Girls’ Stuff, Boys’ Stuff

---01.22.2000---

I’m very happy today. I could feel myself constricting over the past couple weeks as my concern grew about what the islanders would think about me writing all this stuff down. Phillip has been running around interviewing people, taking photos, with an eye on putting everything up on the web. There’s a lot of talk about how this is making everyone a little uncomfortable. I began to wonder about my clandestine typing. I mentioned all of this to Jon. He was of the opinion that Phillip and I are from two different universes and not to worry. I showed him a few pieces of what had been written so far, which he enjoyed. Then he said, “By the way, I don’t feel competitive with you, quite the opposite actually.”

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I got a great letter from my friend Mirasol in San Francisco the other day. It was a delirious run through beauty, philosophy, and late night observations, all taken in and relayed like deep, full breaths, like being dressed for cocktails and running, giddy, down a side street at night, or like the meadows and flowers of childhood. It felt like being shown how she sees, which is such a pleasure.

The other satisfying surprise came in the delivery, made in typical St. Agnes fashion. Hans had just picked up the mail from the post office and passed the letter to me as we crossed paths on my way to Gugh.

I read as I walked, sandwich in hand, over hills and through puddles. When I reached the Bar I stopped, handing my full attention to the enthusiastic pen strokes rushing over the pages. Too soon they jumped, jotted some x’s & o’s and ice skated through her signature.

The wind, rushing cold over the Bar, from green cove to green cove, fluttered the loose leaves in my hand. I folded them carefully to ensure her words wouldn’t be blown away and lost at sea, then stuffed my hands into my pockets and carried on to Gugh.

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Coming back from Gugh today, I was initiated by the Bar.

Before I left Patricia’s, she looked out the window to check the state of the tide. We had lingered too long over tea. “Better hurry, you’ll get wet,” she said. The heavy spring tide had already covered half the Bar and was surging fast.

I ran down to the beach and tried to ease my way through the current. Five meters in and the cold sea rushed down into my boots. A few more steps and the engorged cove, now mated with its twin, swallowed me up to my knees. Back on Gugh, I later learned, Patricia had kept watch to ensure I wouldn’t be swept away.

A day or so earlier she had said, “If you ever get into trouble on the Bar—not that you would—let the current take you and it will drop you on this side of the cove.” I gave a quick thought to turning back but I was already wet either way, so I decided to run for it. The water wasn’t quite as cold as I expected. I charged for the opposite shore! Gworsh! Gworsh! Gworsh!

I bounded over rocks which I could still see through two-and-a-half feet of rough water. I ran, open sea to my left, open sea to my right, and felt the rare, headlong rush of danger, as my surge cut across the current at 90 degrees.

Simple thrills like these seem yet another casualty of modern life. We don’t have many opportunites to face and conquer mild dangers anymore. All we have left are the inanely safe and the desperately adventurous. On one hand, scissors advise us to use safety glasses. On the other, screaming bungee jumpers leap off of the nearest bridge. We need sinking sandbars and wolves at our door. They keep us fresh.

The bank gradually eased upwards again and I was back on St. Agnes, sopping wet and dripping from the waist down. I looked back at the torrent I had just braved and laughed at the state I was in. My lungs heaved as I trudged towards the rocks to sit down. Pulling my boots off produced a sloppy, wet, sucking sound, and more than a pint glass of seawater each. I headed for home, soaked like a sailor, but more alive for the experience.

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Speaking of manhood, I’ve heard women here on several occasions saying, “You go do that. That’s boys’ stuff.” Patricia said it to me the other day on Gugh as we were deciding who would operate her backhoe (a Christmas gift from her husband—she got him a bread maker). It was prefaced by her asking me if I knew how to build a road. Glibly, I said, “Yeah, I can do that.” So we got out her new backhoe, figured out how to get it running, and got to work making a small section of “road”.

I like this idea of “boys’ stuff.” It offers men an arena within which to work and feel proud to be a man. The same goes for “girls’ stuff”. When women do “girls’ stuff” it gives men more reasons to admire them and say things like, “I love the way you do that.” I just like that we can admire each other’s differences, that we can see things in each other that we feel are beautiful and attractive, that we can find joy in our polarities.

The day after that she asked me if I knew how to operate an oxy-acetylene cutting torch. So funny. It’s been awhile, but I do.

I’ve had such fun working with her over there. I really enjoy her company and her down-to-earth nature. She doesn’t get too worked up when things go wrong (like when towing the backhoe snapped the linkage on her tractor). Her smile is buoyant and never disappears for too long.

---01.22.2023---

Present-day Nik here again. Regarding, “boys’ stuff” and “girls’ stuff”, I’d like to offer a more nuanced view and refer to them as “masculine things” and “feminine things”. In this way it doesn’t matter which gender we identify more strongly with. We can still do masculine and feminine things, feel good about doing them, and admire each other for the things we offer.

And, of course, we might identify as more female and still do masculine things from time to time. I identify as male, the gender I was born into, and like to do plenty of things that might be considered traditionally feminine, like nurturing, caring for, and cooking. And I love knowing how to dock a boat or pick a line up a rutted four-by-four trail.

I think it’s nice the way we can find joy in our masculinity and our feminity, and admire those traits in each other. Let's celebrate our polarities, for the things that we may not be so good at ourselves. We can be. We can admire. We can receive. We can give. We can learn.