‘I’m the Gianni Agnelli of Glasgow’ claims the ghoulishly gaunt, and glaringly greyish, forty-six-year-old man sat perched like a gargoyle on the opposite side of the bar. On top of his head, he hosts a pitifully sculpted, and rapidly thinning mountain of white hair that is losing its battle to the terminal plague of male pattern baldness with every sorry second that passes. This malevolent and inevitable truth is one that he has responded to accordingly, by indulging in the futile art of constructing an admittedly deceptive combover. An optimistic spirit might assume that such a deliberate act of protective self-maintenance indicates that somewhere within the cavernous recesses of his repressed fragile soul, he has come to accept that the halcyon days of youth have slipped from his grasp.
I would argue that to associate such a man with even the slightest degree of self-awareness, is being far too generous. Still, his newly installed set of vampiric veneers prove that while he may indeed have one foot in the grave, the other (that is dressed proudly in a Versace trainer,) remains for the time being planted firmly within Turkey. The revolting figure is dressed in his usual attire, a haunted mannequin possessed by the wicked spectres of alpha-male podcasters and Ibiza warriors. He boasts a pair of un-ironed skin-tight chinos that clutch onto his slender legs for dear life, a white Fred Perry polo-shirt that exposes his foreboding patches of sweat, and an ostentatious Gucci belt that undoubtedly will one day take out the eye of a large passing dog. His ankles are of course exposed, and his trainers are even brighter than his teeth. Rather disturbingly however, he has thrown a silk cravat into the mix. The absurdity of this new accessory can only be matched by the harrowing incident wherein he brought a crisp copy of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment to the bar and proceeded to pretend to read it directly in front of me, constantly looking up from the unturned pages to check whether I was watching him.
The performance lasted the better part of an hour. (I would like to mention that this is an individual who claimed to me that he has ‘five master’s degrees.’ Upon investigating his LinkedIn, I was unsurprised to discover each of these were a gross and fictitious exaggeration, and what he was referring to was in fact a series of one day training modules related to Microsoft Excel.)
‘I am actually the Gianni Agnelli of Glasgow,’ he utters once more, although this time he speaks slightly louder, his voice breaking momentarily, as if his subconscious lingers for a second on the possibility that no one is really listening. It is unclear whether he is directing this monstrous, and monotonous speech towards myself and the other bar staff and the room at large, or whether it is yet another ludicrous attempt at self-affirmation. His motivations don’t really matter, as if we have all been forced to hear this exact statement at least twelve times over the past three months. Most recently, he demanded a mystery speaker on the other end of the phone (whom he referred to rather reductively as ‘The Mrs,’) to google Gianni Agnelli so she could form a better comparison of the estranged, and unnervingly unrelated pair of men within her mind’s eye. One must regard the authenticity of this phone call with caution, primarily because he has never made it past the second date with a woman and secondly, due to the fact that I have watched him on more than three separate occasions pretend to dial a phone number onto his turned off phone screen, before wholeheartedly proceeding to stage a ‘business call,’ yapping tirelessly into an empty vacuum, about the Stock Market.
Aristotle claimed that the perfect tragedy should inspire within its audience both pity and fear. In analysing this certain epidemic of middle-aged men that are multiplying in our society at an alarmingly grotesque rate, I would like to focus on the latter part of the argument. While these individuals are often pathetic to the point of hilarity, and perhaps can inspire to a lesser extent commiseration, it is essential to consider that they are also symptomatic of something far more sinister. These men are hollow echo chambers; they are faceless blank canvases waiting for the manipulative brushstrokes of their masters whom
they blindly idolise in order to help them form their identity. They are puppets, waiting to be ventriloquised and brought eerily to life by the most toxic and influential figures operating within the 21st century.
I wish to present this pressing parable as a kind of cautionary tale which acknowledges the spectral traces of toxic masculinity, that are possessing and bewitching the ordinary middle-aged man. These men could be our fathers, uncles, lecturers, and that is a horrifying thought. In understanding how these dark forces operate, perhaps, we can better understand how to unravel them and begin to combat them. Just as a blood-sucking vampire must be invited indoors to enact their ghastly deeds, a malevolent demon must be given access to a human host in order to be rendered visible, and truly wreak havoc on those around them. Perhaps to prevent these ghouls from spreading their curse further is to allow for them to fade into obscurity, and into the realm of invisibility, and irrelevance. My point in illuminating this is that the next time a creepy middle-aged man comes into your workplace and compares himself to an Italian fashion icon; just ignore him. Let his dulcet tones fade into the ether and force him to begin to reckon with who he really is. Perhaps to de-platform is the first step in exorcising our society off these menacing men.
Honor Kerr [she/her]
qmunicatemagazine.co.uk 