HEREIN LIES THE TRAGEDY
I’m reviewing the transcripts in a gluten-free, vegan café in a trendy Baltimore neighborhood when a man comes in wearing an attitude shirt: GOT MANHOOD? He walks past my table and I turn and see the back of his shirt: Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are wicked but that men know so little of men. —W. E. B. Du Bois.
I Google Herein lies the tragedy of the age and find the full quote (which wouldn’t have fit well on the back of a T-shirt): Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor,—all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked,—who is good? not that men are ignorant,—what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.
I think of Mark’s clichéd notion of toxic masculinity. The point of this project is to show what seemingly nice guys are capable of.
. . .
ME: Did the conversations that happened—
HIM: Jake’s uncle was a pig. He was all, Bitches this and women are the worst and this is why. He was the worst.
ME: And you and Jake—
HIM: We were barely friends when I was living with him. And a year or two of living with him was enough. I haven’t talked to him in probably—not quite as long as since I last saw you, but pretty close. At least a decade.
ME: You were pretty depressed while living there. And you were depressed in high school, certainly. How much do you think that factored into what happened?
HIM: Oh, that was definitely part of it. I was right at the cusp of a breaking point in general. And some of that ended up focusing on you. I think I said this a little bit earlier, but I always just assumed I would kill myself at some point. I think it wasn’t until my midtwenties when I decided, No, I think I’m going to stick around.
ME: I was thinking about how—
HIM: And—oh, go ahead.
ME: No. It’s okay.
HIM: I’m curious about what you’re—
ME: When I think back to that time, I was in a bad place as well.
HIM: Yeah, we were miserable together. [Server interrupts, checks on us.]
ME: We were both depressed, sure. But why do you think you acted in that way in your depression?
HIM: I don’t think it had that much to do with you—other than you were in my line of fire, so to speak. But yeah, and especially at nineteen when you’re pumped full of hormones and not sleeping at night. I don’t know if I could construct a narrative where it makes sense that this happened, but I do feel like it was part and parcel of what happened.
ME: I’m trying to think of the worst act I’ve committed when depressed. Far more men than women commit sexual assault.
HIM: Sure.
ME: I guess what I’m—I don’t know what I’m asking.
HIM: Why did I convert angst into sexual assault?
ME: Yeah.
HIM: It’s a good question. Especially at that age, it was more important to me to—it used to really bother me as I got—when I was college-age—that I hadn’t been in a relationship, hadn’t had sex. That used to make me angrier than it does now. So that was probably part of it.
ME: Do you think if it hadn’t been me? If it had been someone else in the friend group. Amber, for example?
HIM: Do you mean: Can I envision a scenario where this happened, but it was Amber and not you?
HIM: I think possibly other than—you remember earlier when I was talking about making embarrassing confessions? I’d already done that with Amber at one point. And it ended ugly.
ME: How did she handle it?
HIM: She shut me down pretty hard. Which is fine. But I don’t know that I took it particularly well. As I recall, I wrote her some ridiculously embarrassing email.
ME: Was it around that time?
HIM: No, this would have been at least a year or so before.
ME: It’s been so long that it’s hard to reconstruct, but the one thing that confuses me—
HIM: Okay—
ME: Why carry me into the basement? That’s the one thing—I don’t really remember the house that well.
HIM: If I’m being totally honest, this is a two-part answer. One, yes, I used to hang out with people in the basement. I had a computer down there and we’d watch movies. Two— [Server brings me another cocktail, takes away our plates.]
ME: So you were saying, one, you would go down there—