The Secret Language
Oh, Man: Excerpts (Part 2)
Please note: This post contains explicit language and descriptions of pornography and sexual misconduct that will be disturbing to many readers.
“Oh, Man,” my book-in-progress, is largely composed of these uncomfortable, often painful excavations of the formative moments that informed my understanding of masculinity as a boy-becoming-man. Please be forewarned that this piece includes graphic and intensely challenging material.
Certainly it happened slowly. Certainly there were many moments that made the man of me. Many lessons, learned without my even knowing it. Many teachers in the unspoken curriculum. A few stand out. My middle-school acting teacher, for one. He was the first man I’d ever had as a teacher, and I adored him, as did the other boys. There were only about half a dozen of us boys in the seventh grade of our private school, but still, Nick, Mark, and I found our way into a little clique together about halfway through the year, my first year at that school. Our allegiance was, in part, defined by the extra affection we had somehow earned from this particular teacher of ours, an ebullient Black man who kept his head glistening bald with a razor. His eyes were lasers of energy. His taut, half-moon belly didn’t fit with the rest of his athletic body, a body which knew how to fill his basement classroom completely, command an entire stage. He was one of the first artists I ever knew. I’ll call him Mr. C.
When I first arrived at the school as a new kid in the seventh grade, I somehow understood there was a secret conversation transpiring between Mr. C and his chosen boys. Who was in on it? Certainly Nick. And Corey, the tall and skinny eighth grade skater. It seemed that Mark was on the outside of it, like I was. Mike and Charlie, the only other boys in the seventh grade, were also on the outside. What was this thing that I could feel happening in between the words Mr. C spoke to his boys? What was that in his half-smile, his raised eyebrow? I had to know. I adored him.