“Ew! EEEEEWWWWWWWW!!!!”
My wife’s exclamation on our afternoon walk declared imminent danger ahead.
As I glanced down the leaf-lined road in our sleepy West Tokyo neighborhood I spied the subject of her concern. It was a middle-aged man, slight, scruffy and harboring the look that only an aloof Westerner admonishes in these parts. It made matters worse that the guy was astride a skateboard . . . and that he sported a (wait for it!) man bun.
“It’s terrible enough that any human over 40 should travel by skateboard,” my wife ranted. “But a man bun? How could he? This is REPREHENSIBLE!!!”
Given the gravity of the offense, her reaction was just, perhaps even measured. Man buns, as common knowledge dictates, are reserved for sumo wrestlers and for the Hemsworth brothers if their role requires it. For the rest of us, it is simply not done.
Once the culprit skated by, I pondered whether I actually knew anyone fool-hearty enough to flourish such a curt coif. Fortunately, my mind drew a blank. But then, like the Ring of Power revealing it’s foreboding script to Gandalf and Frodo, the truth dawned upon me. I did know someone.
He was one of the fathers in my middle son’s soccer team, and his unfortunate fashion choices perfectly balanced his very terrible man bun. Acid washed jeans, resuscitated from David Lee Roth video from 1987 were typically complimented by a look-at-me Balenciaga t-shirt. Hanging over his pinster shoulders and above his waste flank would often be a Mystery Ranch merse.* Unlike the rest of us happy dads in our Uniqlo dork sweats, he stood out. It was as though Milli-Vanilli and an over-the-hill samurai had spawned a love child. Unlike a samurai, the top-knotted wretch did not ride off into the sunset on a weathered palomino. He went about town in a white . . . Porsche . . . Macan SUV.
The first time I spied the wheeled bête noire was after a particularly spirited Saturday soccer practice. As I gazed upon it’s gaudy frame I gripped my son’s hand, un-checked rage swelling in my very pith.
“Dad, I can see the veins in your neck,” my son warned. “Dad. Dad? Dad, are you going to turn into the HULK??? You look mad!”
A Dirty Harry scowl plastered across my mug, I pondered aloud, “A Porsche SUV. What would Bill Benz have to say about this?”
“Who is Bill Benz, Dad?”
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In 1976 when my family and I first moved from Palisade Avenue The Bronx to Palo Alto, my mom made her first order of business finding friends. Extraverted to a fault, she had had lots of them back East, and she imparted to me the importance of making new ones.
“Friends are the best way to get acquainted with your new environment, Adam, my dear,” she quipped between drags of Benson & Hedges Lights.
“You mean they’re like teachers?” I pondered.
“Yes! Teachers. Kindred spirits. Purveyors of juicy gossip. Keepers of hope. Friends are ALL of this and more,” my mother explained.
Her search led us five short blocks down Webster Street to the Benz family. In a town where all the mom’s and dads were (seemingly) blond and bland, Ruth Benz, with her brunette bob, imbued a kind of soulfulness that my mother was out to find. Ruth was quick with a hug and a bowl of ice-cream, the perfect recovery food after hours playing in the front yard with George and his toe-head little brother, Alec. George, my first true buddy in California, would curiously accompany the heaps of Breyer’s vanilla with sour pickles. The odd combo may have been a portent of things to come given that he would later find success as a toy executive of some note.
I knew that George and Alec had a father, and, with my warped memory of the time, it took what seemed like several months of friendship with the boys to finally make his acquaintance.
One Saturday afternoon, hunkered down around our cream and pickles, we gazed up at the sound of the screen door to the Benz’s detached garage. A tall man, whip thin with great shocks of blond hair pasted across his pate entered the kitchen. He was clad in a weathered white t-shirt and old dungarees. This was standard “dad wear” of the era, but there was something very non-standard going on with Bill Benz. His forearms and wrist were adorned with grease smudges, and his countenance imbued a quiet intensity that was somehow familiar to me. I had seen the look in my mom’s eyes when she would emerge from her study after a “quality morning” at her Olympia Traveller typewriter working on her soon-to-be-published book.
“Well hello!” chortled Mr. Benz. The pensive expression had been replaced by a folksy silliness. He finished scrubbing up with Boraxo and extended me a handshake.
“Hi, Mr. Benz,” I countered. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Adam Brownstein.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Brownstein! Call me Bill!” he countered.
Later that afternoon I got the skinny on Mr. Benz from George as we took in Destroyer, the latest double-platinum vinyl offering from Kiss. To “pay for stuff” Mr. Benz was a lawyer at one of the venerable Silicon Valley firms. But his great passions in life were two-fold. He was an outstanding distance runner, known to lace up his Adidas SL 72’s and crush the brutal Cow Hill 10K loop with enough time for a shower on his lunch hour.
“ . . . and my dad loves Porsches,” George relayed.
“Oh. You mean like the fast, red ones???” I posited. “ Porsh! I know those cars!”
“Noooooooooo!”, exclaimed George. “Por-SCHE! NOT Porsh! Por-SCHE. Say it! Por-SCHE!”
It took a bowl of Breyers Mint Chip consumed in silence for George to forgive my obtuseness. Amends made, he led me to the garage out back. Bill Benz was hunkered over the hood of a 1975 911 TS. Kitted out with wide rear flares, PS 230 fuel-injection and the iconic Targa open top, it was majestic. There was something noble and soulful all at once about the machine, and I felt as though George, Mr. Benz and I were in the presence of another symbiant being.
Over the next several years, I would make my way to the Benz house, and I often took time to glimpse at Bill Benz’s vorfreude tuning up for his next amateur race at Sears Point. Bill Benz always greeted us with a smile, a corny joke and often a compliment.
“Adam, I hear that you are REALLY something on the soccer field!” he would offer up.
Out of respect to man and machine George and I would keep our sojourns to the garage brief. I sensed that Bill wanted to get back to his ratchets, wheel bearing gauges and Kukko extractors. But one day, as we commenced to enter the kitchen for a generous helping of Breyers Cookies and Cream, I turned back and issued a question to Mr. Benz.
“Why do you like to build Porsches so much, Mr. Benz?” I asked.
Bill placed his oily hands on his hips, his light eyes gazing up for a moment at the California sky. Then he looked straight at me.
“Well Adam, it’s good for a man to have an interest in life. Mine is this. I mean just LOOK at this car. It’s really beautiful, isn’t it? So pure.”
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In 2003, due to market interest, Porsche introduced the Cayenne SUV to the world. Whilst a handful of 911 Carreras and Targas are driven home from dealerships these days (alas none with manual transmissions), the SUV category has flourished. The Cayenne is the company’s second best selling model just behind the smaller sized Macan SUV. Over 180,000 were sold in 2019 alone . . .
. . . including a white one to my friend with the man bun.
*Merse: man purse.
The Tokyo Yenta 