The closest I've come to changing a flat is hoping that I'd never have to do it. I have, however, fixed the toilet cistern when the valve wasn't filling the tank properly, cooked for myself - food that wasn't just instant noodles, thank you very much - and I hit the gym regularly (at least for the past month). I even made Sergeant in the Singaporean army, so I've pretty much done what is considered masculine by society's standards. But I've never changed a tire.
I'm not sure what my hang-up is with tire changing, but recently a female friend remarked to me quite nonchalantly that she once changed a flat all by herself.
"You even took out the lug nuts?"
"Yup," she said with a satisfied smile, "you just need a little leverage. And some elbow grease." Noticing the crease in my already furrowed brow she asked, "Have you changed a tire before?"
Beat. "Did I mention I once fixed the toilet cistern?"
I understand we're now living in a more enlightened and modern age, a time where men and women can skip together hand-in-hand, a time in which the ceilings are made of pliable Saran wrap rather than glass and where the roles once thought to be gender-specific are easily interchangeable. But I can't shake the dread that consumes me - as I continue through life without changing a tire, I'm feel like I'm missing out on something essential. I feel like I'm missing some crucial piece of being a man.
But what is being a man? Is it pounding your chest stereotypically and crushing beer cans on your sloped forehead? Is it chewing tobacco, riding horses and being a grizzled cowboy like John Wayne?
When Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" was published, the whole notion of men getting together socially and then beating the stuffing out of each another was an eye-opener. The fight club was intended to be a support group for disenchanted males to regain their masculinity. What better way to get back one's cajones than to engage in a raw, bloody beat down?
Since the book's release, many real-life fight clubs have popped up, attracting white-collar desk jockeys who are looking to trade bad posture and carpal tunnel for internal bleeding and bruises in the ring after work.
Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at New York's Stony Brook University, told USA Today, "real-life fight clubs are the male version of the girls who cut themselves. All day long these guys think they're the captains of the universe, technical wizards. They're brilliant but empty. They want to feel differently. They want to get hit, they want to feel something real."
Was there ever a period where men actually felt emasculated? Or is it just all in their minds? Maybe it's that men's ideas of what qualifies as manly behavior are shifting so frequently that they can't keep up. Or men are so shackled to political correctness that they have to suppress their hunter-gatherer instincts.
I'm not sure if it's magical thinking, but a few weeks after the tire conversation with my friend, I got a flat. Parked in front of my apartment, the left rear wheel of my truck looked like it had melted in the heat.
Okay, I thought to myself, this is my chance. Time to step up. I took out the tools needed for the operation, laid them by the vehicle and stared at them, trying to see which piece did what. I didn't have a clue. It was like putting together an Ikea table without the instructions. In my defense, I'm a city boy. I spent most of my life in Singapore, which is an Asian New York, if you will, surrounded by steel and concrete. Given the size of my country, it was ludicrous to own a car when one is able to get from point A to B via public transport. I mean, open up your average map, look around the vicinity between the south of Malaysia and the north of Indonesia's Riau Islands, and you'll see: The Singapore title is much bigger than the actual country itself. Some creative cartographer might even use the city-state as the dot over the "i." That's how small Singapore is.
An hour later and I was no closer to even removing the spare. I was this close to getting a hammer and letting God sort it out when I saw two men in the distance of my apartment complex. They were doing man stuff like drinking beer and scratching. I swallowed my shyness and what was left of my pride and approached them, asking if they knew how to fix a flat.
Amazingly, they didn't laugh in my sooty face. They came over and talked me through the process - how to remove the spare, tips on how to loosen the lug nuts, the proper way to jack up the truck. Even after everything was done, they lingered behind, offering wisdom on getting my deflated tire (punctured by a nail, by the way) fixed and what to do in future, if I ever got a flat while driving on the highway.
I thanked them profusely and the taller of the two waved it off. "It sucks, but you either get a flat or you don't. You don't have to embarrassed about it," he said.
He was right. No one, neither man or woman, should be embarrassed about not having changed a tire before, or being scared of spiders, or plucking their eyebrows. Ultimately, it's how you see yourself.
But changing that tire - that felt really good.
Cheong is a screenwriting graduate student.
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