AUTO - ETHNOGRAPHICAL WRITING

Pro/An-tagonists

My own experiences and assumptions have been explored via auto ethnographic writing to produce monologues for my film soundtracks. Though I have always wanted to avoid making work about myself their assertion helps me see my experiences as situated in wider cultural, political, social and community contexts. Placing myself as a participant in the work and writing about my own life has given me a way to start working through broader beliefs about emotional stoicism, violence and masculinity. Joel Ryan McDermott 2019

The following texts are written by Joel Ryan McDermott

The Street

The street is long cold and dark, dim yellow street lighting punctuates moments here and there, some lights are out. A tall man in a black tracksuit and baseball cap passes me and Mike on the left, he seems to be in a hurry. As we approach the junction on the left the first man runs towards another man who is similarly dressed, this second man is holding a third man by the neck, the third man is screaming and in distress. The first man pulls the third man to the ground, the third man is now shouting “just take it just take it!” The similarly dressed men start to kick the third man in the head as he attempts to conceal his head with his arms on the ground. Mike and I have stopped walking by now, my heart is beating fast, I look to Mike who says “wait!”

I hear the third man whimper and scream, the two men similarly dressed say nothing, cold and empty, silent, animal like and physically aggressive. I look back at Mike who again says “wait”.

The third man gets up in between the flailing arms and legs and runs across the park and over a small fence. The two men spot they have an audience and run the other way. The third man gives out an uncontrollable scream of relief as he runs off into the distance out of view. The two men are gone. I look at Mike who says “let's go.”


We Enter The Gym

We enter the gym. I stand still and silent. I am stunned by the palpable and overwhelming sense of calm, silence, organisation and purpose. Music is playing. Stood face-to-face are 15 pairs of men, 30 in total, a sparring night. All men locked in focused habituated one-on-one physical conflict. A body movement performance. An arranged experience for all. Consensual and egalitarian somehow. All men are different shapes, sizes and abilities. A dance of violence. A form of silent communication. There is no speaking at all. Body and facial expressions are exchanged. Hits, kicks, grabs and blows. Each participant is clearly reading the responses they are receiving; aggressive and tentative; active and passive. Each participant is attempting to control and assert dominance over the other. Each participant is attempting to defend themselves. Each participant is scared and this fear is feeding their focus to survive the fight and so on. Each participant is calm, full of adrenaline and functioning within the frequency of this beautiful brutality. The practice of physical and mental skill. A loud knock sounds. A bell rings. All men stop, touch gloves, some cuddle and laugh. All change partners. A bell sounds and a recorded voice says “round 6”, and then the dance starts again.


Dressing Gown

Sitting in a familiar place by the sea, a trendy bar on the North Bay to be more specific. The four of us, like brothers, fully aware of our histories together, each of us aware of each others insecurities and personal strengths, values and individual qualities. We meet to spend time together like friends do. On this day it has been some time since we all met. When we meet we are rarely anything but excitable, familiar and expressive. Conversation at first, is always random, unpredictable yet predictable. We all engage in competitive and highly provocative banter and attempts are made to outdo each other with our surreal sense of humour. We dance, chase each other, tickle each other, wrestle, sing, shout, swear, burp, break wind and laugh.

We have known each other for twenty years and although we have all grown and aged over this time there is an established and recognisable set of behaviours that dominate how we interact, what we speak about, and how we behave in public places. I like to think that I am always careful and attempt to recognise social etiquette and how I am behaving within a given space. I would go as far as to say that I pride myself on my ability to read spaces and the people in them, and yet having said that, my anxiety disorder often confuses things and my unconscious bias often prejudges males I don't know who exhibit loud boisterous expressive language, as belligerent aggressive and potentially volatile or violent men. When I meet with this group of my friends it fascinates me that we behave in exactly the same way as the men I sometimes make judgements of when out and about on my own or with a family member I am protective of.

On this day in question we're sitting in the trendy bar at 12 noon. I see there are families with children in the bar. Some are eating food, others having conversations, some are sitting silently and some are playing on their iPads. My three male friends are talking like they do, raising their voices over each other and becoming louder and louder. I don't know whether or not I have a personal problem placing what each individual person is saying when everyone speaks at the same time or unless one person speaks at a time but I know I have always struggled to understand and follow what people are saying and this often makes me anxious in social situations.

As we sit at the table and the conversation moves from politics to food to Watersport activity choices of the day, including surfing and kayaking, and back to politics. Everyone around the table makes a concerted effort to stop talking about BREXIT when it comes up. It is clear that hear there is significant confusion and frustration. Conversation moves to drug taking and hallucinogenic drugs.

My friend then tells a story about the dressing gown that he used to masturbate into. He tells us that he attempted to throw it out but his stepmother found it in the bin, took it out washed it and hung it up on the back of his bedroom door. He tells us about the time his Dad could be heard telling his own Navy friends about his sons semen stained dressing gown whilst at a family barbecue. He told us his dad took great pride in ridiculing him and laughing with his friends.

Although this story makes me laugh, hearing it in this public place where children are present makes me anxious and worry about how others perceive my friends and make judgements about who they are. If I'm honest I also have a bit of a problem with the fact at my friends fail to recognise their proximity to children in this space and how the content and volume of our conversation could offend parents in the room. Again I don't know if I have a hypersensitivity and if I am guilty of over thinking this one but this is how it makes me feel. If I were the father of one of the children sitting in the room and a group of strangers were behaving the way we were how would make all kinds of assumptions and judgements about a group of men.

Would I make the same judgements if a group of women were talking about vibrators for example? My grandma used to get her words mixed up and call her clematis plants her clitoris plants. My auntie and mum would fall about on the floor laughing, and at the time I had no idea why because at my age I had no reference. Do the children in the bar know what my friend is talking about; am I being hypersensitive; is my response due to my past?

At different stages in the conversation the content makes me wince. I struggle to relax and I joke with my friends that I'm going to leave if they don't stop swearing. I'm complicit in so many of the interactions, behaviours and expressions in our group and in a lot of ways I have contributed to and encourage them. I find it interesting that I'm a odds with some of my own behaviours and in some ways I am not comfortable judging my friends and do not feel is my place to. I am guilty of cognitive dissonance; my ethics at odds with my actions; my unconscious bias against men at odds with my lad culture capitulation.

We make our way to exit the bar, I apologise to the bar staff as I pay for my tab. I wonder what they thought of us? I wonder if the parents in the bar give a sigh of relief as we left? I lead my friends to a vacant cliff top down the coast so they can release their wiggles and electricity. They sing together and relax.

Cutlery Drawer

My sister is asleep, I sit waiting in my bed for them to return home. I received the call at 11:30pm and it is now 1am. On the phone mum was distressed and lost, she had been walking down a country road and didn't know where she was. He had kicked her out of the car again and she had used her last 50 pence piece in a phone box to call me. The money had run out before she could tell me where she was, she was crying and it was difficult too calm her down.

I don't know where she is or how to find her. I sit waiting in my bed for them to return home. My sister is asleep in her room for now. She is only 11. I listen for cars in the distance. Maybe he's crashed the car again? Maybe he's gone back to the pub? Maybe they are fighting in the forest? He may have picked her up and crashed the car and killed them both? He may have killed her? I hope she's managed to get away? I sit waiting in my bed for them to return home.

I listen closely as a car drives up to the house. I look out of the window and the car drives past, its not him, its not them. I sit waiting in my bed with my pillows propped up so I don't fall asleep. My attempts to keep my eyes open are failing. I need to stay awake to protect them, to protect my little sister and my Mum.

I drift in and out of half sleep, I gain a false sense of security, comfort safety and warmth in between waking and dreaming. I daydream and see my mother smiling, she is happy strong confident resilient assertive stoic resolute ambitious creative and beautiful, like she used to be before…

I see a car crash, I hear a loud bang and a shout. I sit up bolt up right in my bed and can hear them fall into the front door downstairs. I can hear his deep low belligerent defensive aggressive droning drunk voice through the wall like a hollow empty angry demon from the woods. I hear my mother shouting my name…


Wallpaper

Stripping wallpaper is one of those things, you don't really know how its going to go, be nice to have some pointers though. Hardly much of a hand-me-down set of skills, I suppose its useful. I fumble around and wonder if anyone is watching me. That lad’s doing it right. Why is he doing it like that? Shouldn't be doing it like that. Trying to do a good job. Silly really. Maybe there isn't a right way to do this. Get that ladder. I think I spent most time trying to be close. Didn't matter if I was fixing the toilet or sticking Lino on the floor. Yeah, I'll help. Hopeful for approval. Maybe one day I'll have the same stories. I can share them with the lads. Talk about the time I stripped wallpaper with my dad. The time I painted the house. Little stories of my own. My dad can't see that well, needs me to look, needs me to check. Is that paint wet or dry? I worry that he really struggles on his own, with his eyes, is dodgy mince pies. I struggle on my own, come to think of it.


Plate Glass Window

We arrived at my auntie's and uncles house at around six pm, everyone appeared to be jovial and getting on, family members new and old exchanged cuddles, held hands, gave and received physical signs of affection. Some exchanged glances of understanding the relational subtexts, prior history. Some exhibited an emotional dexterity and an unsaid yet visible familial connection; one I am very proud to be a part of.

In spite of this, there was always a moment of awkwardness and tenseness where the ice needed breaking. An elephant in the room. A reason to dread the night. A reason to stay alert.

For some reason I got a massive headache which is unusual because I don't normally get headaches so I went upstairs for a lie down and took a couple of painkillers. I woke at around 10:30 PM and made my way downstairs. As I entered the dining room I sat at the dining table at one end. My uncle and auntie were sitting on either side of the table in a deep discussion with him. He was sitting next to my mother at the other end of the table from me. Everybody was drunk including my mother but he was clearly angry about something. I attempted to make sense of the content of the conversation but it was difficult as he kept talking over my auntie. She was becoming more and more frustrated with him and my uncle sitting calm as a Hindu cow was attempting his best comedy sketch to calm things down and bring things back to being jovial and friendly.

My mother looked at me as if she had had enough, her face so full of hope looked defeated, beautiful and strong yet embarrassed and tired. She said goodnight to everybody and made her way to bed. She was used to going to bed when he got like this, a strategy two attempt to lead him away from us and upstairs with her. She was used to his angry belligerent abusive language whilst trying to sleep. He seemed to be in the habit are verbally abusing her well she tried to sleep until he got too tired in the early hours and would fall asleep himself eventually.

This night he did not follow my mother to bed and he stayed at the table with my uncle, aunty and I continuing he's angry rant. I attempted to speak at one point but over the years observing his belligerence I had developed a stutter and shakes. I always found myself stuck between being scared of what he would do and what would happen if I lost it. If I am totally honest I always wanted to hit him or worse. He would offer me out for a fight and I would just tell him to go to bed.

My auntie continued at first to try and appease him as at this point it was clear that he believed no one cared and he was insecure. He never said this directly, but he always said he needed more, more love, more attention, more people to listen to him, more people to love him, more people to respect him.

From a young age I always recognised the correlation between insecurity, anger and at times violence, or at least violence of this sort. In the aftermath of his domestic violence he would always deny responsibility and say is was due to provocation. That my mother was to blame. So arrogant was he that he would rather gaslight my mother into the idea that she was the cause and he was the victim. A strange twilight zone version of reality where men like him are not to blame for their actions.

My uncle until that point had managed to sustain his calm but he had had enough. He swiped his left arm across the table, a glass smashed on my face, my uncle then threw him to the ground like a rag doll, my auntie screaming for my uncle to stop, My uncle then picked him up by the neck and walked towards the front door opening the door and launching him out onto the street. My uncle then turned slammed his front door and in rage through his own fist at his plate glass window of the interior door.

I looked at his face full of rage, a protective patriarchal bread winner, the main avuncular character for me throughout my life, the comedian at every social family event, an amenable, placid erudite family man, principled ethically and morally driven, a true hero of mine, his face changed by his rage, his virtues stripped away in a moment acting as protector at his own sacrifice.

I could hear water pouring onto the carpet like an open tap, I looked down to see is hand hanging and blood rushing onto the floor, he had severed his right hand partially off and cut his wrist in half on the plate glass window. His face changed from rage to fear…


Laying Awake At Four O'clock In The Morning

Laying awake at four o'clock in the morning has become an all too familiar habit of mine, a learned behaviour brought on by a combination of my PTSD and storytelling propensities. Sadly I only engage in this habit of mine when all is silent and I should be asleep. I listen in the dark to an imaginary monster, my antagonist, a dangerous man, an ex family member, a real person, the man who causes pain, a man in great pain himself.

I am laying in the silence of the dark preparing myself for self defence and the protection of others, my loved ones. My heart is beating out of my chest, so much so I can hear my own pulse in my ears. Every single creek and bump in the house and change in light in the room, some of which I'm not sure if I imagine, is amplified and propels the string of narratives in my head further and further towards the worst of the worst, towards the inevitable, a tragedy, where someone I love is going to get hurt.

I am convinced that if I do not stay awake that I will fail in my role. I must fulfil my role as the man of the house, a role bestowed to me ever since I was young, too young, too young to understand what it meant. I search through my mind for the mask I must grow into. It still wont fit. This is a role and a narrative with its origins in reality. I developed my heightened anxiety and unhealthy instincts to protect my mum and my sister from the age of fourteen

My own philosophical belief system, one of compassion and community belonging with an old fashioned sense of noble obligation. This now crystallised with a willingness and readiness to match violence with violence in the home. This isn't me. This feels wrong. This is absurd. This is the only context that should fulfil my hierarchy of basic needs right? My needs of sanctuary and safety.

Sadly I am far too familiar with the normalisation in my mind that violence and silence are just oscillating statuses in a never-ending sequence of interchangeable tension and tragedy. These ideas have been deeply engrained into my mind like desire line walkways walked into a grassy field. My mental process has an established and predictable pattern, it follows the path of least resistance in my brain. It is even worse when I'm tired and even after extensive cognitive behavioural therapy it takes very little in the early hours of the morning for my thoughts to go from 1 to 100. Is that a cat outside on the dustbins - no its him, its the killer!

I’m no longer sure of the differences between my own myths and reality. Even greater still, as I lay in bed I'm aware now at my age, heading towards forty, that this has become a story that I have written, adapted, imagined and re-written for myself, ever since my teenage years, a story with every conceivable imagined tragic trajectory, a combination of fact and fiction, real-life events, the legacy of failed parenting and education for those who have become my antagonists, and an assumed role for myself, the hero or protagonist in my own fictional film, I am Zorro, I am Batman. It is tiresome, ridiculous, stymied, depressing and it is ruining my life.

As the early morning light aluminates the room and the birds start chirping, a wave of relief and relaxation overcomes me and I fall into a deep sleep, safe in the knowledge that it was all in my head, that I am asleep in a safe house these days, doors and windows locked, extra precautions taken to buy the best quality window locks where the kitchen windows are at their weakest. My fiancé sleeps peacefully on my left. My dog sleeping on the floor, she with her heightened sense of smell and hearing, an area to rent picked out for its low burglary and crime rate, a suburban middle-class Utopia Village Community. Not the council house I grew up in or the flat I lived in above a shop in South London during the London riots when arsonists went out to play. A stark contrast from houses I have come to assume are more likely to be dangerous.

But this is not about council houses or south London, from my experience both are wonderful places to live. This idea that geography and area have anything to do with safety is nonsense. I recognise now that I have developed a new and unhealthy unconscious bias, a xenophobia and snobbery about where I live, But, Its not the location is it, its the domestic danger, the familiar, the family history that haunts me now, my laying awake is a consequence of my anxiety disorder or as my clinical psychologist Katherine would call it, my post-dramatic stress disorder, brought on by the monster, just a man that used to live with us. not an intruder at all, an all too familiar family member, a once trusted friend, a man who caused great pain. a man in great pain himself, like all men who are in pain who go on to cause pain.

How do I stop this pain for myself now and how do I stop this happening to others?

Shaving

My beard is my man mask - I’ve not had a wet shave for about ten years, I was a late bloomer amongst my school and collage friends with their hairy wild animal faces. It was a measure of boy success to have sideburns as a teenager in the late 90s. Anyone who could grow hair on their faces had the girl, the girl I wanted. My big brother could grow a full beard like a thicket bush from the age of thirteen. I couldn't grow a thin Michael Finnegan one until I was mid 20s. Walking around town with him as teenagers, little me, two years his younger sibling, I looked like Jimmy Cranky or a little boy dressed like Compo from Last of the Summer Wine.

Fast forward to now and I'm on my way to get fitted for my PPE at Malton hospital as now I work as a carer for my oldest friend during the Covid 19 pandemic. Amongst other medical conditions he suffers from aspirational pneumonia every month. I walk into the hospital with a full beard on, Ray ban style sunglasses, a smart blazer jacket, skin tight jeans and smart shoes. Full of confidence in my appearance, many have said I look good with a beard, I met my fiancé two years ago and haven't had a wet shave since, my Jimmy cranky Little boy dressed as Compo impersonation a distant memory, I've even forgotten what my own face looks like under this hairy fuzz.

It’s funny when someone asks you to shave your beard off to wear personal protective equipment during a global pandemic, your priorities change quickly. I sit down with an NHS volunteer, Mark, who takes me through the differences between breathing and coughing particles and aerosol particles, the type created whilst I set my friend up with his CPAP machine at night.

As my conversation with Mark about facial hair ruminates around my own head it echoes around in the corridor waiting room, I imagine a queue of blokes awaiting their own mask fitting procedure, a pagonophile rogues gallery, beards, designer stubble, and a handlebar moustache the size of a mellon slice. One gentleman approaches and remarks “I can't shave my beard off my wife will kill me, she doesn't like my face”.

After Mark finishes his respiratory conditions Health and safety demonstration and takes me through the risk factors of having facial hair and wearing PPE with his wonderful information graphic chart, it dawns on me that I only have one option, that my beard is coming off.

A wave of fear wrestles with my own ego about my self-image, one I've come accustomed to and comfortable hiding behind for the last 10 years plus. Standing in front of my fiancé I imagine myself as a smouldering rough and ready Tom Hardy in a perfume advert or the vampire Kiefer Sutherland from Lost boys. In front of other men and strangers I imagine I look like Jason Mamoa or Clint Eastwood on the silver screen. Strong and mysterious and not to be messed with.

I'm not ready to take this beard mask off. I'm less ready to lose my friend. Friends don't grow back from Covid 19 complications combined with pre existing health conditions. My beard will. I ask Mark for a razor.

Jim

Every adolescent boy needs a Darcey of their own. I first met Jim on a first-aid course when I worked at a south London college. He made each day learning about head trauma, CPR, and heart attacks an absolute joy, super interesting, full of detail, and hilarious. You wouldn’t think that something as stressful and intense as first-aid training could be an absolute joy, but Jim‘s outlook on life, its ups and downs, its tragedy and comedy, was unique, he had something few possess.

As the head of client care security at the college Jim had the responsibility of looking after his team, wider college staff and students, thousands of individuals. Incidents at the south London college ranged from minor scuffles up to knife crime and at times reports of firearms.

I’ll never forget seeing Jim in the corridor once, his security team running towards the canteen, stab vests on, radios sounding and alarms ringing, and Jim, finishing his story to me about an old antique coin he found at a charity shop, his face smiling as he was running backwards at the time, toward the canteen to confront the unknown.

It was clear to me that Jim had a level of equanimity unequalled of any man I’ve ever met. Nothing phased him, he was always ready for the challenge to intervene, negotiate and ameliorate problems when they arose. As I came to work with Jim over the next decade I learnt that this man had one of the greatest virtues someone in his position could have when dealing with students and their emotional hijackings and violent outbursts.

Jim could disarm any student with his smile, warmth, ability to listen, understand and confidence, and offer alternatives that would lead once angry and upset students in the right direction, usually back to class to get on with learning, calm and feeling that they were cared for.


Skinheads at Sainsbury’s

I approach Sainsbury’s social distance in queue. Its interesting how this situation has become part of the every day and wearing a mask and gloves in public has become normal. People are racing to get to the start of the queue and I noticed to skinheads, both around 6 foot, dressed in tracksuits, make their way to the start of the queue. I stop walking and say, “there you go lads, you’re next,” to which I’m greeted with, “oh thanks mate, sound!” One of them grabs an trolley to which the other says “shall I get one too?” his friend responds, “yeah mate you get your own.” He waits for his friend to go back to where the trolleys are based and on returning myself and an elderly woman signal to the two of them to go in front of us. “Are you sure” the older lad says. “Yeah go on buddy you were here first”.

Caught up in the positive exchange they approach the supermarket staff member girl at the door who stops the two lads and says. “You can’t go in there together with two trolleys, you will have to go in separately.”

I can't help but think she has made a judgement about what they are up to by the way they look and even though I do not know these gentlemen from Adam, I am guilty of making judgements about them based on having shave their hair, and what they wear. I donned a shaved head myself for years. There weren't any hair products in the 80s and 90s that could tame my wild locks so I would shave it every Friday and love the convenience of not having to wash my hair with anything but a soapy flannel.

It frustrated me that it appeared that the supermarket staff member girl at the door appeared to have made a judgement about what these guys were up to because of the way they look, maybe she thinks they’re up to no good, we all judge others by the way that they look, or maybe this is just the way is if you’re shopping together during this pandemic. Either way the older of the two lads makes his way into the supermarket saying, “I won’t be long” to which his friend walks off a bit disgruntled.
I make my way around the fruit and veg section and I bump into their older lad who looks nervous, fidgety, disorientated and stressed. He comes up to me and says, “I didn’t think that was fair her not letting us in together, I nearly had a panic attack, that’s not sound at all, she could have just let us both in.” I nod in agreement with him, and at the same time I am filled with a sense of warmth that he felt he could come up to me and tell me he has an anxiety disorder. I am just a stranger after all, another man, in a leather jacket, six foot with a mask on, not my man mask this time, a different sort of mask, my beard is gone, my PPE mask conceals my face like Bane from Batman. I am somebody he’s never met before apart from outside in the trolley queue.

He walks away and I start to worry about him, all anxious and stressed, now walking around on his own. I bump into him next on the next isle over. He comes up to me and says “I’m really struggling now”. I’ tell him that I suffer with an anxiety disorder too, and I had done CBT and it had changed my life. He said that he had been in hospital with a head injury and ever since then he had developed and anxiety disorder due to the trauma and it was ruining his life and stopping him going outside. I told him about Scarborough and Whitby IAPTS and how to self refer without going to his GP. His face tension disappeared, he smiled, and I felt our connection helped him in that moment of stress. As he walked away he said, “thank you mate that means a lot”, to which I responded, “no problem buddy”.

I bumped into him a third time on the sauces and pasta isle where he came up and said, “you don’t know where the peppercorn sauce is do you mate?” to which I said, “I think it’s over there buddy”. He smiled said thanks and walked away, this time a lot calmer than previously. I shouted back, “we all have to help each other out don’t we mate.”