Questions for Men about Man-Making

Question 2. Being Between Boyhood and Manhood

In this question, I want to know if you remember the shyness, confusion, and the discomforts of no longer being a boy, but not yet being a man? Will you share a few lines about something like the rapid growth in your body, your voice changing, your general restlessness, feeling clumsy, stealing for the excitement of it, emerging sexuality, embarrassing moments (first hard-on), pimples, being with girls, or testing parents' limits?

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STEVE - 45: I used to sit in front of the mirror in the bathroom, studying my features. My sister, to this day, remarks about my vanity - how I could always spend so much time just looking at myself. I used to study myself, trying to find something, anything, positive about my looks or features; often failing. The insecurities I was facing all seemed to merge at one very bad intersection. My parents divorce, the hostile battles between my mom and dad, the resulting loss and battering of my "hero", and adolescence. I was considered a good-looking guy, but in an era of teenage heartthrobs like Bobby Sherman, Davy Jones and David Cassidy, why would ANY girl find ME at all desirable? How do I measure up? I searched the mirror for clues, answers, hope. Few, of course, were ever found.

BILL - 19: Its a pretty strange journey, you don't really realize it’s happening and then thing like bills and rent and living alone and higher education come along and you don’t realize it’s making you an "adult." I mean I still make regular calls to my mother (normally saying ahhhhh I’m so poor!). It’s like they slowly phase out the things that make you kid, your Lego blocks and stolen and hidden treasures in the loft, and the next thing you know your coloring books are replaced with text books.

Getting a job seemed novel at first, like having 200 quid a month pocket money, now it’s just necessary to survive. Growing up without a dad about didn’t really seem to bother me much, just cut out that embarrassing first shaving lesson and those horrific talks about the birds and the bees. I do guess it probably made me a little more feminine being surrounded by two women, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; the word Tampax doesn’t embarrass me. I remember longing to be 19 when I was about 10 and now I am 19 it seems a little bit weird to have once yearned be here. Things like owning keys, alcohol, and stuff seemed so cool back then, but now it’s just normal.

ANDRE - 62: I had always been the smallest boy in my class; bright, unsportly, timid. An only child, I never learned the rough and tumble of living with other kids. By Grade 7, I had developed a bad stutter - after a range of typical nervous ticks. This stutter was to last well into my adulthood. It was a profound embarrassment, and caused me no end of grief: I was teased, I was laughed at, and I really could never express what was on my mind.

I was raised a Roman Catholic, in an all-boys' school, and for a long time was destined for the priesthood. Of course, no one ever talked to me about sexuality, and I was certain that I was the only one going through the pain of addiction to masturbation.

My dad was not easily accessible and I never thought that I had his approval. He was not someone I could readily talk to. I had no other male role model.

It took me decades to figure out what being a "man" was all about. It was with great pain that I slowly learned that I didn't have to be macho, didn't have to like sports, didn't have to swill beer or go out with the boys.

But it has only been in the past few years that I have learned to listen to my heart, to truly pay attention to my feelings.

STEVE - 53: When I began 9th grade in September of 1962 I was 5'6' tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. And by the June graduation from Irving Junior High School I had grown to 6'1", weighing only fifteen pounds more. I recall walking into English class one day, and for no discernable reason, I just fell over. At one moment I was walking through the door, not a care in the world (not really), and the next thing I knew I was in slow motion through the air. Sprawling out like some kind of disjointed, collapsing, pencil-necked geek, I hit the desk in front of me with my chest, neck and cheek to land with a ear ringing thwap on the shiny cork floor. No one pushed me, I did not trip on something...as best as I can recall...I just fell over. I think I tried to change direction by just a few degrees and got tangled in my size 13 feet, crammed into size 12 shoes. I just fell over. That's all, I just collapsed under the weight of my growing bones.

As the beginning of class bell range, I lay on the floor trying to disentangle myself from my own limbs and the desks heaped over and around me. I can still hear my classmates and teacher howl in laughter. Tears burned my eyes as I righted myself, gathering my things, and those of others whose books and papers I had scattered in my fall, and I slunk inconspicuously as I could to the way-to-small desk in the last row.

It was a year of pain. My joints ached. I could not get enough food in my belly to stop the rumbling. Every short kid in school picked a fight with me so they could say they beat up a bigger guy, my brothers teased me unmercifully about my pimples, I could not get my dick under control, my grades sucked, girls wouldn't be seen dead with me, and I looked like a death-camp survivor. I was.

STEVE - 60: This is a tough one... no memories of a clear line of demarcation... I still see my self as awkward, shy and clumsy...hell, I'm still not comfortable with the girls... I never left my adolescence I guess. This man needs help.

TOM - 54: I remember in junior high school going to dances and being surprised at how firm and even sharp and pointy the girls breasts were. I don't know if they were putting something in their bras or what. I remember that when slow dancing I could always feel these sharp points in my chest. I was nice but strange. Weren't they supposed to be soft ?

STEVEN - 49: That time for me was truly a time of terror. I grew so fast that the bones in my knees couldn't keep up and sort of came apart--so they swelled and locked up every once in awhile. I found girls horribly attractive and scary. Much of it was a tongue-tied feeling--I couldn't think of what to say--I didn't know till much later that they had some of the same fears.

I was also sick with lymphoma for 3 years, getting radiation therapy, feeling nauseated much of the time and having some of my hair fall out. I recall the looks I would get from classmates like I had a contagious disease... they held class prayers for me when I wasn't there (embarrassing).

I had a lot of interests in music and sports but most of the time I would have been quite content sort of fading into the background, out of the spotlight--attention.

CHARLEY - 49: I remember the summer I was a caddy laboring under sometimes two bags (I was not a big kid). I remember looking down my open collar to the white valley between my pecs. One day I saw my first black chest hair. I was so excited. I would often look at that hair (and others as they came in) while I was caddying like they were pals, a little garden of sprouting man-plants.

Body hair is a funny thing. I was proud that some of my body hair came in "early" enough to earn me some status (chest, beard, legs). At the same time, I was embarrassed of what didn't show up--like my underarm hair. It never became the tuft of dark fur I craved. This is adolescent angst to me, hoping my friends would notice the "good (manly) hair" and not the "bad (little boy) lack of hair."

GARY - 51: My terror of this age was that of not fitting in--and I didn't. Except I could not figure out why. I liked myself and was very popular until 7th grade, when (out of jealousy, I like to think) my friends conspired to turn on me. They shunned me, made fun of me, did not include me, and openly gloated about excluding me. My trust in them and in myself (what is it about me?) was shot, and it didn't recover for many years.

LEWIE - 70: Wet dreams scared the hell out of me until I found out that they were normal. I wish that I found out about them from my father rather than from the library. Erections came at weird times-saying goodnight to a girl after a movie date or in the locker room in Phy. Ed. Of course the other guys took notice and laughed. Erections did seem beyond my control.

ANDY - 52: I was a social outcast from ages 13 to 18 (Jr & Sr high). I hung out with other social outcasts and did no dating, and felt very nervous around girls. I felt shame every time I had to get up in front of the class and give a presentation or act in a skit like in French class. I didn't know what "being a man" meant, and in Texas, the brutish, survival-of-the-fittest model presented to me by football players, bullies, and the local police on horses really put me off. I hid in my good grades and looked forward to college and liberation.

BARRY - 45: The first thing that comes to mind is one of the first days in 7th grade when I went to gym class and found out that I had to undress and change into gym cloths for gym class! Worse yet...I had to shower with other boys!! I was shocked. I had no idea that was coming!! It was something that I never really got used to throughout school. That was one reason why I hated gym and found any reason to get out of it. I was so determined not to go to gym class that several times I forged a doctors' note excusing me from class. In my Senior year, I got caught. I spelled "excuse" wrong in the note. I was almost put back a grade because of it, but they let me graduate (I think just to get rid of me).

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