Tag Archives: Masculinity

Mementos

Mementos

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We’d been cutting weight for weeks, wearing garbage bags in the sauna and running a few miles two or three times a day. I’d already shucked fifteen pounds just to save space for booze, but I started to worry Mikey would be a downer all night. Worst thing about a guy like that—he gets you worried you did something wrong, like all his problems are your fault.more

Chalk Outline

Chalk Outline

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The downtown lights blazed in the evening air. Slouched behind the wheel, Ismael watched as Loretta’s staff—the few whose physical presence was deemed “essential”—broke at the lobby door and hunched to their cars. Loretta, gone for 15 cold days.more

What Men Doo

What Men Doo

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Maybe I was a little maníaco because I only thought about sex during our all-male camping trips in Puerto Peñasco every Easter vacation, beginning when I was twelve. Dad would load up his white work van with a bevy of motorcycles and minibikes and enough food, beer, and soda to last a bunch of fathers and sons an entire week.more

Real Men Don’t Hit Their Wives

Real Men Don’t Hit Their Wives

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Lewis relishes, slightly and mischievously, the young couple’s naïve discourse about bridesmaids and flower centerpieces, as if it all means something. They are blissfully unaware of the inevitable mutual loathing that plagues all marriages.

She’s your problem now, Benny-boy. Enjoy paying for Amazon deliveries the rest of your life.more

Mermaid and Seaworm

Mermaid and Seaworm

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She said her hair was red as blood, and he said it already was the color of a penny and he liked to picture it the way it was.more

Snotknockers

Snotknockers

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He lowered his head to spear the bully in the chest, maybe knock him out of the game without the help of the refs. He imagined himself a rocket, charging through the cosmos. The moment his head made contact with Peewee, he realized why bullies always got what they wanted.more

How We Got Here

How We Got Here

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He’d felt the particular ache of a thing compressedmore

Silence, Father

Silence, Father

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“When grandmother passed away, father grew reticent. And I was okay with it, since he abandoned his routine of scolding me for lacking masculinity. Since he didn’t condemn every tear that fell from my face, spewing the same toxic rhetoric of how I needed to emotionally withdraw and appear similar to a parapet wrapped in black derma, to protect everyone around me, just like him. When I thought I would cry most, I felt nothing.”more

Cigarettes After Sexism: The Shy-Boy Misogyny of Indie

Cigarettes After Sexism: The Shy-Boy Misogyny of Indie

Essay by

I spent most of high school wearing hoodies, reading guys like Salinger, and thinking about a girl called Laura, whose name is not really Laura.more

Where The Big Bad World Begins

Where The Big Bad World Begins

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Tall as the devil, they said. At thirteen. Wingspan of a rare stork. Hands fat as chuck steaks. He should have been ruining worlds, not having his own destroyed by a pint-sized Indian in a second-hand Raiders jacket.more