Man-Child
Girls are lucky to know so quickly. True, when it comes to the responsibilities of life, women carry more weight on their shoulders mainly because they have to fit into a patriarchal society, but at least they know the exact moment they transcend from girl to woman. It’s not a pleasant experience, of course. The rise in hormone levels causes sleeplessness, irritability, sudden outbursts, fits of crying, feelings of isolation and self-contempt, cramping, bloating… and yes, this uncomfortable cycle occurs every 28 days for the next 30 or 40 years…but at least they know.
Boys, on the other hand, have no universal standard to determine when exactly they become men. We turn to rituals instead, and our make-up and societal attitudes tell us that we need to be ushered into the state of manhood. We make manhood a secret club where you need to know at least one other member in order to join. The reason for our history of horrors is that men are insecure. We need confirmation that what we are doing is normal, that we have the same mindset as everyone else. We don’t simply become men. We have to earn the title. Manhood requires a trial of some kind to prove that you are worthy and responsible enough to care for a mate and/or child. And because we have no clear set biological rule like women, we do the honest thing: we just start making shit up.
Some African tribes arm a 13 year old boy with only a spear and shield, and he will only be allowed to marry and have children after he kills a lion. An Aborigine boy becomes a man after eating his own foreskin (without chewing, of course), and can then marry and have children. Native Americans send their boys on “vision quests,” wherein the boy sets off for the wilderness to live within the elements and survive until he finds his animal spirit, which will then guide him into adulthood. I think that with enough research, I could find a tribe whose trial is nothing less than strapping a harness on a tiger and riding it across the Serengeti.
As westerners, supposedly more civil than other cultures, we might call the above trials “savage” or “primitive,” but what does a father say to his son after he bags his first deer? What is a bris? Is it actually a smarter move to slice off the foreskin after existing for only eight days? And we might not have “vision quests,” but what about the first time you and your underage friends piled into the car and snuck into a strip club? Depending on religion, social status, or location, each boy’s trial differs. Bar Mitzvahs, hunting trips with Dad, your first lay… these can all be considered rites of passage from boy to man. For me, being completely adverse to firing a rifle (for fear of shooting my own face off), having no set religion, and seeing sex as a reward for the completion of the manhood trial and not as an initiation, I didn’t know exactly when my man-card would be signed until it actually happened. July 24, 1999. I was sixteen, and my initiation occurred inside of a Victoria’s Secret store with a man I never met nor saw again after that day. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Jump back to August of the previous year. I was hanging out at my good friend Andrew’s house playing a little Twisted Metal for Playstation. Andrew and I had been friends for a few years by then. We first met in the Glenside Youth Athletic League when we were on the same baseball team. He played second base and I pitched. He was an unstoppable second baseman. If you were playing against us and hit it towards the right side of the field, just forget it; Andrew would gobble it up. I nicknamed named him Hoover during our time spent on the field. By the end of the baseball season, once the ball went near Andrew, and before the ball was even in his glove, I would yell out, “Hoovah!” knowing that that play was over before it even started.
Andrew’s flat street was always host to some sort of sporting event with the neighborhood kids depending on the season: baseball and basketball in the summer, football in the fall and winter, and hockey all year round. Hockey was always best because, since there were no sidewalks and only front lawns, we older kids were allowed to check each other as hard as we liked on the sides. God forbid if you went over to the curb to get the street puck. At any rate, during this one August evening inside Andrew’s living room, we saw that little eight-year-old Dominic from down the street was playing basketball in his driveway. Andrew and I went down to join him. I didn’t see her sitting at the entranceway of the garage. Not at first. The first thing that struck me about her before I even saw her was her perfume. It had an overwhelmingly feminine scent to it, a fragrance mixed with an impossible combination of sugary flower and sweet fruit that I had never smelled before. Before even seeing Kristen I was weak in the knees, and then after I saw her I was nearly struck dumb. She was Dominic’s cousin who drove over in her blue 1989 Honda Accord to watch Dominic and his little brother while their parents were out for the evening.
Nothing was more important than to not let this girl know that she smelled fantastic. A simple ‘hello’ would have to do. Another thing I knew not to do was to let Andrew know what I was feeling. Andrew is a great friend, but all friends will see a weak point such as that and exploit it for their own amusement. I moved as best as I could, missing shot after shot, trying to look cool in front her, and making sure not to smile too much so as not to reveal the braces on my teeth. Her smile, however, was perfect and it encompassed her petite face when she was particularly amused.
I was in a haze by the time Andrew and I left Dominic’s. I didn’t walk away with Kristen’s phone number, though. I had something much more palatable: her AOL screen name. I much more preferred to type than to speak. A phone conversation with her would leave me stuttering, and when I wasn’t stuttering, there would be awkward pauses too numerous to count and too awkward to live through. The instant-messenger gave me enough time to be thoughtful of what I had to say and eliminated awkward pauses.
When I got home that evening, before drifting off to sleep, I let the encounter with Kristen sink into my head and if I really concentrated, I could think of something other than her for maybe three seconds before thinking of her again. It was a new emotion I was experiencing, and it went beyond the simple boyhood crush I had on my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. McNew. Of course, Mrs. McNew was a beauty, but my feelings for her were simply limited to staring at her while she worked the chalkboard and dumbly thinking, “pretty…pretty…pretty…” With Kristen, an odd feeling of possession took over. I didn’t want to just look at Kristen for hours on end, I wanted to be with her. I was getting quick visions of time we could spend together much like that in a romantic comedy movie montage—cheesy, clichéd visions like holding hands on a beach, sharing a milkshake at the malt shop (two straws, one cup), making her laugh, kissing her sweetly and intensely, holding her tightly all through the night. I didn’t just like Kristen. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to have her. Never had I felt that before, and it scared me to the point of paralysis. My hormones were working overtime. I was going to be starting the 10th grade in the High School building, away from the Junior High building. I had metal braces on all my teeth. Acne was multiplying exponentially on my face like a weird sort of pox on my skin. My voice was cracking profusely, trying reluctantly to find a deeper balance, the high-pitched tone refusing to diminish. And on top of all that I was now, for the first time, experiencing the feeling of falling in love.
Not too long after the screen name exchange, Andrew had alerted me that Kirsten was interested in hanging out with he and I, and not only that, she might be interested in hooking up with me. I was shocked. But before I got too far ahead of myself, Andrew told me that hanging out with her would just be a “trial period.” I didn’t quite understand the logic until I learned that Kristen had a boyfriend named Stefan. Fortunately, the relationship was long distance, as he lived in New Jersey. New Jersey might as well have been as far away as Neptune as far as I was concerned.
Andrew was incredibly vital in closing the awkward gaps I would create when the three of us would hang out. Andrew always had something to talk about and he must have known that I was dependent on him to make things run smoothly because he would exploit it. He would ask me for things in front if Kristen to make me look like a good friend or to embarrass
me, which was something Andrew relished. There were two times, I recall, when we were at Kristen’s house and I made a fool of myself. Kristen’s dog, a floppy-eared, low-walking orange Cavalier King Charles named Riley took a fondness to my leg. Seeing Riley’s enthusiasm, Andrew held me down while Riley made love to my calf. On another afternoon, in the same room, someone let slip a silent but deadly fart that cleared the room. Immediately, Andrew campaigned that I was the one who had broken wind and everyone bought it. I tried pleading with them, to Kristen especially, that it was not I who had emitted the noxious odor, but the idea was already planted in everyone’s head. Trying to disprove my supposed guilt only put fuel on the fire and me getting beside myself only made everyone laugh harder from the other room waiting for the smell to clear. When they came back to the living room, I was gone and the back door was still slowly closing behind me. What was left of my presence was a note written on Kristen’s little sister’s chalkboard, next to the television. It read: “I DID NOT FART!” I walked home that day.
If we weren’t hanging out at Kristen’s house, we would drive around town in her Honda listening to CDs that Andrew would bring along for the ride. Bands like Crimpshrine, Bouncing Souls, and Billy Idol. Kristen preferred Dave Mathews Band, and for me, if it wasn’t Tom Petty or Led Zeppelin, then it was just noise. It didn’t matter what music we listened to, just as long as we were mobile, in the car going somewhere; no destination, no time constraints, just being aimless teenagers, shirking off any responsibilities that may come our way.
Andrew would always get dropped off first when the three of us would hang out, and that four-block quarter mile drive to my house was too intense for me to handle. Apparently, Kristen wanted to kiss me, and all I had to do was lean in for it, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it. I had never kissed a girl before and Kristen’s beauty intimidated me. I kept asking myself, “Why? Why in the world would this girl want anything to do with me? Surely she is either psychotic or she is actually just a cruel mistress who will reject me and embarrass me if I try.”
“Well, Kristen, so long,” I’d say before the car would even roll to a stop. That was my routine for the entire month of September.
As October came around, Kristen’s relationship with Stefan dissolved, and her friends as well as some other friends of Andrew’s and mine began to all hang out, and together we had a good sized group, which unfortunately brought competition onto the scene to win Kristen over. Two other guys, Stew and Kolb, also began vying for Kristen’s attention. They were not friends of mine, more like acquaintances. I wasn’t worried about Stew. At the time, Stew was quite overweight and I saw him as no threat. There was a rumor that he at one point tried to serenade Kristen outside her bedroom window with a karaoke machine he lugged up the street, but it could not be proven. To anyone that was not there, it was simply hearsay. Kolb was a tall, freckly kid who physically seemed out of place for his generation. He looked like he belonged in a Norman Rockwell painting.
Most of us were in shock when Kristen began to date Kolb in late November. I was enraged. Kristen had grown tired of my shyness and had moved on. The problem with Kolb was that he was an ass. He paid no attention to her and that only seemed to drive her further into his arms. She would buy him gifts, take him wherever he wanted to go, and he seemed annoyed by every advance that she made. I had never felt such jealousy. Didn’t this guy know how great he had it to have a girl like Kristen swoon over him? She even bought him a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. Ocarina of Time! How could he be so clueless as to how lucky he was? Having a girl buy me the latest Zelda game is still just that—a fantasy. My brother had already bought me the game for my 16th birthday. He even got me the limited edition gold cartridge as well as the musical soundtrack to the game and a t-shirt to boot. Kolb didn’t get the limited edition gold cartridge. He may have had the girl of my dreams, but could he display on his shirt the best videogame series of all time? I think not.
Kristen’s friends and I soon discovered that it was not just Kolb’s indifference to Kristen that made him a jerk. He also talked badly about her to his friends behind her back. Her friend Jen and I decided it was in Kristen’s best interest to have a small intervention for her. I felt like a bastard doing it, since it wasn’t really my place, but love and jealousy tend to supercede all bylines of the social contract. Kristen was quite upset over hearing the things that Kolb was saying about her, but at least the seed of doubt over his apparent awesomeness was planted in her head. They were broken up by late December and she was once again available.
On New Year’s Eve, a few of us were watching the ball-drop at Kristen’s house. By that time I had grown more comfortable around her and although I was still overanalyzing every interaction I had with her (her body language, her inflections on sentences involving likes and dislikes), I was no longer worried that each interaction could be our last. The “trial period” as Andrew called it months ago was over and I would talk to Kristen on the phone on a regular basis. I was still trying desperately to impress her, to show her what I could offer her as a boyfriend, but I never had the tenacity to just go for it. On that New Year’s Eve night though, I made an insinuating remark to her.
“Ya know,” I began. “I hear it’s good luck to kiss someone on the first of the year.”
“Oh, really,” she said coyly. With that said, the other four friends in the room saw their immediate cue to leave and Kristen and I were alone. For twenty minutes we sat there, awkwardly, as I readied myself to lean in. When I finally did though, our lips locked and I followed her lead. Our lips didn’t move at all as our faces were suctioned together, but her tongue began rapidly spinning around mine and I tried to keep up for the whole two minutes. I could taste that kiss the whole walk home that night, could still feel her tongue on mine. What an…what an interesting sensation! I kept thinking. And I wanted more.
To me, that kiss was an open invitation to put more moves on Kristen, except that on that night, she had only seen me as the best choice in a bad situation. I was incapable of playing it smooth. My eagerness got the best of me and the pager that Kristen received for Christmas that year was constantly alerting her to call me. I abused the hell out of that little blue beeper of hers, pleading with her to call me, typing in my phone number and following it with the numbers 7 3 1, meaning “seven letters, three words, one meaning.” I was hardly ever called back, but when she did call, I did nothing but bombard her with constant flattery and sycophantic soliloquies. It may have been good for her ego, but it got me no respect at all. I don’t even know why she was still hanging out with me as I constantly pressed the issue of being with her, commending her charm and extolling her beauty.
Throughout the winter months and into spring, we never did kiss again, despite my desperate attempts. As May rolled around, she actually had to sit me down and let me know that we would not ever be together. My behavior had changed for the worse after that kiss in January, and the only way it would cease would be if she told me face to face that we weren’t ever going to do it again. She wanted to be friends. Nothing more. Looking back on how I acted that winter, not even 100 Rileys humping my leg could match the shame I felt when I left her house that day. It felt so final and I had never felt more defeated.
Once the school year ended, Kristen took a three week trip to Italy and I started working my first job as a summer janitor for my old elementary school, Glenside Weldon. It was strange how nostalgic it felt to be back in the same classrooms in which I was a student only four years prior. I was sixteen and was looking back on my childhood as if it were a lifetime ago. The desks were tiny, the ceilings were lower and I realized that I was making a major transition in my life. It was the hardest tug of nostalgia I had ever felt up to that point, knowing that the time I spent there in that school would never come again. That mode of childhood thinking would never come again. A lot of things would never come again. But there were things on the horizon, more adventures to
get into, more experiences to revel in and more things to grow into. In my head I told myself that I needed to be with Kristen in order for me to continue onward. I was standing in my old second-grade classroom, scrubbing down a particularly dirty desk when I raised my head in a “eureka” moment.
While Kristen was away in Italy for three weeks, I tucked myself away in my room after work and thought over the past year in my head. What did I need to do? What was lacking? I tried every conceivable angle: shyness, flattery, assholishness, back-stabbing and desperation, but where did it get me? Nowhere. But what did all of those attitudes have in common? The commonality with all of them was in what they lacked: confidence. I needed confidence. It was the one thing stopping me from Kristen.
Now I knew what I needed, only I didn’t have any. How does one gain confidence? I wondered. Being with Kristen would give me confidence, but I can’t be with her until I actually possess it. I knew I had seen confidence before, but where? I snapped my fingers at the realization: Robert Redford in The Natural. I watched The Natural to garner some tips on how to be confident. Then, to balance out the quiet humility of Redford’s Roy Hobbs I watched Steve Martin’s character in the movie Roxanne to pick up pointers on timing and comedic restraint.
Now that I knew what confidence was I did what any desperate guy does. I faked it. I imagined myself in a high-stakes poker game, holding nothing but a pair of two’s, and while the other players were throwing hundred dollar bills in the pot, I was playing with Monopoly money. The trick to winning was to be so convincing that no one would question it. I could see the other players conversing with each other. “Yeah, Biff,” one player would whisper to another, “I don’t think he’s got anything either, but that stack of blue 50’s says otherwise.”
When Kristen came back from Italy, she saw a different side of me. I had a new haircut, a slightly modified wardrobe, and a straightened posture that gave me a bit of extra height. When it came to conversation, I kept it short and knew when to draw the line on my humor. No longer did I desperately try to force a joke or a laugh at an inopportune time. My jokes had a quieter, more subtle demeanor to them and were no longer antagonizing to others. I would poke light fun at things instead of making bitter observations. I was no longer going to be a jealous, spiteful person who could only feel good while putting others down.
During those first few days with my new attitude, I was outwardly sturdy but inwardly very fragile. At any given moment I could have been shattered by a snarky comment or a reference to one of my many previous embarrassments, but no one tried it. The more I bluffed, the easier the confidence came until I was no longer faking confidence, but gathering it.
A week after Kristen came back, she and I were kissing on a daily basis and we became a couple in July, which brings me to the Victoria’s Secret excursion I mentioned in the beginning of the story. Kristen and I were not in the lingerie section of the store. We were in the bath and perfume section when another couple in their 30’s walked past us. The woman was absorbed in her own world of fragrances, sampling each candle and scented soap while the man made eye contact with me and gave me a nod. It was a small gesture, but to me it meant the end of a journey. I recalled the past year from when I first saw Kristen sitting on that empty crate in front of her cousin’s garage to the present moment when her hand was in mine. My personal voyage into manhood involved feeling the extremes of my basic human emotions: paralyzing fear, blistering rage, blinding jealousy, boundless shame, and finally unadulterated joy.
The man in the Victoria’s Secret and I had something in common. Without our respective girlfriends there, he and I never would have set foot in that store. It all became so clear to me. The reward for being a man is to be invited to partake in another person’s interests and life. In the future, I would stumble, I would recluse myself, I would push others away, and only every once in a while I would show a brief but brilliant flash of who I was in that store in 1999. But that would be the future. At that moment, I was the best man I could possibly be, and the next moment was to bend over and smell a body spray that Kristen offered and give her my thoughts on that sweet, flowery scent. A scent I never would have smelled and an experience I never would have had were it not for her.
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