The other month I gave myself a black eye while trying to do a somersault.
I walked around looking like some Fight Club casting called wannabe
And when people lifted eyebrows blood thirsty for a story
I told them I gave myself a black eye while trying to do a somersault.
And yeah, that was really what happened.
And each time, almost every person responded with "you should just make up a cool bar fight story".
And each time I wanted to tell them:
"You're right".
It sounds so much better to say I downed enough shots to gloss over my better sense.
Enough to morph the passing glance of another man into a death threat.
Enough to lay him across the pavement with his blood painting my knunckles,
Or better yet, maybe I'm in the one in the pavement.
I guess it doesn't matter as long as someone's teeth are in the gutter.
But that's not what happened.
I accidentally gave myself a black eye
And I'm not feeling insecure enough about my manhood to start lying about how violent I can be.
But if you really want a story, here's a metaphor:
I was somersaulting, head spinning through expectations of manhood and came on the other side with the black eye.
I actually got the shiner from Troy Navein's masculine meteorites under the guise of dodge balls in gym class,
Missing most of them but still hearing the cat call whistle fly past my ear.
I didn't get this shiner having a fun time, no.
I got it from boxing, from stepping into a ring the second I was born with a crowd already formed
Just waiting for me to throw my first punch.
I actually got payback for every guy trying to compensate for someone who just tried calling me a pussy,
A faggot,
A little bitch,
A queer or any other name implying that
The worst thing for me to be is womanly.
With it to love another man itsn't to be one.
And yeah, maybe I'm making too big of a deal about this
Maybe I'm making this a gender thing.
But so are we
For telling the boys to man up when they start to cry.
So are we for saying "boys will be boys" when they make someone else cry.
So are we for telling the girls that if a boy hits you, it probably means he likes you.
When my mother was a girl she was thrown into a rose bush from her bicycle because a boy pushed her.
Her mother spent hour tweezing the thorns out of her back .
So don't tell me that that boy had a crush on my mom.
Don't tell me that this violence has the name anything other than what it is
Don't tell me that "boys will be boys" when really boys will be whatever we teach they should be
They will be whatever it takes to prove they're men whether that means hitting the gym
Hitting another shot
Hitting homerun
Hitting on girls
Hitting girls
Hitting guys
Hitting anything that lets them channel the agression they've been told is normal for them.
So no
I didn't get a black eye because I hit someone
There's no cool bar fight story I can use to validate the violence I've been told I should wear across my shoulders like a victory flag.
There's no real winner in the real story.
And I guess that's kinf of the point .
