THE BROMANCE
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with
you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid,
affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl
with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has
become not yours only nor left my body
mine only
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh,
as we pass, you take of my beard,
breast,
hands, in return
“To A Stranger’ Walt Whitman
My
soon-to-be twenty year old daughter dismisses the word “bromance” as the
relationship between two straight guys who love each other but are afraid of
being perceived as gay. I don’t entirely agree. I feel that sometimes we have
to provide a phenomenon with a word in order to define something that makes
people uneasy; by naming it, we often demystify it. (She’s way beyond the
simplicity of semantics; “It just is, dad,” she says. “You don’t need to label
it.”)
And
she’s right. Perhaps what Walt was describing in all those fervid lines about
his male-to-male encounters were, indeed, the first recorded bromances. The Urban
Dictionary defines the word as
“a relationship between two men that are unusually close” while several
mainstream dictionaries suggest it’s a relationship specifically between two
heterosexual dudes.
“What was the name of the poem you mentioned in
class today?” Mitch asks. Not only are we in the Whitman class together, his
room is directly across from mine in the dorm. Mitch possesses that television star
virility with an accessible sexiness rather than movie star hauteur. In
addition to his physical prowess (athletic, confident stature), he is
intellectually muscular as well.
How can I not hope for a bromance? Yet, that
part of me that is often distrustful of being drawn to a straight man was on
alert when I reminded him of the name of the poem. A lot of my hetero buds
would not be able to wrap their pretty heads around the complex nature of
Whitman’s “To A Stranger”.
But Mitch got it, responding with a certain
masculine ease that assured me were destined to the George Clooney-Brad Pitt
stratosphere of bromancehood.
This was confirmed by our enlivened chats about
what went on in the day-to-day seminars and our burgeoning reflections on
Whitman. In addition, we intimately bonded by sharing
details on the roller coaster ride each of us values and struggles with on a
daily basis: fatherhood.
Katherine with her dad Michael
As the father of a nine-year old, it was clear
that Mitch (mid-forties) was a spectacular father and part of that praise I
heap on him is derived from his anxiety about being a good dad. He’s listening
to his boy; he and his wife are paying attention to the world that his son is
growing up in. These details all swirl in the orbit of Whitman’s passages.
And Whitman does stress the gloriousness of
conception—above all else, in fact. And please, my fascistic gay friends, don’t
tell me that’s homophobic. Whitman is celebrating the miracle that is each new
life. I feel certain that he would applaud the soulfulness of “conception” in
all configurations of the Twenty First Century.
When you rivet on the same subject for several
days, you inevitably come up with alternative words to describe them or their
trademark beliefs and behavior: “Whitmanesque,” “a Whitman moment ” or,
perhaps, “ Walt would like that.”
Mitch’s relationship to his son is Whitmanesque
and, according to Mitch, they share what I would identify as “Whitman moments”:
every morning when Mitch drops his kid off at the school bus (“Be kind and
smile,” he encourages him) and every night when he tucks him in (“Dream big,”
he says).
In getting to know each other, I told
Mitch—keep in mind, this is a man who teaches at a private school in Connecticut
“A healer?” he asks, intrigued but without a
whiff of judgment.
I admit that I don't really know what a healer
does exactly but I feel Santa Fe Aurora
This is
part two of a five-part series.
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