The Measure of a Man

Tomorrow night the Jazzman and I are going to a birthday party for a woman whom I've met once, at the summer Farmer's Market a year-and-a-half ago. The net keeps getting tighter and tighter around us—the honoree knows my younger son from his college days, and she and her husband are good friends with the Jazzman.

I'm normally very anxious about going to parties where I fear I will know next to no-one, but I'm not sensing that same anxiety building for tomorrow night. The couple I met a week ago should be there, and that woman and I have a mutual admiration and respect over all things fiber; it will be fun to see her again and get to know her better.

The anticipation of this event has caused me to page backwards in my memory over the men I've dated in the past twelve years, and to examine their social networks. The Lemonade Tycoon was friends with one couple, and during the four or five months we dated, we socialized with them once. Mr. Match only knew his work colleagues, and had very little positive to say about them. His greatest skill was complaining about his job. The Flipper had one friend—a CPA who started lighting up his joints at noon every day, poured his first drink around 4:00 p.m., and was out of his mind by 7:00 p.m. Socialize with him? No thanks. EEFFH enjoyed socializing with the philosophy faculty at the university, and I found them rude and socially unacceptable. The Gardener had only women friends. Hmmm.

None of these men had a regular network of man friends with whom they spent time, who would call them or text them, who would tease and tell good-old-boy tall tales with them. Who had their backs.

My sense of this very large network of friends I keep hearing about is that they are true and loyal to each other and genuinely enjoy each other's company. Dr. Phil talks about people having a soft place to fall. In contrast, I think these men are a strong brick wall around each other—protection and support. Even before having met them, I feel completely accepted by them.

I imagine they have noticed an attitudinal change in the Jazzman—a good change—and that they endorse that goodness and impute it to me.

Or maybe they're just the sort of Youngstown friends that my son and daughter-in-law were willing to leave everything in Arizona for, to return to a support network they had found nowhere but here.

The measure of a man? I think you can measure him by the people who want to spend time with him.