Crying? No, it’s something in my eye

If you ask women to name their all-time tearjerker movies, they’ll likely bring up films whose very titles make men cringe, like “An Affair to Remem-ber,” or “Terms of Endearment.”

But men have a few of our own, like the scene at the end of “Terminator-2,” when Arnold Schwarzenegger asks to be lowered into a vat of molten metal so his advanced computer chips can’t be used for evil against mankind. His hand is the last part of him to disappear, giving a thumb’s-up. Every time I see it, I cry like a little girl.

I’m writing about this because I just read an article about people who cry at movies. It’s assumed that women do most of this. I’m not sure that’s true, which is not easy to admit since the culture says real men don’t weep. Women are always telling us to get in touch with our emotions, but I think even they are turned off by males who are overly so. I heard that author Fran Liebowitz once said, “Show me a man who weeps at sunsets and I’ll show you a real imbecile.” Though she used a different word.

But I’ll admit I cry at movies. I talked to my brother Matthew, 50, who said he’s a closet movie crier, too, though if it happens, he pretends he got something in his eye. I usually use the I’m-suddenly-allergic angle.

It’s somewhat acceptable to admit to crying at guy-movies, like when Jim Brown, ex-Hall-of-Fame football player, is shot in the back at the end of “The Dirty Dozen” during his heroic sprint with those hand grenades. I didn’t exactly cry at the end of “Casablanca” and “Proof of Life,” but I grimly misted over at the timeless honor of men giving up the girl they love to do what’s right. Those moments have to be much sadder than anything in “The Love Letter,” which my wife has been trying to get me to watch for eight years, and I’m still holding out, in part because the title alone is embarrassing.

Here’s a harder thing to admit: In many movies — non-guy movies — I cry at the mushy parts, like at the end of “Ghost” when Patrick Swayze recedes into the light. Or when E.T. does the same in that film. Those scenes kill me.

I even cry during animated movies.

‘Lady and the Tramp’

When they shoot Bambi’s mother, I’m a mess. I fall apart every time that truck in “Lady and the Tramp” hits Old Trusty, and Jock the Scotty sits at his seemingly lifeless side on the dark street baying in grief. During “The Little Mermaid,” I’m a wreck when King Triton says goodbye to his daughter Ariel, perhaps because that’s my daughter’s name, and by the way, I named her before that movie came out, so I’m still thinking of suing Disney if there’s a lawyer out there who wants the case on contingency.

And then there’s my deepest shame.

Most of all, I cry at the happy parts.

I still remember watching “Flashdance” at a hotel in Karthoum, in the Sudan. I’d been in Africa a month on an assignment, and was at last watching some familiar Americana. At the end, when she nailed the audition, I sat there wailing. My excuse is I think you get more emotional when you’re far from home.

I think my low point was when I cried during that commercial where Mean Joe Greene suddenly shows his softer side and throws his football jersey to a little boy who offered him a Coke.

Though now that I think back, I’m pretty sure I was just allergic to something.

X Mark Patinkin is a columnist for the Providence Journal. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.