Drinking at the Dam
masculinity, artistry, emotion
It was pouring rain. I spent the earlier part of day running around town finishing up some moving errands - I do laundry at the laundromat now, and had to go get my testosterone from the pharmacy in my old neighborhood, while the rain clouds encroached. When we started moving the bar from SPACE to the First Parish UU Church, it was coming down in sheets.
First Parish is gorgeous - red cushions on the pews and big, plain glass windows, and a massive organ in the back. My first show with SPACE was at the UU Church - I was a volunteer, and my job was to make sure nobody brought any beverages (water included) into the sanctum. Working the UU shows as a member of the event staff brings me back to my time in film school - there is lots of hurry up and wait, lots of hustle and bustle. Everyone is a bit out of their comfort zone. And this time, there was an air of nervousness, because this was the Bill Callahan show.
Bill Callahan, the singer songwriter with a beloved career as the face behind the recording act Smog. People were ravenous to see him, tickets sold out right away. Someone left a voicemail begging for a ticket to the show when he heard there were none left. I didn’t know his music by name, but I was familiar with some songs - and I’m a sucker for excitement.
On the night of the show, we couldn’t really tell whether or not Bill was a diva. When he arrived at SPACE, he wasn’t making eye contact with any of us. He retreated back to the green room as the crowd started to arrive, full of excited devotees. While I tended bar, I asked most people whether or not they’d seen him before - most had.
Bill Callahan is like, a man’s man. He is doing a pretty traditional, aesthetic masculinity. He wore a black shirt with a subtle line of rhinestones along the wide collar and shirt pockets. His haircut sharp, clean-shaven face serious. His voice, a leathery rich baritone, communicates masculinity.
Playing with only one other musician, the set was stripped bare and revealing. He didn’t play the Smog hits that I knew, or even the ones that I would get to know later (after seeing Bill, I got really into his album A River Ain’t Too Much to Love.) He opened up room for emotion, painting obscured scenes of yearning over the vast expanse of the desert. Longing for lover, mother, and self was all contained in this manly mans man. Sat in the church pews, tall plain-glass windows being smacked with torrential rain.
It was 2021 and I was working my first Camden Film Fest. I had just come out of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, where I’d made a lot of work about transness. I’d come back from a cross country road trip, and was barist-ing and trying to become a journalist. I’d been using they/them pronouns for like… eight weeks. There was a lot going on.
There was one trans-masculine filmmaker who had a film in the festival that year, and I had been trying to find a way to talk to him since he’d gotten to town. I didn’t really know what to say to him. In the middle of a cocktail mixer on the first or second day, I ended up saying, “I was really excited that you were going to be here because of some things that are going on in my personal life.”
He took that cue pretty quickly and ended up sitting down with me for like half an hour and talking over drinks. We talked about how confusing things are when you are told that misogyny is something that is acting upon you. He warned me about not being too quick to cut out friends who struggled to understand how I was changing. The evening ebbed and I mingled with some more folks, ruminating on the conversation we’d had. It was really important to me.
A few months later he came through and did a screening of his film and QnA at SPACE. I was newly on testosterone and eager to impress him, and I told him earnestly that the conversation we’d had at CIFF meant a lot to me. He told me that he didn’t remember what we talked about at all.
Lately I’ve been interested in my encounters with these masculine artists and the things that they have to do to protect themselves. The distances they have to keep.
Masculinity is a narrow guide book. After the contradictory rules and time consuming routines that marked my experience with femininity, the vague rigidity of masculinity is a whole new trip You’re not supposed to smile or hug. It’s hard to find the space to be giddy. The rules are blunt and curiosity is discouraged - if you have to ask, bla bla bla.
I was recently at my third screening of the film I mentioned earlier, by that trans-masc filmmaker. It’s a challenging film about family trauma and survival and how you always hurt the ones you love. And during the QnA, people ask him deeply meaningful and personal questions, all with an emotional affect ringing in their voices, about some of the hardest things he has ever gone through. I’ve been thinking about how he’s been answering those personal questions for like two-and-a-half years now, at QnAs, to emotional strangers who think he has an answer about masculinity, brotherhood, lover.
When you’re able to express emotions through traditional masculinity, people flock to you. It seems like you might have the answer to something, something that a lot of us might like to borrow. People feel close to you right away. And because of that, you have to cultivate a distance.
After the Bill Callahan show, I saw just one audience member who waited around afterwards to try and get a couple of words with the guy. Bill very politely, and quietly, chatted with the guy for a few moments before signing something, and saying goodnight.