April 26, 2021
Man Talk – a Short Story by a Reader
Today’s post, “Man Talk”, is a short story (offering fictional truths, I would add) authored by a reader of Home for Fiction, who would like to remain anonymous (their identity is known to me). I would not normally accept a text for publication under these conditions, but the nature of the text and the importance of its message compel me to make an exception.
“I want you to prove you’re a man”; “claim you’re a man”; “if you don’t do this, you’re not macho”; “you look like a faggot”.
Since childhood, a man loses decades of his life proving his masculinity. With friends at school, inside the house, on the street with the girls, in adulthood with the women and the booze friends.
He is tested in every moment. At the club or at the barbecue. On the sidewalk or at the stadium. Being a man is not natural, it is a conditioning. An endless test of intellectual testosterone. An incessant ordeal that begins in infantile fights and does not end with death.
Who has not had a woman in their life who cried out: “You’re not a man!”? Only to get you to go there and kiss her on the mouth. Isn’t it sad to be submitted to a public contest of your own condition?
Watch a circle of friends at a pub. There will be provocations from the machos in the group. Involuntary jokes, always questioning others’ sexual behaviors. Colleagues take offense as a form of friendship.
It is a trap. How can a man exercise his sensitivity, forced to repeat his sex eternally? He spends most of his days defending himself. He confuses camaraderie with redundancy. This makes him an idiot, because he repeats himself and repeats the collective insinuations endlessly. How is it possible to maintain the same refuges, from kindergarten to university? The man does not dare, does not invest, does not contradict the pre-established profile to discover what he likes and how he likes it.
It hurts to be a man, it’s exhausting to be a man. Yes, men have facilities: to pee standing up. Did I say facilities? I retreat, men have one facility: to piss standing up. Men are trained to be influenced and to suffer with comparisons. Men will be compared to fathers, to colleagues, to ex-boyfriends, to in-laws, to children, to ex-husbands, and, a recent trend posits, to dogs.
A man is not governed by intuition, he is situated by others. Tapping on the shoulders, on the back, exercising greetings to the pushes, threatening with indirections and inspecting those who seem to step out of line. A man lives denouncing his equals in order not to reveal his secrets. A man is an informer. A man never contemplates his inner being enough so that he may spy and control his peers.
At school, conversations only revolved around boobs, asses, and pussies. I SWEAR! I couldn’t even comment on anything. My experience was almost null. Judging correctly now: It was null. All I knew came from the encyclopedia’s medical pages. But I was trained to treat the erotic triple with vulgarity. If I didn’t let out a dirty word, I wouldn’t be accepted. Habit bites back, I just used one in the beginning of this paragraph.
To be accepted and to accept oneself are very different situations. When I was a child, my friends either gathered for soccer or to comment on the sordid details. I had nothing to add to the subject. It took a tremendous effort not to be labeled as a fag. High school went the same way. Friends even stayed under the bed while a couple of colleagues had sex. Of course, with the guy’s consent, as he would deceive the girl so she wouldn’t spot the intruders. Soon the girl was classified as a bitch, and the guy as a hero. With pastry and coke, he told us what she had done or not done.
Men admit their stupidity. They reinforce their prejudices and phobias because it is difficult to alter the manliness acquired through societal persistance.
The notion that every gay man is promiscuous comes from a macho speculation, because men fear, deep down, the very gays they are. Gays do not always think about sex (“men” do think about it way much more). By thinking only about sex, we impoverish sex. Gay men have the freedom to say what they feel, “men” are obliged to feel what is said and expected of them.
Besides, gays are more faithful than “men” themselves. How many gay couples show a loyalty that is not found in a heterosexual couple? I recalled five couples before finishing the sentence.
Warning: this is the nerve. Gay intelligence has enough room to exercise its tastes. That’s why gay men are best friends with women, they have finer temperament, wittier humor, an enviable ease to dance, cry and rejoice.
Men are trained to think about sex or to think they are men. There is no time left to mature. They will have to decide between exhausting themselves and renewing themselves.
My soul is not feminine, sorry for the disappointment. As if sensitivity is only complimentary when feminine.
Men suffer, men moan, men make mistakes, men love scandalously.
My soul is masculine, which makes me sensitive not to prove anything else.
You can call me gay, you are not offending me.
You can call me gay, it’s a compliment.
You can call me gay; even though I’m straight, I don’t mind being misunderstood.
Being gay favors me, expands me, frees me from conditioning. It’s not a judgment, it’s a reference.
You can call me gay, I don’t feel challenged, I don’t feel bothered, I don’t feel diminished, I don’t feel embarrassed.
You can call me gay, you are saying that I am intelligent. You are saying that I speak emphatically. You are saying that I am sensitive.
You can call me gay. You’re saying that I worry about the details. You’re saying I water the ferns. You’re saying I worry about my pride. You’re saying I care about the truth.
You can call me gay. You’re saying I can keep secrets. You’re saying that I care about the words unsaid. You’re saying I have a sense of humor. You’re saying that I am wanting the future. You’re saying that I know how to dress.
You can call me gay. You’re saying that I take care of my body, I tune the strings. You’re saying I talk about sex with no shame. You’re saying that I dance lifting my arms.
You can call me gay. You’re saying that I cry without the consolation of tissues. You’re saying that my nightmares went away since childhood. You’re saying that I bend a tablecloth like a silk pajama.
You can call me gay. You’re saying that I’m open and free of prejudice. You’re saying that I can walk hand in hand with rings. You’re saying I watch a film to sort myself out in the dark.
You can call me gay. You’re saying I reinvented my sexuality, I reinvented my principles, I reinvented my face at night.
You can call me gay. You’re saying that I didn’t die in the womb, in the color of the iris, in the brown of my eyelashes.
You can call me gay. You’re saying that I’m a woman’s best friend, that I wave at the airport, that I call the cab with a shout.
You can call me gay. You’re saying that I care about the suffering of the other, about rejection, about fear of isolation. You are saying that I don’t tolerate omission, envy, rancor.
You can call me gay. You’re saying that I’ll wait for your first bite before eating. You’re saying that I won’t pick my teeth. You’re saying that I vent my feelings over a glass of wine.
You can call me gay. You’re saying I’m generous with losses, I spare no praise, I collect shoes.
You can call me gay. You are saying that I am educated, that I am spontaneous, that I am alive so as not to repress myself when it comes to writing.
You can call me gay. Let it be loud. Glass’s fragility is born from fire’s strength and impetus.
3 Comments
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I’d call this a manifesto, not a ‘short story’ – it’s tough being human, but it seems to me that men have always done this to themselves. Testosterone? We all have to learn to master ourselves, and to find our place in the world. Mostly because we don’t have a choice: we didn’t ask to be here, and, as far as I can remember, no one asked me what I’d like to be.
Being a woman is no picnic – all of the above PLUS men telling you what to do PLUS being the ones who end up having the babies and mostly taking care of them (rewarding, but not necessarily ‘fun’) PLUS not being able most of the time to do the things you are capable of.
I wish your friend peace – somewhere in the mess we call life.
“Manifesto” would indeed be a good way to describe it. Parenthetically (and coincidentally), these days I’m working on something related to the realities of fiction and life alike. Ultimately – and now I sound like a postmodernist, I do confess it – it can sometimes be hard to draw a separating line behind fiction and reality; at least intellectually, as things like toothaches or headaches seem to be well embedded in hard reality 😉
I am no stranger to pain – just trying to damp it enough to finish Pride’s Children before I’m in a nursing home with a single shelf for my books!
But it is a mainstream novel, firmly within the tradition of contemporary commercial fiction, and I wouldn’t know postmodern if it bit me (not having your advantages of education).
Though if I could wave a magic wand and MAKE it reality, I would, as I have rearranged life for the characters by putting them through the wringer first, but I believe the rewards will make it worthwhile – and there was no other way (I’ve spent the last 21 years looking for one).
We are each entitled to write what we choose – including your friend. Kudos to him for putting it on the page.