One summer day, my sister Leah and I were at the Hollis\u2019s house, playing in the yard with Stacie and Brandon. Brandon was two grades above me and several inches taller and even though he was only nine or ten you could already tell he\u2019d grow up to be the kind of man who drove trucks and shot bucks. Brandon had never acknowledged me in school, but today he\u2019d kicked a ball with me, showed me his Super Soaker, said my name. When he said he had to piss, I went with him. We stood under a pine tree, squirting the dirt like cowboys. I was staring straight ahead\u2014everyone knew you didn\u2019t watch another boy pee\u2014so I jumped a little when I heard Brandon say, \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
I turned my little head.<\/p>\n
Brandon\u2019s pants were all the way up. He was doing it with one hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill pisses with his pants down,\u201d Brandon said, shaking his head. He put his free hand in his hip pocket. Leaned back and sprayed his golden piss high and wide.<\/p>\n
I looked down. Pee was dribbling from my wiener. My legs were cold. My butt was out.<\/p>\n
\u201cPisses like a little boy,\u201d Brandon said, as he zipped up and walked away.<\/p>\n
I crouched down and tried to get hold of my pants. Some pee got on my hand.<\/p>\n
By the time I finished peeing and pulled up my pants, Brandon was long gone, back at the swing set with the girls. They were all laughing. I knew he\u2019d told him. He\u2019d told them I wasn\u2019t a man.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Last week, I got the stomach flu. The first day I had a hundred-degree fever, and the second day I had nonstop firehose diarrhea, and then, for the next several days, I was just tired, so tired. I\u2019m between sessions of the classes I teach, fortunately, so I don\u2019t have a whole lot to do every day besides write and think and write about thinking and think about writing. Still, that\u2019s felt like a lot. I\u2019ve needed at least one nap a day. I\u2019ve moaned to my partner, Casey, about how tired I am of being tired. Today, I woke up with some sniffles and a sore throat. I\u2019m fearing the worst.<\/p>\n
Casey had mono in high school, and it never really went away. She now has chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition I\u2019ve never fully understood because it\u2019s hard to understand, and because I probably haven\u2019t made enough of an effort to understand it. Some nights, Casey will collapse into bed immediately after getting home from work. She\u2019ll lie there, eye mask on her forehead, maybe doing a few French lessons, maybe dangling a toy for the cat, maybe just staring at the ceiling. Then she\u2019ll spend the whole night tossing and turning and soaking her sheets with sweat, and the next morning she\u2019ll get back up and go to work and help other people with their chronic fatigue.<\/p>\n
Sometimes this\u2019ll happen at the same time she\u2019s on her period.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t understand that, either.<\/p>\n
Whenever my dad gets sick, my mom will call me and say, \u201cYour dad\u2019s sick.\u201d Then we\u2019ll both pause, and I\u2019ll smile and sigh and say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d and she\u2019ll know I mean, for you.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll get on the phone with Dad, and I\u2019ll ask how he is, and invariably, using the voice most people use to deliver news about a death in the family, he\u2019ll say, \u201cNot great, Bri. I\u2019ve got the blahs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe blahs,\u201d I\u2019ll say, trying to keep the smile out of my voice. \u201cThat sucks, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d he\u2019ll say. \u201cIt does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he\u2019ll force a cough, like a six-year-old boy hoping to stay home from school.<\/p>\n
A few decades ago, when Dad was around the age I am now, he got in a terrible ski accident in Utah. He broke his femur, mangled his knee, sustained a compound fracture in his lower leg that left a foot-long scar that now looks like an undercooked flank steak. The doctors have told him, multiple times, that his leg injury is one of the worst they\u2019ve seen. His femur and fibula have mostly healed, but his knee still hurts, all the time. He limps like he banged it on a chair five seconds ago. He winces whenever he stands up. If he sees you seeing him wincing, he\u2019ll roll his eyes and force a smile. If you ask him if he\u2019s in pain, he\u2019ll say, \u201cOh yeah,\u201d then shrug it off and change the subject.<\/p>\n
I have never once heard him talk about his pain like he talks about the blahs.<\/p>\n
When he\u2019s in pain, he doesn\u2019t sound like a six-year-old boy.<\/p>\n
He sounds like a man.<\/p>\n
On my ninth birthday, my parents offered to give me the deductible to our insurance policy if I made it a full year without going to the emergency room. I did indeed make it, but only because I didn\u2019t tell them about slicing my foot open on a clay pigeon shard while wading in a lake. I didn\u2019t learn anything. I am known, still, as an inveterate klutz, a walking, breathing disaster. I have gotten dozens of stitches. Sustained multiple concussions. Gotten hit by cars, fallen off of horses, sat on beehives.<\/p>\n
You will never hear me talk about my pain like I talk about my head colds.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m in pain, I sound like my dad.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m sick, I sound like him, too.<\/p>\n
Where does this come from? Why do men\u2014most of us, at least\u2014grin through our cracked teeth and dance on our broken ankles, but then crumble, just crumble, when our noses begin to drip? Why aren\u2019t we more embarrassed to be seen being sick, chronically ill, unsensationally uncomfortable? Why aren\u2019t we less embarrassed to be in serious pain?<\/p>\n
Even now, in my forty-first year, when I\u2019m home sick, my mom will ask, in dead seriousness, if I want her to fly out and help. I\u2019ll tell her that, no, I\u2019m okay, I\u2019m just lying in bed, there\u2019s nothing to help with. I\u2019ll hang up the phone, and I\u2019ll text my sister about how Mom is doing it again, babying me, treating me like I\u2019m Dad. And then I\u2019ll pull the covers higher, and I\u2019ll wait for Casey to get back. She said she\u2019d make chicken soup tonight. She\u2019s buying popsicles on her way home from work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
December 1994<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Lacy Burkett and I have only been dating for three days, but I have loved her for at least a week. She\u2019s way prettier than the five girls I went to elementary school with and I like how she smiles when she sings in church. I don\u2019t know what it means when the guy in the song says all I wanna do zoom a zoom zoom zoom and a boom boom, but when my best friend Nick says I should write that to Lacy in a note, I do. The next day, Kelly Soff comes to my locker to tell me Lacy Burkett and I aren\u2019t going out anymore. I go to my math desk and pretend to be sad about Kurt Cobain.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
January 1995<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019m sitting in science when Missy Dreger tells me Denise Lorch is dumping me. I say, \u201cOkay,\u201d then look at my desk as Missy walks away. I don\u2019t understand. Last Friday, Denise and I held hands during Beethoven. She rubbed her thumb on my palm. I\u2019m not sure I love Denise, or even like her, but that\u2019s not the point, the point is: I\u2019ve been dumped four times in a month. Maybe it\u2019s the acne? Are my hands too sweaty? Two days later, I ask Missy Dreger out. We kiss in the library and then she dumps me, too.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
November 1997<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When I call Amber Lapp\u2019s house, her mom, who just last week frosted my hair, picks up. She sighs and says, \u201cHi, Brian,\u201d then hands the phone to Amber, who needs to tell me something. I don\u2019t hear what Amber says next, because I\u2019m thinking about that day in her closet, when I touched her boobs and she touched my boobs and I went home and wrote about it in my Star Wars journal. I survive the call without crying, then retreat to my room, where I spend the next four months listening to Oasis and joylessly masturbating. Years later, when friends-with-benefits is my favorite word, my mom will tell me that, at some point, Amber\u2019s mom told her that Amber hadn\u2019t wanted to break up, had just wanted to slow down\u2014but when she said so, I didn\u2019t seem to hear her.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
June 2000<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Carly Boers and I decide it just doesn\u2019t make sense anymore, since I\u2019m going to Madison and she\u2019s going to Minneapolis and anyway all we do is fight about how I need more affection and she is tired of me needing so much affection. We end it tearfully, spend the summer apart, then meet at a boat launch in August to say a few kind words and hug goodbye. I spend the next year begging her to take me back.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
November 2007<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Rachel Fiske stops me at a street corner to tell me she needs to tell me something. Three hours ago we had a tickle fight. In two days we\u2019re supposed to go to the ocean. Now we walk home, and after she leaves, I watch myself cry in the mirror and for good measure clutch a throw pillow to my chest while sliding down the wall. For days, I keep up the grief theatrics, replaying the best memories, the ones where I\u2019m wanting her and she\u2019s hurting me. When I start seeing someone new, I tell her.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
December 2016<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Jo Faris and I break up in the middle of an ice storm. We\u2019ve been together for two years, after a seven-year spell during which I seriously dated no one, a spell during which I was convinced I would never find love again. Then I found Jo Faris, and I fell for her as hard as I\u2019d ever fallen for anyone, and two years later, here we are, standing silent at her door. As I bike home, I slip on the ice and fall, and the carton of egg nog she\u2019d given back to me breaks open and soaks my bag. For the next month, I cocoon up in my room and cry until I can\u2019t breathe. At some point, I remember I\u2019d broken up with her.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
July 2017<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Casey Carpenter calls to tell me she needs to tell me something. I go to her place, where she tells me what Amber Lapp told me, about slowing down, and then what Carly Boers told me, about my suffocating needs, and then she lies there crying, like Jo Faris did, because she can tell I\u2019m not hearing her. I leave her house and go sit on an urban volcano, where I listen to sad songs and meaningfully sob and feel like the victim I clearly am, until, on the seventh day, I stop crying and start thinking. I think about what all of these women have said to me, about me. I think about what I haven\u2019t said, to anyone, about the women who don\u2019t fit into this story, the women I left, women who maybe still don\u2019t know why. I think about a thing I heard someone smart say, years ago, about boys, about how they love to be the one who is hurt, so as to ignore the hurt they cause, and I think of what I thought when I heard that, which was: I\u2019m glad not a boy anymore. The next day, Casey Carpenter writes me a letter, saying she\u2019d like to try again, but first she needs to tell me something. I go to her place and tell her, I\u2019m listening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why do men\u2014most of us, at least\u2014grin through our cracked teeth and dance on our broken ankles, but then crumble, just crumble, when our noses begin to drip? Why aren\u2019t we more embarrassed to be seen being sick, chronically ill, unsensationally uncomfortable? Why aren\u2019t we less embarrassed to be in serious pain?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3529],"tags":[971,30,3710,2534,3490,361,3577],"class_list":["post-20049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-nonfiction","tag-boyhood","tag-breakups","tag-chronic-fatigue-syndrome","tag-flash-cnf","tag-illness","tag-masculinity","tag-victim-complex","writer-brian-benson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20049"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20506,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20049\/revisions\/20506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}