Enough to Make a Man

The baby shower is abuzz with conversation. “What will they name him?” I wonder, I wonder. “Are they ready for the baby?” I don’t know, I don’t know. “Hm, I sure hope that it doesn’t look like the daddy.” Huh, I wonder.

“Is it because he’s black?”

“No, it’s because he’s not the prettiest thing to look at.”

“Ah,” you reply, “I gotcha.”

Your uncles are striding around the yard, strewn with balloons, an arrangement of blue. They are drinking, beers that smell vaguely like metal, and they are very open about what they think.

“The little man is going to be a go-getter, the ladies won’t be able to get off him.”

That’s a baby, you think, but man. He sure will get those women, just like a man is supposed to. Otherwise, what kind of a father are you, letting your son be raised as someone respectful? Absurd, fucking lunacy. I can’t believe you would even suggest anything like that.

Fucking idiot, that’s what you are.

You look at these uncles, and you will grin. Man, you love how funny he is. So nice. So kind. Especially that time that he attacked the father of the said-baby because he was ahead in life. Who the fuck wants someone of a different race to get ahead of them? This is America, land of the free, not land of the racially-privileged. Why should shows about them get attention when shows about you, the heterosexual, the Caucasian, get swept under the rug, like they’re the standard? Like they’re the average? Privilege, damn it, these blacks and gays are so privileged.

So obviously, I must call them the N-word. No, I’m not stupid enough to actually say it in public, because you got to pick and choose your places to say the things that some people don’t like. It’s just a word, I don’t know why they put so much power on it, when they could just not care. Not like they have been fighting oppression that has been heralded by that very word for hundreds of years, because if you just separate the word and the meaning and assign your own meaning, then it’s okay. After all, white people can be the N-word too. My friend told me one time that this was incorrect, because whites have never been oppressed in America where the use of a single slur that was chanted and used to taunt as men in white hoods hunted them down and lynched them in public as they were cheered on for doing the work of God, but what the fuck does he know?

And just as obvious, they must be a faggot, especially if they haven’t slipped their hands deep into the panties of a girl who may have not been ready but man oh man, man oh fucking man, you gotta try that pussy to become a man. No matter how old you are, you aren’t shit until you fuck at least one chick. A man, a man, a man oh man, that’s what we’re raising. We got to be enough to make a man out of him.

Your family haven’t seen you in a while. You got a girlfriend? Nah. You don’t got a boyfriend, do you? Nah. Okay, good.

Okay.

Good.

A man is raised to be the man. The man is the one who controls, who is strong, who doesn’t flinch, who protects his family. The one who controls, the one who is strong, the one who doesn’t flinch, the one who protects his family, that’s who the man is going to be. Fuck the women who have taken hits when the father was charging towards them because he just wanted to have “some fun” and his wife said no. Fuck the men who feel scared when a woman approaches him when he doesn’t want her to, because he’s a man, he can’t get raped. He liked it, why would a man object to free sex? Besides, everyone knows that if you cum, then you enjoyed it, so you really shouldn’t be complaining. Fuck the men who fuck men, because that’s not a man. So, which one is the woman in the relationship? Well, obviously that’s how it works, right? One’s the woman while one plays the man? Fuck the weak, because that’s not a man.

Men show no weakness, they don’t cry, they don’t feel sensitive, they don’t see how all these little facets of people acting towards them and classifying them and labelling them and isolating them all at the exact same time. That’s the stupidest damn thing that anyone has ever said, that a man is allowed to be sad, that a man is allowed to be the little spoon, that a man is allowed to be single and happy.

“He’s going to be just like his Dad.”

“Nah, haven’t you heard? It’s called a ‘Momma’s Boy’ for a reason.”

“Oh, right. Right.”

“Besides, we don’t want another one of those.”

“Yeah, true. Oh, he’s coming over here, act friendly.”

I wonder why people haven’t already made a list of how to raise a man properly. Strange, how whenever anyone sees a male baby, all they want to comment on is how big and strong he’ll be, when he might not be that at all. It couldn’t be that society, as a whole, have crafted such an in-depth notion of what should be expected that we, as individuals, impress these expectations on children? These ideas couldn’t be ingrained into nearly every single media outlet as the norm, the broody man who likes to yell and the man who is fit beyond belief, so that anyone who differs against that have no sense of self-confidence?

Nah, that’s not it. We would never set such a burden on our children that them telling us that they’re gay or transgender or that they don’t want to have sex at all would be held as a problem, as an achievement if they succeed in telling you, because why would coming out be so hard? We love them.

Just not as much if they’re not what we wanted them to be. We just won’t bring it up.

But, again. We won’t tell them, because look at that, they’re coming over here. Act friendly.

“We’re going to spoil this child rotten.”

“I wonder if they’re going to raise him right.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”

“Why?”

“Because we’ll be there to help. Takes a village to raise a kid, didn’t you know?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

In the South, family is blood, and blood is family. Friends are optional, friends will never be that, because friends can be toxic. Family can’t be toxic. So that Dad that comes home and takes his daughter to a backroom for an hour or two, that’s just a man being a man. He’ll get maybe a couple years in prison while she deals with the trauma for the rest of her life. The white boy who just shot up that school two towns over? Yeah, he’s a terrorist, but he’s also American, so………ten years in prison sound good? That Muslim girl who was valedictorian of her university because she worked hard? She got it because she has slightly colored skin, fucking race privilege is real as hell, man. That boy who has brought other boys over and left his room afterwards with hickeys down his neck? It’s just a phase, he just hasn’t found the right pussy yet. Those families trying to get across the border because, in their hometown, they can literally be hunted down and shot to death by a cartel? Don’t let them over, because they don’t belong here. Sentence them to misery while you live in privilege that you don’t even recognize because you’ve never found your race to be a problem in life, a hinderance that gets you denied for jobs just because your name doesn’t sound white enough. That mother who is trying to get an abortion before she raises this child in an environment where it’ll likely be malnourished and impoverished? Make her have the kid, she should’ve kept her whore legs closed anyways. Send it to adoption. And those kids that are already in adoption? They’ll age out and be sent to the streets because those people wanting adoption over abortion so bad are too busy yelling about how much abortions are against God’s will, so they’ll continue a life of loneliness perpetuated by a group who don’t know the struggles they think they have a say in.

Yeah, I think this Southern hospitality is gonna be good for the baby. We’ll be enough to make a man, a fucking good one too. No matter the black daddy or his sexuality, we’ll make a man out of him.

It’s what a family is good for.

#lgbt #south #racism #homophobia #criticalnarrative #discrimination