Epiphany - How Fight Club Changed My Life - A Short Story Read online

  A prissy metrosexual or a monosyllabic lad? One-dimensional advertising demographics. Isn’t that what being a man is?

  Thankfully no. There are as many paths to manhood as there are men. A man can be buff and bucolic, a lover and a fighter, a father and a fire starter, a twist or a straight, a rock god or a tank commander and everything else in between.

  Being a man means making mistakes, trying things out, knowing when to say no, knowing when to be tender and knowing when to be hard; it’s neither one-dimensional nor any one thing. And let’s just clear something up right now: macho is just the bluster of little boys, manly is knowledge and inner strength to find your own path – whatever that turns out to be.

  So that’s what we’re here to do, to throw down a few ideas and see if there’s anything you can play for a winning hand in the game of life. What you hold in your hands is the essence of a gentleman’s guide but a little bit bigger, a little bolder and a damn sight more dangerous. Because it says you can do anything you want to, gives you the first steps how and then a friendly shove.

  But danger doesn’t mean simply putting your life on the line for extreme sports and adventurous sex although that can be a part of it – that’s up to you. Danger means putting your ego on the line and challenging yourself to do and think things outside your comfort zone.

  It’s the kind of thing our fathers and teachers would have liked to tell us and the kind of thing we wish we could do as fathers and friends ourselves.

  There are no pre-packaged life products you can buy off a shelf or order online. You won’t be a passive consumer inside these pages but the manufacturer of your own experience. If you don’t throw the book at the wall at least once and laugh out loud even more then I am doing my job wrong. What’s more I expect abuse from you, I expect you to tell me I’m wrong and that’s a good thing. Think about it.

  Being a man means recapturing the idea of being a gentleman in the sense of being a truly noble man and doing the right thing, learning from your mistakes, and saying what needs to be said, and then just for kicks knowing how to blow shit up or jam with a guitar. It’s definitely not about being a man’s man; it’s about being your own man. And being a man is fun. I mean really how dangerous can that idea be?

  What Do You Really Really Want?

    Okay before we begin there are one or two things we have to straighten out. First thing is this. I can show you any number of ways to tie a tie, scale a rock face or bodyboard a naked teen through a lake of fire but they will all mean absolutely nothing if we don’t first figure out why we’re here.

  I won’t just be making things up or copying from books on social etiquette written in the 1930s. I’ll actually be doing as many things as I can so that you know I’m not just heckling you from the sidelines and to show you that whatever you put your mind to you can do too. While researching this book I burst my left retina, cracked a couple of ribs, and fractured my wrist, and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. You see, being a gentleman is about far more than knowing how to wear a tie pin or hold a door open. So here we go . . .

 

  The Modern Gent

  Back in the day, days of yore to be precise, a gentleman was simply a bad boy who got away with it. They gave him lands,   castles and funny little coats of arms that kept him occupied and away from anything where he might cause too much trouble, say international politics. Then Henry VIII went and spoiled the party by chopping off one head too many.

  Suddenly the definition of what constituted a gentleman changed and became a set of rules for how to behave made up by wives intent on keeping their heads and the kind of chaps who didn’t like warring and whoring in foreign parts.

  They boil down to this:

  Look nice, act nice, speak with authority and eloquence, have your own income, don’t cause too much trouble but be prepared to step in when absolutely necessary.

  There were of course the obligatory rituals stolen from chivalry: pull the chair out for the ladies, make sure they don’t have to ruffle their petals unnecessarily, those delicate little flowers that need tending. Poor things.

  Thank god that all changed. Women have moved on from being finishing school fops and everyday house servants.

  However many of us domesticated males are stuck in the roles defined by the Industrial Revolution working silly hours so that our wives can stay at home (they’ve stopped doing that remember?) to produce the next generation of domesticated males for the factory floor.

  Times have changed, but we have not. Very few of us know how to be bold, brave, self-effacing, self-critical or put our lives or egos on the line; we’ve become the equivalent of those delicate little flowers that need tending, only wearing a disguise of thorns. You know the look: the haircut like a foetus, the cheap mass-produced sportswear. The only calluses we have are on our game-playing thumbs and our most daring adventures are package holidays.

  One Saturday night not so long ago I witnessed a painful example of the modern ‘bloke’. I tried to stop another man from beating his wife to the ground and splitting her skull open. I was held back by the kind of men who would rather stand and watch hoping no one bothers them and that life passes them by. Once they’d finished with her they turned on me.

  I would do it again tomorrow.

  How about something worth aspiring to? The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that in the thirteenth century manliness meant:

  1. To have the noble qualities of a man who is of mature character.

  2. Having the admirable traits and virtues of being honourable, having courage and being independent.

  It had little to do with class or status. The modern gentleman needs to represent the best of the old – daring, adventurous and willing to have a go – combined with the best of the new – courteous, intelligent and self-aware.

  By necessity we will have to explore a few of the dark arts while we’re here because rather than saying, ‘Oh I couldn’t possibly,’ we want to say, ‘I know how but I choose not to . . . for the moment.’

  If you’ve been wanting to find a new direction now is always the time; you really can do anything you want only most people don’t want to. They’re scared.

  So what do you most want to do?

  And what are you most scared of?

  Be honest with your answers: they are just for you not for anyone else. You might end up with two huge lists or not have any answers because you’ve never thought about this before. Whichever it is don’t dwell on it; pack a sense of humour in your kitbag and let’s see where we end up.

 

  Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda . . .

    . . . pursued that dream job, chased that girl, taken that trip, stayed at school, dropped out, kicked that fucker’s arse, eaten the monkey brain, snorted the white powder, gone into rehab, mainlined vodka, jumped out of a plane, raised a child, driven a car so fast your ears popped, been pampered like a prince, skinned a rabbit, learned to cook, won at blackjack, cheated at poker, spoken another language, felt the warmth in a stranger’s eyes, travelled to the edge of space, hit the road, taken a year out, lived on the edge, been your own boss, hired a hit man, retired young, had the sex you wanted, survived a crisis and lived to tell, said yes and meant it, taken the knocks, found meaning, woken up happy, turned off the TV, survived in the wild, learned to shoot, seduced someone truly beautiful and travelled the world.

  So choose life, choose being a man. Occasionally you might even be accused of being a gentleman.

  Now let’s take a step in the right direction . . .

  LIFE SKILLS EVERY MAN SHOULD HAVE

    Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. 

  That’s where the fruit is.

  H. Jackson Browne

  How to Drive a Tank

    The first question is why would you want to? Well let’s see; you get to be that guy sticking his head out of the little hatch just like James Bond and then if the mood
strikes you rebel against the herd instinct of commuter traffic by taking short cuts through thick walls and over parked cars.

  Take a fully loaded Russian T55-AM2 tank for example, a more modern version of the one Pierce Brosnan drove in Goldeneye. It measures more than six metres long and is nearly four metres wide. Massive, unwieldy and complex it weighs in at a whopping 42 tonnes and has a 45-litre engine capable of 690bhp. It has a top speed of 50mph and in the right hands is a deadly and destructive mobile weapons system.

  At the very least you’ll always be able to find a parking space.

  My American uncle Armando drove one of its older incarnations in the first Gulf War and according to him, ‘You had to steer it with a hammer.’

  Life often feels a little like that so perhaps as a mechanical metaphor for the intricate nuances of a modern gentleman’s life it’s an apt one to start with.

  So is it really possible for one man to bring this unwieldy life–tank–gentleman thing under control? Possibly even with a little finesse? Could you do it? Could I? How do you drive the square tank of life into the round hole of happiness and fulfilment?

  Well as tanks can drive through buildings, crush cars and take out the enemies of an easy life and abundance with one well-placed shell I’d say let’s hold on to our helmets, floor the accelerator and see what happens when we actually drive one.

  The easiest way to do this is to get yourself on a red letter day where you’ll be taken out with a handful of other equally deranged people and allowed a few minutes on a tracked vehicle of some sort which could range from a small armoured people carrier to a Chieftain tank.

  Of course, the most effective and life-changing option is to join the army and attend their training school in Bovington.

  But remember: you are basically sitting in a target on tracks and there will be plenty of unfriendly armies and air forces out there eager to shred you into bite-sized chunks.

  As a private individual to make the most of the Bovington facilities you’d also need a Top Gear-sized budget to play with and a lot of patience as you wait for the cogs of military bureaucracy to clank round.

  Alternatively you can contact private tank owners direct.

  But be warned: they are an idiosyncratic breed. They tend to be men with large tracts of farmland to play with and a fair few quid in the bank. They spend their cash on tanks sourced from various armies around the world. The cost of these vehicles can be anything from tens of thousands of pounds to hundreds of thousands. Good examples are regularly serviced and in full working order, the other type end their days as unique talking points next to the water feature.

  You could buy your own tank and then take your H licence, the same one you need for a tracked digger and then drive it legally on the road. But buyer beware: make sure private individuals offering H licence training in their own tanks can deliver on any promises and aren’t more interested in money than in training. If you are thinking of taking this route my advice is to go through a commercial firm that trains construction contractors. After all the training vehicle doesn’t matter as long as you get the licence.

  But you don’t need a licence to drive off-road on private land. I used the rolling farmland of the Tank School in Usk on the Welsh border. Where Alastair Scott is the proud owner of the only T55-AM2 in the country. He bought it from the Polish government and agreed to show me how to drive it. He assured me that it was nothing like the older version of the T55 that my uncle drove and definitely didn’t need a hammer to operate the steering or the fully operational laser-guided targeting system.

  However if it hasn’t been used in a while the beastly T55 does need some warming up. Before you can take it anywhere you have to prepare the engine, the fuel and the pressurised heating and cooling system. Not by flipping a switch as you might in your compact high-spec modern family motor but by setting a fire beneath it. Literally. On a mild winter morning Alastair lit what looked like a mini flame-thrower built into the machine underneath the chassis and we waited outside for the tank to boil. Once the toxic fumes cleared he fired it up and we were ready to roll.

  Lurching out of its garage we clambered on to the behemoth’s back and with Alastair at the controls headed for the combination farmland and woodland training area.

  I then took over Alastair’s position in the front driving seat and he strapped himself above me onto the side of the tank so that he could coach as we drove. My uncle had also warned that Russian tanks were designed for small people and it was a tight squeeze for a broad-shouldered lump like me to fit through the small driving hatch.

  Core Combatives instructor Mick Coup (you’ll meet him later on) still holds his H licence from his time in the military.

  When he heard that I was going to handle one of these babies for real he said, ‘They’re easy to drive, you’ll love it.’ Conflicting information. Somebody had to be right but who? With the engine idling over it was time to find out.

  Surprisingly the controls of the T55 tank are almost identical to those of a manual car. There are only two differences.

  First the thick chrome gear stick can be slightly harder to move and has an unfamiliar five-speed shift pattern with gear one in the bottom middle rather than the top left.

  Second there’s a distinct absence of steering wheel. Instead on either side of you are two steering levers that extend to shoulder height and move along an arc that runs parallel to your body.

  To start moving you press the clutch down with your left foot, pop it into gear, push the levers all the way forward and then take your foot off the clutch. Next to the clutch is a brake pedal and accelerator set out just like your car. A firm stamp on the accelerator and away you go. Easy.

  Now how do you turn without a steering wheel?

  Simple: both steering levers have a middle braking position. If you want to turn left pull the left lever to the halfway point. This stops the track on the left side while the still moving track on the right pushes you round in the direction you want to go.

  It is a far from dainty procedure. With all that power under the bonnet any other machine would be shaken to pieces but with so much weight beneath you it is an unexpectedly smooth ride. And for such a big vehicle the turning circle is smaller than some 4×4s I’ve driven, as Alastair proved by having me perform ever tighter figures of eight on my first go at the controls.

  You probably wouldn’t be able to take it into the nearest multi-storey car park without removing a few walls but get your head around the size of the machine and it really is that simple. There is a little less finesse rounding a corner but then you are in a tank; you don’t have to worry if you hit anything smaller than an elephant.

  And when you finally open it up on the straight, in our case a wide open field, it’s like shoving a chilli up an elephant’s backside: it’s stupidly dangerous, surprisingly fast and something mechanically wonderful to behold. Anything in your way is like the pub doors ahead of a monk after his final day of abstinence: splinters.

  To change gears you go through the whole levers forward process again. Despite Alastair having to shout his commands over the rapid fire ack-ack-ack of the engine’s pistons that’s all there is to it. Black smoke pours out of the rear exhaust but that doesn’t affect you at the front. It’s no more difficult than driving a car. Anyone could do it. Yes, even you. But as in life it’s where you take it and what you do with it when you get there that counts.

  In fact tanks are so easy to drive that they are regularly hijacked in civilian uprisings. This happened in Paris in 1944, Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 and most recently in 2006 when protesters in Budapest (again) seized a museum display tank and drove it away. Unfortunately for them the museum piece ran out of fuel a hundred metres down the road slap bang in the middle of a protest and they were instantly surrounded by police.

  It’s actually quite surprising to find that there are a great many tanks littering the British countryside, and
, as I found out, many of them fully operational. But for anyone with lofty guerilla ambitions in the British Isles you’d be a bit of an obvious target trundling into your nearest service station and trying to fill up with diesel.

  It takes four people to make the T55 fully operational so if you and your pals do decide one drunken Saturday night to take over the neighbouring tower block or village you’ll need more than Dutch courage and a foolhardy plan to make your hopes for world domination a reality.

  How about this? You could try dressing in a chauffeur's outfit then each take a different service station one tank at a time and tell them you’re drivers from www.tanklimo.com.

  You never know it might just work.

  You see, learning to drive is the easy bit. Like being born the tricky bit is all the stuff that comes after it. As I found out during my training: without effective knowledge of how to operate one of these bad boys the tank’s laser-targeting system is likely to permanently blind you, the moving turret liable to rip limbs from your body or crush your skull, and, if the smoke alarm goes off, you’ve only got thirty seconds to remember how to unlock the hatch before poisonous gases flood the interior and kill you outright.

  Still, that’s life: dangerous, full of obstacles, and just like a tank an outrageous amount of fun if you learn how to use it and then give it everything you’ve got.

  Handbrake Turns . . . and Other Naughty Driving Skills

    Early marketers fooled men into buying Ford Model T’s because they claimed it made men more manly. This campaign strategy helped usher in the age of the car. It became a modern myth so successful that later generations of Freudians and feminists used the penis-substitute label to denigrate any man who owned a car for simply being, well a man who owned a car. And they had a point: there is nothing particularly masculine about exchanging money for a product.

  On the other hand knowing how to drive a car better than the next man is. Clever chaps in white coats have demonstrated that for women risk-taking in men isn’t an attractive trait but between peer groups of men it is. Risk-taking is hard-wired into us from our days as hunter-gatherers when not taking extra risks to hunt for food meant our tribe might starve.