55The truth was that during that period in my life, I
was living scared. Things weren’t going well for me fi-
nancially, I had serious health problems in my family,
and I had that mildly suicidal feeling that accompanies
an increasing sense of powerlessness over one’s prob-
lems. (I now think one way a lot of men hide their fears
is by assuming a macho kind of dull indifference. I know
now that’s what I had done. That a psychotherapist
could hear it immediately in my voice was unnerving,
though.)
Trying to understand why I covered fear with indif-
ference, I remembered that back in my high school the
“cool” guys were always the least enthusiastic guys.
They spoke in monotones, emulating their heroes James
Dean and Marlon Brando. Brando was the coolest of
all. He was so indifferent and unenthusiastic you
couldn’t even understand him when he spoke.
One of the first homework assignments Devers
Branden gave me was to rent the video Gone with the
Wind and study how fearlessly Clark Gable revealed
his female side. This sounded weird to me. Gable a fe-
male? I knew Gable was always considered a true “man’s
man” in all those old movies, so I couldn’t understand
what Devers was talking about, or how it would help
me.
But when I watched the movie, it became strangely
clear. Clark Gable allowed himself such a huge emo-
tional range of expression, that I could actually iden-
tify scenes where he was revealing a distinctly female
side to his character’s personality. Did it make him less
manly? No. Curiously, it made him more real, and more
compelling.
From that time on, I lost my desire to hide myself
behind an indifferent monotonous person. I committed
myself to get on the road to creating a self that included
Learn to lose your cool