Ryan,
Thank you for sending me the email. I am saddened that conditioning has consumed you. It makes perfect sense to me as to why you masturbate in haste and don’t enjoy your body. We will work on this. I want you to tell me something that you heard as a child that had a profound effect on you. It can be positive ornegative.
Russell
Ithought for a while.I had heard tons of shit and none of it was positive. I assumed he meant something that I had heard fromhome.
“Hmm,” I mumbled. “Something that had a profound effect on me.” I spent about thirty minutes thinking about what affected me the most and finally typed out myresponse.
Hi Russell,
The thing that had the most impact on my life as a kid was from my dad. He said that boys don’t cry. Specifically, thathisboys don’tcry.
Ryan
* * *
Ibit downon the sleeve of my brother’s hand me down gray sweatshirt. I had tried to muffle the sound of me crying and wipe away the tears before anyone saw. I had lost my grip and fell from the monkey bars on theplayground.
Other boys challenged one another to see who could make the most down and back rounds before they had to drop down. I had watched them for a long time. Today was free play in P.E. class and most of the other boys were playing basketball today. I had eyed the empty monkey bars. Today would be the day that I’d try. I wanted to fit in with them. If I knew for sure that I could do it, then I’d join them during lunchrecess.
I climbed up to the metal platform and reached out for the first bar. I had it in my grip and stepped off the platform. I swung on the first bar for mere seconds before pain shot up from my lowerstomach.
“Ow!” I cried out and fell to theground.
My stomach again. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and tried to get up, but I hurt too much. I knelt on one knee and put my arm on my knee to help push myself off the ground when I was ready. Why was it hurting so much? I lowered my head and bit down on thesleeve.
All I could heard was my dad’s voice, “No boy of mine cries like a fuckingpussy!”
“Stop crying,” I whispered tomyself.
“Ryan, are you okay?” the P.E. teacher calledout.
I looked up in time to see him jogging toward me. I quickly wiped my eyes and pushed myself off theground.
“I’m okay. I fell off thebars.”
“I see that. Tore your pants on the knees it looks liketoo.”
I quickly looked down. My new pants! These were my first pair of brand new pants. Nothing handed down to me from my brother, but all mine. And I ruined them. My parents were going to killme.
All the way home from school I tried to come up with a story about my pants. Anything that would possibly get me out of the belt, or worse, would be worth my attempt. I changed my pants as soon as I got inside. I even made it all through dinnerunscathed.
Then bedtime came. I was sitting on my bed with my new pants turned inside out and I had been trying to tape the inside of my pants so the hole wouldn’t be so obvious. Dad came in and he carried a bottle of liquor in one hand and the belt in another. He looked at what I was doing and slammed the bottle down on mydresser.
“What the fuck are youdoing?”
Seized with fear, I did all that I could think of in that situation. Ilied.
“Some kids pushed me and I fell,” rushed out before I could stopit.
I thought that he wouldn’t be as angry if he knew that it wasn’t something I had done. I had beenwrong.
“Some kids pushed you and you fucking fell? Don’t you have more balance than that, Ryan? You fell like a littlepussy!”
He grabbed the pants and yanked the tape dispenser out of my hand. My dad examined the damage that had been done to my pants and when he discovered they were as bad as they were, he threw the tape dispenser at me and hit the side of my ear. Dad reached down and pulled me off of the bed by my neck and shoved me hard toward thedoor.
With a closed fist, he delivered the blow to my stomach, knocking me down and with enough force that I landed in the hallway. My hands grabbed my stomach, but no sound would come out of my mouth. I was crying, but there was nosound.
