stash hole.
Then he knelt and things got serious. Down each leg, front and back. As I was left alone up top, I couldn’t help notice other travelers watching my new TSA paramour, a few of them wearing looks of disgust, as if witnessing something illicit going on in this sad corner. My man was now rounding the ankles, where he paused. Like any gentleman, he was saving the sensitive areas for the end.
Classically, there are two professions in which a man is granted access to another man’s undercarriage: doctors and tailors. TSA officials now make it a reluctant trifecta. My inspector traveled swiftly up the inseam—a path many tailors have trod—then the upper thigh, then the upper-upper thigh. We were approaching doctor territory, yet before he went any higher, he glanced up to catch my gaze. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. It was a noticeable “I’m sorry” look, a silent apology with the eyes, which is something that I am sure they are forbidden from doing verbally. The look was just enough to distract me from the main moment—an efficient testicle-swipe with one hand, and with the other, a wedge of pressure down my backside. Two seconds and it was over, and when all was said and done, it’s fair to say that the look I noticed was more uncomfortable than the procedure itself.
When someone becomes a doctor, they know in advance they’re going to be performing bodily maintenance on people, and they get paid handsomely for it. Tailors, likewise, know what’s required of their job. And that’s the million-dollar difference that comes with these new TSA procedures: the people who are now obliged to explore your crevasses are the same people getting the same paycheck that they did before all these new procedures were enforced. We didn’t sign up for a fondle, but they didn’t sign up for it either. They aren’t some new batch of depraved feel-up artists; they probably hate this more than we do.
And that’s why when it was all over for me, when I had put on my belt and shoes and was headed to the airport bar for a calming pint, I looked back at my pat-down man in that sad corner, and I felt sympathy. Most likely that man took his TSA job years ago intending to touch forearms and swab bags and wave a metal detector around, all while keeping his distance. Now he’s on his knees grabbing groins so we can all fly safely.
I say give ‘em a break. Like it or not, this is what’s required in the modern age, and we should learn to deal with it, just like the TSA has to. So I got goosed by a stranger. It lasted a moment and at least I was on my way home afterwards with a beer in me to make it all right. As I walked out of the bar and looked back towards security, I knew there stood a man who had a thousand more crotches to grapple with before he was able clock out and do the same.
Contributing Editor Max Campbell lives in Montreal, Quebec, and while airport security thinks he has something to hide, he’s actually a pretty nice and open guy.
Don Draper and the Perils of the 21st Century
Posted: January 12, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentA BULL editorial by Jared Yates Sexton
I think about Don Draper a lot. This is something common to men of my generation, the twenty and thirty-somethings of this country. We talk about Don Draper, about his conquests and how he seemingly bends the world to his will, how we wish we were him and how sweet it’d be to live in the ‘60s and watch the times a-changin’.
All this fixation on Draper makes me wonder why it is he’s become so important to men in the present day. For one, there are very few instances when popular culture really engages and captivates the thinking man. We’ve long been offered television and music and movies that celebrate the mediocre and uninspiring: the insipid action-blockbusters, most all of pop music, the brainless, bumbling sitcoms and so many permutations of criminal procedurals.
But there’s something different about Mad Men. There’s hope to be found there and in a handful of other shows like Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, and The Walking Dead. These programs have something important to say and do so in a thought-provoking manner, but their strength is not only in compelling storytelling or unflinching aesthetics. These shows, and Mad Men particularly, are appealing to modern men because they feature dynamic male protagonists who are confident, forceful, and ultimately, effective.
Let’s look at Don. He has a somewhat classic American mythology: the son of an alcoholic and a prostitute, who pulled himself up by the proverbial bootstraps and sculpted himself into an affluent, stylish icon. He has flaws to go around–a philanderer, a drunk for all intents and purposes, and a chronic liar, but these vices do little to hold him back from what he aspires to. While the world transforms around him, and culture continually evolves, he adapts to the changing times and ultimately overcomes them.
Here in the present things are no less changing and uncertain. The economy is at a slow crawl, the country is saddled by debt, and the environment is wilting as we stand by and watch. We have two wars going on halfway around the world, and back home the threat of terrorism obliges us to choose which civil liberties we’re most willing to cede. And if all this weren’t enough, the men and women elected to deal with the big issues instead engage in daily scraps that would shame a child in their pettiness. Each week the polls tell us what we already know–we have no confidence in these people to make the huge and sweeping decisions necessary to pull us out of our tailspin.
There’s no denying life is hard, but that’s always been the case. The ‘60s were no better, of course. We picture it as a decade of dreaming and experimentation, when the Beatles and Dylan floated through the air and stale mores were challenged and discarded. We see men dressed in suits and fedoras, smoking and drinking as if the party would never end. The reality, of course, is different. Women and minorities struggled for their seat at the table, civil unrest threatened cities and homes, and an even more blatantly unjust conflict raged in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Still we build up the past and glorify it, reminisce blindly about a time we never experienced because that era, in retrospect, had purpose and direction. Likewise, maybe we lionize Don Draper because he is serious in a way that we, and more importantly–our culture, is not. Where others bicker over trivialities, Don is focused on whatever the goal is at the moment. While we wring our hands and dread the repercussions of drawing any hard line in the dirt, Don is self-assured in a way that enables progress.
But we men of this age aren’t ready, or willing, perhaps, to do this. We prefer our decisions and sacrifices to be handled by others more suited to the task. It’s as if we’re waiting for Don Draper to come and save us from the 21st century. We’re waiting for him to pay our debt like it’s a round of drinks at a smoky Manhattan bar. We need him there, smiling that composed grin of his, while everything crumbles behind him. And, most of all, we need him to tell us–in a voice that commands attention–that everything is all right. That he’s going to get on the phone and make some calls. Not emails, not texts. Calls.
But Don isn’t real. He’s a silhouette, forever slung back on that office couch of his. We are the descendants of those nervous souls who knocked on his door seeking direction, only there isn’t a door to knock on and there never has been. There is only a hard world of challenges and concession and the considerably softer escape of childishness. God help us if we can’t step up to the bar. God help us if we can’t all be Don Draper.
Contributing Editor Jared Yates Sexton is an Assistant Professor at Ball State University.
BULLshot: Gary Percesepe
Posted: January 5, 2011 Filed under: BULLshot Leave a commentBULL: In “Wingman”, Sam R is an eye surgeon and our guy is a house painter who finds a memorable way to quit his job; what’s the best/worst job you’ve ever quit?
GP: I made Sam R an eye surgeon in this story because I’m interested in the inner life of doctors, especially surgeons, who sit at the top of the heap in the medical profession. I am fascinated by surgeons. What do they do? They cut things. They saw and sever and burn and laser human flesh and condition themselves to not feel the pain they inflict on others, because, ironically, to feel the pain and damage they inflict would make them poor at what they do. Thus, they put themselves at risk every day of becoming unfeeling for the sake of the “greater good,” even as their profession tears at their own humanity. They are beasts, in a way. The same qualities that make them “the good doctor” make them poor at being human. Wives of surgeons deserve their own Pantheon of Honor. Ann Beattie is a good friend and I love the story she published in The New Yorker a while back called “Coping Stones”. The story is about an aging Dr. Cahill who is clueless about his own life and marriage, though it is continually signifying. I loved the idea of Sam R as an eye surgeon who is blind (a trope as old as Oedipus Rex or the gospel of John), particularly when it comes to women.
As for me and great jobs I have left, I walked away from a tenured position as a professor of philosophy. Philosophers occupy the top floor of the academic ivory tower (up there with the theoretical physicists), and in my case I was teaching social & political philosophy, waxing eloquent daily on the inherent contradictions and legitimation crises of late capitalism, and I kind of talked myself out of the academy, and went out onto the streets. I became a community organizer and a peace and justice activist, headed up an international peace organization, worked as a social justice minister in a progressive church supporting marriage equality and feeding the hungry–all things that I had talked a good game about, but had somehow neglected to do when I was an academic. I don’t miss the terrible academic infighting and stultifying department meetings, but I sure as hell miss the students, and the way, sometimes, we would get launched into a conversation that opened up the room, lifted the roof and seemed to soar into the stratosphere, as questions were asked that opened onto the meanings of our lives, that put us into question, and that lull that came, the space of awe and silence, when we realized how far we had traveled, and how strange the familiar had become. Teaching was sexy. I’m saying I miss the students every day.
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