Loving Masculinities [Love, Anonymously]
by Guest Contributor Soyluv, special to Racialicious
My ex boyfriend would stop canoodling with me, as soon as his elder brother came into the room we were in (they were roommates in a house together).
He’d snuck up on me, pressed the length of his body against mine in the kitchen — sweet warmth and closeness radiating between us two — all the while, keeping an ear open, or both, for the tell-tale sounds of his brother’s movements and whereabouts. And I could tell. I could feel the slight edge beneath the love-up. There was no real reason for his brother’s movements to inadvertently police his behavior, other than his own perception of what such behavior would reveal about himself. And anything connected to softness wasn’t good. Even, someone you have been seeing for a while. I got hip to that real quick. Anything remotely in the vicinity of softness just wasn’t good.
Neither one of us lived with parents or elders, we were not engaged in an illicit affair (as far as I know!); it was well known that we were seeing each other, my friends knew him or of him, and his brother (and his few close friends) knew me and was comfortable with talking and hanging out with me when I was over. I could tell there was something bubbling under the surface behind all this and I realized that it wasn’t directly connected to me.
It was him.
Even when I called, I could always tell when the fellas were liming home by him, (even if I hadn’t heard them yet in the background) the threesome: his bro, their other homeboy and sometimes, a couple other or select various young men. I finally told him this once at his “hello”, that I could already tell he was around company but we never fully unpacked that observation. In fact, the entire pitch of his voice would change, harden, but ever so slightly, but enough still, like vivid colors getting sucked out of a portrait. The warmth fervently sealed out of his voice — on purpose, lest it betray him in the proximity of other men. It was so bloody pronounced to me, I wonder why he didn’t hear it himself (I asked, he said he didn’t) and why he didn’t hear the way it made me cringe and shrivel a little on the inside.
Of course, I wanted to hear the same level of sweetness, kindness and quirkiness in his voice and conversation, as when we were one-on-one, whether the trio of guys happened to be watching a basketball game or football, or shooting the breeze. It bothered me that this mask of masculinity, a particular kind, would come on in this way, always, in certain circumstances. Invariably, we always “could not talk” if The Guys or another guy was around, and he would have to pledge to call me back. Sometimes, it wasn’t even a live game in progress on TV, sometimes it was just an intense video game battle amongst them or some Guinness in hand, liming with the guys and therefore, an attendant conversation with me in that space, just could not take place. It wasn’t about attention to me, it was about spaces and access and most of all vulnerability.
In public spaces, the facade governed his interactions with me and the world. He smiled a lot less (if at all), he yielded to me less, his body was tenser, the whole vibe radiating off of him changed and I felt it acutely. This was a guy who could not, would not, casually caress me, even inside his home space, before his own kin. He wasn’t mean or anything like that in the interim, just off, like a switch. Until he was free to reactivate. And I wouldn’t push him to either. When all I wanted was to cover him in cuddles (no matter who was around or within ear-shot), I found myself tempering and adapting my own behavior and my own wants. Like him, cool while the front descended over him, then on again when it was lifted, softly squeezing my hand, tracing the lines of my inner palm, once out of sight of certain folk. This — all rooted in these rigid notions of “manliness”, against the backdrop of dancehall music and its rules and regulations about the performance of masculinity, black masculinity, West Indian and Caribbean manhood — its rules and regulations, predominant religious doctrines and stringent gender socialization.
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