The male mystique
Commentary by JoEllen Collins
When 37-year-old Bob Long told a friend
about 3:30 on June 9 of this year that he was going to go outside to plant some
cabbage, he seemed fine. However, Long, a much-praised worker in the dramatic
rescue of nine men from Pennsylvania’s Quecreek mine, may have had other things
on his mind. At 5:30 p.m., his kids awakened him from a nap, and he seemed to be
unreasonably angry that he couldn’t find clean socks. Before his wife could
comprehend what he was about to do, he went to his pickup, took out his
9-millimeter semiautomatic Glock pistol and, in spite of her pleas, shot himself
in the head. In Long’s case, hindsight provides some clues. His community had
ostracized him ever since he signed a deal for a cut of a book and movie about
the miners’ story. Certainly alcohol was involved: a toxicology report would
show that his blood-alcohol level was .26, more than twice the legal driving
limit in Pennsylvania.
Jeff Goodell, a New York Times reporter
covering the case, remembers thinking at one time that Long, who had received
$150,000 from Disney, was the luckiest guy in Somerset County. The suppositions
about Long’s suicide and the events that followed the dramatic rescue can be
found in a thoughtful July 27 New York Times Magazine cover story. It is a
fascinating study of the disaster’s impact on the lives not only of the nine
rescued miners but also of their rescuers. Being a hero, according to the
article, does not guarantee an easy ride afterwards. There have been stories of
9/11 heroes suffering depression, jealousy over the media attention garnered by
colleagues, and what may possibly be post-traumatic stress. Even the tales of
former lottery winners bear out the simple truth that sudden fame and fortune do
not guarantee happy endings.
What most fascinated me about Long’s
story, though, was the unpleasant reality that his is merely one of an
increasingly disproportionate number of male suicides. More than four times as
many men as women die by suicide, although women report attempting suicide
during their lifetime about three times as often as men do. What I wonder about
this odd statistic is if this is because women call for help at the last minute.
I am teaching a communications course this
semester, and it is tempting to fit everything I encounter into a matrix of
communication-related issues. At the risk of a huge generalization, one
nonetheless supported by several studies, men have a harder time communicating
their emotional concerns than do women. It has been documented that even very
close male friends spend much of their time together talking about mutually
interesting events, sports, people and business matters rather than about their
personal lives. And, in spite of advances made in the ways men express their
emotional needs, there is still a pervasive macho mystique, which derides any
man’s more feminine or "wimp" factor.
Of course we all know exceptions to this
generalization, but I bet that if you can overhear groups of men and women
conversing with each other, you will observe a similar pattern. Several years go
I wrote a light piece about waiting in bathroom lines with women. After a
preliminary joke or two about the "luck" of men who could find bushes, and by
the time we finally reached our stalls, we already knew many personal facts
about each of the women in line. Even in a silly context, women got right to
heart issues.
What I would hope, of course, is that
everyone, whether male or female, would feel there was a kindred soul somewhere
to whom he or she could go for help. I remember a good friend who disappeared
one morning on the way to the bank where, we later found out, he confirmed a
balance of only $35. He was a creative and honorable man suffering a temporary
setback in his profession. His wife, four months pregnant, and I spent many
hours combing the streets of the neighborhoods around his Hollywood home
thinking we would find him slumped behind his car wheel. Six days later he leapt
from the top of the Howard Johnson’s near the LA Airport. There was no note, and
we can hardly imagine his thoughts during those last agonized days of his life.
We do know that we would love to have been given the chance to help him. Our
abiding words were, "If only he’d said something!"
Certainly, most of us never can understand
the rationale of a suicide. Whether or not the inability to communicate sadness
and need are paramount in the motivation for committing suicide, I would hope
that we all keep up our efforts to tell each other what is really important. It
is also, of course, incumbent on those of us to love the men we know and listen
carefully to them. Maybe if Bob Long had been able to have an open discussion
about the issues that alienated him from his fellows, if he could have moved
beyond the haze of alcohol to connect with a loved one, perhaps he would have
survived not only the momentary impulse to do away with himself but also the
pain that eventually separated him from the life he could have led. I imagine
his children would love to talk with him now.