It was during a class I was teaching to young American students that I first heard of the incident in which more than twenty people had been sent plummeting to their deaths in a cable car in the Italian Alps. While one of the students explained that the cause of the incident was thought to be recklessly low flying on the part of a U.S. Marine pilot and others wondered what the cause could have been, a young woman student said, in a voice as tired as the ages, “It’s a dick thing.” I was surprised by the vulgarity of her language, but I have not, in all I’ve heard and read about the incident, found it more accurately or correctly explained. It’s a dick thing: young men, high on testosterone and the sense of power that no doubt comes of flying around in their death-dealing capsules at supersonic speeds, had apparently disregarded all rules of safety or sense and competed to prove to one another how low they could fly. Unfortunately, much as the pilots and navigators might have enjoyed their all-male ritual, a score of people had to pay with their lives for all the fun.
Twenty years ago, when I worked in Iran, all of my tennis pals were men, and most of those were former Vietnam combat pilots. I still remember the day, sitting around between sets, talking, drinking iced tea, and trading stories, I heard them begin to reminisce about how much they missed combat flying, how wonderful and exciting it had been to sweep in low in the early morning, machine guns blazing, and drop napalm on the sleeping villages, then wheel back and cut down the fleeing villagers. One of them claimed it was better than sex, better than anything in his life, before or since. All of them missed it because it had been so much fun. These, mind you, were the same guys who softened their serves when they played with me, who were always willing to cover more than their half of the court when they played as my doubles partners, and for whom I had developed a real affection. But from that day on I could never see them as the same men.
For some years, I’ve been teaching on the periphery of the U.S. military, and my students have often told me similar tales, about what great fun it is to sweep out of the skies and terrify the stupid civilians standing on the beaches, about the wonderful sense of power that comes from knowing you carry the power of life and death over the people below you. Thus, when the military issued its first denials and spoke of bad maps or confused instructions, I knew that the cover-up had begun. In the end, the evidence was too obvious, and we found out what it was: just good old boys horsing around, driving too fast and having themselves a good old time. It’s a dick thing.
Then, the Indians go and blow up their bomb, and CNN shows us the masses in the streets, cheering and yelling and happy as clams that India now has this great new bomb, Shiva the destroyer in their own backyards. Many of the people interviewed—all men, I might add—raved on about how proud and powerful it made them feel, how India had finally become a nuclear power, worthy of respect. It’s a dick thing.
A not dissimilar phenomenon is the American male’s love affair with his gun. Bodybuilding, religion, and guns are the three subjects I forbid my students to mention to me because they are the three subjects that most immediately launch them into flights of irrationality. Their ignorance, both general and historical, causes them to misinterpret the U.S. Constitution and insist that this document gives them the right to keep a gun at home, indeed, to keep as many of them as they please. To attempt to reason with them is to court madness; to listen to them is to enter into it.
It all seems very simple to me. If this little portable penis is the only power a man is ever going to have in this life, then using it will be fun, and he will never allow it to be taken from him. You see, it’s not a deadly weapon they see when they pick up the gun, or fly the plane, or blow up half of Rajasthan: it’s power. It’s a dick thing.