The Dan Chronicles

Setting: Most of the Dan Chronicles take place in the bowels of a machine shop located in an industrial zone of a major metro. They employ close to 500 people, 5 of whom are women. 1 of those women works a machine. The others are all relegated to less threatening more feminine positions as receptionists and human resources personnel. This is so commonplace in the manufacturing industry that it isn’t even a tiny bit surprising. The shop makes various parts for oil rigs using a variety of equipment, most of which is computer controlled and hazardous.

Nigel and I look rather average on paper. We’re a young couple struggling at a just-this-side-of-poverty-class income. We have two beat up ’80’s cars that we’re always having to fix, four cats and a bunch of computers. We’re renting a 3 bedroom apartment in a strip-mall infested outskirt of the city. The apartment is always messy because both of us suck at cleaning, but we do what we can to make it home. We have some privileges and not others.

Dan: Dan operates a specialized piece of equipment that manufactures pipes. His job consists largely of pushing a button and waiting for the machine to do its job and monitoring its progress. He likes sports and building things. He is married to a woman who works an office job for another company. He’s 6′ tall and about 100 pounds overweight, largely due to drinking beer by the case every day, with short balding dark hair and in many ways resembles Lenin. I wouldn’t call him a handsome man, but he isn’t ugly either. Born and bred here in Texas, his experiences of other cultures are, as he put it, limited to where white people are. He is typical in just about every way. He also happens to be a disgusting misogynist.

Nigel: Currently he is an electrical engineer who designs and fixes the large laser computer-controlled machines in the shop, and just about anything else they can think of for him to fix. He spent most of his life in a very small, poor mining town out in the desert mountains of Arizona where people still grow their own food and hitch their horses at the general store, and so he still regularly gets lost in the big city. He lost his mother to a car accident when he was 17, but from what he’s told me, she was an strong, competent earth mother. His interests are too many to list completely, but among them is video games, hunting and inventing things. The menacing vibe he radiates belies his thoughtful, philosophical nature as a liberal pagan radical. He is also my husband.

Me: I have lupus which limits me, so I work out of the house as an artist and a writer. I hate being a statistic, but yeah, I’m one of those women who was beaten by my stepdad so I had to leave home early and it curtailed my education. But that didn’t stop me from self-educating and starting a non-profit for science education which I ran until I got too sick to do it. I’ve always been a feminist, but I became radicalized after I spent a short stint in the adult industry (pre-Nigel when I was poor and desperate), and I saw what it does to women and men. I enjoy reading, philosophy, science, art, cooking and having adventures.

Travis: Another employee at Nigel’s workplace. He’s a Nice Guy(TM). He works the night shift on one of the machines, and exists in a state of perpetual bitterness, despite his talent and intelligence. I suspect that beneath Travis’ emo surface lurks someone very dangerous to women, and his comments about women all being this-or-that provide a foil for Dan’s stupidity. He’s about 5′11″, somewhat good looking and a tad overweight from all the McDonalds he subsists off of which I imagine has to do with his loud proclamation that vegetables are girl food.  He has black hair that comes down just shy of his shoulders, brown eyes and a face that reminds me of putti.

Daniel: This is another technician who works closely with Nigel helping him to fix things. He’s just a good ol’ boy, and I mean that in the mostly positive sense. He loves his wife and shows it unabashedly, though he is still a product of the patriarchy with his gentle, well-meant condescension. Still, he’s not a bad person. He’s 6′ and about 250lbs, and is a relatively average looking fellow. He’s got blond hair, blue eyes and looks a bit like a copy of a copy of the Marlboro Man without the hat, but with the cigarette.  He’s an interesting contrast to Dan.

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I’ll be adding characters to this list as they are included in the story. I have left the wives’ names out on purpose to highlight the fact that the spouses of these men are not present in this male environment, and may not have any idea how these men act when they aren’t around. Or maybe they do. The patriarchy convinces women to put up with amazing amounts of bullshit.

Also, it’s worth noting that I described the physical characteristics of all the characters except for myself (Nigel is described here), because as the disembodied feminist narrator, I’m not really part of the story. I included my bio up there mostly because I knew folks might be curious. The physical descriptions of the characters are there to help you visualize the people as people and not merely ideas, not to make generalizations about their personalities and their physical appearances. It’s important, I think, to remember that these are real, actual people acting this way, not just some bit of fiction, and visualizations help, but it isn’t productive to think that all Dan’s are overweight, or that all overweight guys are Dan’s, or that their attractiveness or lack thereof has much to do with it. Those things could never be demonstrated anecdotally, which is all this project is.