I went to a party last night with some of the "inner circle" from the factory, a celebration that they throw whenever any of them has a birthday. I am the only foreman who gets invited. I forget that, sometimes, but last night, I remembered. I may be a bit vulnerable right now and looking for a happy place. Last night, drinking in the cold night air at an open bar attached to the little arthouse theater, things seemed right. My oldest friend, my college roommate, was there and I spent much of my time, as I should, talking to him about where we were, where we are. As the late afternoon turned to evening, the table changed and grew. It was all good fun.
Then a fellow walked up, someone I know from my life in town, my crazy existence outside the factory, a successful business fellow whose work is quite different from mine.
"Hey Crazy Man, what's up? You mackin' on these ladies?"
Holy shit, I could see my already shaky sexual reputation taking a beating. He had his arm around one of the younger, new employees, a radical feminist who was already suspicious of me.
"This isn't an office party, is it? This guy's my hero. He's a fucking madman, right?"
He was with another of my whacky friends whose has his own entertainment company. Neither of their professional lives have an HR department looking over their shoulders. They are more like Ari Gold in "Entourage," witty and irreverent and. . . well, let's face it. . . "unprofessional." They couldn't last a week in my work environment.
But I am like them and have been much shaped by the witty repartee that is a major element of their world. I have learned, at least, to keep up. And I am not offended much by their politically incorrect sensibilities.
When he went back to his place at the bar, one of fellows looked at me and said, "O.K. Tell us about that."
"Oh, you know, life away from the factory."
"You've got a pretty weird life, huh? This isn't the same group as the one Stormie is part of, is it?"
He was referring to one of my maniac gym friends, a one time NCAA wrestling champion, a professional wrestler who was World Champion after defeating Dick the Bruiser long ago, a steroid fellow who lived above the gym in an empty room that had a small black and white television with rabbit ears, a hot plate, and a mattress on the floor.
"No, no, not the same group at all."
I thought about how compartmentalized my life has been. Academics, lawyers and doctors, factory workers, businessmen, fighters and gym boys, drug dealers and other criminals--I liked them all pretty much equally, I thought. They all had their qualities. And somehow I have been able to fit in, not quite them but of them, I guess, never core but hanging around on the margins.
I think that is what I am--The Marginal Man. It's O.K. with me, but maybe it has fucked me up, too. Perhaps I needed to narrow my focus in life somewhere along the line, take on a set of some groups core values, maybe have adopted their Mission and Vision Statements if you will.
But when? Whose? At what point? I think of Maugham's "The Razor's Edge." Where do you stop in the journey?
I don't think the exchange really did any long term damage to my reputation in the end except maybe with the ideologue. As I say, she already viewed me with a skeptical eye. But I am a sweet boy and have friends, even of her ilk, and maybe they will counter her opinions or at least temper them. You never know whose a comer and who is not. Things are competitive and people are bright. It is difficult to stay a hero.
I am returning to my monkish existence now full of books and music and ritual, eating better and losing weight, returning to my boyish self if injury and disease will let me. Perhaps it means not fully engaging on some level but being an exquisite observer, a camera, an audio recorder, an encyclopedist, a Larry Darrell.
My god, though, that is a horrible name.
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