The Good Green Stuff

A Parable For Men

By

Leigh Travis, Ph.D.

The conventioneers on the elevator with him announced that they all were heading toward the pubs on the first floor of the hotel, and asked if he'd like to join them: he hesitated - did he have enough time for a beer before grabbing a quick dinner, calling home to his wife, Diana, and his sons, and then hitting the sack?

He wanted to chat with the boys, but he and Diana had been having severe marital problems since she got her law license and hooked herself up with those radical types, and he'd had it with her and her "new vision of men and women," period. That decided it: he'd call the boys tomorrow when they came home for lunch while she was at work, and spare himself the agony of dealing with her tonight.

And it had been a long, grueling, day, for "Tank" Moses: he had given the keynote address, sat as an expert on two panels, conducted three seminars, fielded hours of sincere, but annoyingly foolish, questions and listened to the usual endless tales of suffering and heartbreak. Same old stories of being nice guys screwed by unscrupulous wives and insensitive, bigoted, Judges: when were they going to learn to strike first, and hard? Ah, nuts, time to relax, he admonished himself, as he exited the elevator and started to head towards the pubs with the guys.

"Dr. Moses! Just one quick question, OK?"

He recognized the tense, thin, voice of Adam Le Jonn: Adam had been badgering him for months, expecting him to somehow discover some kind of magic formula to rescue Adam from the traumatic events following his divorce - visitation denials, his sons dealing or on drugs and flunking out of school, one drunken bum after another in the spacious home he had boughtfor, and the Judge had given to, his alcoholic ex-wife.

To be sure, Adam perhaps over-valued Tank's learned opinions, but based on Tank's some 20 years in the movement, a Ph.D., a J.D., and the Presidency of Fathers for Justice, Adam "trusted Tank implicitly" as he often put it to other men. Tank - an ex professional football payer - was tough - really tough, and Adam needed to absorb some of that toughness. Adam plodded over to his mentor:

"What does 'ecofeminism' mean, Dr. Moses?" he asked.

Tank turned, leaned his considerable bulk against a pillar, shrugged: "Just more virulent green stuff - that's all it is," he replied, stroking his long, graying, University Professor's beard, a faint, forlorn, smile in his sky - blue eyes.

"Green stuff?" Adam repeated. It was hardly the kind of answer Adam expected from his learned leader, whom Adam had unconsciously come to idolize, the way small boys sometimes worship their teachers, or their fathers.

"Yup, green stuff," Tank replied, his gruff voice acid with a weary bitterness: "they've been spewing it all over us for about 30 years now." He nodded, began packing his ornate, carved pipe, as he spoke: "Feminist economics, feminist history, feminist psychology, feminist 'unisex' education, feminist sociology, feminist politics, feminist this and that ad nauseam - anti-female, anti-male, anti-fatherhood, anti-civilization rubbish - and right in the midst of the heavy muddleheadedness of all that green stuff they were - and are - stealing and destroying our most precious assets right in front of our faces - with the unwitting help of some of us, I might add."

Adam was bewildered - and frustrated: he had waited all day through interminable speeches and papers at the annual men's rights convention, including all of Tank's appearances, to ask Tank's expert opinion on the subject of ecofeminism, and Tank's answer seemed at best puzzling. Adam tried again:

"How's ecofeminism different from, say, just plain 'ole environmentalism?"

Tank lit his pipe, looked at his young, nervous, rather naive, companion. Adam was in his mid-thirties, thin, about 160 pounds, sported bright white sneakers, bluejeans, a red sweat shirt with "FFJ" printed on it, had shaggy, straight black hair parted down the center, wore thick, bifocal, glasses. He had a Ph.D. in mathematics and was a research engineer, like his father, who had died in a airline accident when Adam was a child; his mother never remarried, and raised her only child alone. Adam had joined Tank's chapter of Fathers for Justice some two years ago following a divorce in which Adam, like most of the other members of FFJ, had lost everything. But Adam's story was also different from those of the other men.

Early in his marriage to Judy, whom he had married as a teenager to "make an honest woman outta her," as he put it, Adam had somehow been converted to radical feminism by her, overlooking the facts that, while she was beautiful, she was also alcoholic, promiscuous, had lied to him about being on the pill, and was at best a neglectful mother of their twin sons. After he caught her in bed several times with different men, he moved out and rented an apartment, leaving the boys with "their blood mother" in the hopes that the sole responsibility for them would straighten her around. It had felt like the right thing to do.

Within days Judy sued him for divorce and got an Ex-Parte Order giving her custody of the boys, which Adam did not contest. Sprouting the party line of the male feminists, he had proudly stated that he believed Judy could "do it all" by herself, and decided to give her full custody of their two sons if she agreed to get feminist therapy to help her understand how it was that his "controlling chauvinistic attitudes" had "caused her to seek relief in substance abuse and elsewhere," as she had phrased it. Her feminist attorney, Maime Meinmash, had also sternly advised Adam to "look in the mirror" and seek therapy with a "person in tune with today's truths about men and women."

Thus, unlike the other men in the group, Adam had not put up any kind of a fight for his children or his property, and now he was paying for it. After a few months of severe depression, several feminist "consciousness raising retreats" and useless psychotherapy, he became haunted by a vague sense that somehow he had done the wrong thing, and turned to Tank and his group of angry, and beleaguered, divorced men, for companionship, support, and a magical way to somehow undo what he had done to himself and his sons.

"Oh, it differs considerably," Tank finally replied from behind a blue cloud of pipe smoke" - largely because of the imprimatur of 'feminism' which makes it a poisonous strain of the green stuff, and with the that kind of green stuff the power to do horrendous damage."

Adam was often confused by Tank's learned vocabulary; as a mathematician Adam had never placed much faith in words, but he had learned to face his ignorance and ask Tank to explain his strange language:

"What's an 'himprintadure'?"

Tank raised an eyebrow, puffed on his pipe, looked askance at his unstudied, pesky, apprentice:

"Ahem: 'Imprimatur'. A license, given by a Church or State, to print nonsense and have it believed, by the population as a whole, to be Divinely Inspired Truth, when it is nothing of the sort and, in fact, is usually contemptibly distorted and thus profoundly evil. The imprimatur these days is usually in the form of the word "feminist" in the title of the propaganda, like a 'Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.' 'Ecofeminism' indeed."

Adam shook his head in disbelief: "How can something as fine as being good to the earth be evil?"

Tank felt the irritation rising in his throat, squashed it, forced a benign smile at his follower: "Did I say that the ecological movement was evil, Adam?"

"Well, no, but--."

Tank shook his head: "No 'no buts,' Adam, please: just plain 'no' is sufficient - and correct. It's the virulent green stuff that is evil, and anything that gets contaminated with it becomes evil and destructive beyond description. Look at what's happened in the last 30 years! A 50 percent divorce rate - two thirds of them filed by women--, 90 percent of custody to women, with the resultant massive juvenile delinquency, colossal increases in out-of-wedlock births, incredible growth in the male teenage suicide rate - and on and on: read my books and articles!"

Adam was baffled: he confessed to himself that he had never read Tank's works, but he had never heard Tank talk so, well, so - intense? Was 'green stuff' a secret code word for some kind of horrible political conspiracy? Or was Tank a woman hater? Adam had heard people say that of certain people in the men's rights group - well, but not of Tank. And what did Tank's simple words mean? Usually Tank's lessons were long, detailed results of his research projects or complicated arguments in Constitutional law, presented gently, in a soft, deliberately controlled voice, entirely professional, hard to understand, because of all the legal and psychological terminology. And Tank was married - remarried - to gorgeous, brilliant, Diana, a respected woman's rights attorney, and they had three handsome sons. As a matter of fact, they had met at a convention like this one: they were an ideal, modern couple of the 90's. No way was Tank a woman hater, no way. Adam tried again:

"Can we go back to the green stuff thing, sir? You always tell the guys in the movement to 'define our words': that's all I'm doing now, asking you to define your words."

Tank blushed, grinned: "Ok, you got me! Hoisted on my own petard. 'Define my terms', I take it, is what you mean, eh? OK: but remember, it's been a long day, I'm rather bushed, so please listen - listen very carefully, OK? It's a kind of parable that you have to think about to understand."

Adam nodded, vaguely remembered that a parable was some kind of story with a moral, pointed towards an empty table in the hotel foyer, and they sat down.

"Ok, look," Tank began, "Many years ago, when I first started teaching at the University here, I also started to go bald. I'd just gotten creamed in my first divorce, was broke and very lonely, and I confess to feeling excessively ashamed of that embarrassing bald spot on the back of my head: I tried to cover it up by letting my hair grow long like a hippy's, combed it back over that humiliating hint of premature aging. But, alas, I started losing that hair, too. Finally, I screwed up the courage to ask my barber, Bud, what to do about restoring my sex appeal. He laughed at me, and then explained 'not to worry', he had just the remedy for me, namely, 'the good green stuff.'"

Adam was more baffled than ever: "'G'on," he said.

Tank brushed away a haze of pipe smoke: "No - seriously: Bud and I created our own belief system in the GGS - the "Good Green Stuff" - and as a result nowadays the GGS drops invisibly on my head every time I walk through the door of Bud's barber shop, and although Bud has warned me that it takes a long, long, time for it to work, I have every confidence that someday I will have my old, luxuriant head of wavy brown hair back again. I trust Bud implicitly, you see - and he and I have become sorta chums because of the GGS, have had years of hilarious fun with it, to the bafflement of other customers. Great diversion from the usual mindlessness of men talking sports garbage together. A veritable miracle! That's what faith in the GGS can do, you see!"

Adam looked at Tank's glossy, bald head, reflecting the light of the overhead chandelier above them: "Ah, but, excuse me, Sir--."

Tank puffed on his pipe, waved his free hand, laughed uproariously: "Of course, to you it looks as though the green stuff isn't working on me: but your problem is that you are so damned intellectual and logical that you are lacking in male trust, fear initiation into the sacred mysteries of the GGS, are at best a neophyte, are no where near being a true believer, and are thus blind to the Revealed Truth of the Good Green Stuff!"

"Are you b-sing me?" Adam snapped when Tank's laughter subsided: Adam was bewildered and irritated by Tank's 'definition of terms' and felt he was somehow being toyed with, even mocked. "Did you pay him money for this so-called stuff?"

Tank scowled: "Green stuff for green stuff? Of course not, son, that would have ruined the meticulous inanity of the plan! You seem not to understand how men play - and besides, you're not listening carefully to me, as I requested you do: the GGS is invisible, is a fiction, doesn't exist, but is also simultaneously and wonderfully real! Look at what it's done for Bud and I!" Tank laughed, tapped his pipe against the ashtray on the small white table in front of him, "Now, Adam: I have defined my terms: it's up to you to work with the definition of terms, the parable, try to understand its application to the present realities which are torturing you."

"Ok, sure," Adam answered obediently, still massively confused, "but - er, one last question, OK?"

"OK: but a short one, please: I've a got a date with a beer and a burger."

Adam swallowed hard, looked over, plaintive:

"How's this green stuff wrecking 'our most precious assets'? You mean things like trees 'n water 'n stuff?"

Tank shook his head: "You're not thinking: the virulent green stuff itself doesn't destroy anything."

"It doesn't?"

"It doesn't. It can't - if you see it for what it is."

"Then what does--. "

"Don't you understand," Tank heard himself growl impatiently, "it's the belief in the illusion that the virulent green stuff is true that does the damage!"

"Then what's it hurting in the environment?"

"'It' isn't hurting any thing! It's the belief in the virulent green stuff that's doing the damage to people."

Adam thought, rephrased his question: "What's it that's getting hurt?"

One keynote speech, two panels, three seminars: perhaps he had not made even a dent in the dense skulls of those audiences either. It was a hard business, trying to educate hoards of essentially fatherless men raised by sometimes incompetent women, their hearts and minds poisoned by years of feminist propaganda. Adam was one of a legion of wrecked men, fatherless boys, walking zombies, Tank reminded himself. Poor Adam: 30 years of doctrinaire feminism, a dead father whom he never knew, raised by a single parent then married to a feminist, a feminist culture, an education limited to numbers and mechanics - all had conspired to scramble Adam's mind and deaden his heart. Vast confusion. Blind, adrift, directionless, like a rudderless ship.

Tank put his pipe inside his sports jacket, stood, sighed, took a couple of steps, stopped, turned around, gave it one last try:

"For God's sake, Adam, wake up - look at what's happening to your kids!" Tank bellowed, startling a group of nearby men and women. He stared at Adam's blank, uncomprehending, eyes, saw that Adam had failed to understand a thing he'd said. Tank swore under his breath, and lumbered away.

He slipped hurriedly into the first dark, noisy, tavern in the hall, lost himself in the milling crowd of laughing, somewhat drunken, conventioneers, found a place at the end of the bar next to a woman. Then it hit him, the way the realization of the absolute certainty of one's finitude sweeps over one at funerals, and he ordered "two double, bone-dry Vodka martinis," instead of his usual beer. A couple of men behind him said something to him, but he didn't hear them, so entranced was he in his revelation: "I'll be damned," he said over and over to himself, "I'll be damned".

When the drinks arrived Tank stood and turned in the direction of the door he'd just entered, raised his glass and drank a silent toast to, and, prayed for, the three sons he had left at home with their stunningly beautiful, archly feminist mother - and to Adam, whose utterly terrifying emptiness had just convinced Tank to divorce Diana the minute he got home, before she suffocated his sons in the green stuff and made gangrenous Adam clones of them all.

"Whatdaya know," Tank said to the alluring woman in a low-cut black cocktail dress seated next to him, "you can actually learn things at these conventions!"

His companion smiled, toasted Tank with her drink, winked seductively at him: "Hi - my name's Nancy," she said, looking him over, "And you are--?"

"Call me 'Tank'," he replied, feeling the blood rush to his loins: "Can I buy you a drink?"