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I've heard that whiskey is the curse of the working man. If it is, then machismo must be a close second.

When I was 15, I followed the footsteps of my brother and our father into the oil fields. Through family connections, I got jobs on drilling rigs in the Texas Panhandle for parts of the next 4 years. I learned male chauvinism, racism, disregard for my own safety and everyone else's, gun handling, the glories of crudity, and how to denigrate almost everybody. I learned quickly and was good at, at least good at the appearance of, all the worst things about men in a patriarchy. I swaggered with the best of them. Nothing made me happier than getting drunk out of my mind and treating almost everyone with total disdain. By the time I went in the U.S. Navy at age 18, I could embarrass most sailors and did.

I paid the same price that other men paid in hangovers and alienation. It was only good fortune that kept me from being hurt in oil field accidents. I wasn't quite as lucky with my macho driving and drinking. On my 18th birthday, I totaled my Ford and nearly killed my girlfriend and myself. I could have, should have, also gone to jail for bootlegging. By then, I knew something was amiss. Even today, though, in 2015, I'm not sure I've mastered machismo and stopped letting it master me.

Our culture breeds male chauvinism. The stereotypical "hero" in literature and movies is macho. We may joke about it, and we do, but it has its teeth sunk deep into the American psyche. It's a problem for almost all American men. It's only a matter of degree.

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