“The good people sometimes need to mask their behavior,” Dallow might say, “behind more genteel words,” he might finish, “then those direct.” He then might stammer slightly, ask you to repeat yourself, though you had not said anything, and act as though you had suggested he should finish. “Which is not to say more accurate. It is all,” he grins, “only as accurate as your imagination can conceive.”
Fine, then. I take your challenge—for if it is not a challenge, I don’t understand why you would waste your breath—to be one equally semantic and imaginative. Dallow could then continue by describing the Gentleman’s Wash to you, but it would simply provoke a series of questions and concerns, to some of which he would possess witty rejoinders, to others, charming befuddlement. We can skip those niceties and dive right into rampant speculation and example, and save Dallow the trouble of needlessly performing his act, that he might save it for more jejune company, which is to say, eligible women, comely men, and fetching nonbinary folks who might cross his path.
What, then, renders a Wash the unique purview of the Gentleman? Is it especially genteel and proper, averting its eyes ‘round the naughty parts and taking care not offend mixed company? Do Gentlemen comport themselves towards their hygiene according to a specific set of precepts, ways and means which would appear ritualistic and strange to the uninitiated? It may be simpler to conceive of an ungentlemanly wash, all rough and lewd, reveling in the filthy beginning rather than the cleanly end. Perhaps it is present company influencing my imagination, but the Gentleman in question is clad in brown felt derby hat, efficiently but unostentatiously scrubbing away hands and forearms over a wooden trough in a forest clearing, with only the flora and fauna as witness to his Wash. He twirls his moustaches with sap from a nearby pine, gives himself a few hearty slaps to the side of his freshly shorn face, and gets on with the lengthy walk back to town.
This is, without question, entirely wrong, and Moist has something to say about it. She has to say that she is as much a gentleman as anyone here, and certainly more so than gentlewoman, which strikes her as ridiculous. She can Wash with the best of the Gentlemen, because she knows there is nothing gentlemanly about applying deodorant to the outside of one’s shirt, still salty from the night previous, smelling like a seaside resort placed next to a petting zoo, and splashing cold water on one’s groin in a backstage dressing room lavatory. She has to say that Dallow is damn right that anyone would want to “mask” that sort of behavior, and that those kinds of gentlemen would be much better off herded out to the forest clearing I described, and then perhaps pushed into the nearby lake. Moist has to say that she does not know what kinds of gentlemen we have been spending time around, but she has known a variety of hoodlums and rakes with vastly less clever and more complete bodily care regimens.
“Cursory Bathing,” says Dallow, “it just kind of references being clean without making any concrete steps in that direction.
“You’re disgusting,” replies Moist, “but I loves ya.”
Poor Old Jeffrey Young knows about gentleness, surprising as that might initially read. Among his evening activities is a range of mumbled mantras, punctuated by his famous arsenal of squeaks, whoops, and non sequitur ditties, before engaging in various forms of unusual physical exercise. The bottomless shower handstands—“it requires more balance, and is easier on the hands” he says; “at least you face the wall,” say I; “well of course, I am not some kind of exhibitionist,” he exclaims—are really necessary to witness but once in order to be burned into one’s memory evermore. The single-finger curls seem tedious, wrists up, tiny barbells rotated from left thumb to pointer finger, and so forth, but if the results are his impeccable left-hand articulation, then it is impossible to argue with the practice. But certain, dusky evenings, when the light combines just right from under the hotel bathroom, the ever-luminous hallway, and perhaps the security lamp through a too-sheer curtain above the overactive air conditioner, Jeffrey takes up a figurative derby hat and moustache of his own, to engage in some Gentle Stretching.
I could, having observed the practice carefully and with an eye for how I might describe it, offer a florid and conscientious depiction, to the very finest of my abilities, of the combination of transcendental meditation, Tai Chi, and isometrics, possibly with just a whisper of Rolfing thrown into the mix. I could attempt to reflect the calculated concentration, the nearly imperceptible sweat beads forming at the temple, the palpable depths of commitment and teleological idealism which flow through the high-strung vessel sitting on the disgusting motel carpeting next to the detached sink. I could even speculate, based on lengthy and careful consideration both of my own and in conversation with the man himself, on the deepest thoughts and most astral projections penetrating and moving through Poor Old as he tenses and relaxes various fibers and groupings according to symphonic arrangements and constellations of which even his own understanding is callow and undeveloped. But that would all be excessive, and perhaps your own memory of that time you saw a guy you were certain was either sleeping or dead suddenly move just the slightest bit, and you sighed in relief (or disappointment) and got on with your life. Thus, Gentle Stretching.
Among the strong arguments for veganism are those ethical, health-based, spiritual, and environmental. Almost certainly the weakest is that individual behavior can significantly impact the status of our planet as moving from “often on fire” to “more fire than anything else.” Somewhere in between the strongest and weakest are the general arrogance and moral highroading it allows the non-consumer of animal products. In this country, it is especially difficult to argue that it is the more inexpensive way to consume enough to subsist, let alone thrive. Thus, to label oneself a Fiscal Vegetarian is entirely likely to impact one’s health in untold ways, or restrict one’s diet to a small range of bulk-purchased canned and dried goods. On the other hand, if one is to adopt a more scavenging manner, finishing dishes of others indiscriminately and openly soliciting donations from fellow diners, then one is closer to a Convenience Omnivore. There is, however, a balance in this delicate system as regards convenience, and more often than not, one person’s convenience is another’s inconvenience. But at least the animals are already dead, prepared, purchased, and disused.
But each of us needs some kind of label for their behavior and identity, do we not? For myself, a gentleman, for you, a brute. To them, gentleness is lightness, to him, it is the only gravity we can access. Concerns fiduciary look like convenience to he who has, and like impending and certain death for she who does not. The masks we use out here are between our lives as others construe them and as they actually are.
