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Journal of Family Communication

ISSN: 1526-7431 (Print) 1532-7698 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjfc20

“You Might Want to Call Your Father”: An Autoethnographic Account of Masculinity, Relationships, and My Father

Daniel S. Strasser

To cite this article: Daniel S. Strasser (2016) “You Might Want to Call Your Father”: An Autoethnographic Account of Masculinity, Relationships, and My Father, Journal of Family Communication, 16:1, 64-75, DOI: 10.1080/15267431.2015.1111214

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2015.1111214

Published online: 22 Jan 2016.

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“You Might Want to Call Your Father”: An Autoethnographic Account of Masculinity, Relationships, and My Father Daniel S. Strasser

Department of Communication Studies, Rowan University

ABSTRACT Autoethnographic scholarship interrogating father–son relationships and masculinity adds to our understanding of father–son relationships through the critique of dominant models of fathering that may harm intimacy. This autoethnography explores one turning point that occurred between the author and his father when they experienced the death of a mutual friend. This event became the catalyst in the relationship, which the author illus- trates through narrative vignettes to show the struggles that exist, and highlights a view on father–son relationships and masculinities that chal- lenges masculine norms in order to (re)create a valued relationship. The goal of this narrative is to offer an opportunity for others to reflect on identity, relationships, and masculinities in their own experiences and relationships.

His hand swallows mine, shaking me while I hold on. I shake back the best I can. “LeRoy’s son, right?”

“Yes, sir”, I replied, feigning tough. “Roofin’ with your dad still? That’s good hard work. Good for ya! Not your back so much, but

good.” Coughing a bit, mucus found its way to his mouth, mixed with shreds of his Camel and then to the ground in a side-mouthed spit. “You can put those tables over there in a line.”

The sun burns my shirtless bronze back as sweat pours out of me, and I struggle to move the picnic tables off the wood splintered flatbed truck into their position. I dare not ask for help continuing in my struggle to accomplish the goal. Bill patrols the farm getting ready for the party, and I do my part. “Here alright, Bill?” Lifting my finger to point to a spot 50 yards away, sweat leaks off my elbow. He looks, nods, and moves on.

They don’t move. “Shit!” Thoughts of being less-than-a-man bombard my brain. Finally, I suck up my pride and ask for help. “Bill, ya got somethin’ to help get these off here or what?”

He stops, then stares with Clint Eastwood-squinted eyes practiced for 68 years and makes his way towards the truck. Moving me out of the way and with his one good arm he rocks one of the mammoths covered in green slime until it budges. “Ya see! That’s how you do it.”

Arms burning with lactic acid and sweat blinding my eyes I give it my all. Nothing. “Not that way, like this,” he said, doing it himself. Whether it was moving picnic tables for midsummer hog roasts or climbing rickety wooden

ladders in an old barn, he had no need nor want for frivolity. His voice, marked by those Camel nonfilters and barnyard hay-bailed debris matched his face, leathered and worn from sun. His hands were large—the size of an old baseball mitt, but rougher.

The years consumed by backbreaking work hunched Bill to the ground, knees fused together. A yellow-toothed smile carved canyons around his eyes and brow. When not working, Bill carried a

CONTACT Daniel S. Strasser [email protected] Department of Communication Studies, Rowan University, Hawthorn Hall, 201 Mullica Hill Drive, Glassboro, NJ 08028. © 2016 Taylor & Francis

JOURNAL OF FAMILY COMMUNICATION 2016, VOL. 16, NO. 1, 64–75 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2015.1111214

Budweiser or a High Life, or whatever beer you had in your cooler, and always that nonfiltered cigarette in the other hand. He told stories, tall tales and memories of growing up on the farm, of working sun-up to sundown. Each story somehow, with that mucus-filled laughter, seemed to end with a joke about the size of his dick or how small yours was. “Yep, all the hard work makes your hands rough . . . like the wife likes it!” He was direct, sometimes too direct, a man’s man.

“I got those tables in order,” I said, panting. He glanced over at me. No words. I consider that I never once saw him without his Big Smith

overalls—flannel underneath in the winter, stained white t-shirt in the fall and spring, skin in the summer, his dusty cowboy boots peeping out from the legs of his overalls.

And now he and those boots are covered in the soil he toiled over.

Introduction

Constructing a narrative of father–son relationships and using my relationship with my father as a basis scares me. Feelings of doubt, betrayal, misunderstanding, love, and the need to acknowledge the gravity of the relationship in and through (re)creating my experience still sits heavy on my chest. However, reading other scholars, hearing and feeling their longing, betrayal, haunting, and their continued need to understand these relationships moves me to share my experiences, too. Scholarship surrounding the representations of father–son relationships and the dynamics per- formed in and through those relationships continue to be well represented in family communication. This scholarship demonstrates the vital importance father–son relationships hold for boys, young men, adult men and their fathers. The present and lingering conduit from which boys and men form, to a certain degree, their own performance of masculinity, male relationships, and their ideas surrounding fathering stems from the relationship with their father. The relationship, like all others, is a process (Brotherson, Acock, & Yamamoto, 2003; Floyd & Morman, 1998, 2001, 2003; Floyd, Sargent, & DiCorcia, 2004; Golden, 2007; Lamb, 2010; LaRossa, 1988; Odenweller, Rittenhour, Myers, & Brann, 2013). Exploring my relationship as well as scholarship surrounding others’ father–son relationships, I have come to know and appreciate the contentiousness, affection, estrangement, reconciliation, tensions, and critical turning points that make the relationship as influential as it is. Throughout my exploration of father–son scholarship I found an additional critical perspective, one that addresses and critiques the power and politics of the relationship, my relationship, is needed.

Autoethnographic scholarship exploring and critiquing father–son relationships represents an important and valuable addition to family communication scholarship. Narratives focusing on becoming fathers and fatherhood (Anonymous, 2015; Dillon, 2012; Poulos, 2012); father–son relationships (Adams, 2006; Bochner, 2008; Fox, 2010; Sparkes, 2012; Wyatt, 2005); and marriage and family therapy (Davis, 2005) all add breadth and depth of knowledge surrounding father–son relationships. As these contributions to father–son scholarship add important insights into this meaningful relationship and its personal and cultural influence, examining my father–son relation- ship and masculinity through autoethnography expands our way of thinking about the dynamics embedded therein.

My narratives offer a critical view, one encompassing the power, weight, and possibilities surrounding a turning point experience, within an emotional, resonating approach that highlights and critiques the often oppressive cultural conventions aligned with hegemonic masculinity and traditional father–son relationships. Through “a method that uses personal experience with a culture and/or a cultural identity to make unfamiliar characteristics of the culture and/or identity familiar for insiders and outsiders” (Adams & Holman Jones, 2011, p. 110), I use autoethnography as an alternative and additive way to understand, critique, and alter masculinities and father–son relation- ships, our cultural performances of gender and class, and ourselves.

In the preceding narrative and the ones that follow, I reconstruct a recent life event to describe the emotions and (mis)understandings that formed because of the death of a mutual family friend, Bill,

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my dad’s friend, and my friend. By reflexively examining my vulnerabilities, desires and relationship in and through (re)constructing these narratives, I gain insight into my father, his relationship to me, our relationship, and myself. These narratives also critique dominant roles, relationships, and performances of classed masculinities to show how relational experiences influence the cultures of masculinity and fatherhood. I use my experiences to resonate with others’ feelings of home, to acknowledge the path I traversed to make my way back home. Much like Poulos (2012) crafted “new narrative trajectories for troubled relationships” by seeing stories in different ways (p. 201), I draw upon my own desires and vulnerability to provoke others to address their experiences and relation- ships and to comment on the culture of fatherhood and masculinity. I use this autoethnographic account to show how the experience of a friend’s death unearthed the longing to finally verbalize my love for my dad for the first time in my adult life.

Furthermore, I argue that performances of classed and generational masculinities often need turning points and catalysts to alter the trajectory of relationships and harm that hegemonic performances of masculinity can do to the quality of father–son relationships. Ono (2011) “argu [es] for a definition of critical that addresses power as a constitutive dimension of social life, hence is inclusive of the different ways power functions, therefore . . . recognizes various and diverse critical positions as potential starting points for theorization” (p. 94). He encourages a new look at critical work calling for a diverse, power-centric, and more inclusive approach to communication scholar- ship. This turning point is a critical moment and offers insight into my experiences. Thus, my autoethnographic account of a turning point with my father demonstrates Ono’s idea of constitutive power. My experiences, the power and empowerment within them and the exploration of them become critical. I call upon others to address and challenge their own relationships and toxic cultural norms to enact positive change in relationships.

An autoethnographic approach

I use autoethnography to show how others’ experiences may be similar to my own. As Ellis (1993) states, “we will not know if others’ intimate experiences are similar or different until we offer our own stories and pay attention to how others respond, just as we do in everyday life” (p. 725). The story of Bill and his influence on my relationship with my dad has multiple implications for family communication, masculinities studies, and on the cultures of masculinity and father–son relation- ships. Through the exploration of these experiences and the performances of masculinity and relationships, I address the political nature of varied performances of masculinity. I include the performance of submissive forms of masculinity; I represent the White performance of masculinity —neglecting emotional expressiveness, hiding vulnerabilities, and adhering to a dominant perfor- mance—within the narratives as a means to make sense of dominant White masculinity. I lived within the dominant discourse for much of my life. Performing blue-collar masculinity, nonexpres- sive (outside of expressing anger) masculinity, and submissiveness were a part of my everyday experience. Reflexively addressing the performances draws me ever closer to understanding the relationship that I have with my dad and with that masculine culture.

I use my experiences to evoke and thus call attention to the family and cultural implications necessary for change. Berry and Clair (2011) call for newer ways to study culture reflexively and suggest that such reflexive practices “create very significant consequences concerning ours and others’ stories and ours and others’ storied beings” (p. 95). This autoethnography offers an oppor- tunity to utilize a reflexive view of myself, my dad, and our ever-changing relationship to examine father–son relationships and masculinities. Also, I am called to, as Adams and Holman Jones (2011) suggest, “reflect not only on the self, how the self works, and how others are implicated by the self and the self’s desires, but also on how we represent . . . the process and challenges of reflection” (p. 111). But autoethnography does more than just tell my story. It is more than just self-indulgence and “trying to find myself” in my experiences. Referring to ethnographers’ need to engage reflexively Madison (2006) suggests that as ethnographers:

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[W]e do not hide our selfhood and subjectivity, transparency is not an issue, nor do we make ourselves the primary subject of our own study. Instead, we are critical and self-reflexive of how we think about our positionality and the implications of our thoughts and judgments. We don’t stop at our mirror reflections, but recognize the resonances that ripple and expand to a thinking about thinking—a meta signification—that inherently takes our contemplations and meanings further out, beyond our own mirrored gaze. (p. 322)

Here, Madison suggests that personal narratives, and thus autoethnography, can also encompass politics outside of our embodied experiences. My stories, then, can give insight into cultural under- standing of relationships. Expanding further on the benefits and political implications of autoethno- graphy, Ellis (2007) states, “autoethnography involves a back-and-forth movement between experiencing and examining a vulnerable self and observing and revealing the broader context of that experience” (p. 14). My examination of specific and broader contexts encourages others to examine their own experiences within these structures.

But autoethnography is even more than examining and acknowledging the weight that our experiences may hold. Writing, unearthing meaning through writing, and toiling through the messiness of self aids in a deeper understanding of the complexities of the experiences. Writing uncovers self and other; writing becomes political. Specifically when addressing the notion of writing as inquiry, Denzin and Lincoln (2008) suggest that it is in and through writing that we begin to know ourselves and understand our experiences more fully. By looking into my own experiences, critically thinking about them, writing about them, speaking about them, and then placing those experiences in front of others, my experiences and vulnerabilities become an avenue for individuals to look inward at their own similarities and differences. Moreover, the narratives challenge others to push against heteronormative male relationships and performed masculinities and give a space to speak to and against larger discourses of expected gender performances.

The conversation

At school I call my voice mail. A message from mom greets me: “Hey, Danny. It’s mom. I wanted to let you know that Bill died today.” I stop walking to class, my heart pounds too loudly in my chest as I hold back tears like I was taught. I lose focus, and stare. I listen to her simple somber sentences, and the final soft one rings in my blood-warmed ears: “You might want to call your father,” she said.

He needed me. I don’t know quite how to explain this other than my dad needed me. Feet frozen to the ground, eyes pointed down, heart stuck, I can’t make thoughts. I manage to get

to the red F150 truck my dad helped me pick out. Grabbing the handle and stepping up to the warmed torn leather seat, I close myself in. Both hands on the sticky grey wheel, tears well, but I keep them back. My knuckles turn fleshy white and the pressure builds in my eyes. Bill is in every thought. And then numbness. My thoughts shift from Bill to dad. I hide from anyone who may see and let a stream of warm water seep from my eyes. But only for a second.

Man-ing up, I shake my head, clear, and reset my emotions. Back to the basics: “Keys in, turn key, starter engages, engine starts,” I whisper just like dad used

to say. I pull away. At home, I stumble up the stairs to my apartment. I reward my feet for getting me this far by

sitting on the couch. The center button on my phone beckons. I say, “Call home.” I want to talk to my mom about the whole thing—not dad. This keeps me safe. “I’ll call mom to

see how dad is doing, sending my love though her,” I think. Mom is the mediator between dad and me, the person who negotiates being close, but not too close to my dad. I rarely call dad to talk . . . about anything.

The script goes like this: “Hey. How’s the truck? Good? Be sure that you are getting the oil changed. That’ll keep ‘er

running good for ya.” I reply. “Of course, dad. Yeah, I actually had time to go hiking this weekend. School has been

crazy. You wouldn’t believe how tough this can be. It was nice to get away.”

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“Yep.” “I went to a couple new bars you would really like, good music and great beer.” Masculine

persona rescued. Our relationship is one of unspoken caring at a distance—emotional, personal, and geographical.

For years, I have been working to become relationally and emotionally closer with him. However, negotiating those barriers erected from years of not being physically, spatially, temporally, and emotionally available prove to be challenging. He was, is, and always will be silent, strong, hard- working, and stuck in his ways of being a man: a man with a monolithic, quiet strength.

Turning points

Unexpected events within collective or individual experiences often have the ability to change the way that relationships are perceived and performed. Individuals, like my dad and I, who experience turning points are often introduced to new perspectives and altered relational dynamics with those who experience the event as well (Baxter & Bullis, 1986; Baxter, Braithwaite, & Nicholson, 1999). Specifically, “turning points . . . capture a critical moment, event or incident that has impact or import [and] . . . trigger a reinterpretation of what the relationship means” (Graham, 1997, p. 351). Within the context of father–son relationships, turning points may need to occur in order for fathers and sons to realize and address the importance of their relationships.

A son moves away for college or the military; a stepson comes together with a stepfather after the death of the mother/wife; a gay son reunites with a father for his son’s wedding; a father and son tear down barriers to intimacy when a friend dies after years of scripted interaction—these all represent important relational turning points. In these instances, the turning point events catalyze individuals to alter their communication, how we see ourselves and the cultures in which we exist. In my case, I use my narrative to highlight the turning point in the relationship with my father, to illustrate the individual characteristics of our situation and reflect on how upbringing and generational cultures are embedded in our relationship. I examine the turning point, a critical point, that changed our relationship—Bill’s death—and offer an example of the possibilities embedded in these vulnerable moments.

Bill was more than a friend to me on the day that he died. He didn’t know it. And I only know it now. Because of him, the moment that I never thought would happen in my life, happened. I always thought that the only time I would be able to say “those words” to my dad would be when he was on his death bed, me on mine, or when he was dead already. There were no exceptions. I longed to say those words to my dad, but the opportunities to verbalize how I felt never manifested themselves. Instead, I found the desire came to me in the mundane everyday interactions that exist just for such things: sharing a beer in the barn, helping him with one of his projects, just being. I never found the right time, never the right space, never the right moment. This was my reality. Was it my dad that kept those words inside? Was it fear that the words would fall on silence? It took a life-changing event—a turning point—to coerce those words from my heart to my mouth.

Fatherhood in my father’s generation

From the beginning of my life, I have been constructing and performing my masculinity through interactions with others and with my father. The interactions, roles, and relationship with my dad have and do offer me a perspective and performance of masculinity that is quite different than my own. Examining my experiences with my dad has afforded me the ability to understand that differences in masculinity do, in fact, exist. But it is within a larger framework that I understand the implications of my individual masculinity. I perceive and perform my own masculinity within different relationships, roles and interactions. I also understand that a majority of my masculinity was/is socially constructed through interactions with my father and other socializing forces.

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The generation in which my father was raised offered very little room for fathers to express emotion and affection, especially toward their sons. My dad was a prototype of this generational fatherhood, a replica of the fathering he experienced. LaRossa (1998) stated that there were three versions of the father role that emerged in the 20th century: (1) the distant breadwinner of the late 19th to the mid 20th century; (2) the sex-role model from 1940–1965; and (3) the nurturing father beginning from 1966. More specifically, the 1950s and 1960s found the dominant fatherhood paradigm to be about father as breadwinner and authority figure within the household (Griswold, 1997). This was the way my father was socialized to perform, and this is how he fathered—silent, strong, absent of emotion, physically and emotionally distant.

Within his generation, my dad’s reality as a father was constructed from ideas of fathering as one of distance and dominance not nurturing and affection. His job as a father was to be a provider, financial supporter, and a disciplinarian—traits he learned from his father. Being a father was a job. This was his job. He also reared me to be sure that I became a good, hard-working and responsible man, that I was respected for the hard work that I had accomplished, and that I would do things in my life that would make him proud to be my father and his father proud to be his.

My job was to listen and obey, to work hard at whatever I did and to be respectful and to acknowledge and perform a hard day’s work. At 8 years old I had my first experience on the roof “helping”; at 12 I was working, helping dad clean up roof materials on the weekends; at 14 I got my first part-time job as a stock boy in the local HVAC company. Why?—It was not because I was forced to do so. Instead, I wanted to impress upon my dad that I could work hard too. I wanted him to respect me. I needed to contribute. Because he worked so hard all of the time, if I was to ever relax around him, guilt would overtake me. The desire to be like my dad moved me to do these things. In these experiences I learned how to be a strong, respected, working-class man. I did what I was told, learned from what I witnessed daily, and didn’t question any of it.

These roles and rules were the roles and rules I was used to. My dad performed the fatherhood and the masculinity that he was taught to perform. His father taught his version of masculinity to him; distance, dominance, respect for authority, and separation from emotion were the character- istics that he knew. The Americanized culture of fatherhood and masculinity kept us in line and deprived of emotional expression. Much like what Anonymous (2015) proposed, he and his father, like my dad and I, are haunted by past relationships. More than just the relationships, we are haunted by and coerced into adhering to the cultural conventions of men. The hegemonic mascu- linity that envelops our lives and relationships, the father wound that we are unable to heal (Hooks, 2004a), forces our relationship to remain within the parameters of “normal” father–son distances emotionally and physically. Connell (1995), for example, establishes masculinity as a patriarchal, cultural paradigm and differentiates between politically and culturally dominant forms of masculi- nity by addressing subordinated and marginalized masculinities. Masculinities not only exist within larger culture contexts but also in specific marginalized groups such as Black, Latino, and gay (Beynon, 2002; Brod & Kaufman, 1994; Connell, 1995; Hooks, 2004b). “Masculinities are therefore multiple, contested, and contradictory and are also based on the specific social and historical contexts that shape gender relations” (Williams, 2009, p. 442–443). Throughout my life my dad (un)knowingly socialized me into this world of men.

Within contexts outside of my relationship with my father, I am able to see differing and alternative versions of father–son relationships and representations of masculinity. Moving from the black tar roof to the ivory tower I have accepted and have been exposed to differing perfor- mances of masculinity. I wanted and needed the change. Interacting with open, emotionally expressive men and women, caring professors, supportive LGBT friends, fellow grad students and colleagues helped me embrace my alternative masculinity. Although these forms of masculinity may be viewed as a more feminine, nurturing, caring forms of masculinity, forms policed by arbiters of White, blue-collar, hegemonic masculinity, I use them to aid in the performance of a more nurturing, emotionally expressive, and affectionate masculinity within our relationship.

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So then, how does this altered perspective of masculinity add to or take away from the experi- ences of the relationship of father and son? What makes it okay to say, “I love you” to my father? What turning point created this degree of importance? Is there an experience in the future that would change my relationship again?

It’s me

Heart beating through my chest, I only see his face through closed eyes. I call. He answers with a demanding voice, “Hello?” The phone didn’t even ring.

“Hey dad, it’s me.” He must have picked up the phone to make a call, too. In that instance, I hear his voice and he

hears mine. Then, silence. “Breathe,” I thought. “How do I talk to him about this? Bill was his friend. Bill was my friend.

Open your mouth and talk to him!” My tongue is tied, my breath shallow. Finally, the words come. “Hey dad. I was just call . . . I was calling to say I’m sorry about Bill.” Someone was tightening their grip around my throat. My head pounded with the effort of keeping

it together, the lump in my throat pushing back against the stop and start of the words. I clear my throat and stammer over the silence. “He was a pretty incredible dude, huh? It sucks that he’s gone . . . I guess he was a dying breed that, well, died, huh? . . . He lived a hard life, you know. Drinking, smoking, and working all of the time . . . I, I’m sorry dad.” Each statement was met with silence. My anxiety built.

There I was again trying to get my dad’s attention—the little kid with the ball and glove in my hands waiting as dad cut the grass. I just wanted to let my dad know that I was there. “Dad, I’m over here . . . I’m right here, Dad . . . I’m right here!”

I wanted him to talk, to let go, to tell me what was going on in his mind and in his heart. He didn’t. Was he afraid of the vulnerability, of not being a man, of losing my respect, of being too close? Instead, with each clumsily cast line, there was no catch. Instead, a monotone, steady voice responded, “That’s just the way things go”; “He was a hell-of-a dude”; “Yeah, I just don’t know what to say”; and “It just happens, I guess.” We didn’t know what to say. We were, with this loss, at a loss.

Silences, pauses, anxieties, and lines cast, I fish on. “So, did you see him before he died? Did you talk to him?”

Finally, dad says, “Yeah, I helped set up for his last pig roast. I stopped by and had a few beers. Didn’t look too good.” He continued, “I wasn’t gonna stop by but I figured I better.”

I could hear it in his voice. He knew. He knew that was the last time that he was going to see him; the last time to share a beer; the last

time to hear Bill’s mucus-filled laugh; the last time to endure a brash comment on the size of his dick; the last time to bum a smoke; and, the last time to share an understood moment of quiet in his space.

I knew in this brief conversational moment that my dad missed, truly missed, his friend. And I missed him too. In drunken chats in the barn while Bill was still alive, dad said that Bill taught him more than anyone could ever learn in 10 years of college. And I believed him.

We talked for 20 minutes. It felt like an eternity.

The masculine space

Morman and Floyd (2002) explain that in terms of masculinity, the relationship between father and son may be challenging not just because it falls within the parameters of familial roles, but also because it is a relationship between two men. Although it can be argued that a large portion of my masculinity is socially constructed in and through the relationship with my dad, outside influences also have a great deal of significance. Therefore, within specific moments, adherences to unique perspectives of “traditional” masculinity influence the relationship itself. From the time I moved

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away from home, I performed a white- collar, academic, queer masculinity in contrast to that masculinity with which I was raised. This means tightly hugging, side-cheek-kissing, cross-leg- sitting, crying, expressing stress and strain, caring for others, letting others take care of me, becoming an agent of change, listening to learn and be mindful, being educated on how to be open, and learning the vital task of how to silence the hegemonic masculine tendencies I was taught to perform.

In the conversation with my dad I pushed back against the culture of fatherhood and hegemonic masculinity, pushed back against generations of men who told me it was not okay to be expressive. But in these moments when men feel uncomfortable expressing emotion, when we push back, we tend to fall back on acceptable masculinity and friendship roles, comfortable masculine space. At this turning point in my dad’s and my relationship, we had nothing to fall back upon. It was a new experience for us both, a new masculine space; father to son, man to man, we were without a script, nothing to read off of, no performance to guide us.

The words

After another period of silence, I take a deep breath: choked, not choked-up. My mouth waters, I swallow and exhale. My eyelids twitch, my palms drip sweat. I can’t get comfortable as I lean back slightly, place my feet firmly on the ground. I sit upright, inhale, exhale, swallow. Nothing settles.

“I know that it doesn’t need to be said but in light of the situation, I want you to know that . . . that, I love you, dad. I love you, and I appreciate everything that you have ever done for me.” I say it.

It didn’t need to be said? It didn’t need to be said!? Who was I trying to kid!? It needed to be said. I wanted to say it for 15 years, and finally I said it. And it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do—needed to do—in my life.

Dad responded back. “I love you, too.” And then, another silence. The real conversation ended. I knew what we had said. He knew what I had said. We knew it was

our shared, vulnerable space. I was safe. We digressed into mundane talk about school, roofing, and the weather. But it didn’t matter.

“I can’t wait to come home and hang out in the barn and share some beer, listen to good music. We need to have our private wake for Bill.” I said.

He said he was looking forward to our time together, too; time when we could hang out and have those beers. “I’m just trying to stay alive long enough to be able to go do that,” he said, breath jagged.

“You better not fucking die on me!” I demanded. I was joking. I was serious. “No, it’s not my time . . . yet.” I was drained. Broken. Tired. Satisfied. In that moment, fulfilled.

Necessary identity

Bill died in his farmhouse in Indiana. Like dad said, “He lived a hard life. He smoked all the time and drank more beer than I could ever imagine.” But that is who Bill was. To take those things away from him would be to take Bill away from himself. There wouldn’t be a Bill without nonfilters Camels, or High Life, or the overalls. It made him the man that everyone respected, liked and cared for. The same goes for my dad. If he didn’t work hard every day, if he didn’t drink as much as he does, if he didn’t smoke, and cuss, and laugh and joke inappropriately . . . if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be my dad. He wouldn’t be “a man.” He wouldn’t be. Working endlessly with your callused hands, sore knees and back, and bronzed back and brow, hour after hour, day after day, creates a working class identity and culture—a means of identifying with each other and, by inclusion in that group, a hegemonic performance of relationships and masculinity. It creates a means and space to compare stories, to commiserate, and to hold each other not only up, but to a standard of work. Working class identity binds us together.

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These men’s work—leaving before the sun began to burn your skin, returning home in time to cut the grass before the sun went down, sacrificing a weekend to build a deck on someone else’s house— demonstrated to me the value of working hard, friendship, using your hands and back, and then telling stories about the toil: “Yeah, you think you had it bad, well . . . ”, and how to be a “man’s man.”

But these performances do not come without damaging, destructive implications. Performing White, heterosexual, working class masculinity, imbuing and embedding in me those values also meant devaluing others performances of masculinity, sexuality, able-bodiedness, ethnicity, and race. Their palpable close-minded perspective towards “outsiders” of otherness was a staple in policing their value system. If you weren’t strong enough, White enough, straight enough, able enough, or man enough—those characteristics that made Bill and my dad men—were used against you. I pushed back against this when I told my dad that I loved him.

Can it change?

I wondered what I would have to do in order to change our relationship, to change how I viewed my own performance of masculinity. If I was to be the son that I was “supposed to be” in this patriarchal masculine paradigm, how was I ever to change my relationship in ways I wanted? In pushing back against the cultural conventions of masculine performance and freeing myself to be in my own skin and mind, I show how others can push back and set themselves free of their own generational, cultural bindings and hauntings, the White lower-middle class male, heterosexual, blue-collar, straight masculinity, the “That work’s for shit,” “Don’t be a pussy,” “Man up, Sally,” “Stop crying and just do it!,” oppressive, demeaning, negative, and deeply hurtful forces that we all need to push against. I have resisted these messages and often still resist when relating with my dad. Reclamation of self in the midst of oppressive men and conventions is the change that needs to be made. It can change.

I tried for years to make the uncomfortable comfortable, to be centered in my own masculine performance. I told my dad how I felt about so many things: how my romantic relationships were faring; if I felt sad or depressed about work or school; and even how I felt about him. My attempts to deconstruct the rules of masculine expression that had been set, from his perspective, for the both of us reoriented our relationship and how I see myself in our relationship. It was my hope that allowing myself to be vulnerable within that relational space would give my dad the ability to do the same, to open up, to feel and experience his “self” and our relationship on a different level, from a different perspective.

It was not until Bill’s death that my dad saw my need for this depth of disclosure, openness, closeness, and connection; all of the things I wanted so badly for decades. The mess of our relationship and my unwillingness to let my vulnerability show allowed only for indications of these needs—of what I needed, wanted, and desired. But I was not confident enough or steadfast in my own performances for fear of not living up to his view of who I was and should be. My version of masculinity was not enough. Instead I let hegemonic masculinity, a culture of male performance, my dad and my beliefs about these things stop me from feeling, from expressing, from being me. It took a tragic event outside of our power, a critical turning point, to cause me to change the way that I communicate with him. It was this event that forced vulnerability, nurturing and affection into our relational space, into our lives. This allowed me to be me, to come out from underneath my emotional cloak, to begin to push back against hegemonic masculinity, to begin to heal this father wound.

Moving forward

When Bill died, so did the type of man that I hope I will never know again. His passing brought both positive and negative implications to my perspective on performing as a man and how I once was. It

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was a death of a man that had worked hard all of his life, demonstrating a strong work ethic; a death of the influences that his type of masculinity had on the education of young and old minds and bodies; a death of a type of man that would drop absolutely everything and help you with what you were doing; a death of a type of man that allowed time for individuals, to slow down, to sit, to listen, to talk; and it was a death of a type of man that was able to live life a little slower and to pay attention to the little things that often matter in relationships that are often overlooked.

Bill’s death also signified a death of a type of man that was representative of an era of idealized, fictive masculinity. Represented in Bill’s dying was the death of a misogynistic, racist, sexist, homophobic, working-class-elitist mentality that was damaging to those who could not perform those idealized characteristics. And in that, it was a good death.

His passing allowed for a wall of masculine silence and expressive silence that has been built over generations to slowly be deconstructed. Bill was hyper-masculine. My dad is hyper-masculine. Seeing his friend die, a man so close to him in age and manner of living, may have caused a portion of that masculinity to die with him. I offer my perspective on a critical turning point moment and experience that gave irreplaceable insight into the relationship that I have with my dad, and I hope to extend a new perspective on masculinity and father–son relationships to fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, family scholars, and whoever else may benefit from its telling. Challenging the generations of fatherhood that resulted in father–son distance and pushing back against the white, heterosexual, working class hyper-masculinity to which I adhered to, I call on others to challenge and push aside the cultural conventions set before us; to explore the constitutive power and (dis) empowerment (Ono, 2011) in our relationships and selves.

In contrast to Goodall’s (2012) sense-making experience of the relationship with his father as like visiting a museum full of artifacts, mine is a living museum. As my father ages, and his body breaks down from years of hard labor, the artifacts are his stories, our stories. I believe that the majority of what I do in my life is for my father—the creation of a story of which he can be proud. I do this to help us comprehend my education, my “self,” my/our masculinity. He can’t physically reach the mountain tops that I summit, accept those people that I have befriended and am often in awe of— the educated, the marginalized, the outsiders, of which I have become one. In the strides that we have made together, he struggles to express what I consider necessary feelings; masculine love, affection, fear, openness, closeness, acceptance, and reverence. But I also realize that I can’t achieve these things without him. He will never know the extent of his own achievements, and that is why I achieve for him and with him. My dad continues to show me what it is to be a man, the type of man that he is. I am this, but so much less and so much more. We show each other what masculinity can be. In these moments, in the critical exploration of my relationship and self, “Autoethnography can change autoethnographers” (Berry, 2013, p. 210). Indeed it did.

When we had that conversation on a day I will never forget, we deconstructed dominant ideas of father–son relationships, masculinity, and friendship through our words and silences. We allowed ourselves to exist with and for each other. What we said, what we didn’t say, how we said it, and why we said it. We were there for each other. That moment represents the start of a new relationship between my dad and me. That moment highlights a cultural need to embrace a different form of fathering and masculinity; one that allows for quiet, vulnerable spaces, difference, hugging, sober caring conversations, acceptance, and love. It represents a deep cleansing breath in his mind and in mine.

Conclusion

Led Zeppelin’s Since I’ve Been Loving You is blasting loud in the barn as I pull up the dusty gravel driveway to mom and dad’s place. The sun highlights the freshly mowed grass, the smell is better than freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. I fill my lungs. The newly painted Farmall tractor poses in the grass catching those last rays of the low summer sun filtered through the haze of still settling sod. With a beer for me in one hand and his own half-full beer in his other, dad’s scattered-toothed smile

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shines prominently against his tanned, shirtless body. Jean shorts caked with dirt, grease, and barn grime barely cling to his hips. Under his toned calves, two once-white cotton socks peek out over the ragged steel-toed work boots as he comes close. Sticking out my hand to shake a hello, he puts down the beers and hugs me.

“It’s been too damn long.” He said. “It has.” When I hug him, my arms slip on the sweat and green grass remnants. “Come on. Let’s get ya that beer. There’s a good tune playin’,” he said. I smile and follow him. Today, my dad is my father and my friend. We talk on the phone. We hug when we see each

other. He accepts my lifestyle, my masculinity, me, as different, not bad, but different. It’s a start . . . another challenge, another beginning. My dad is not perfect. I am not perfect. And the relationship remains a work in progress, not a work of art. However, the importance lies in understanding that in those moments, the critical turning point moments, our relationship, all relationships, can change.

I don’t know if my dad was ever able to tell his dad that he loved him. I don’t know that, if Bill hadn’t died, that we would ever have had the opportunity to say it either. But a different wind blew that day in that moment. We were able to say those words that men, like Bill, like my dad, don’t say. We were able, in that moment, to say, “I love you.” We, together, pushed back against generations of men and masculinities. Those things that are left unspoken because they are supposed to be “a given” have now been spoken. There is ease in our conversations; a way that we talk; a way about us when we don’t talk. I thank my dad for that day. I thank him for not being afraid of what he said. I thank myself for not being afraid of what I said. And I thank Bill.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was presented at Central States Communication Association conference and was the impetus for my dissertation. The author would like to thank the reviewers for their valued acuity and critiques, Dr. Sandra Faulkner for her thorough and thought-provoked editing, Dr. Beth Suter for her encouragement and support, Dr. Kathryn Hobson for her constant strength, validation, and insight, and, of course, my dad.

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