The Gentry

While I don’t remember it, I clearly at some point agreed to receive a series of desultory magazines sent to my address. This selection of rags is quite random and sometimes I get a gem (Newsweek) and sometimes a giant question mark (Parenting). This is how I came to be a regular recipient of GQ, and unlike the back issues of Plane and Pilot and Better Homes & Gardens I actually enjoy reading this one. While I would more accurately consider myself a dude far more than I would gentlemen, I do occasionally like to roll a bit of civility and tact that one associates with the polished man.

It seems a bit contradictory that a schlep like me would trouble himself with even minor trappings of refinery, especially when considering that my second favorite pastime is to mercilessly attack pretension whenever I see it rear its carefully coiffed head. Amongst my favorite targets are the holy trinity of posers; arthouse blank verse poets, vainglorious fashonistas, and dickheads who claim to understand The Wall Street Journal. And absolutely nothing that trips my bullshitometer more than going into a coffee house just to see some hipster with a shiny belt buckle and nut-hugger jeans tucked into vintage hightops prattle off an unbelievably convoluted drink order that mentions soy twice.

I do, however, draw the distinction between pomposity and class. For even though I am just as likely to end the evening at seven eleven at four thirty in the morning calling the clerk ‘sacred brother’ while I try to explain the plotline to The Sopranos, I start the evening with the same routine. That routine includes carefully laying out and suiting up my nighttime survival kit; a pocket square, a lighter, a pen, some extra cash, and a good luck charm in addition to the usual carryon; mp3 player, cellphone, and sketch journal. Conspicuously absent from this list are condoms, and that is because for as often as they are needed I can just as easily jump into the red phone booth and sidestep into the alternate dimension where my bullshit actually constitutes charm. Most people aren’t aware that I am carrying these things but when the opportunity arises, and I am able to produce a handkerchief or silver plated zippo to a young lady in need, I hope it communicates that I am an interesting and subtly refined person. Of course it could just as easily be screaming “huge freaking anglophile and possibly homosexual”.

Being in the Midwest the term “gentlemen” or “refined” generally carries with it a negative connotation. I grew up and currently live in the shadow of the largest manufacturing and industrial complex in the northern hemisphere and as such the blue collars look upon those terms with great distain. Gentlemen are stuck up, they don’t work, they perfume their hands. Sometimes I imagine that when I say to my mill friends that I like to consider myself something of a gent, they look at me as if I suddenly transformed into a sixteenth century dandy with a tall powdered wig, laced cuffs, and a perfumed hankie that I hold in front of my mouth as I speak in a loud falsetto.

The truth is that I consider the term gentlemen to mean a man of culture and taste, and that is not something to be ashamed of. I like good wine, whiskey and beers, not because it is a vogue hobby, but because someone walked me through the processes of looking at and enjoying these things. They pointed out the differences and subtle character in each one in terms that I could understand and now when I drink them I experience new things that contribute significantly to my enjoyment. I like pop art because it is simply aesthetically pleasing, not because the hallowed pages of GQ informed me I should. I like these things even though I know for a fact I regularly engage in behavior that would be scoffed at by the gentlemen community as a whole. I don’t think gentlemen are supposed to own all three major video game consoles at any one time. And I am reasonably sure that most people who call themselves refined don’t have a cat that they claim watches over their sleeping form to make sure nobody sodomizes them in the night.

Like just “alternative”, “spiritual”, and a myriad of other monikers one could label themselves, I take what aspects of the term “gentlemen” that appeal to me and leave the rest to the hardcore. This salad bar approach has served me exceptionally well during the ongoing construction of Mr. Ebner because it allows me to dodge definition, and definition inherently contains limitations. Sure, sometimes I flip through GQ and let myself wonder how cool it would be to have that suit, umbrella, and haircut. But then I also consider that the possession of those things would also make me the consummate GQ guy, and that would make it impossible for me to also be the comic book guy or the guy teaching himself to juggle. My life would suck if I were just one thing.