Hidden Jims
Some men choose to hide. Others feel they have no choice but to live in obscurity, a place between being and non-being, somewhere on the scale between slightly below average and just a waste of space. These men aren't hiding purposefully, they simply don't know how to be seen. They are men and boys who have faded from sight in a culture where men are struggling to find their place.
What do these men do in their obscurity? In the case of the many men I have encountered during my stint as a volunteer at the Sex Buyer Accountability and Diversion class (known as SBAD, hosted by the local police department), not much.
Take for example 30-year-old Matthew. He's white, average-looking. He has a good job, works five extra long days, and then has five off. He lives in a house, alone, in a spartan way. It’s not on purpose, it's just a default. His family is his only social life. His loose handful of friends have paired off and are too busy with their young families to ever invite him out. Multiplayer online games and subreddits run dry for Matthew only a couple of days into his long empty corridor of a weekend. He's been unsuccessful on the dating scene and doesn't hang out at bars or clubs. He has no hobbies that take him outside of the house. He doesn't have any hobbies at all, actually.
What does he do on days three, four, and five of his recurring cycle of work and rest, when he's massively bored and hasn't spoken to a human in 72, 96, or 120 hours? He scrolls ads online and calls a number that looks interesting. “Just to talk, really.” He says, “But maybe something will happen.”
Or consider Pancho. There's nothing particularly troubling Pancho. He has an adult family and should be retiring in a few years but he's always nervous about money. He grew up in relative poverty but immigrated from Mexico to the American suburbs long ago and now drives a nice truck that he pulls himself into every morning before dawn. His father taught him how to be a “real man” but he realized the same lessons weren't going to be true for his son so he never really gave him much fatherly advice. A 20th-century Mexican laborer practices a proud version of machismo that doesn’t land easily with a 21st-century teenage boy living on the edge of a big city. He feels he has no chance at all to understand the world of his future grandson. They probably won't even speak the same language. He is slightly resentful of his wife who–although she makes less money than he does–is nonetheless traveling most weeks for work and seems to be important in their neighborhood community. On the weekends when his wife is away and therefore there are no shared meals planned with his children, Pancho spends more time online than he really wants to.
One of his co-workers told him about a particular website and he's called a few numbers from the ads he found there. The last one didn’t go so well, hence my introduction to him at John school.
There's also Chris--that's his American name. His family lives together, including aunts and uncles and they all call him Xiao Wei (Little Wei). He's been old enough for a while now to feel embarrassed by the nickname. When he speaks in his college classes his English is slow and stilted and he only understands most of the lecture. But he tries hard to live up to expectations. His family is concerned he hasn't made any friends and that he's too old to have never been with a woman. They pity him but they also really love him.
They give him a number they found from an online ad. He nervously calls it and a woman answers. He didn’t know she was really a cop.
There's the white dude whose rough upbringing has given him a rough exterior–he could be anywhere from 25 to 45–who slumps in his chair all day with his hoodie pulled over his head. He has never left the metro area and never thought to. There's a guy who is traveling most of the year for work and wonders aloud why he never left his college lifestyle behind. Then there is the 20-something East African immigrant whose grandfather had multiple wives and treated them like property. The retired Marine also had multiple wives (though it was in succession) and thinks he’ll never be wanted like that again. The older man is a grandfather and can count on one hand the number of times he’s been with his wife over the last 20 years. The self-labeled 'white trash' never thought twice about paying for sex because he comes from a lineage of buyers and sellers and whose mother was also bought and sold. He just thought it was normal.
Some of these sex buyers are resentful about life or love, some are angry at women, and some feel entitled. Some buyers have never received a kind word from another man. The crotchety ones gave up on themselves a long time ago and forgot why they ever thought their life could be meaningful. They try and usually succeed in not thinking about the meaning of the woman’s life either.
There are first-timers and the loyalty-rewards members, the narcissists, and those who struggle with this or that addiction. Usually, at least one man in my class will say, “I have no idea why I did it,” and I believe him. Mostly they do know, though. It is only now that someone asked them the question, including themselves.
You may be familiar with the term “Anonymous Fat Guys” from a previous Epik post. I'm coining a new term too: “Hidden Jim.”
Jim is a John, a sex buyer for sure, but Jim is not a John. Jim is Jim. Jim goes to work the same hours you do and sits at the same desk he always has or wears the same jumpsuit while working on cars all day. Jim was a young boy once and played with the neighborhood kids. He went to your high school. You probably don't recognize him now, though. He keeps to himself, he's just getting through the week. Like you, he never dreamed of becoming a John—who does?--he thought he'd do something of note someday or discover he has some amazing talent. Maybe he'd be a firefighter or a teacher or win an award. He always thought he'd be as big and as impressive as he saw his father. Or maybe he never knew his father. But Jim thought he'd be a good dad someday. He'd probably grow up and be a respectable citizen. Just one of the guys.
But it just didn't go that way for Jim. His life sort of fizzled before it had a chance to get off the ground. He did all the things the people around him expected both good and bad. But you know what? He never really cared that much or really tried either. He never got too excited about going on vacation or getting a raise and didn't really ever “fall in love”. Jim just ended up being mediocre and fading into the background of daily life.
We're all a kind of Jim, are we not? We're all a little mediocre. We can't all be above average.
“Young men today face an existential dilemma when they come of age. Who am I, where do I belong, what will I do, what is expected of me? And what is the answer? Not much.”
Young men today face an existential dilemma when they come of age. Who am I, where do I belong, what will I do, what is expected of me? And what is the answer? Not much.
Buying sex is easy for Jim. It’s transactional. Men, at the moment they are buying sex are not confronted by another human but an object. They pay to be certain of that. They don’t want to take the chance that their life may be reflected back to them. They don’t want an intimate conversation. They are hiding. They purchase a substitute for human interaction. This is why they always feel empty after the encounter. And the emptiness is why they must go back and do it again. It’s too easy. It’s too easy to not be seen. Nothing ever happens to Jim, except for this intermittent thrill of risk and sexual release.
When you live with the tension every day of wanting more out of life and your relationships, one always hopes that today the facade will finally crack open a tiny bit and someone will peer in. But it never happens.
Their hunger is not for sex. It is for intimacy. Sometimes we forget we must do the hard, lifelong work of forging the relationships that go along with the sex. We interchange one for the other and wonder why there’s still that empty space. All men and women crave intimacy—emotionally, physically, and internally. We want to be seen and touched. We want to know ourselves and know that we’re ok.
We don’t have to dig deep into our culture today to hear a narrative of shrinking maleness. What alternative stories can we present as options? If we are told we are bad, what do we then believe we have to offer? Not much.
Today, men giving nothing is better than becoming a burden. This may be logically true but what kind of narrative is that? What if we could convince ourselves that we all had something to contribute, that there was a place for everyone, flaws and all?
What are we doing today to create a society where even those who feel so diminished to the point of invisibility may be seen? What story do we offer our fellow man that is compelling enough to draw him out and keep him from fading into the shadows? How can we uncover the Hidden Jims and offer them the support they need?
