The less we know of real men, the more daring we seem to become in
our efforts to be masculine. If we have a father (or uncle or
grandfather) we admire, and we can find some of him in ourselves, we can
imitate him. If we don't, we may have to imitate movie stars or sports
heroes. We look to other boys our own age to tell us when we're overdoing
it, and they may be battling just as fiercely and desperately to flex
their masculinity at the world. So we bounce our absurdly puffed-up
masculinity off one another and think we are preparing ourselves for
manhood.
A BOY AND HIS PECKER FACE PUBERTY I wonder why men get serious at
all. They have this delicate
thing hanging outside their bodies which goes up and down by
its own free will. If l were a man, I would always be
laughing at myself.
--Yoko Ono
A BOY'S PUBERTY is a strangely unsettling transition, perhaps not
quite as dramatic and definitive as menarche (though a boy's first
ejaculation can be every bit as frightening as a girl's first
menstruation). Before puberty, the bodies of boys and girls are similar
enough to be easily interchangeable--except for the insignificant little
genitals. Much is made of those little genitals from birth, or nowadays
even before birth, and they become the determinant of everything in
life.
But for the fast 10 or 12 years they have little significance
except as predictors of furore events. Early on, girls begin to
menstruate, which is dramatic but not immediately obvious to their
playmates. For boys, puberty comes later, sometimes much later, and its
delay is humiliating. While the tall, round girls are getting themselves
up like grown women, the prepubescent boys, with their featureless,
hairless bodies, are just little kids who could almost pass for the
children of the grown-up-looking girls.
The genitals are the first part to change. First, there is a little
pubic hair, and then, with alarming suddenness, the penis blossoms into
its full glory, utterly inappropriate to the little-boy body from which
it dangles. A boy's penis seems so enormous and hard to hide, far too big
yet still too small, always too small.
The boy has little control over it, and for a few years it is not
clear who is in charge of whom. He pushes it down constantly, but it
simply springs back up just when it is least expected.
Yet when it is needed, it is nowhere to be found; with any anxiety
it will run away and hide.
The boy has become one element of a pair of Siamese twins, with
this other independent being attached to his body--a constant, unreliable
companion, a source of comfort and entertainment when alone, but a steady
embarrassment in public.
While the boy is pre occupied, learning to break this willful
creature, thick hair has started at the ankles and moves relentlessly
up--as if a furry monster-to swallow him. All this remains concealed from
the outer world until his voice changes and his pants, one morning, are a
foot short. The hair reaches the pimply face, and the body exudes
goat-like odors. The muscles bulge--though never enough, of course--and
he bears no resemblance to who he was a year ago or even
yesterday.
Parts of his body look like a mans, and impatient girls, who
reached puberty before him expect him to act like a man. Yet he doesn't
feel like a man, and his parents don't treat him like one. They have no
idea what has happened inside his body and inside his mind. And he
certainly doesn't know how to talk to them about it. At the beginning, he
clings to other boys who are experiencing the same exciting, terrifying
changes, and they form a separate society, a very intimate one,
ultimately avoiding and examining the sexuality that obsesses them and
passing on fantasies, fears, and fallacies about sex.
From the day this man's organ sprouts from this boy's body, the two
are in a straggle over who is in charge and whose needs will prevail.
Boys with models of masculinity can learn to keep their penises under d
control, but a boy without models may turn control over to his
penis--which at this most sensitive stage of life seems so I much more
masculine than the rest of him--and then spend the rest of his life a
slave to an insensitive, noncommunicative, unreliable, utterly
self-centered, spineless piece of flesh.
LOSING OUR CHERRY I was never to see her again. Nor was I ever to
learn
what became of her....Life is made up of small comings and
goings, and, for everything we take with us, there is
something we leave behind. In the summer of '42...in a very
special way, I lost Hermie-forever.
-- HERMAN, reflecting on his lost virginity,
in Summer of '42
I FAILED my own prescribed masculinity test: I didn't play football
past the eighth grade, which meant I wasn't a real man. I had to gain
acceptance by getting drank throughout my teens, engaging in activities
requiring more bravado than brains, and making obligatory sexual efforts
with women I didn't know, didn't like, and didn't want.
These initiations were not pleasant, but they weren't crippling
either, and I'm glad I learned to play the macho games well enough to
survive adolescence.
Tags:
alarming numbers,
armed robbery,
boys team,
chants,
corporate takeovers,
exaggeration,
father,
girls team,
heavy doses,
jungles,
male chorus,
masculine mystique,
masculinity,
mating,
meaningless work,
men,
men masculinity,
mortal struggle,
primitive society,
Puberty,
saber toothed tigers,
testicles,
time and place,
trudge,
veneration
