I became a man. Before that I was a little boy.
— Adam Ant (Stuart Leslie Goddard)
Observed each year on November 19, International Men’s Day (IMD) celebrates the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities, and raises awareness of men’s health and well-being. The theme for 2025 is “Celebrating Men and Boys.” I was unsure how to approach the topic until my friend and fellow blogger Aimee Wilson suggested I think back to when I was a boy. What did I imagine my life would be like when I grew up? What did I want to be?
For the purpose of this blog post I’ll define “when I was a boy” as the period of my life up to and including 1979. I turned eighteen that March but I was far less mature than my age might suggest. I knew little of the world beyond my immediate family, school, and the local environment of West Derby on the outskirts of Liverpool. It was a pivotal year for me. My father died in April. I took my A-level exams in June, passed them all, and left for university in September. Before the year was out I’d fallen in love and made friends who would shape my life for many years to come.
What Did I Want to Be?
Eighteen is the earliest I can remember thinking seriously about my future. Before that, if you’d asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d probably have answered train driver or cowboy. You can blame Casey Jones and the Cannonball Express for the former, my father’s love of Westerns for the latter. Pushed for a third career choice, I might have said secret agent. I spent a lot of time watching TV shows such as Joe 90, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and The Champions, the last heavily influenced by my youthful appreciation of Alexandra Bastedo in her role as Nemesis agent Sharron Macready.
Nicknames
Before moving on, I’ll touch on the subject of nicknames. That might seem off topic, but nicknames express how we’re thought of by others, and how we think of ourselves. I wore glasses from the age of eleven, so it was natural to find myself referred to as Joe 90 for a while, referencing the show’s eponymous hero, schoolboy Joe McClaine, who becomes a World Intelligence Network agent. I didn’t mind the epithet. As others have noted, the series’ bespectacled protagonist “boosted the self-confidence of young viewers who wore glasses. [...] The name ‘Joe 90’ has become a popular term of endearment for both children and adults who wear glasses similar to Joe’s.” It beat Specky Four Eyes or Goggles.
My only other childhood nickname was Nitram (my name in reverse) which was used by two of my classmates in secondary school. I never knew why. The pair were inseparable and — it’s fair to say — odd. They conversed in a secret language of their own devising, although it occurs to me that it might have been nonsense and they only pretended to be saying anything meaningful to each other. Their calling me Nitram was innocuous enough, although I recall an incident when one of them sliced through the strap of my army surplus backpack with a Stanley knife as he walked past my desk. Decades later I learned that the nickname has darker connotations. The 2021 movie Nitram tells the disturbing story of Martin Bryant (mocked as Nitram as a child) and his involvement in the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Bryant killed thirty-five people and wounded twenty-three more in the deadliest massacre by a single person in modern Australian history.
I was known simply as Martin through university and adult life until one day in 2011 when my new friend Fran asked, “Does anyone call you Marty?” In that moment a new nickname — and a new me — was born. These days I’ll answer to most things as long as it’s not too rude. Nitram is off the cards, however.
Things I Didn’t Want to Be
Something I definitely didn’t want to be when I grew up was a professional footballer. I was useless at team sports but nursed a futile desire to fit in. Hence my nominal support for my local football (soccer) team and subscription to such magazines as Shoot and Goal. I cringe at the photograph of me standing awkwardly in my Liverpool FC strip in the garden of my family home. (ChatGPT: “You appear to be a young child in this photo, likely around seven to nine years old.”) It evokes the smell of Dubbin and the loathed ritual of cleaning my mud-encrusted boots from the previous week’s PE lesson in preparation for the next.
Then as now, my life was defined more by things I didn’t want than things I desired or hoped for. I had no idea what kind of career I wanted. My father was distribution manager at Distillers Company Ltd (DCL). That didn’t appeal to me, although I have one very clear memory of visiting his office and playing on the huge (as they seemed to me at the time) mechanical typewriters. A foreshadowing, perhaps, of my much later employment in the IT Services industry. Dad’s brother, my Uncle Jack, was an architect. That did appeal to me and fit in with my favourite school subject, Technical Drawing. I dropped TD, though, when I chose my A-level subjects and never seriously pursued architecture as a career. I have a near pathological aversion to regret, but it’s interesting to wonder how things might have gone had I chosen differently.
The Next Most Obvious Step
The first time I gave any serious thought to my future was when I applied to university. There was no pressure to do so — I was the first in my family to go to university and very few of my classmates chose to remain in education beyond the age of eighteen — but to me it seemed the obvious next step. I’ve done that throughout my life. Taken the next most obvious step, the path of least resistance, without considering if it was what I wanted or where it might lead.
Having decided to go to university, I chose my degree subject on a whim. I attended a careers evening at school with no idea of what or where I wanted to study. I came away having decided I’d study pharmacy, on the sole basis that it matched the subjects I was studying at A-level: chemistry, pure and applied mathematics, and physics. The fact that a degree in pharmacy led naturally to a career in pharmaceutical general practice, hospital pharmacy, or industry was a plus, but I wasn’t planning for a career as a pharmacist. I simply didn’t look that far ahead.
As for the university itself all I knew was it wouldn’t be Liverpool. I chose Bradford because it was the only university offering pharmacy as a four year sandwich course. I had no idea if that was a good or a bad thing, but it helped me make up my mind. These days I seriously wonder how real the illusion of free will is.
“Where Do You See Yourself?”
Career path aside, how did I feel about my future life when I was in my teens? How did I see myself as a man in years to come? The simplest answer is, I didn’t think about it. The jaded interview question “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” still terrifies and confuses me. How can anyone see themself in the future? It hasn’t happened yet. I gave no thought to where I might end up living. Apart from a six month university placement I never returned to Liverpool and rarely looked back. I’ve always lived in or on the outskirts of major cities — Liverpool, Bradford, London, Newcastle — but where I live has never seemed all that important. Relatedly, perhaps, I had no desire to travel, even in my teens and twenties when many seem keen to travel as far and as frequently as possible.
Love and Longing
How about relationships? What did I imagine for myself romantically, emotionally, sexually? I once accidentally ticked the “gay/homosexual” box on an application form and decided not to bother correcting it but I’ve never had cause to question my sexuality (straight/heterosexual) or gender. I remember thinking that one day I’d be married with a family. It was an assumption as much as a desire. Getting married and having children was what adults did, at least in my very limited experience. I had one spinster aunt but all my other aunts and uncles were married or widowed. Two of my older cousins were married by the time I left home. Another wanted to be a nun.
I began university with negligible experience of women or what it meant to be in any kind of relationship. I’d never had a girlfriend and had no female friends. I can thank the single-sex secondary education system for that, although I don’t remember having girls as friends at junior school either. Throughout my teens I carried a torch for one of my junior school classmates but nothing came of it. (It was more of a candle, really. One of those novelty birthday candles that refuses to be blown out and has to be forcibly snuffed between finger and thumb or dropped into a glass of water.) My first slow dances were on the final night of a youth club week away in Wales when I was sixteen or seventeen. I remember being entranced by Siobhan, a girl my age who I played backgammon with on a writing weekend organised by schools in the region. I wrote a poem for her which she never saw.
The brush of femininity
and the way you catch back
your hair makes mockery
of the dice’s favour,
and who would wrench victory from so delicate a grasp?
— from “Strategem”
I had a major crush on my human biology teacher in Sixth Form. Helen had a significant impact on me, both work-wise and creatively. I achieved a grade A in my Human Biology AS level exams and passed Biology O level after teaching myself the entire syllabus during the summer holidays. As “Eleanor” she inspired some of my best early poetry. My first celebrity crush was Irish singer and 1970 Eurovision Song Contest winner Dana. (Rosemary Brown, who later served as a Member of the European Parliament.) It’s no coincidence that Dana and Helen were very similar in appearance. Dana’s 1976 album Love Songs & Fairytales was one of the first LPs I ever owned. The music and album art still move me, especially her cover of the 10cc classic “I’m Not in Love.” When Helen departed the school on maternity leave my focus switched to another of the teachers. I was just wise enough to recognise that the affection I felt towards these women spoke to deeper needs.
It may be that I do require someone to cherish,
someone in whom I may find inspiration and mature.
However, she is no mere substitute for
her, though indeed my loss has shown her dearer.
These new emotions may be less aesthetic, but they are no
less real for that.
Full fealty is lost, but still I offer tribute:
now to a deeper woman.
Treat me then gently, perilous in your dark beauty:
that which Eleanor inspired you may command.
And would I lose my heart, I gave it gladly.
The fantasy novels of J. R. R. Tolkien influenced me greatly through my teenage years. Arwen (developed far more in the later movies than in the books), Galadriel, and Éowyn present as strong independent women, but it was Tom Bombadil’s wife Goldberry that my heart responded to most ardently.
In a chair, at the far side of the room facing the outer door, sat a woman. Her long yellow hair rippled down her shoulders; her gown was green, green as young reeds, shot with silver like beads of dew; and her belt was of gold, shaped like a chain of flag-lilies set with the pale-blue eyes of forget-me-nots. About her feet in wide vessels of green and brown earthenware, white water-lilies were floating, so that she seemed to be enthroned in the midst of a pool.
— J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, “In the House of Tom Bombadil”
There’s an echo of Goldberry in another of
my poems.
by a brook stands my lady, hair flowing
free, dark memories washed away by sleeping:
her dreams the the colour of tall trees in autumn,
tall trees weeping.
— from “lo, the lady walks in my heart’s garden”
My feelings owed a good deal to the medieval concept of courtly love (French: amour courtois) which emphasized chivalrous adoration from afar. The opening lines of a poem written during my first year at university make this connection explicit.
Poetry was easy when
I called the tune
l’amour courtois, ma belle Hélène …
Now ‘Eleanor’ respells her name
and wraps thus mystery
in different garb.
— from “Poetry was easy when”
That poem marked a watershed. My earlier romantic devotion lay behind me. I was looking ahead to the (slightly) more realistic prospect of finding love amongst my contemporaries. As another line in the poem declares, “faded denim for the lady.”
My Role as a Man
Three years ago I explored what being a man means to me. I’ve also written about men who inspire me and some of the qualities and men I admire. Those were all written from my perspective as a man in his sixties. What did I know about such things when I was in my teens? My father’s chronic arthritis meant he wasn’t active or sporty but he was the financial provider for the family and very much the head of the household. In Being a Man I mentioned the second husband of one of my older cousins. I didn’t know him well but his devotion to my cousin and her daughters from her first marriage served as a role model to me in later years.
Tolkien’s works immersed me in Middle-earth, a world populated by such heroes as Aragorn, Boromir, Faramir, and Éomer. All were courageous warriors, men of action — and notably single. Aragorn’s love for Arwen is a backstory in the books and there’s an air of dynastic necessity in the joining of Mannish and Elven lines. The hobbits Bilbo, Frodo, Samwise, Merry, and Pippin are likewise all single, until Sam marries Rosie at the end of the story. The unspoken but nonetheless potent message was that, for men at least, life is lived best by the unwed. Marriage, if it happens at all, is for afterwards, once the adventures are over, the foes vanquished, the prophesies fulfilled, and the dreams realised.
Only much later, in a short story written in 2003, did I realise that the true hero of Tolkien’s world was not Aragorn, Boromir, Faramir, or Frodo, but Sam. In the following excerpt from “And Men Myrtles” the lead character William (Bill) Stokes finally understands the nature of his role supporting his wife through her battle with cancer, and finds healing for the pain and guilt he’s carried since her death.
And it came to him, hard and sudden. If the second acorn — this tiny oak tree in the plastic carrier at his feet — was the gift of the Lady then he was Samwise Gamgee. Not warrior but steadfast companion, whose hands were not those of a healer but gardener of a line of gardeners.
In that moment he saw himself through Joan’s eyes. She didn’t see — hadn’t seen — him as a failure, hadn’t hated him for failing to make the disease go away. They had been married twenty-seven years and he had been what she needed him to be. Faithful friend, truest companion on the longest road. He was her Sam.
Not Aragorn, damn his eyes. Sam. The hands of a gardener.
Bill Stokes, grower of things. He knew at last what the last tree was for.
It remains one of my favourite short stories. Fiction has allowed me to explore such themes as devotion, service, obsession, sexual desire, reward and retribution, hatred and violence. Bill Stokes is deeply flawed and many of his flaws are my own. But he’s not without awareness and finds hope before the end.
Last of all she would look at him with those velvet eyes and that smile, expecting him to be there. And he would say nothing because there would be nothing to say, but fall into step behind her as they followed the party down the gravel path to gather at Tolkien’s grave. There, at the head of the tidy plot, small still but proudly the little oak would open its leaves as William reached out his hand and found hers. She would look enquiring up at him until understanding dawned in those ageless eyes. That was how it would be. But before then he had a lot to do.
Stepping from the kerb, he did not see the car until it was too late.
Like Bill, the boy some called Joe 90 still has a lot to do. Unlike Bill (spoiler alert) I hope the man he became will have time to do so. I’ve shared my thoughts elsewhere on turning sixty-four. I’ve drafted my obituary and intend to write a eulogy for this life which — hopefully — is far from complete. In the meantime, I’m grateful to Aimee for suggesting this blog post. It’s given me a lot to think about and surfaced some warm — and some less than warm — memories. Thank you.
Photos by my father Norman William Baker (left), University of Bradford Student Union Card (centre), and Martin Baker (right).
