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I had always fancied myself something of a man’s man, the sort of man to cause a woman to stop dead in the street, ponder her poor luck, then assume me married or gay.Unfortunately, I never really had many of the trappings of the objective man’s man, such as biceps sculpted like boulders from the mighty Rocky Mountains, or the steel blue eyes that blaze from behind leathery but perfectly carved cheekbones, or a firm jaw supporting a broad-toothed smile which I would flash at some precious darling that caught my steely gaze from a shop window. Or perhaps I would stoically reserve its brilliance for good laughs over beers at the hunting lodge with the boys. I didn’t quite possess a fabulously broad chest, or shoulders you could land a Cessna aircraft along. I didn’t have buns like two red delicious apples straining against the back pockets of sturdy dirty denims, concealing a wallet full of cash.
To my knowledge, there’s never been much coveting of my anything by anyone.
I was also pretty aware that men’s men didn’t “fancy” themselves anything, since men’s men didn’t use words like fancy, or fabulous. I didn’t fill out my flannel shirts too well, and often heisted extra napkins from fast food restaurants for the purpose of padding the back pockets of my freshly washed Levi’s to lend to the appearance of having a backside at all.
Men’s men wielded power tools, and ventured into forests with firearms and Sawzalls to dispatch animals I considered cute and fuzzy, and bring them home to grill up with a German beer rather than to unwrap, sauté and serve with a fine pinot noir that sported notes of currant and pepper. In fact, my lone excursions into the wilderness, to date, could have been admonished by critics as cutting through the neighbor’s evergreen patch to shorten the tiring quarter-mile hike to ballroom dance lessons – a notion my father had to improve my marketability among single women.
“A lot of guys don’t dance, son,” he patted my teenage shoulder as he discreetly ushered me into my first lesson, “You need an edge. You really need an edge.”
So obviously when the opportunity presented itself decades later to bring home a goose for Christmas dinner, I leapt at it. I envisioned myself with three days growth of beard, strutting through my parent’s door in my buffalo checked hunting jacket, woolen pants, and deer stalker cap – proudly holding in my iron, calloused grip the limp neck of a magnificent goose, eliciting gasps of pride from my adoring family and girlfriend, Jane. In this vision it seemed to me that I should also have an empty shotgun resting open and smoking in the cradle of my other arm, as it was unlikely that any goose would swoon to death in the humbling presence of my new manly ensemble. Hence, the offer of a pre-murdered goose by a man possessing such manly appurtenances would have to suffice.
