Best Man

Interview with Asa Baber

by Lyman Grant

For 10 years, Asa Baber has written the “Men” column for Playboy magazine. Born in Chicago at the end of the Depression, Asa went on to graduate from Princeton in 1958 and serve in the Maine Corps from 1958 to 1961. He has published a novel about the war In Laos, The Land of a Million Elephants, and a volume of short stories, Tranquillity Base and Other Stories. His Playboy columns are collected in Naked at Gender Gap, published in 1992. MAN! editor Lyman Grant interviewed Asa for the “Representative Man” feature in the Spring, 1992 issue.

MAN!: Asa, you are a man who knows what he believes and Is willing to stand by those beliefs when — we nughr say especially when— chose beliefs are unpopular. That seems to be an admirable quality whether one agrees with your views or not. Where did you learn to stand by your convictions?
Asa: Let me say first that when you call me a “Representative Man,” that does not mean that I think that I speak for every man. And it is important for me to say that because I can be misperceived by some guys as thinking that I speak for others, for all of men. I am not. I am one man speaking about a representative male life, whatever that is. As to my instinct toward self-destruction and stubbornness, I guess I am a man who is willing to be politically incorrect when it is necessary. The first place I would go to describe where I got that is genetically. It is my family. My people are Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky farm people. I am the first male in my family to go to college. I think there exists in my family tradition that Scotch-Irish, mule-stubborn quality of country people who say, “You can push me just this far.” The second place I would go, I guess, would be when I was 14 years old. I had been raised on Chicago’s South Side on 42nd Street, which was a fairly tough neighborhood and a declining neighborhood. I had my leather jacket, my bad case of acne, greasy hair and bad dress. I got lifted out of there and sent to a very fancy prep school on the East Coast. I was certainly politically incorrect in the prep school, particularly at first. And as a 14-year-old kid I had to figure out how much of myself I gave up to please the more snobbish of the faculty and students who were there. And I made a decision to go only about half way. I think it was at that point that I learned how prejudiced people can be, how unfair they can be, and how sometimes you have to stand up for who you are, no matter who you are, I would say that was one of the most difficult and formative experiences in my life.

MAN!: Flaw were you chosen to be 4ftedfrom that circumstance?
Asa: It was a combination of things. My grandmother had some money and could help towards my tuition. I was a fairly good athlete. I was a fast little shit. At 14, 1 could run the 100-yard dash in 10.3 or something. So the combination of that and the knowledge that I was already deeply into trouble. I was a fighter, something of a kleptomaniac. I had already done drugs; I had already experimented sexually. By the age of 14, I was not exactly an innocent. There was this sense on my part and my family’s part that if I didn’t get out of there, I would end up in very deep shit.

MAN!: You say in one of your pieces that your father was a non- drinking alcoholic.
Asa: Yes, I said that he was an alcoholic who never took a drink while I was alive. My dad was an alcoholic; he was a man who drank very heavily when he was very young, particularly in high school and college. I guess he went to about one semester at the University of Illinois and then he dropped out. I believe that alcohol was one of the reasons. Also when my father came to Chicago, he had no money at all. He was 19 or 20 and got a job in the Stephen’s Hotel, which in now the Conrad Hilton. It was then the world’s largest hotel. He got a job in the mail room, sorting mail. When he was done sorting mail, he would take some mail bags and sleep on the shelves of the mail room and then go back to work. He was really broke and really in trouble. And I think as just a matter of will power, my dad decided he could not drink and survive. And he just quit. He was a very courageous man. A very embittered man in some ways, a very humorous man, but a lot of balls.

MAN!: But like most fathers at the time, he wasn’t home much?
Asa: In terms of my relationship with my father, it was the old story of the father who is embittered, disappointed, angry and takes out a fair share of hostility on the son. He is distant from the son and then later regrets it.

MAN!: You’ve written in a piece about your mother that because of his distance your mother turned to you.
Asa: My mother and I had what was basically an Oedipal relationship. She was a great lady, a dear, dear lady, loving and supportive. But let us just say that she loved me too much in some ways. Particularly in my younger years and, I think, made the mistake of almost placing me in the role of husband. Which is a lot of pressure on a kid. And a lot of guys will know what I am talking about. My mother was an orphan who was raised by an aunt and uncle in Gibson City, Illinois. She was just as literate and bright and humorous and beautiful as could be. But she also suffered greatly from a sense of no self-worth. I think she tried to gain self-worth through me, at least in my formative years.

MAN!: You wrote that that tie was broken when you left Chicago at the age of 14.
Asa: Well. I had to break it, but in some ways that tie is never broken. But I was conscious very much that I had to get away from my mother, that her love was too possessive and too overwhelming.

MAN!: Fm sure a lot of men ideiwfy with thLr. Many of us are conscious that we have so break away from one or bosh of our parents simply to grow up.
Asa: It’s a matter of identity. Frankly, I believe that all the work we are doing in this field of men’s work is about establishing a sense of identity, of individuality. And this age tries to take away identity real vigorously.

MAN!: How so?
Asa: That’s a whole other subject. In this culture we are nothing but markets, potential spenders, potential consumers. So many many forces are trying to get our money, our vote. They try to influence and manipulate us. And by the time you get through the day, you wonder who the hell you are, as everybody is trying to get a piece of you. It is my thesis, anyway, that male identity is more tenuous, particularly at an early age, than a lot of people give it credit for being. We have to work real hard to know that we are men. I think that is what this work is about: saying that it is OK to be male and by the way now you can take a look at yourself and figure out why and how you’re male and what it is to be male. And I think it is very strengthening work.

MAN!: In a recent article about you in the Chicago Tribune, one of your colleagues says that your columns seem to have a defensive quality about them. “Asa’s always bleeding,” the colleague said. Another way of looking at it is that you’ve become a great defender, an apologist for men.
Asa: There is truth in almost every criticism, isn’t there? I am sure there are times when I’ve been too defensive. But given the history of the last 25 years, I don’t think it is a great sin to defend masculinity. It is my view that masculinity is roundly trashed every day. I’ll give you a quick example from today. A producer from a television talk show called me. She outlined a show they were doing later in the week. They are having a male feminist and a woman who has done research on male aggression, and basically they are going to talk about how awful and aggressive and terrible the male is. They wanted to know if I wanted to come on that show, and I told them that quite frankly I am very tired of ambushes and I don’t have a great need to be there. The producer said. “Well, as you know, men are the standards by which we judge everything and men have all the power.” How many times have I heard that? So I have defended masculinity, and have at times been too defensive. But what wasn’t mentioned in the Tribune piece is that sometimes I just sit down and boogie and goof around. It’s not all sincerity.

MAN!: Yet you do seem to love men, not as men might have been, in a romancing of some past of kings and warriors and magicians. And nor a beaurful vision of what men might become. You love men as they are, right now, today.
Asa: Exactly right Just regular guys.

MAN!: So what’s so lovable about regular guys?
Asa: Well, basically, I think they anchor the world. As the feminists go off and trash masculinity, and as some of the mythopoetic guys go off and get in touch with their King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, and as everybody just floats off the earth into some stratosphere, the regular guys — the truckers, the farmers, the cops, the firemen, the newspaper vendors, the taxi drivers, and all the regular guys — they keep the humor going, they make the tough choices, they commit their lives to their families, they deal with the violence of the world. I think they are wonderful. I hope that in this men’s work we can be much more inclusive, and always work with those guys. The smartest people in the world are everywhere. I’ve known some Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeants as smart, as well-read, and as shrewd as any college professor I ever met. We have to remember that regular guys are fine, thank you very much.

MAN!: Bus Isn’t It in some ways these regular guys who are the wife-beaters, the child abusers...
Asa: Let me stop you right there. You look at wife-beating and it goes across the economic scale. And you can find husband-beating, too. I think it is one of the most snobbish things in the world to suggest that because we have an economic clout or a college degree that it places some men above others.

MAN!: So let me ask, does men’s work offer anything to the average guy?
Asa: What the average guy needs is support from other men — in particular, support for the idea that masculinity is a good quality. I feel that the average guy will never choose to deal with the more exotic rituals of much of the Bly work or with the Jungian vocabulary. But the average guy certainly feels ambushed and trapped by feminist rhetoric, by pressures to perform as a breadwinner, a good mate, a good father. Just an awful lot of unpublished great men think about all the issues that we talk about. They don’t necessarily talk about them, but they sure as hell think about them. One of the deepest and most unfair criticisms of men is the whole idea that since men don’t talk as much as women or verbalize as rapidly that they’re poor communicators.

MAN!: As a young man, you served in the Marine Corps. What did that experience teach you about the nature of men?
Asa: Well, first of all, l happen to think that the Marine Corps is one of the finest organizations in the world. I believe that my experience in the Marines was a very grounding experience. I use that almost jokingly, too. We covered a Jot of ground, and we dug a lot of earth. What the Marine Corps did for me was take me out of the precious Ivy League environment and put me back on the street where I belong. There are traditions and loyalties in the Marines that are incredible. The care and the training that, for example, my drill instructors gave me was just outstanding.

MAN!: The first Men column that you wrote, in April, 1982, was titled “Role Models” and there you wrote about your drill instructor, Danny Gross.
Asa: I owe my life 10 him. During that boot camp, he became a very good friend and a real role model for me. If you want to know a group of just great men, go down and meet a bunch of drill instructors in a Marine boot camp. You will laugh your ass off. They are the funniest human beings on earth: they are the toughest, and they are the most demanding. They give of themselves — I mean, just the physical energy it takes to be a drill instructor. They are just great men. And you learn in the Marine Corps how to take care of your own. If you’re in charge of some men, you have to make sure they don’t have trench foot; you have to make sure that they are well fed: you’ve got to make sure that if you are in an ambush you can get them all out; that you just don’t suddenly leave somebody behind because you forgot them. There is a sense of loyalty. The Marine is just the essence of the stand-up guy.

MAN!: It seems that your drill instructor served as a mentor. And you wrote that sooner or later, younger men turn to you as a role model. What does it mean to be a mentor?
Asa: I’ll put it this way: I think we are very simple and primitive creatures. As men, almost everything we learn is by imitation. How did you learn to hit a baseball? You watch guys hit baseballs. We imitate each other physically and how we treat one another. I think that this is the essence of male initiation. Men teach other men how to behave. That’s what mentoring is. I think another name for it is brothering. Fathering, sometimes. I think it is much more often like the older brother saying, here’s how you hold the curve ball. To some degree, I think it is how we show our love for one another. We don’t talk a lot about it. We just say, “Here, let me show you how I build this back porch.” That’s how we communicate.

MAN!: When Robert Bly was in Austin in 1989, he tossed out the comment that a father’s role might just be to express conditional love. Fathers are critical; fathers are judgmental. Perhaps it is the mentor, the older brother, that expresses the unconditional love for other men. Perhaps we need both kinds of love.
Asa: We do need both. But I think that as fathers we need to learn to be more unconditional in our love. I would like to think that as a father, I was basically unconditional in my love for my sons. I am sure that I was also critical of my sons. But I hope at heart, they understood and understand that I’m going to love them, no matter what. But you’ve raised an interesting point, because there is a way that when men deal with other men we set up certain boundaries, certain standards. We do show our displeasure if those standards are crossed.