A Funny, Frank Talk about Being a Man: Between a Millennial and a Boomer
- Mark Grayson
- Feb 12
- 2 min read
I first met Brad Gage at a birthday party for Mark Greene during a heavy snowstorm in Manhattan. Niobe Way and I were in the middle of a Vulcan Mind Meld when Mark leaned in, pried me away, and said there is someone he wanted me to meet. Then, in his typical understated fashion, he remarked, “I think you two have a lot to talk about.” Then he let loose one of his signature giggles, as if he had lobbed a grenade between us.
We soon discovered that we did indeed have much in common, despite the 30-year age-gap between us. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Within seconds we figured out that we are both on a war path, trying to help men reclaim their mental equilibrium in a world where guys are being whipsawed by competing views of what it means to be a man.
Towards the end of our conversation, before the party games began, Brad asked me if he could interview me about my book Getting Naked for his podcast, Real Feels. A month later I was in the basement of his apartment in Brooklyn, nervous as hell, wondering how on earth I had gotten myself into this situation. It was so much safer to write a book, put it out there, and talk about it in hushed tones with thought leaders and academics at the endless dinner parties that we always seem to have our house.
But here I was, sitting next to a man nearly half my age who is a comedic ball-of-fire off camera. Was I about to be scorched?
What unfolded was one of the great joy rides of my life. Our conversation was totally disarming and unexpected. Lots of banter back and forth about “boy dinner” (rolls of lunch meat), being pee shy, how much we can bench press, and other idiosyncratic topics of particular interest to men. However, amidst the high-spirited joking around, we managed to have a serious discussion about the benefits of “Getting Naked” while doing men’s work, the impacts of the male gaze (so under appreciated by most men), the importance of releasing the narratives that we make up about what it means to be a man, the need to stand in your own naked truth and accept who you really are, instead of showing up with a one-dimensional, socially approved stick figure of yourself. We spoke at length about the shame that all men feel and need to reclaim the vast array of innate capacities that are conditioned out of us from an early age. In the end we decided that the question that everyone needs to be asking in our efforts to help men isn’t “What’s wrong with men?” but “How can we make things better?”
I remember feeling a strong sense of kinship after our discussion. There was a palpable connection, a shared love of laughter, and a mother lode of common experience in navigating today’s conflicts that transcended our generational differences. I could not shake the feeling that we had just scratched the surface of a conversation that in fact we will continue for many years to come.
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