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.
