The measure of a man.
Dick size, right? Kind of. Close anyway; cojones. Lots of talk of dick swinging and abusing lately, as if that is some measure of a man or something.
Long before Chuck Palahniuk ever came on the scene, I went through stages three and four of my own personal fight club. Both were in the mid-years of high school. Stage three involved a kid we will call SL, who challenged me to one of those afterschool fights where all the other kids gather like seagulls at a dumpster full of offal. I felt the peer pressure, so I showed up. I didn't want to fight this kid, I just wanted everyone to leave me alone.
We squared off and everyone gathered round. Side note: I started training in Tae Kwon Do from five years old, for a total of close to seven years by this stage. I knew how to fight, but the thing about tae know do particularly is that it is based on a very non-confrontational philosophy birthed of Korean farmers forbidden to even carry farming implements to and from work, under Japanese occupation. By this stage I had spent more time listening to readings about avoiding conflict than I had actually being punched in the face.
We squared off and SL hit me square in the nose, which exploded in a shower of blood. I hadn't even raised my hands to defend myself, I just kind of let him hit me. The blood felt warm, but didn't seem to bother me as much as it bothered him. I put my hands down and smiled, told him; "hit me again" and he did. I felt nothing. By now my arms were out in christ-like fashion and I yelled "hit me again" I remember hearing almost simultaneously, SL saying "I don't want to" and some girl yelling "Fucking gross!"
I kind of chased him around, slowly, as he retreated, still asking him to hit me again. He was crying by this stage, as were more than a few onlookers. The thing is, that none of them had any idea. By this stage of my life, the institutional experiences had certainly made me afraid – afraid of bullies and being social ostracised, afraid of humiliation and public exposure – but none of this had anything on the horrors of being raised by my fucking uncles. I think I've always had a thing against dissociation, and by this stage, I had been beaten to fuck by much larger, much angrier men, and I had something to compare it to. This was nothing.
Stage four came a few years later, after I took up boxing. By this stage, I thought myself pretty tough already; I'd had my arse kicked a few times, and even a few victories. I entered that gym thinking I knew what I was doing, but quickly learned that there were far more masochistic sorts than myself, and they could fucking punch, too. I spent like four years as an amateur boxer and have a perfect xero for four record. To my credit, I've never been knocked out. But I was kind of a shitty boxer.
I didn't have the thirst that others seemed to have. I could get a good combination off on someone, but something in me never followed though. A good deal of finishing any fight is taking that one last punch that you know very well a ref would not allow, and that you would not allow on fights you were refereeing. I could never bring myself to do that. After hours of being popped in the mouth every time you drop your guard, you become reactive out of muscle memory; but it still takes something more to pull the trigger while someone is already down.
I left boxing for a while, to become more of a lover than a fighter. I've dabbled in other martial arts over the years, but I've never really gained that killer's edge that seems to define a good fighter.
The thing is, I've bought into this whole bullshit about what makes a man for most of my own life. I've oscillated between definitions prioritising being able to give or take a punch at different stages, but I've always largely bought into the idea of it involving punching in some manner. Makes sense, I guess, when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you are a manifestation of ... ok, I'll stop.
The measure of a woman, on the other hand, is largely time. Whether we are talking about her uterine time bomb ticking down or the ends of the month being made to meet, obviously without the need for external meat, or her endless fight against time itself, woman seems to be on the clock in ways us men only bitch between ourselves about.
And that is largely all men seem to do: bitch. Generations of little bitches doing nothing.
I've stumbled across a few real men along my travels now. Always very unassuming, never threatening (to me, anyway; can't speak for the system they were fighting against). None of them have ever been loud, none of them have been asking for money for anything; they seem to figure out the logistics of that kind of shit for themselves. None of them even really seem to fight the system as such, but have figured out means of creating new oceans rather than just swimming against tides. Most of the real men I have met have been short, and soft-spoken (I still need to learn this), and slow to anger and wrath. Every one of them, without exception, has been good in the garden (and good in the bedroom – there is a reason good marriages last), good with kids, with animals, and with day to day bullshit.
Real men don't bust through windows, they replace them after kids break them. Kids break windows. Kids get in fist fights. Kids want to get better at fighting.
Men get better at getting better. The measure of a man is not his span (as it is the measure of a woman), but his effect; his cojones. It is all the plants, animals, and ideas he nurtured, all the change he effected. The measure of a man is not the life of his offspring – don't do that to them, let them make their own mistakes – the measure of a man is what he accomplishes in his life, the change he is able to make. The epilogue of every life lived is never spoken, but lived in the lives of others affected by that very life lived, and the measure of every man is not in what he leaves behind, but what he allows to become.
We are at a point where the real men need to step the fuck up, and most of that is all of the other men realising for themselves that they can be real too. Your dick will grow like Pinocchio. Once you stop lying to yourself – everything is backwards in this satanic inversion.
'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit
Submitted January 28, 2019 at 10:47AM by pieceofchance http://bit.ly/2FTl34G
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