PLEASE HELP ME WRITE MY FIRST NOVEL
WHAT MAKES A MAN A MAN?
This Blog explores the views, beliefs and feelings of all kinds of men, especially of teen guys, on the subject of MASCULINITY and on the process of becoming men.
This to help me write a novel about a recently orphaned teen boy struggling to become an adult with VERY confusing and conflicting guidance from a lot of very DIFFERENT men and women in his life.
The last words said by his dying father to him, three times, were "Walk like a man". This leaves a 14 year old genius whose voice has not yet changed and has not yet experienced any of the other body changes associated with puberty feeling that he has a duty to discover what his father meant. His body is certainly not giving him any clues!
Seth-Alexander (the boy) will be hearing a lot of different voices giving him advice.
Let one of those voices be YOURS! (Including the voices of women.) I NEED YOUR INPUT! I know what MY opinions, feelings and ideas are, as well as those of the guys who grew up around me, but that is a limited group of individuals who were mostly from two ethnic groups at a particular time. I do not have a good enough imagination to populate the book with a greater variety than that and make them really alive with credible souls and personalities. I need YOU to provide me with that.
What does it mean to YOU to be "manly"; to be "a real man"? How do you feel about your manhood, and the process you went through from a boy to becoming the man you are today? How has the way you’ve viewed masculinity changed as you matured, or has it stayed the same?
This is NOT an ADULT site, because I REALLY want to allow TEENAGE MEN a voice in this discussion. So, PLEASE watch you language, so stay that way. We are all (even you Teens) mature enough to know the "clinical" words for what you want to say, so you don't have to prove that you're a "REAL MAN" with the curse words. I will be more tolerant of crude language from the younger guys then from adults - one of the reasons I ask posters to state their age.
PLEASE leave "Comments" to my Postings!
(To add a "Comment", click on the number of Comments in TINY gray print at the end of the actual posting. - too often just a "0")
You can make "Anonymous" comments but please sign those with a "Pen Name" and your age. If you use a "Pen name", and add more Anonymous comments later, please use the same one.)
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THIS is the ideal of masculinity for a large group of men???? To be honest, he looks like a guy I would avoid in a dark alley - dangerous and possibly violent. Hell, I'd cross the street to avoid a punk like this. In fact, I HAVE crossed the street to avoid punks like this.
ReplyDeleteCould that possibly be the reason why some men find him in ideal of masculinity - his potential for violence? The power in his muscles combined with his admitted unleashed sexual energy and a lack of morals?
I certainly wouldn't tell MY son that being like that was the way to "walk like a man". He seems more like a way to walk into prison, or the graveyard.
Ira
I realized when I visited today that Ike wants us to give a little "bio" background information. I guess that's to help him figure out the types of men would say different things about masculinity and manhood.
ReplyDeleteI am a divorced (not my idea - she met decided she was a lesbian) man with three sons ages 15, 17 1/2 and 23 who just turned 41. If you do the math, I married young - what they used to call a "shotgun marriage", although my girlfriend and I were already talking about marriage in our senior year of high school, but not until we went to college.
I DID finish college - after 14 years of night school. My youngest son was born 9 months after my graduation.
I am a strange combination of blue collar and white collar. I grew up lower middle class, with my family pushing me towards education, although I was good at sports. (Track team; second string football - not bulky enough for the "big boys".) My family tried to be supportive of me when I had my "accident", but their finances didn't allow them to just say "That's alright, Junior, go to college; we'll support you." (I really AM a Jr. To my shame, I gave into pressure, and named my first son III. Neither of us EVER tell anyone pour horrible middle name.) I was going to depend on a scholarship and working my way through college part time as it was, with minimal help from my parents, since I have 3 younger siblings.
I had to work in a furniture warehouse for the first 5 years of my marriage; hard work with rough men who I came to admire for their honesty and strength. Not just their physical strength, but their strength of character. They never pulled punches in "telling it like it was" to a friend, and I am still friends with a few of these men, which puzzles some of my new co-workers. That is, until I invite them to a night of poker or bowling or just hanging out, and then these effete snobs understand why I value these rough men.
At the same time, I developed a veneer of "civilization" going to college. After almost 6 years hauling heavy furniture, my bosses recognized my efforts to improve myself and made me the office manager of the warehouse. I often found myself having to be the buffer between the higher management and men who I still drank with regularly; I once had to fire a man who's best man I had been at his wedding, for excessive absences. I loved my first job, and hated my second one, although it payed three times as much.
END OF PART ONE
PART TWO - THEY LIMITED ME!
ReplyDeleteMy degree was in business management, and when I graduated, I got a job with a fairly new consulting firm. I was one of the oldest employees, even if the ink o my diploma was still wet. My bosses valued me since, along with my high grades with my degree, I had been a laborer and middle management.
I was talking to my sons about how I taught them to "be a man". they told me by example. I never was disrespectful of my ex-wife, although her deception in cheating on me with a woman for three years before telling me she was leaving out of the clear blue sky almost killed me. (I should have gotten a clue from our decreased sex life, but I was focused on my new career.)My boys were teens when the divorce happened,and they chose to live with me.
The eldest graduated college 2 years ago, and I am so darned proud that I was able to help him pay for it, although Mr. Brains DID get a good scholarship! He is living with a girlfriend he has been dating since his freshman year, and I expect an announcement of an engagement soon, since he asked his mother if he could have her engagement ring last week. (Yes, we communicate. We have children in common.)
The only thing I ever pushed on them was constant lectures on birth control. I don't have to worry about that with my middle son, who came out to me as gay when he was 15. Although I was nothing but supportive of him, he now knows that the blue collar me was raging inside for a year.
All of their lives, since they first learned the facts of life, I also pushed the message of responsible, safer sex, and all three have assured me that they practice it. Although it was strange to hear that coming from my baby boy last week, I was also rally happy that he could feel free to tell ME about his first sexual experience, which was less than his fantasies. I never talked about sex with MY father, until the day I had to tell him I was about to become a father.
I realized as I wrote this that i am not typical of ANYTHING, but I may be the sort of man who may wander into the life of Ike's young man.
Good Luck, Ike. I'm going to be here for you for the long haul, and I'm trying to get one of my sons to log in.
Ira Jay, Jr.