Never The Man
if you don’t ask
you won’t get –
no one says no
if you don’t ask –
often what you get
you didn’t ask for
I felt
I was never the man
my father expected me to be
I was never the man
I saw on TV
in movies
I would never be up to scratch
I would always be less than
all those guys who were real men
I would never be a real man
with sweaty rough-and-tumble garb
of that sort of pride
would never be mine
even if I wore that garb
it would a costume
a disguise
to hide my heart
the man I was
was someone
who strove not to be defined
contained by definition
so I lost
the comfort of the acceptable
an acceptability
I never asked for
I felt was was never the man
my father wanted me to be
not that he wanted me to be like him
but to be the man he wanted to be
I was never asked
if his expectation a good fit for you
I wasn’t aware
that I could say no
or that once I started to choose
the definitions
that I hoped would suit me
that I’d have to constantly be adjusting
to make the shoulders fit
to make the pants crease properly
but by losing the comfort of the acceptable
I found the ease of being me
This starts with with a variation on the internet meme – if you don’t ask the answer is always no – an exhortation to less fearful in making our hopes clearer. What troubles me about this is that it is too easy to ask for what we think our culture wants us to ask for – things that supposedly make it comfortable for everyone – or at least more comfortable for the majority.
I grew up with the cultural narrative of what boys are & what they want to be is men – not ‘want,’ because ‘want’ has a sense of freedom of choice. The dominating narrative is too narrow to allow for choice. Even as laws changes, morals change, the majority is so uncomfortable with changes they feel attacked not enlightened.
The man my father expected me to be was not his fault – he fought a war that defined his masculinity in a culture that equated masculinity with physical prowess. You faced violence with violence – bullies were bested & defeated. As a kid I never questioned that equation but never could face violence with violence, hence I would never be a real man. I probably hated myself more for being a ‘coward’ than for any other reason.
So growing up has been a process of recognizing, questioning and putting those heteronormative notions of masculinity in perspective – the constant adjusting of shoulders. Not something I asked for but something I couldn’t refuse to deal with either. Today I have the ease of being me, most of the time. But I know enough ‘real’ men to know even they don’t have as much ease as I do.
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