my sensitive boy
recipe: Garden Salad with Horseradish Ranch
a brief intro
I’m equally excited and nervous about this weeks material. I set out over two years ago to maintain a level of honesty in my work. The story posted in here is leaning into that value of honesty. Thank you for keeping this space safe for me to express my creativity. Thank you for your praises and your support allowing my artistry to grow. Thank you for the many weeks/months/years you’ve been with me. This story is a real one and I want you to know I’m feeling better everyday.
*trigger warning: the following essay contains details of violence.*
my sensitive boy
If you’ve ever had the pleasure to read bell hooks, you know she writes with ferocious accuracy. bell hooks unveils the ugly underbelly to our most common issues and problems we somehow suppress unknowingly. One of her books, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love offers a detailed explanation of the negative effects patriarchy has on the male psyche. In The Will to Change, bell’s fierce candor unveils the ways in which modern men live their life with fear, loss of intimacy and loneliness.
There were moments of discomfort in reading the book. In the chapter, Being a Boy, she starts with a heavy blow, “boys are not seen as lovable in patriarchal culture.” Scientifically baby boys cry more than girls. Boys grow up and never receive the same validation over their feelings as girls. In fact, the language around boys' emotions isn’t as developed as the complexity girls have for their emotions.
Terrence Real is cited often in The Will to Change. He says (and I’m paraphrasing here) “hour-by-hour, day-by-day our boys and girls across theaters, movies, classrooms, homes are bombarded by traditional messages about masculinity and femininity.” Quite recently I had an experience that brought me back to this text specifically. The experience wasn’t pleasant, nor did it leave me hopeful, but it might have saved me.
*trigger warning*
During my morning errand I called my friend Lindsay, she had wonderful news. “Jeremy (her partner) is going to show his paintings at Time Again bar in September." When you get news like this, it’s exciting, it feels like a win for everyone. An artist given the space and time to show their hard work on a big stage like New York City, it’s a win.
I was walking home from grabbing a loaf of bread, finally taking in the first sunny day in a while for New York. My headphones weren’t in, I was fully present, although my mind has a tendency to wander. I passed a man, tall, like me, on a scooter with pink wheels. His shirt had a pair of children’s hand prints on it. He was just moseying along and I didn’t think much of it.
Walking up to my building I grab my keys from my bag. The man on the scooter stops in front of my building, he’s saying something in my direction. He repeats, “I said, I’m fucking talking to you.” I proceeded to open the door to my apartment building despite his presence. Before I could realize what was happening I was in the vestibule of my own building having to stand my ground.
“Give me what you got.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to this. His demand felt vague and uninspired. “I don’t know what you want,” I felt this was a moment of reconciliation. Standing in front of me was the person I passed on the street. This man who was attempting to take from me what we both know doesn’t belong to either of us. He said, “stop fucking lying, I know I saw you with cash, open your bag.”
Truth was the only path to follow. We saw in each other that we were both desperate. He was desperate for an easy fix and I was desperate for safety. “The only thing in this bag is a loaf of bread.” I opened the contents of my bag revealing the sesame loaf. He tore the paper bag in an act of frustration but did not proceed to investigate further. “Unlock your phone,” his patience was pressing him to grasp at something. “Which floor do you live on?” My first lie in our conversation happened when I needed safety most.
“Okay, let’s go. Come on, let’s go. Don’t make this hard.” He attempted to usher me up the stairs to get me to open my home to him. What pains me to realize now is how my own cat could hear her owner trying to reason, trying to deescalate an invasion on the other side of the wall. He grabbed my shirt and yanked me pulling out my vape. “What's this?” My palms were open, fingers spread as I did the international gesture for misfortune.
“In my home right now I have quarters for laundry, quarters, that's it. If I actually had money to give you, I would. I’d give you all of it, but I don’t carry cash. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.” I noticed he slipped his hand into his crossbody bag, now on his shoulder. The bag became pressed into my ribs with his hand concealing I don’t know what. Our eye contact broke and his last words to me were, “do you want to fucking die today?”
After calling the local precinct their response was to question why I didn't call 911. As someone who’s never called 911 before, I didn’t think it was my first option. 911 remains in my call list on my phone. When the police came they offered a ride in the car to canvass the streets seeing if I could spot the person in question. When we got back I met the sergeant who heard the same retelling of what happened thirty minutes ago. “Can we bring you in to give your story to the detective?”
At one point I felt like a narc, a moment later I thought about where I would move to next. The idea I settled on was that this situation is a one-off. Any trope you can imagine about a police precinct is pretty accurate. Computer screens, vending machines, mismatched chairs and tables. Entering into the interrogation room with the one-way mirror completed the image in my head of what this experience would be like. After the filing and signing I walked myself home. I didn’t leave my apartment for the rest of the day.
Thinking about the course of events, playing them carefully in my head, I remembered just how young this man felt to me. He felt fragile, yet somehow wed to violence and aggression as a final act. I’m certain he saw my fear and I sensed he was fearful as well. On the basis of fear, it’s complex how we cannot register it within each other. My intuition told me he doesn’t want to be here. I luckily chose emotional discernment. I’d rather relate and respond than react. His mood, his plan, felt shaky at best.
I was offended once when a manager of mine told a fellow employee that she thought I was sensitive. The threat to my masculinity pierced my ego. She’s right though. I’ve always been a sensitive boy. Safety, happiness, laughter, emotional expression are all things that light me up inside, they make me feel alive. I believe being sensitive has made me a strong man, one I’m proud of. I’ll learn to tell that little boy I used to be that being sensitive has saved his life.
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