Tunesday : So Macho

So Macho

(Styne, J/Cahn, S) Performed by Sinitta

I don't want no seven stone weakling
Or a boy who thinks he's a girl
I'm after a hunk of a guy
An experienced man of the world
There ain't no way that I'll make do
With anything less than I'm used to
If I have a man tonight
He's gotta be right, right, right

So Macho
He's got to be
So Macho
He's got to be big and strong enough
to turn me on
He's got to have, big blue eyes
Be able to satisfy
He's got to be big and strong enough
to turn me on

I'm tired of taking the lead
I want a man who will dominate me
Someone who will love and protect me
And take care of my every need
Now I don't mean to be personal
But a guy like that's more preferable
In my humble point of view
Than any of you

So Macho
He's got to be
So Macho
He's got to be big and strong enough
to turn me on
He's got to have, big blue eyes
Be able to satisfy
He's got to be big and strong enough
to turn me on

So Macho
He's got to be
So Macho
He's got to be big and strong enough
to turn me on
He's got to have, big blue eyes
Be able to satisfy
He's got to be big and strong enough
to turn me on

Macho man
-Ooh I'm in need of a
Macho man
-Ooh I'm in need of a man...
He's got to be...

Last week, I introduced Glen into my life's tale: I was just gone eighteen, freshly started at university, and after having carefully selected harmless boyfriends all through high school, I thought I was finally ready (past due, really) to lose my heart to someone. I didn't realise that would also involve losing my mind; losing all sense of myself. As my intention has been to record the dull facts of my life as a legacy project, I am very aware of giving TMI to my kids; so don't worry girlies, I'll do my best not to scandalise you.

As I got to know Glen better, he had so many stories that should have scared me off. He was from a small town in B.C., deep in mountain country (he's the one with the Sasquatch story, here, and for that matter, a ghost story here), and his childhood was wild and redneck and so completely different than mine. He was the fourth of five kids in a devout and close Catholic family -- and though he never went to church in the time I knew him, he was happy to hear that I was Catholic too because he could never be "serious" about someone outside his faith -- and it sounded like his mother was a prefeminist stereotype: one of his favourite stories involved his Mom cooking for him (as an adult) a big batch of pancakes one blustery winter's morning, and when she saw that they were out of maple syrup, she put on her coat and boots and walked off to the store to get him some. For some reason, I took that as a challenge to prove my own domesticity to Glen: I was always cooking for him, cleaning up after him in his apartment.

He told me that he was something like ten years old the first time his oldest brother got him high, and although he was forever trying to get me to do a wee bit of hash with him, I for some reason felt like if I hadn't done drugs in high school, I was now too old to be picking up bad habits. A prude, I know. He told me that he and his friends used to go gay bashing -- driving to Kamloops and roughing up patrons as they left the one gay bar in town -- and although I was sickened by that (and had several gay friends), I somehow wrote it off as youthful ignorance. He told me that he and his friends were always at bush parties, always getting into car accidents in high school -- driving drunk, driving too fast off-road -- and in grade twelve, he and his girlfriend had been in the back of a pickup truck that rolled and she (a "perfect Barbie doll") had broken her back. Glen visited her a few times in hospital (she was always asking for him) but eventually decided to just have a clean break with her: what was he going to do? Marry a quadriplegic at 18 and take care of her for the rest of their lives? (That's his question, and yeah, I think he could have done more for her.) He told me that when he lived in Jasper after high school, he started sleeping with the woman who owned the house he rented a room in: he was 18 and she was 35, and at the time, I thought that was nearly pedophilia; what could they see in each other? To be fair, Glen said she was a hardbodied, petite fitness freak (who ate only popcorn? could I be remembering that right?), and from my perspective now at the far end of my forties, if a single 35-year-old woman can get a guy as young and as good looking as Glen was into her bed, why not? The bottom line is: no matter what Glen told me, I had already fallen for him and I ignored or rationalised away every story he had that spoke of bad character. 

This first semester of university, Glen didn't really interfere with my studies, and I fit him in around time at school and time with my friends. He didn't much care for the rest of VOMIT, but he said he loved my look: the faux-hawk, the crazy clothes, the masses of accessories. If he was working an evening shift, I'd still go out dancing with my friends on the weekend, and this week's song choice is from those days: every time So Macho would come on, I'd feel a surge of love for my redneck boy and I'd get up and dance; Glen may not have known it, but this was our song; it's probably not insignificant that we never danced to it together. (And can I add that I've never seen this video before, and isn't it terrible? When American Idol first came on and I learned that Simon Cowell's biggest prior success was producing this song, I was stunned: there can't be too many other people to whom this was a significant memory; just more fodder for my latent solipsism.)

It didn't take long, however, for Glen to start acting possessive and controlling. He told me that when he described me to a friend of his (the same one I mentioned last week who had told Glen about the Loose Ladies Cabaret in the first place), this friend said he knew exactly who I was: he had checked me out in the university gym and had thought I was "hot". This may well have been just a buddy trying to back up his buddy's taste in girls, but I had to endure a bunch of questions about how often I went to the gym, who did I go with, why did I dress "hot" to work out. I started wearing baggier clothes when I'd go, and then I went less often, and then I just stopped going. It simply wasn't worth the hassle.

Before I had even met Glen, I had agreed to go to Curtis' Prom and Kegger with him. Glen didn't care that I was only going because Curtis was gay and needed a date; he was terribly jealous and put me through the third degree over the history of our friendship and my expectations for the evening. When the grad came around, I went to the ceremony and dance with Curtis -- and I was still independent enough to do mock lovey-dovey slow dancing with Curtis to totally confuse his classmates -- and then went to the Kegger with him. In those days, in order to combat teenage drinking and driving, schools put on these semi-official events where the grads would get on a school bus after the Prom and be driven out to a secret location in the country. Here, there would be a bonfire and loud music with teachers serving draft beer and snacks without judgment or restraint. There were more teachers on hand, and whenever anyone wanted to go home, these teachers would bring you right to your door and wait as you went inside: under no circumstances would any of these kids be driving that evening (and I still think this was a great idea; it was totally fun and safe). As I said before, there was a freak snowstorm the night of my own Prom, so my boyfriend at the time wasn't around when my Kegger eventually happened, and now a year later, I had more fun with Curtis at his than I had had at my own. At some point, I started talking to this guy that I had known from before, and we were both drunk and laughing and sitting in the glow of the fire, and when he leaned in to kiss me, I put my hands up and said I had a boyfriend. This was totally unprovoked and innocent on my part, and I had reacted as Glen would have wanted me to, but when I told him this story later, I tried to use it as proof that I was trustworthy and faithful. To underline that point, I fibbed and said something like, "I used to have a crush on this guy, so if it wasn't for you, I might have been tempted". All Glen got from this confession was that I had been "tempted" by some guy I was crushing on and he was enraged. I had to keep going over and over my story of the evening, and I kept trying to backtrack on the word "tempted", but I was now stuck: either I was lying about being tempted by this guy or I was lying about what actually happened next. Glen and I were together for another two years after this, and this story was thrown in my face countless times. In hindsight, this is when I should have left, but not a small part of me wanted to stay to prove that I was a trustworthy and faithful person.

Also planned before I met Glen was my backpacking trip to Europe that summer with Kevin, written about at length here, so I'll just cut and paste the relevant bit here:

My gorgeous redneck boyfriend called me within an hour of me getting home, mad that I hadn't called him first. I really should have known this guy was unsuitable for me: nearly as soon as I left, Glen had a fling with a co-worker, justifying it by saying that he had no reason to believe I wasn't cheating on him with my gay male friend (I think he honestly believed that opportunity was all a gay man needed in order to throw up his hands and say, "I'm not attracted to you, but you'll do"). When I was telling him about my trip, Glen got so angry about me talking to and giving my real address to the man in Paris who had asked to correspond with me ("Why didn't you make up a fake address? Do you want him to find you?"), and I somehow let him be the mad one; like as though him cheating on me with a co-worker -- who he continued to see at work, and presumably lust after, every day -- was way more understandable than anything I had done or anything he had imagined that I had done. I don't know how I got knocked onto the defensive on that but that's the position I was in for the next year and a half. 

Somehow, proving my own loyalty became more important to me than being able to trust in my boyfriend's; and he only became more possessive as time went on. Over that summer, Glen traded his monstrous Chevy Nova for a Triumph Spitfire (like in the picture at the top) and that's why I know I don't like convertibles: if you need to have the roof up, it feels claustrophobic, with a musty humidity hanging in the air if it's raining. If it's nice enough to have the top down, either my hair was blowing in my face or the sun was pounding the top of my head. As beautiful as this car was, I pretty much hated it. As it was a beautiful car, people always turned to look at us as we'd drive along, and that summer Glen started accusing me of checking out every guy who would look our way. We'd be stopped at a red light and I'd be innocently looking around, and as we'd pull away, Glen would say, "Well, did you get a good look?" I'd turn to him, and noting the tension in his jaw, ask a mystified, "Get a good look at what?" Through clenched teeth, Glen would describe some guy that he thought I had locked eyes with, and every time, I would have no idea what he was talking about. I am not proud to say that I eventually started keeping my eyes on the floorboards; it wasn't worth the fight to be innocently watching the world go by. And I'll mention that Glen wasn't physically abusive, I wasn't scared of him, but you don't need to be beaten to feel beaten down. And somehow in all of this, I was flattered by how much Glen wanted to keep me for himself.

When school started up again in September, I was on a much shorter leash. Glen expected me to be around him whenever he wasn't at work; and that included during the day, when I should have been in classes. And I really didn't mind; I loved being with Glen, and as he felt like my future, I didn't care that much about school. This was also the semester that my mother started at the U of L, and between wanting to avoid her on campus and not wanting to be at home in the evenings -- where my parents were in a constant screaming match that threatened to be directed at me if I caught the notice of either of them -- being with Glen was the only happy place I knew. If he was working in the evening now, I often went to the park at the river bottom to get caught up on my school reading. Any time Glen was supposed to be off by 7 or 8, I'd leave home right after dinner and drive to the parking lot of the store where he worked, doing my reading and waiting for him. More times than I can remember, I'd have been sitting out in the cold for a couple of hours and he'd come out to tell me that he had decided to go out with his friends instead of me (which usually meant to the strip club). As I would have been embarrassed to go back home so early, these were usually the evenings I'd drop in on Curtis and drink instant coffee and play Scrabble and complain about our boyfriends; often in tears.

Glen was a talented artist, and when we did hang out in the evening, it was usually at his place; drinking beer and listening to classic rock; him trying to teach me to draw. While he was right that anyone can be taught the mechanics of drawing a face, I enjoyed the peace of these evenings most of all. At one point, Glen became semi-interested in photography, and despite the fact that I am not one bit photogenic, he liked to experiment; like putting bright red lipstick on me and shooting my face in front of a black garbage bag he had taped to the wall. In those days, this hobby involved shooting a roll of film and waiting a few days to get it developed, and I was never much pleased by the results; I certainly haven't kept any of the pictures he gave me. (I did have a pocket album with a few of the best of these pictures of me and quite a few pics I had taken of Glen, but after Dave found it when we were first dating -- and his only comment was, "He's a big boy" -- I threw it out.) Photography would eventually become Glen's passion.

Meanwhile, over this school year, I lost myself ever more in Glen, spent much less time with my friends, had mediocre results at school, and started to dress like a normal person. Even though it had been my alternative look that Glen said had attracted him to me in the first place, he now kept browbeating me with, "Whose attention are you trying to get with all that?" I had no answer to that, couldn't explain that I was simply trying to express myself, and I gave it up. I was a normal-haired, jeans-wearing, eyes-on-the-ground possession, waiting to be posed at my boyfriend's command. (I don't need to explain that there was nothing risque about these pictures, right? Not only was I a prude, but in the days before digital photography, there was zero chance Glen would have sent out questionable pictures of me to be developed and seen by strangers; and besides, he really was interested in photography as art.) I was also helplessly in love, trying desperately to prove that I was worthy of Glen's love, and just the touch of his hand would send jolts of electricity through me. I was trapped and smothered and miserable and deliriously happy; I couldn't wait to spend the rest of my life with Glen.

The next summer, three important events happened: First, friends from Ontario -- Cora and Andrea, and Cora's brother Paul and a couple of his friends -- were planning a trip to Calgary and asked me if I wanted to meet them there. Glen was wary of the guys who would be along -- what if I was tempted again -- and he forbade me to go. Forbade. This was the only time I ever fought back for something and Glen told me that if I went, we were done. This blew my mind: Glen would dump me over this? After everything I had sacrificed for him? So I packed up all of his stuff (including his high school letterman jacket that I had loved and wore all the previous winter) in a garbage bag, and before I left for Calgary early the next morning, I snuck it all into his Spitfire (which he left unlocked in the driveway because he'd rather have a thief open a door than slice through the roof). I went and had a wonderful time with my old friends (with heartsickness over Glen never far from my mind), and we went up the Calgary Tower and I showed them what I knew of the city and we drove out to Banff and Lake Louise, getting drunk and sleeping in my Dad's car. When I got home after the weekend, Glen called and picked me up like nothing had changed and he apologised and said he knew that he had been wrong. On one level, I had been hollowed out by what I assumed was our breakup, and on another, I was half-relieved it was over. But if we were actually still together, that was the path of least resistance, and that was the one I stuck to. I accepted the letterman jacket back.

Cora, me, and Andrea in Banff

Second: nearing the end of August, Glen decided he wanted to take me camping. I was 19, going on 20, but I wasn't really keen to tell my parents that I was going away with my boyfriend, and I put it off and put it off, with Glen all the while telling me that he expected me to act like an adult and just do it. In the end, I worked up the nerve to tell my mother the day before we left -- implying that it was last minute and a big gang of us were going together -- but it was embarrassing because my Aunt Judi was visiting at the time and the two of them looked at me like they understood exactly what was going on. As it went, it wasn't even a very good time: being from the woods, Glen thought that camping at Waterton National Park would be like going home, but when we got there, the campground was on a plain beside a river, every tent visible to every other and not a tree in sight. So, he wasn't happy about the setting, I wasn't happy about being pressured into going, and we barely got dinner cooked before the drizzly rain put out our fire -- what should have been an exciting and bonding event (this was the first night we spent together in a year and a half of dating) was not a success; why couldn't we have fun together anymore?

Third, and most important: I knew that one of Glen's older brothers back home had Cystic Fibrosis, and against all expectations, he had been selected to receive an experimental double-lung transplant. There were to be months of pre-op tests, and as the sibling with the least to walk away from (he had a low level job at a grocery store after all), Glen was asked by his family if he could go with his brother to Toronto. Of course he had to go. And I was devastated and relieved and hopeful for the future and dreading being left alone.

So that's the ugly middle to this story, the rocky end will be coming up next week. I can't explain why I stayed so long in this manipulative relationship -- I'm not some strong-independent-woman-hear-me-roar, but I had always been the one in charge with previous guys -- and all I can figure is that I was misunderstood from the beginning and was always trying to prove that I was as decent and worthy of Glen's love as I claimed to be. And I wanted that love: Glen was probably the most charismatic and rawly attractive guy I have ever met; I manoevered by animal instincts, not quite in conscious control of myself when we were together; his smell heated my blood. And once upon a time, just hearing a song about a big, strong redneck like mine set my heart racing.

I'm tired of taking the lead
I want a man who will dominate me
Someone who will love and protect me
And take care of my every need
Now I don't mean to be personal
But a guy like that's more preferable
In my humble point of view
Than any of you