Greetings, Ghost Family. Welcome to Family Ghosts.

On this episode, you're going to meet Mark Pagan, Mark's a radio producer, a filmmaker,

a mouth-winning storyteller, and he's always been fascinated by what he calls the emblems

of masculinity, how transparent they are, and how desperately men cling to them. Here's

a story he told recently on his podcast, which is called Other Men Need Help.

It was a Saturday night, everybody was out. I noticed this couple that's at the corner

nearby me. It's a man and a woman there in the early 30s, and he's standing on the

curb hailing a cab, but he's doing it in this cool guy way. And what I mean by that is

he's not making eye contact with the direction traffic is coming from, and then he's got

one thumb in his waistband, and his cab arm is like a dying plant. It's not eye catching.

I don't know if he thinks this is effective, or if he just wants to look cool. Now I look

over at who I assumed was his girlfriend, and I could tell that she was just done with

the night. Her arms were crossed, her feet were tapping, she took his dying plant arm and

dragged it down, and she threw her arm up, locked her eyes in the road, and within 15 seconds

a cab came to the curb. It was like a PSA for effective cab get-edge. And before they

got in the cab, the guy did this head twist thing looking around like, did anybody see that?

And I sat there going, I totally did. This week on the show, we're going to hear the

story of Mark's discovery that masculinity is an invention made from weird materials.

And panoply, you're listening to family ghosts. I'm Sam Dingman, and this is episode

five. Lookin' good, Charlie. Our story begins in the suburbs of Washington, DC. My earliest

memories of my dad are waiting for him to come home. I'm eight years old, and I'm waiting

by the door while my mom picks him up from Dallas Airport. Eventually, I hear the

...