I've got to be careful when I'm drinking. My dad's the same. I don't go sniffing for scraps,
but if I'm in a mood and I start into theJjack, I will not back down. If someone's looking, I'm
off. It's like sex, heat, our bodies colliding, pounding each other. Sometimes, after we help
each other up, shake hands, admire each other's bloody faces, even hug. Hello and welcome to
What Kind of Man Are You, the podcast about men, masculinity, and you and Degan and I being friends.
I'm Chris Garbutt, a writer and communications professional.
I'm Degan Davis. I'm a poet and a writer and a Gestalt therapist. I'm just laughing. We were
deciding what poem to read just a few minutes ago, and this is on friendship. And here we have two
guys pounding each other, then at the end, coming up and saying, you know, respecting one another's
strength, even hugging. And that story was told to me by a relative, you know, big guy gets into
fights sometimes, and he said, it's happened more than once. And I've got stories afterwards of that.
So we're coming at friendship from the start, from what may seem at the beginning very far
from the idea of friendship, male friendship. But one of the things I thought we could do at the
beginning was actually talk about famous male friends and duos. Okay, so I'll throw some out
and let's make a little. Let's riff. Let's riff. Okay. These are, well, one of the most classic
Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Oh, yeah. And then I was going to the 70s and 80s for television,
Starsky and Hutch. Yep. Bowen Luke Duke from the Dooms of Pazard. I'm really sure
where that stands. They're brothers, though. So brothers and friends, I guess. Brothers and friends.
I mean, some of these being very classic duos, Batman and Robin. I was even thinking Calvin
and Hobbes, they're friends. Yeah. Robin and Hobbes. That's my favorite cartoon. And Robinhood
Little John. Yeah. Do you any others that you can? Well, off the top of my head, I can think of
Lenin McCartney. Right. Who else? I felt so good. I felt so proud of Lenin McCartney. Yeah.
Yeah, one of the faults. I blanked myself out. Interesting. You mentioned Lenin and McCartney
because we're talking about friendship this podcast. We're also talking about mentorship. And I think
they are different, right? Friendship doesn't have any hierarchy in that way. And mentorship often
does. But you mentioned music and the Beatles. And I've got some stories of musicians have mentored
others. I guess there's also Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Right. I've been preparing for this podcast
over the last week and really thinking about male friendship. You had to pause there. It's not that
easy, I found in the last week, to think of works of art, classic television shows that are centered
on male friendship. Hmm. Again, I'm saying to readers, listener, prove me wrong. Prove us wrong.
Prove us wrong. But that's a good point, though. And you know, and I think you have this whole
subgenre of friendship art movies around the word bro and the word bro man. And to me, that has this
kind of faint ridiculousness to it. And I'd love your take on this because in my sense, bro is always
either like two guys that are maybe drinking buddies or they're kind of lost and they hang
out with each other. There's something lost about a bro or a bro man. Is that your interesting?
That yours take? The first time I heard the term bromance was after there was a movie that came
out. I think it had Paul Rudd in it. I don't know who else was in it, but it was called I Love You Man.
Right. I never saw that movie, but that's the first time I heard the term bromance.
And when I think about bromance, it feels vaguely, does it feel vaguely homophobic to you? Yeah.
Yeah. Men can't say they love each other because that means they might be gay.
Exactly. And it's like, what? Yeah. On the other hand, it's true. This is a fact of our existence
in our society. You and I call each other man all the time. Bro feels like kind of a distancing word
to me. You are more like a brother to me than a lover. And it's like, we're both straight men.
I handle this. Yeah. There's an inherent suspicion or judgment inside the word,
particularly bromance, but bros. I suppose you could say like, yeah, they're bros,
but a lot of time it has that suspicion in it. I was thinking, there's no comparable word for
female friendship. I can't think of one that you could throw people with that faint sense of homophobic
or just that discomfort of men being together. So you have to have some slightly ridiculous
phrase to name it. But I can't think of one like that friends call each other like bestie or best
BFF. That doesn't have a negative connotation. No, that's true. That has closeness. Maybe we
talk about the male script, right? Yeah. I have loved the Elena Farente quartet of novels,
which begins with my brilliant friend. It's a set of four novels. And that is one of the most
profound examinations and explorations of female friendship I have ever read. And it follows this
incredible bond, these intimate betrayals, love, jealousy, the incredible distance over their
lives. It follows about 40 or 50 years and this unbreakable closeness. And I felt myself longing
to read about male friendship in that way, the complexity of it, particularly over a lifetime.
And I want to say to the listeners, please prove us wrong. Maybe there are wonderful stories that
go into the intricacy of male friendships, but I don't feel that they are as present in culture.
Well, we talk about in previous episodes about mediated connection, everything between men
tends to have to be through an activity or talking about that activity. So sports was our last episode.
Let's think about some of these people we mentioned. A lot of those
hairs of friends worked together or they made music together. We'll put masks on together.
Or put masks on. Oh, Batman. But they worked together. But even Starsky and Hush, they worked
together. Sure. I just thought of another one, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They were
doing a job together. Don Quixote and Sancho on an adventure. Right. Right. And so I guess even
Frodo and the band of Hobbits had to, you know, there might be something to them though. It feels
like it shows a little more vulnerability. The Hobbit friendship. Yeah, the Hobbit friendship
and Lord of the Rings might be. Well, they're cute, right? They can get away with it because
they're cute and they're the underdog. Right. When they head to Mordor with their swords,
we're so backing the underdog. Right. So their friendship, which can seem sweet, is bonded by
this iron will and bravery. Yeah, true. And also it's a bit hierarchical in the sense that they
refer to Frodo as Mr. Frodo. Right. He just refers to them as their nicknames. To me,
when we talk about bro, bro-mance, the opposite of that, and I don't have a word for it,
would be the untouchable iron male friendship. If friends are going through a war, a sports event,
a game, a tragedy, divorce, and any intense experience that you share with a friend,
I think that it's almost, I had the image of iron being melted and a smithy, you know,
blacksmith's shop and being recast as something. It's almost as if the ingredients of this friendship
becomes joined and recast in this unbreakable way. And that to me seems like an almost archetypal
story in men. Can you give me an example? Well, one I'll give you from my grandfather, my mother's
father. He was a paratrooper and in the Second World War, and he commanded a group of men,
a squadron of men, and one of them challenged him early on. They were, I think, only 18 years old.
And this man named Jim challenged my grandfather, and they fought like the opening poem. They fought
it out. And at the end, they did the exact same thing. They one helped the other up. From that
moment, they were inextricably bound. To add to that, they parachuted into Sicily, into Germany.
They were held in Stalig 8, the prison camp together. They escaped from this prison camp,
right close to Auschwitz, and walked back. And I was just looking last night at the walk they took
from just outside Auschwitz to Odessa, at least a thousand kilometers. They at night living off
routes. I mean, this sounds almost Homeric, right? The return home, right? But I think it was, in a
way. And the two of them, my mother said after that, he was even called Uncle Jim. He came into
the family. He married a cousin. All to say, their friendship, I think, had an iron core to it.
And they were with each other for the rest of their lives. I'm not saying that's the only way
that male friendship bonds. But I can't imagine them being called bros. It doesn't feel right. I feel
like there's a respect granted to a friendship like that. The term that comes to mind is brothers and
arms. There is literary language for that, like a friendship forged in steel, you know, that kind
of idea. And I think there is something to a connection you have with someone where you've
been through. There's nothing like that kind of experience that you or I have ever seen.
No, although to say that, we have both been married in the past and divorced and separated.
I'm not saying that's a war, but in an interior way, it's a shocking alteration in your life.
A shocking loss. And you were there for me. And was I there for you? Yes, you were. And indeed,
I would say that divorce was probably the worst thing I ever went through. And that includes
losing a parent. That includes any other breakup I've been through, because you get into a marriage
expecting it to last forever. And when it doesn't, that is that is a lot of pain. It's an enormous
amount of pain. And you know, Chris, I think I'd like to devote a whole other episode to separation
and divorce, because I think it is the unspoken and unscripted ceremony of many male coming into
themselves, almost like a ceremony of becoming becoming an adult. And there's a lot around
that, of course, we need other rights. But I think that's certainly working as a therapist for so
long. So many times I have seen that that the end of a marriage really means in a way the beginning
of a different kind of adulthood. Yes. Yes, I agree with that. It is completely
unscripted, unritualized. The only rituals you go through are with lawyers. It is unscripted.
Certainly what you and other friends did for me, we didn't have a script to read, but we made one.
I'll remember as my marriage was ending. And I'm very happy to say now I'm good friends with my
ex. And this feels very far away to speak about. But in that it certainly wasn't when it was happening.
And I remember calling you and other friends and envisioning the life to come and saying,
I want to buy a piece of land somewhere and I want to build something. And would you come with me
and help me? And it was almost like the practicality of actually having a piece of land was grounding
the idea of hammering nails into wood and creating something. And it turned out I didn't quite do it
that way, although I did buy property. But I think the concrete nature of building a future and
friends to imagine populating this future with or engaging with them, it was really a lifeline.
And also just to sit and say, hey, you know, have a beer with me. This is a really that kind of a
hard time. Yeah. Yeah. And so thank you. You're welcome. And thank you. It really, it is interesting
after a breakup. I've had some great relationships and all except the one I'm in right now broke up.
And I turned to my male friends in those times. And it's not like I ignored my female friends and
didn't talk about it with them. But it is interesting that that was my instinct. And most of those
conversations were some of the most real I ever had with you and with a couple of other my other
friends. It's certainly a time when you do eat friends. It's not forged in the a clash of war
and utter survival in the external sense. But I think it is in the internal sense. Yeah. Yeah.
I feel so blessed to have you and others as close friends working from a coming from a counseling
perspective. Sometimes I play that role for a time, right? Someone is divorcing and they are
dissociated and they are in profound shock. The idea that marriage is forever. And so part of that
role as a therapist is to hold that place, almost a placeholder. And you need to get this kind of
support out there. And sometimes that just means them saying, I've known this person for 20 years,
but they've never really known what's actually going on in here. Right. And for them to risk that.
And I think that's something really important in terms of the whole bro thing and using language
like bromance. That removes risk and vulnerability. That's right. Yeah. And so, you know, if you call
someone bro, then it's like, I like you, but I've still got the shield on and we can enjoy the game
together. But, you know, I'm not going to actually say I like you. Yeah. Although I mean, of course,
you have men getting absolutely drunk and really weeping, right? Yes, that's true. I love somebody
gets very drunk and says, I love you, man, or I just, I love you. Would say wouldn't normally say
oh my God, you're the best friend anyone could ever have. That's an outlet for sure. And I think
beer has actually really helped men probably even come closer to that, you know, right? Man, you
mean a lot to me or this kind of thing. But I think the danger is that that's sometimes the
only intimacy. Right. And of course, then, I mean, you don't remember those words, you know,
there's something about taking the risk with someone and saying, yeah, you mean a lot to me.
Yeah. We don't live forever on this earth, you know. Yeah. So you mean a lot to me, Chris.
Thank you. And actually, I would like to get into that. But let's take a break and we'll come back
after this interlude. So we are back. I'm just realizing, Chris, that just before the break,
I used my broly voice. I was like, I didn't mean a lot to me. Oh, interesting. And I don't think
there's anything wrong with that, right? We have to. We're always mediating these pieces.
But I think we're going to talk about our friendship. Yeah. I thought maybe
it'll be fun to reminisce how we met and how we became friends and what led to this podcast,
like how the conversations we've had and the things we've done to want to explore this topic more.
Yep. So when we first met, I was running a reading series. And I think I was involved with,
it was connected to a literary magazine, that's right. And we had started this literary
reading series to promote the magazine and to raise funds for it. And Degan had submitted some
poems and we wanted to publish them. And the people we published who were in the city,
we asked them to do a reading at the reading series. And I don't know if we actually talked on
the phone or if it was voicemail back and forth, but we arranged to meet in the same
bar that we had this reading series. And Degan was interested in volunteering for the magazine.
And so we met at this bar, the green room outside with the dappled light coming through the trees,
leaves, I remember actually. Oh, really? That's so romantic, didn't it? Yeah.
A bromantic, a dappled light. See how easy it is. Right? I was reading what you might even consider
a rowy book. Alexandria Quartet. Alexandria Quartet by, was it Lawrence Dural? Which at the
time I thought was so amazing. There you go. That's the answer to Elena Farente. That's maybe
the male quartet of books. Could be. It's very male. And I have to say, reading it, however many
30 years later, doesn't stand up. It's romantic in its own way. Is it male friendship? So I remember
it's like a lot of kind of characters that were in their 20s and 30s, almost like beat, like living
in small little apartments and maybe studying in Cairo or Alexandria. They were living in
Alexandria and he was an artist or writer. There's four books in this one book and
three named after a different woman and one named after a man. And I don't know, I was disappointed.
It felt very bro-y to me, actually. I think this was about a few months after because this to me,
I've talked about, you were talking about those moments of iron, right? There's at least, that's a
very fierce image or warrior image, but the moments of connection, right? And when one day at a
reading series, when I was just getting to know you, the reading series you were running, I had
someone ask me if I could put out on the tables an advertisement for another reading series.
And I came to you as the CEO of the Grand Suba and said, hey, is this cool? And I think probably
you were doing a lot of things and you're like, our reading series is what we want to promote,
but sure, go ahead. Something like that. But I didn't, I was just getting to know you. I was new
to Toronto, so I put it out, but I really felt I think I messed this up. And I remember very
clearly being in my apartment and thinking, I think I'm done. I think I don't want to be part of
the reading series that like leave it. Yeah. Oh, because of that. And now that's just for whatever
reason, I just thought I had done something and maybe you were like, whatever, I just felt judged.
I felt like I messed it up, right? And I think these things happen and who knows what else had been
going on in my mind. And I remember saying, I think I'm just going to not just show up anymore.
I'm just going to be out and then going, no, I'm going to call you. And I really,
I think about time stopping in that moment because I could have not. It's like the subway doors.
Right. Yeah. Sliding doors. The sliding doors. But, and here's a sense where I think we,
this is a big topic too, fate. How do we influence our fate? But I call and I said, I mentioned,
I don't know if you remember this. I actually don't remember this. So I called and said,
hey, I just wanted you to know, it sounds ridiculous now, right? But I just want you to know,
I felt pretty bad about that. And you said, maybe I don't even remember it or that's totally fine.
And it sounds so silly. But I think because sometimes men don't speak, sometimes many of us
don't speak about those niggles that we have, those moments of hurt, those moments of confusion,
and the doors close and the subway moves on. And to me, that cemented us or at least an
early cement. And I felt so relieved. So I'm glad I'm happy that my 30 year ago self did that.
And that we're here talking about this. I'm grateful too. What if you hadn't made that call
and ghosted the reading series and never saw you again? And that makes me very sad. And this is
the kind of thing you think about your partner, the person you're in a relationship with. Imagine
if I never asked her out or imagine if my wife now is someone I used to work with and imagine if I
because I didn't take the job at first and then they came back to me with more money, which was
awesome. But honestly, I don't think about it with my friends all that much. And it's interesting to
think about these moments where it could have a friendship that's lasted 30 years. What would
have that been? And one of the things I think about with our friendship is that it is not like
any friendship I've had with the men. We, I think we have both cried in each other's company.
And not about the Leafs losing another series. But actually about personal things. And I'm so
grateful for that. And it's not something I expect from relationships with men. So thank you for that.
But you're very welcome. Maybe I'll share a story then very much on that wavelength.
Talking about this was, I think around the time of my separation or just before it. And in the
second episode on sports, I spoke about having two or three years, which were very difficult,
especially particularly around sports and around being bullied and not for all different reasons,
not having a voice to stand up, not having the knowledge of how to do it, which I thankfully
did learn later, a lot to do with words. But then I didn't have it. I had kept those years very hidden
away deep at a little tiny chamber of my heart almost becomes a speck. And I had mentioned
some of the scenes I shared a couple of the last episode about this man saying what an arm on the
queer after a good thrill and just not knowing how to respond and feeling this burning shame.
And that went on in different ways for a number of years. So I'll never forget this moment coming
to visit you in Riverdale and feeling perhaps some separation was in the air in my marriage,
but it was early. But more than I think beginning to unearth this speck of a chamber in my heart
and pull it to the surface, which is a strange kind of witching hour, right? Or a witching time,
right? You begin to unearth this stuff that has been buried for a long time and you start to feel
never these memories more vividly. And I don't know where I really got this from. I don't remember
anyone saying share stuff with your friends. But I'll remember sitting on a couch in your apartment,
a big, long hardwood floors. And in the evening, and I was tired of being on a plane. And I said
to you, and just as the words were coming that I was going to share something, I actually thought
I will A, be struck by lightning. And that's okay, I'll just die. B, you will reject me. I'm tired.
And I'll just say screw you. I don't know what I just but but I did think these things. I did
have this trepidation. And I said, I think something very simple. Chris, I had a couple of years where
I was really bullied. And to me, the moment after that breath, for you, it may have been nothing,
half a second, it was like expanse of time, where the clock goes, and everything stops and the
colors change. I'm suspended in this moment, where I am bringing out the most painful thing I can say.
And do you remember this? I remember the conversation. You have since told me what it meant to you,
but it didn't seem like a big deal to me at the time. You're watching a movie, it's just me saying,
hey, God, I was young, had these hard years. Yeah, it's like you were bullied. So was I.
So the interior and the exterior are wildly different. And you said from what I remember,
oh man, that that sucks. And I had some similar experiences. And just to continue for a moment
with this, in that interior and exterior play, and I will say this listeners,
in the moment after you normalized and just said, whatever, that happened to me too. But
and we're there. I was very tired. And I think when you've been holding a weight for we were talking
25 years, right? If there's an incredible exhaustion after that. And I think I said to you, Chris,
I need to go to sleep right now. And you're like, no problem. I was gonna I was sleeping on the couch.
And I closed my eyes. And this is where life outside of gender masculinity femininity, all of
this, this is where the sort of subconscious in the place I think of art and of our deepest shame
and also possibility. I closed my eyes and my subconscious had immediately created an image.
And the image was that I or a homeless man with rags and sweat stained armpits was pulling a
vast garbage can full of black banana peels, stained coffee cups, stinking reeking garbage.
And he or I was pulling it up the stairs into a marble mansion. I think the friendship that we had
was that mansion. It wasn't actually a mansion. I think it was like a beautiful, it was a palace.
It was something absolutely grand and spacious and light and beautiful. And here I am pulling in the
darkest stuff of me. And I'm in awe of that living or waking dream that was saying, you have done
this. And of course, these pieces have to integrate, right? It wasn't that angels came down and stripped
me of my clothes and gave me a beautiful suit, right? But robe over you. But I think ultimately,
that's where I am now, I'm wearing the robe now. Right. And it took years, but that place to risk
bringing in. And I think that's shame, that's trauma and bringing it to be witnessed. And I want to
say this, as you said to me, thank you for being there for that. That probably was the biggest
moment of me transforming my shame in my life. But thank you. You've told me that before. And
it's, it's funny because having been able to be that person for you, that gives me gratitude too,
because I just feel like it's a friendship where we can do that. And if you can, if I can do that
for you, you can do that for me. And I can certainly say you have, although there is another time I'd
like to talk about that, isn't you and me, a friend who lives outside of the province emailed me one
day. And we had always emailed, we had that kind of rowy kind of relationship. And he was still one
of my closest friends, but we'd be like, ah, f you, blah, blah, blah, joking around. Good friends.
But this email he sent me was like, completely vulnerable. So he said to me,
things have not been good for me. I've been having suicidal thoughts. And I've been seeing a therapist
and I'm on medication now. And I've been feeling really rough. And I emailed him back and just
said, wow, that's similar to what I said to you, I think it's just, that's really rough. And I've
been there because I have been on antidepressants and I have been in therapy. I'm still in therapy.
And that's really all I told him and just said, whatever you need, just feel free to email or
call or whatever. And his wife emails me the next day and said, I don't know what you said to him,
but he's in a great mood now. And I feel good about that. No, that's it. And I'm not trying to
say how great I am here. But I do feel really good about that. And it was an anti-bro moment.
He took the risk to reach out and you met him in a different place.
The one thing I feel about our friendship and our history, I felt it almost from the moment
I met you is that you and I have been able to go there without something bad happening.
Like a break and then a repair, you mean? No, more like we don't have to have something
bad in our life happen before we can talk about our feelings, quote unquote. We could do that
before divorce and because one thing I remember when we first met, I was reading that book
and you had read it, the Alexandria Quartet. So when we met, I was sitting at the table and I
put the book down. He said, oh, you, you, you. Degan says, I can't remember what it was. There
was something that you loved about how he described the ocean or the sea hitting the shore. And
there was a line that you really liked. That was 30 years ago, so I don't expect you to remember it.
But that's not the kind of thing a guy usually would say. When you start a friendship, you're
getting to know somebody. Right. And so what do you risk early on? And I think I've paid the price
sometimes for, this is an interesting topic too, how much we put out and how much we hold back
and when we take risks. And certainly I felt like I got burned perhaps for being too enthusiastic
very early. And that's a whole other topic. And at that time, maybe it was a bit mediated or titrated,
but I think you can pay the price. I know in my own life, I've had people who I think judged me
for being maybe an archetypal sense, having overt feminine energy. For example, if you think about
that, I'm talking purely archetypal, not man, woman here, but the idea of flowing creative energy
and masculine archetypal energy being controlled and aggressive or contained.
And this way, and I think to me, health is a balance of those to say, I will hold myself in
here, I will express myself there. And because had you been somebody else, it might have been like,
what the F and what are you talking about? Perhaps. But we connected. Or it could have been like,
all right, weirdo. Sure. Yeah, exactly. I just want to say for a moment here that the words
about your friend and your friend had come reaching out to you and you supporting him,
you know, we carry each other. And it seems like we can carry each other with almost the smallest
gestures. That's what touches me so much about that he didn't need you to fly out there. No.
Or whatever else, he just needed to speak it and be heard. And have you say, I'm there,
is there if there's anything I can do? And I think that seems so simple when you
express it now and tell that story. But it's not simple for people who do not have the language.
How many times I have said to a male client, who do you have that you could share even that you're
having a bad day? Some say, nobody, we don't talk about anything. And so the work then is,
who comes to mind if you were going to express something? If you had to, sometimes I say,
if someone put a gun to your head and you had to say something to help, there's a gun to my head.
Yeah. In a way, the skin goes back to this poem, right? I think we can do a podcast purely on
violence. And I think we should. And I think we should have few. We have men's violence against
men. We have men's violence against women. We have all kinds of pieces, famicide even. It's a huge
topic. But I do think if we go back to the poem, this finesse and rain, this ballet and murder,
this let's say, this physicality, strength and vulnerability, right? How do we work that?
How do we work that within this male script? And just to say this piece around them reaching out,
you, I think that's a way of being held. He was held in that and we do it in little ways.
One of the things after my first breakup with a serious girlfriend was my first girlfriend. And
we lasted for three years. And so when we broke up, I didn't know what to do as myself. And she
referred to me as overly sensitive and I cried a lot. And I would consider myself sensitive person.
I take things very personally and that's something I've had to work on. And so I'm not an aggressive
guy. I could count on two or three fingers the number of times I've actually been violent,
maybe a little more with siblings when I was a kid. So this idea, I always talk about how my
primary value is kindness. And I've had people scoff at me. Once someone asked me in a job interview
what I valued most. And that's what I said. I didn't even expect to say that, but that's what I said.
And then they reworked the question so that I would say something else, right? And in the
long run, I think that actually kindness has served me well in the workplace. But what my tendency
takes me away from is the fact that as you say in the poem, some people really get something out of
being aggressive and expressing things. Yeah. What's that movie Goon? It's a movie about hockey.
That's got Jay Perusial. He's a Canadian actor. And he talks about how hockey players will get into
fights. And afterwards, they'll be like, good fight, good fight. And in my mind, it's like,
why would you say that? In that moment, you hated each other. And this is a world that I don't
belong to. And as I mentioned, I also got bullied as a kid. And I must have weighed three pounds at
age 10. So I was super skinny. I did run around a lot. I played sports a lot, but I could eat everything
in my house and still not gain weight. And being that person who couldn't defend himself,
like people always talk about how you have to learn to defend yourself when you're a kid.
For me, it was always like, if I learned to fight, I would still lose every fight.
Right. Just because of my lack of bulk. It makes a big difference, really, doesn't it?
Yeah. When the kids in my class, a couple of them had, quite a few of them had failed a few
grades and they worked on farms. Oh, and so they would be older as well.
They were older and bigger. And also, the sad, the terrible thing is also,
there was a lot of violence in a lot of these families. So they actually were trained in a way.
They could see what could be done and what was done to them. So it's a really different world.
Right. Yeah. And so I think about, I read an article about a mixed martial arts fighter.
And he was poetic about the beauty of the violence in mixed martial arts. I can't stand
watching it. Like, to me, it's a dumb sport. I think it's reprehensible myself. But there's
something in it where people find something energizing and exciting. And I don't know,
we talked a bit in sports about how it's this kind of gladiator thing. And again,
there's that finesse and rage. And so first thing I thought, when I thought about that in terms of
hockey, Marty McSorley, the enforcer and Wayne Gretzky, the guy he was protecting. And there's
a friendship, right? There's an integration of these forces within two bodies. Right. Yeah. And
those of you who are listening who are under 50th, when Wayne Gretzky out traded to the LA Kings,
he demanded that Marty McSorley come along because he felt he needed someone like that to
other team goons off of him. Yeah. And that was a shield. But there's that's a loving thing to do
in a way like you are. I am protecting you. And you are going to do great things because of my
protection. Yeah. And that's also old school male female relationships too, right? Very much
how that archetypal kind of archetypal. I think we might need to get our heads around that and take
a break. Welcome back to what kind of man are you? Well, we have been speaking about in a sense,
these two, these kind of polarities, I suppose, in one sense, vulnerability and the other a kind of
shielding or physical adeptness or violence. And this brings to mind a Facebook comment that we
had just recently, someone saying, could you do a podcast on raising a boy today? And that certainly
we will get on this because that's a question that comes up so often. And just to plant a seed of
some of the things we would talk about in that would be that I don't want to see, let's say,
violence or let's say aggressiveness and vulnerability. I don't want to put a judgment
on the places, particularly aggression, aggression and vulnerability, because growing up as a boy,
there are arrows, right? There are slings of arrows. And so how do you mediate that? And I think
ultimately, just to give it all away, I think what we're looking at is a way to strengthen the
ability to be vulnerable at certain times and also the ability to withstand or stick up for yourself,
whatever form that is. And I think there's a lot of other pieces, but I think that would be a central
core for me to look at how to raise boys in this time. And I will say the last thing is that they're
both equally important because I was an example where I did not know how to defend through language
or physicality or even through internal worth. It doesn't have to be that you become a martial
arts fighter to be able to hold your ground. It is a lot to do with your inner sense of the worst.
That will take you far without it and then with bullying, shame or the very difficult things
that can happen. Abuse, sexual abuse, being targeted by a teacher in a class and being
shamed, whatever may have happened, that's the deadly place. When we're raising boys,
we're teaching them how to be men. It's not the whole thing, right? But certainly,
same with girls. And there's nuance to this because there are trans kids, there are tomboy's,
there are boys who are just more feminine and there are girls who are more masculine, etc. etc.
So when we raise kids, we want them to be good people. But we live in a culture where they are
gendered whether we want them to be or not. And they are seen as that gender. Where I'm going
with this because I do think this is a whole other topic for another episode is how do we learn?
How do we learn to be men? How have we learned to be men? It takes us a little outside the
friendship thing, but you were just talking to me about this. One of the subjects that
Chris and I have been talking about is mentorship, which I think stand adjacent to friendship. And
I mentioned earlier that of course one of the differences is it has a hierarchy to it. I don't
know how you feel, Chris. I feel we don't speak about mentorship very openly. We might in particular,
like perhaps there's a corporate culture and there's a culture within where one person, man,
let's say, takes on another and leads them through in a law firm in this or that. Sure. But that's
not usually gender related. That's not gender related. And it's also it's sort of prescribed in
a particular workplace. But I just feel like we don't speak about mentorship yet. It's happening
all the time. And I'd like to bring a couple of examples of mentorship that I find very touching,
particularly around music. And I think one idea, perhaps why mentorship is not so openly spoken
about is that I think there's still part of the mass script of a kind of individualism,
a kind of sense of I get there on my own. Well, what I'll say about individualism is that this
is an experience I still have to this day. And I've had since I was a little kid, which is
when I don't know how to do something, I get really mad at myself.
Right. Even though there's no reason for me to have known how to do it. And it's usually around
something handy, right? Which you should have known how to do this. So, you know, but nobody ever
taught me how to fix a downspout. I got mad at myself once because I couldn't do it. But there
is this idea, this is what it brings to mind with individualism is you're kind of shamed for not
knowing something as if you should have been born with it. Well, that actually leads very well into
my question, Degan, which is, you know, you talked about these mentors who you never met.
Did you, is there someone who was a mentor to you in your actual life?
That's a great question. It's interesting, this question, because I think one of the,
when I grew up the way I did, I, we talk about individualism. And another way to look at it is
that those of us who grew up without a lot of, say, emotional support have to learn to do things on
our own. And so it becomes very difficult to reach out for help. And you kind of think,
I certainly thought for a long time, I can do it all myself. And then I reached a point where it
was actually, I can't, I'll answer this question in different ways. One was I'm thinking about you,
because we used to meet weekly at Poppers Pub and other places and exchange writing.
Right. And there's something about, about showing a piece of writing. We still do this now. We did
this last night, two nights ago. And to show a piece of writing and to have you say, here it's
working here, it's not, that's mentorship. That's, you're saying, what I've seen in my
understanding of literature and, and here's my take. And that took a very long time for me to be
able to ingest and, and make, and now it's easy, but it wasn't. And so I would say you and others
in that way were mentors. I think a good friend of mine named Stan Draglin, who passed away a
couple of years ago. He was a dear friend. He began Brick Magazine and Brick Books. And he
published actually a lot on masculinity as well. And he was older than me by about 30 years, 25
years. It wasn't in an explicit way. We did, he did edit my work at times. But I think he, he was
an older man who had remarkable experience in reading and in thinking, in consciousness of
how we do approach a sentence, how to approach a work of art if you're trying to write it,
or even a project. And there was something about his integrity and in everything he did
and talks he would give. But I was around for five years when I lived in St. John's. And I think
that was a kind of informal mentorship. But I suppose one of the beautiful things was too,
we used to play music together. Right. He would bring these songs from the 30s, you know. And so
he would, yeah, he would be a mentor of music in a way. He would say, let's play Rock Island Wine.
I think that was more from the 50s. And I would come out and say, sure. And now let's play Bizarro
Love Triangle. And so we exchanged, right. So musical polyglot. Yes. And I know we talk about
mentorship and friendship. I think sometimes they can blend because there were moments where he felt
like he was the man of letters, right? With this, with this history. And I was like, whoa,
I could learn a lot. And there were times where I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm going to
play this guitar riff and we could share back and forth. So first, I'm going to tell you a
joke because you brought that segment in. Oh, we didn't do dad joke of the week yet.
We're doing it now. I'm in a requested knock knock. Who's there interrupting cow?
Not doing it. Oh, terrible. All right. Okay, dads can be friends or whatever.
A question. We were talking about mentorship. I think what is coming to me here is that
I don't think the male script has a lot of sub clauses around mentorship, right? And I'm thinking
a lot about writers or musicians here. So I know more about them than, I don't know, than lawyers.
But I think they end up certainly mentoring one another in different ways. I'm thinking about
James Joyce, who was very influenced and deeply impacted by Ibsen, the playwright, who I think
he felt, oh, here's someone who is writing words and dialogue as they are spoken,
which when he did that in Dubliners, he couldn't get Dubliners published for about a decade because
it was obscene to many publishers. And in fact, that happened to him throughout his publishing
life. Ulysses was banned and that. But all to say, he knew very early on that he needed a teacher.
In a way, very arrogant and brilliant mind who he rejected Yates way early on and said,
what, you don't have anything to teach me. He said something about Yates. This is funny to switch
the mentorship role. He said, I've met Yates when it's too late for him. How's that for self-confidence?
And you know, I think he knew himself. I could use some of that.
So I think we artists find those we need. And I wanted to tell two quick stories that I
absolutely love in music. One was there's a beautiful and brilliant autobiography by Bruce
Bernstein. I forget the title. And if you can get it on audio, he reads it and it's wonderful.
And in it, he talks about being influenced by Bob Dylan early on. And you can hear it very much
in those first albums. And one day he, I think he's he's put out is maybe like it was the Born
to Run album. And a backstage, he in some event, he meets Dylan. And so just like we would be with
someone who has met so much to us, he puts out his hand and Bob Dylan says, if there's anything I can
do for you and means it, you know, and Bruce Bernstein thinks as if you could do any more than
you've already. But I thought the acknowledgement of that that struck me as as rare that this
particularly between men, you know, particularly you think about, you know, Kendrick Lamar and
Drake right now, you know, this this these that extreme, but these kind of professional jealousies,
let's say. And here's these people absolutely saying you meant so much to me. The craft of our
art is so important. And there's just one other short one that I love. There's a writer named Alex
Ross, who is the staff writer for music in New Yorker. And he's written a brilliant book. I
keep using brilliant, but they are they are I'll stand by it, called The Rest is Noise,
which is a history of 20th century classical music. And there's a moment where Igor Stravinsky,
right of spring composer, is in a bar in New York, I think it's New York, and Charlie Parker is
playing, you know, the great saxophonist of the bebop era. And Charlie Parker spy Stravinsky,
you know, sitting at a table. Yeah, I recognize recognize him and is picking up his scotch.
And Charlie Parker, genius as he was, blends in the opening of Right of Spring. Wow,
something like that. This minor slippery melody and Stravinsky chokes and is, it is, you know,
he's scotch down and looks up. And there's Charlie Parker, there's this nod to
how much he's meant to in this little moment, you know, yeah, yeah, it's beautiful.
So I just want to mention something else. And we had talked about it recently, the tragically hip.
I remember sitting with my daughter, I have two daughters and a son and my daughter, who's 14,
almost 15. We were in Huntsville at a cottage and Gordon Downey had been diagnosed with brain
cancer. This was his last show. And I think it was. And it was televised on the one in Kingston.
Yeah. Yes. And I wanted her to stay up for this. So she's sitting on my lap. I'll never forget it.
And we're listening to them, all of these songs that I think have really been for us and for many,
many people, a kind of soundtrack to our lives. We were about their age, right? We're about their age.
And so everything from, you know, nautical disaster, I'm blow at high dough and New Orleans is sinking.
New Orleans is sinking right through all the way through, you know, locked in a trunk of a car
and on and on poets and here is this band on stage. And, you know, there are moments that they know
this is their last show and they have known each other literally their entire lives or certainly
since 16, 17 years old. And there are moments there are hugs. There are moments where they're
kissing on the lips and they are hugging and they are crying in front of millions of people.
And I think I heard a woman on Facebook say how rare that was to see and how beautiful and almost
how relaxed she could feel that men could actually show show love in this way. And yeah, cool.
Okay. So you've thrown me some difficult ones. The last one was not so difficult,
but you asked if I was a feminist and it's just great question. But, you know, these are all
podcasts in themselves. Yeah. And I feel like I am. But you go back to episode two for that.
Have you ever said to a male friend or someone who's not your family who's male that you love them?
Or would you? Or would I say that to you? And no. Oh, then probably not. Or would you? Or yeah,
anyway. Yeah, it's a good question because it is so wrapped up in romantic love.
Like, I think it's fair to say we love each other and we have love for each other.
Yeah. And I could easily say I love this guy, but that's not the same thing.
A little hint of bro. Yeah, it's a little bit bro-y.
I guess not. And I got to be honest, I don't know
that I would. I don't think I'd even say it to my brother. Sorry, Tim. But
it's sort of a shame, but at the same time, is that necessary? I don't know. I mean,
I think it's where there's a level of vulnerability and caring that is a form of love.
Listening itself can be a form of love. Just what you did for your friend.
Yeah. Right. And it's not romantic love. And that doesn't make it any
same. It's no different from having family members. You love your family. So that's where I would
land. I guess it just feels weird because I love you feels like a pronouncement.
And even when it's a partner, it's super vulnerable. Yes. So that's my answer.
It's not very, I don't find it very satisfactory, but there we are.
And I just want to say, I certainly feel we have love and care and I'm holding it.
I'm not asking. No, that's deep to be told that at all in that one. Because I feel,
our friendship is strong. You've been one of my best friends, half my life, two-thirds of my life.
But I do think there are also generations around this. Language means something to different
times. And I remember a female client once who said, my father will not say those words,
but he will spend 18 hours looking at the very best car for me. And he'll come out and say,
I just want, you know, in his quiet manner, I just want you to know that I've come, you know,
50 best cars and I created that for you to kind of compare me. And it's like, I've understood
that that's love. Right. And that happens in a lot of...
Well, on that note, I just want to say to my listeners, I love all of you.
You love them, but you don't let me. Oh, man. We're going to have a fight after this.
And we may hug at the end of... So, yeah, thanks everyone for listening. I just want to
say that if you love us, please give us a five-star rating on your favorite podcast platform
and say nice things about us and tell your friends. We're sort of speaking into the void at the moment.
So we'd love to love to hear your thoughts and your opinions and feel free to get in touch with us.
Listeners, I love you more than Chris. Oh, well. I just want to say. Yeah, sure he does. Yeah.
What kind of man are you is hosted by Chris Garbutt and Degan Davis,
produced by Chris Garbutt at VQC Media. You can support us at buymeacoffee.com
slash Chris Garbutt. Music composed and performed by Degan Davis. You can buy Degan's book at
brickbooks.ca. Thank you to all our supporters and listeners.