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My Space: Men must have a place to go
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Published: August 11, 2008
I live in a cave.
Well, I really don't live in a cave, although it seems that I spend a lot of my waking hours in one. And it really isn't a cave -- that's my wife's name for my man space, which in my case is my high-tech video viewing room.
Find me a man who doesn't have a space of some kind roped off or demarcated as his in his own home, and I'll show you a man who is letting down his gender.
We need our spaces, whether it be the garage, the basement work bench, the patio gas grill, the home gym, even the home office.
The other night I was in my friend's basement where he does all his bicycle repairs. He's got his old FM radio cranked up, a spotless white floor so none of his little screws and gears get lost against a gray background and two comfortable bar stools.
"I love my cave," he purred contentedly.
Why do men need their caves? It reminds me of the cocktail napkins that my dad used to keep in one of his two caves. This one was the basement bar, a popular affectation in 1940s and '50s Cleveland.
Every reputable working man had an underground hangout where he could drink with his buddies -- one of my father's pals had a full-service bar, complete with beer on tap (Schlitz, of course) and huge jars of nuts and pretzels.
I think I tried my first beer there when I was about 8. That kept me off the stuff for a good 10 years or so.
My dad also had a well-stocked work bench to which he would often retreat, although for the life of me I cannot remember him ever doing any serious home repairs. All the tools were perfectly mounted in ascending rows, their blades and gears well-oiled, the colors of their handles seemingly matched. I think maybe he just liked looking at them, being with them, surrounded by them.
That's a man-cave experience.
Back to those bar napkins -- they were typical 1950s sexist images, consisting of a big hairy cave man carrying a club and dragging a bodacious blonde cave woman by the hair back to his rocky domain. There was some ridiculous (and now offensive) caption accompanying these -- something like, "Inviting your date to dinner." But the image that stayed with me was the cave, a deep, dark space in which a man could be anything he wanted to be.
When I went down to South Carolina to visit my brother last week, I was confronted with a different kind of cave.
My brother, who puts together financing for senior-living housing, works out of his cave. It's a rambling office filled with a couple of desks, a TV, a music system and multiple phones, both cell and landline. He goes in there about 9 a.m. and doesn't emerge until after 7 p.m., and he feels as if he put a good day in at the cave.
Why is that his cave? Because my sister-in-law rarely ventures near it, he can keep it as messy and slovenly as he prefers, and it reeks of male energy and testosterone.
That's one of the keys to a successful cave: you don't have to put up a KEEP OUT sign because the people you want to keep out don't want to come in anyway.
Most man caves have a kind of invisible protection shield that seems to repel women in particular -- they seem loathe to enter, even if invited. It's kind of the way men feel if they ever end up inadvertently in a women's locker room, as happened to me in high school. Even if no one's there, we want out, and quickly. It just feels weird to be where you don't belong.
My wife will occasionally, and gingerly, set foot into my cave to watch a movie in my "home theater," a wishful term of mine for what amounts to a TV, a DVD player, a tuner and a few surround-sound speakers. While she's there, she seems nervous, even a little tentative. The speaker behind the little divan I installed for her is too loud, she says. The lighting is too dim. The room smells like sweat (I do my stretching in there after my morning walks).
That's all right. I don't want her to feel too comfortable in my man cave, because then it will cease to be one.
It will become just another room in our house, a room where anyone can feel at home. And that defeats the whole purpose of the man cave.
Time for me to put on my leopard skin and grab my club. I'm inviting my wife to dinner tonight.
■ Dale Pollock, a former dean at the School of Filmmaking at the N.C. School of the Arts, now teaches film there.
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