The Manly Man?

After a few minutes of daydreaming, I’d finished shoveling my relatively short sidewalk, and headed back to reality with a trip to the grocery store.

Saturday brought manliness by the diesel-powered dump-truck load. A friend of Celia’s, my girlfriend, was moving out of her house in Greenwich, New York, and needed some help. She recruited Celia, me, and two other friends to help her move, offering us a rate that a professional mover would have scorned, but which nearly doubled the hourly rate I earn churning out words at a daily newspaper. My arms are about as thick as an empty role of toilet paper—and equally well toned—and thus not really all that useful for moving heavy furniture, but I was willing to do what I could for a buck. Besides, this was clearly a great opportunity to put on my work clothes for the second day in a row! Maybe this time I’d pretend I was in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. 

It turned out that I was the only man recruited to help Celia’s friend move, and I fell into my assigned gender role almost immediately. Needless to say, I was wearing my Carhartts, wool shirt, boots, and work gloves again—so even if I didn’t measure up to some of my stronger, hairy-chested brethren, at least I looked like I could. With a pinch of luck and a dash of knowledge, I was also able to play my part well enough to fool the rest of the moving party.

Who could figure out how to remove the legs from the dining room table? Me. Who held up one end of the heaviest furniture while three women struggled at the other? Me. Who knew how to tie the furniture securely into the rented panel truck? Me. All the while, the four women said things like: “You tie those knots so well,” “We’d better have Andrew get that trunk from the attic,” and “Can you lift this heavy, heavy thing?” My manliness—and my ego—grew larger as the day went on. Never mind that my body ached with a soreness that I have seldom known as soon as I fell into the car for the drive home.