For some, maybe most men, I imagine, their closest friends are their oldest; mine go back decades. Knowing Pete for as long as I have has given me an understanding of his life story, of who he is. But other factors define “friend.”
One of these is trust. I can rely on my men friends, all of them. If one makes a promise, it is kept; as the saying has it, “Word is bond.”
We support each other in deed as well. One friend is my implicit second. If I got into a fight, Steve would not only back me, he’d push me aside and take over fighting for me.
Men mentor and coach each other at their home workshops, on playing fields, and noticeably, on the job. A colleague at a corporate writing gig, Jed, taught me the ropes not only of the work, but of the personalities and politics of the workplace, strands that would have taken me months to unbraid. I took him to lunch.
“You don’t have to buy me a meal,” he said. “I was just doing my job.”
He’d had gone beyond his job description.
Men volunteer to help each other, especially with physical work, even when unasked. I have a downed tree in my front yard, felled three months ago. Two friends, Marc and Jay, have dropped by and offered to help me limb, buck, and split it. If I lift the hood of my car and peer in, my across-the-street neighbor wanders over to ask if I need help.
We keep each other’s confidences without being asked, though sometimes we do ask. We take risks and understand when our friends risk. We tend to not judge each other.
A friend who is unfailingly there for you – in spirit, word, but most importantly, in act – is a brother. He’s stood up for you – backed you, helped you – and would again. Saying, “He’s a brother,” is a meaningful statement for a man to make.
I understand these traits and behaviors are not found only in men. All genders can display them. Women mentor and coach other women all the time. It’s just that I see these traits in many men, and in those they call friend, brother, or even colleague.
This section’s stories bring the undercurrent of brotherhood and men’s friendships to the surface. Two that are in the book, one by Michael Chabon, “The Hand on My Shoulder,” and the other, an excerpt from Mike Cherry’s On High Steel, will not be published here because of contractual issues.
Stephen Crane wrote in the late 1800s. In “The Open Boat,” he tells of being shipwrecked, in a story that reads like fiction, sounds like a yarn, but is in fact reportage: an exemplar of “new journalism” a half-century before the style appeared. It’s a ripping true tale about the subtle fraternity of four men in a 10-foot dinghy, on the open sea, in a storm.
I wasn’t planning on putting poetry in this anthology until Richard Schiffman’s “Buddies” arrived via email, changing my prose/poetry calculus. Schiffman’s bromantic verse speaks poignantly of two men’s longstanding bond.
These are stories about the rich friendships and unstated brotherhood of men – strong and quiet.
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Originally published on Heart of a Man
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A step on the path to gender peace offers stories by men who are opening their hearts to women. the book is scheduled to be published in Summer of 2019.
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Image ID: 1431842525
Many thanks to Good Men Project for publishing this poem, which I love. And the pic they chose to accompany it, Black & White Together, is spot on. THANK YOU, GMP!