The Tender Bar

by J.R. Moehringer

My mother would slip behind her mask of feigned calm for the sake of discretion, as someone might step behind a screen when changing.

My father was an improbable combination of magnetic and repellent qualities.

I didn’t understand why Grandma allowed Grandpa to mistreat her, because I didn’t understand the depth of her dependence on him, emotional and financial.

“Know why they grow those big arms?” “No.” He lit a Marlboro. “When a cactus starts leaning to one side,” he said, “it grows an arm on the other side, to right itself. Then, when it starts tipping that way, it grows an arm on the opposite side. And so on. That’s why you see them with eighteen arms. A cactus is always trying to stand up straight. You’ve got to admire anything that tries that hard to keep its balance.”

knew that my mother was searching for romantic love, and though I didn’t understand what that was, I suspected it was similar to what I was searching for, a connection of some sort, and I worried that, as much as we cared for each other, loneliness was our true common bond.

“You must do everything that frightens you, JR. Everything. I’m not talking about risking your life, but everything else. Think about fear, decide right now how you’re going to deal with fear, because fear is going to be the great issue of your life, I promise you. Fear will be the fuel for all your success, and the root cause of all your failures, and the underlying dilemma in every story you tell yourself about yourself. And the only chance you’ll have against fear? Follow it. Steer by it. Don’t think of fear as the villain. Think of fear as your guide, your pathfinder—your Natty Bumppo.”

Aside from the tangibles—clothes, shoes, parents—what I noticed that first day was their self-confidence. I could almost see their self-confidence rising off the campus in shimmering waves, like the August heat, and like the heat it sapped my strength. I wondered if self-confidence could be acquired, or if, like fathers and flawless skin, it was just something you were born with.

The room was spinning. I’d had too much to drink. And yet not nearly enough.

No one had ever asked me that question. I tried to explain. Sinatra’s voice, I said, is the voice most men hear in their heads. It’s the paradigm of maleness. It has the power men strive for, and the confidence. And yet when Sinatra is hurt, busted up, his voice changes. Not that the confidence goes away, but just beneath the confidence is a strain of insecurity, and you hear the two impulses warring for his soul, you hear all that confidence and insecurity in every note, because Sinatra lets you hear, lays himself bare, which men so seldom do.

Are we hiding from life or courting death?