men i know

Pamela Zimmerman

They are middle-aged, they are old, with blue collar jobs and whimsical laughs and thinning hair; they wear unadorned black coats and black trousers and never neckties. Their wives, some spare and gaunt, all the femininity drained from their bones and souls, some morbidly obese, carrying pain and bitterness and narrowmindedness in their folds—their wives make everything they wear. They sit on wooden benches in front of others on wooden benches. They say yay, yay, nay, nay, and sing laboriously.

Once they were little boys in bowl cuts with hope in their small warm hearts and the light of ambition in their big brown eyes. They built things with mud and rocks, things that collapsed with the next rain. They ate cookies and argued and talked about big things.

There were other men, with other wives fat and thin, back then. Some were uncles, some fathers, some grandfathers. All of them were brothers. All of them patiently guided the little ones, guided small minds with utmost dedication, away from irrelevant and dangerous concepts like hope and ambition. Taught them to build things that did not wash away with the next rain, things that stood for fifty years, things that looked like other things built by their forefathers.

So the little boys became big boys, big strapping boys full of vigor and verve, with ambition shrunk and hope carefully channeled into appropriate dreams. With too much energy to be entirely controlled. Too rambunctious, but sufficiently believing what the men had told them, sufficiently guided to not be loose cannons. Still loud children, now with quiet fears, iron bands on their collective manhood.

And so the big boys were young men and the young men were simply men. They acquired wives who acquired babies who became little boys in bowl cuts with round brown eyes. They were fathers and uncles, one day to be grandfathers; all of them were brothers. Carefully they guided their wide-eyed sons away from the ambition they themselves had once cherished, fed the little boys cookies, showed them how to not let hope run away with them. Every weekday they went out to work blue collar jobs, building things that would stand for fifty years, things that looked like things their grandfathers had built. And they laughed at those who did not live like them, while they wondered what it would be like.

And these little boys who had become men saw their own little boys grow tall and strapping—young men who knew how to build and how to control their energy. The men, whose energy had dwindled, chuckled with envy, watched them with delight, took pride in the fact that these young men who mirrored their fathers’ pasts also saw their fathers’ presents when they looked toward their own futures.

They were little boys who became big boys, big boys who became young men who became simply men. They are uncles and fathers. They are grandfathers now, most of them. All of them are brothers. They sit on wooden benches on Sundays in black coats and black pants that their wives made for them. They never wear neckties.

On Sundays I sit on a wooden bench too, and I see the men on their wooden benches. I see them through round, six-year-old eyes that do not question. Later I will think that they are wise; later still I will consider the lies they believe. I will think about how they walk in small circles for all of their lives.

Not very long ago, in the faraway land of New York State, Pamela Zimmerman's childhood was filled with storybooks. They were usually of the vintage or antique varieties; often tattered, clothbound, with crumbling yellowed pages. Consequently, she has developed a great love for old stories, with fiction from the early twentieth century being a particular favorite. She is passionate about exploring the continuity of human daily life throughout the years, despite all the conquests and king-making emphasized in historical narratives. Human happiness is her favorite subject; she has a weakness for hopeful endings. This will be her first publication.