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Chris MacCormick's avatar

Thank you for giving more dimension to the conversation with this very fine commentary by your friend.

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DeepArcher's avatar

wowie-zowie Mary & co.

I was moved by her feelings about August. I haven't seen nor read the text at hand. Partly I don't feel invited into issues which don't fit my demographic. Unless it has something to do with me. If someone has some particular reason for me. The feeling is kind of a certain type of man has been such a drag on our collective spirits and it's best to give them as much room as possible as this type of man has already created enough trouble/harm.

Hearing about him I feel less unrepresented. I have grown up mainly with women. There were boys in my neighborhood that I grew to love. Home life though was my sisters and mom. My mom married a second time after her and dads divorce.

Dad was escorted out of the house some time around Christmas 1995, not long after. The guy mom brought in was strange and not very talkative. I never grew a concrete concept of him. He seemed like an almost nonperson. With some vague characteristics that mostly dimmed down the energy of the house.

I feel like I've got some stigma because (I read this too, somewhere, about Sartre) that I prefer the company of women. Not in the pimplike sense where women only serve to create a kind of persona on the arm of the man they're on. A kind of photo shoot allure. Though because they feel deeply. And I've always felt deeply things. I also read in a book about alien abduction called THE BELIEVER about the life of John Mack who investigated as a psychiatrist/psychologist the phenomenon of people who attested to being abducted. One of his lady patients said that she was on a ship with men and it was much harder for them to withstand the strangeness of being studied and prodded because women were much more used to being powerless. That really hit me big.

Other than that I think one of the biggest things is you have to be gay in order to have a lot of female friends which in certain communities is very hard. When I was in middle school and had fallen in love a couple of times, the guys would always accuse me of being pussy whipped and it's another of those instances wherein people have a lot of anger & violence & disgust hidden in their syllables that I don't know what is meant besides "someone is freaked out and I'm highlighting their freakedoutness because of a behavior I'm exhibiting that makes an uncomfortableness out of them".

It is hard to exist sometimes in that ever shifting ambiguous space between men/women/men. With lots of 12 step work and reading and a little writing when my body can manage it, I've been able to accept my version of freedom that is giving birth to itself through me. With help from folks like you, Mary. Thanks for the new piece!

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