on male friends

dear readers,

    i come to you from a cafe in montreal, conflicted and a little blue. recently, i witnessed the end of a very short-lived friendship. i say witnessed like i wasn’t the one repeatedly proclaiming to the world that it was over, with pride and more often than not, with an apprehensive melancholy. 

    in eighth grade, around 13-14, my closest male friend dropped off the map. he stopped texting me, talking to me in class and asking to go to 7/11 after school (the favorite activity). it was around the time of covid, which coincided with our graduation and transition to high school. he was in a weird social position, friends with mostly girls but seemingly desperate to be accepted by the boys in our grade. his family life was turbulent, with an anti-vaxxer mom and homophobic dad (from what i heard from a mutual friend years later). when we were about 11, he had told me he had a crush on me, and i had rejected him. nevertheless, it hadn’t really impacted our friendship. we grew closer over the following two years, until he was my best friend. sometimes i wonder if my rejection hurt him more than i could gauge, and he had to stop talking to me to protect his heart. 

the flan, which i know i’ve posted before. as seen in the “four years and i still cry” meme. but it’s been six years.

    on the other hand, prior to his irish goodbye, he had tentatively come out to me by confessing he had a crush on another boy. this is another factor (i assume) contributed to his cutting of contact. maybe the homophobia in his home made him retreat into himself. in fact, i remember in high school hearing that he called it “just a phase”, and that he was now friends with the sporty, frat-bound boys. (indeed, he is in a frat now.) my heart always broke for him, because i feel like i witnessed in real time how his kindness was whittled down and his spirit dimmed. 

    in high school, it was always awkward to see him. i remember being at a party once in junior year and running into him. i don’t remember if we exchanged any words. he had obviously noticed my boyfriend at the time, who was standing next to me, and that seemed to make him a little uncomfortable. i remember him looking a little sad, and feeling brokenhearted after the moment. i still sometimes drive by his house when i’m in our home town. below, i’ve included the birthday card he wrote for me (i’m not sure what year), so you can understand how horrifying this situation truly was:

circa 7th grade

    in hindsight, there’s no animosity. but from the tone of this letter i think you can tell why it broke my heart for him to leave my life. i don’t blame him, and although we’ve never discussed it, i feel as though the aforementioned reasons give explanation enough. i still think about him often, and have considered reaching out to him. he still lives in boston, and is in a frat now. at risk of sounding cliché, i hold out hope that i’ll see him one day, out and proud, unafraid to be kind and vulnerable. in some ways, i wondered if i could’ve done more to have helped pull him from the clutches of toxic masculinity. i wish i could’ve lived with more humility, and inspired both of us to be more of ourselves.

    this is all to say: i struggle to connect with men. i don’t have any close male friends and haven’t since eighth grade. i don’t have daddy issues, as i have genuine connections with male family members that embody masculinity safely, but since eighth grade, the closest i’ve got to a male connection was back in junior year, and even that’s a stretch. i reckon i was more of an emotional support outlet than mutually respected friend. myself and his other female friends were often aware that we were “mothering” or “therapizing” him. 

    i’ve felt close to a few men i’ve been involved with romantically in the past and called them my best friends, but that creates such a different atmosphere. oftentimes i interpret wanting to be friends with a man as romantic attraction, which is its own issue. and although i’m grateful for the experiences i’ve had with men and all that they’ve taught me, i’m equally grateful that i’ve forever chosen to move away from dating men. 

    i have one (cishet) male friend, R, which has been an interesting journey. when i first met him i thought i was in love with him. as i got to know him, i definitely developed love for him, but i quickly realized it wasn’t romantic. on top of this, it was tinged with being a mentor-mentee, quasi-fraternal relationship, so it quickly turned away from possible romance. we’re not as close as i wished we were, (a problem that, like most ailments in my life, is something within my control). he graduates this year, but i intend to soak up more of his wisdom and laughter before he leaves. 

    

    my love for R aside, a lack of male closeness still stands. it is evident that patriarchy has always gotten in the way of my male friendships. if their compassion isn’t destroyed by expectations of toxic masculinity, the gendered dynamic wrenches us apart. i think i can have good platonic relationships with men, but i’m not sure if it’s in my near future. 

    recently, i thought i was making a new male friend. i’ll call him fred as an alias (palo alto reference, if you get it). i immediately felt that a gendered dynamic was visible between us- i felt myself adopt the kind of teasing (often misinterpreted as flirting) that i usually save for men, but spending time with him wasn’t difficult. we bonded through shared complaints about organizing and the people involved. (interestingly, this can be compared to R, with whom my conversations consist of wisdom about and love of organizing). fred leant me books and walked 2 miles both ways after a meeting just to talk with me for a while. we talked organizing and we talked theory. he told me about his childhood and we talked about music. maybe i was naïve in thinking that i understood him, or i fell victim to the “i can change him” mentality. 

    fred was the type to be borderline mean in a meeting, dismissing someone’s idea as blatantly bad, but then text me immediately after asking if he had been rude and how to improve himself. he once expressed that he liked hanging out with me because he thought i was more intelligent than everyone else we knew (i’m sure he feels this way about himself as well, and was just happy to find a conversation partner he found stimulating). evidently, i did not think this was a red flag at the time. i think the fact that he relied and confided in me made me overlook the fact that he truly was being mean regardless of the quasi-apology texts afterwords. a lot of the issues with social cues could be excused by him being super autistic and super russian. i never believed he was a bad person, and i still don't. i still think people dismiss him too easily and don’t care to get to know him, which i’m sure adds more reason for him to be mean to them back, but i also don’t want to keep giving him excuses for being an asshole.  

    long story short, this man still confuses me. he is strange and hard to understand, but at the time, i took pride in the fact that he was opening up to me. perhaps in a selfish way, i was proud to be the only person to bother getting to know him and to be “approved” by him. we had inside jokes, we would be thinking the same thing and making pointed eye contact during meetings, and we would debrief after while looking at the stars and roaming the streets of santa cruz. i felt that our friendship was sweet, intimate, and understated (aka, i could hardely tell if he actually liked me or just liked the company). i should specify that he's gay and i’m a lesbian (and very seriously involved with my bae), so there wasn’t any weird romantic vibe. regardless, it was comfortable.

    until we were in the accountability meetings. in broad strokes, some of our collective organizational behavior was being guided by him, in relation to other groups we work with. some feelings were hurt and trust betrayed with multiple people, social repercussions were had. it was brought to our attention by some club members and we gathered to discuss what happened and how to move forward. it was myself, fred, another person who had been involved in the hurt feelings, and the club members who were facilitating. myself and the third person (both afab and conditioned as female, mind you) were quick to take accountability for our lack of communication and respect. we apologized, took the blame, and were ready to discuss how to move forward productively. unsurprisingly to some (yet embarrassingly shocking to me): fred denied any responsibility, instead explicitly blaming several other people by name, despite his primary involvement. most of this issue was semantic, so it wasn’t even a matter of him standing on principles. he just could not admit he was wrong or that he hurt people. it wasn’t just that he refused to apologize, re refused to admit that the hurt parties were valid in being offended by our disrespect. honestly, with his track record i shouldn’t have been surprised, as he hasn’t always shown the most attention to people’s feelings. it wasn’t even that he paid attention to mine, i just hadn’t been blatantly disrespected by him (yet). 

i’m not really sure what the point of writing this big long post was, besides catharsis. besides expressing my grief about the loss i feel, not only of this friendship but the ones that came before it. it’s not necessarily that fred was a great guy or a great friend to me. it wasn’t that any of the other ones were especially great friends either, besides the boy from eighth grade. i guess this post is just a somber recognition of the ways patriarchy strip me (and men i could love) of connection and wholeness. 

i have visions for male friends, and i think it’s possible. i intend to get closer to and stay close to my current close-ish friend R. i suppose this is the first beginnings of prayers that will let me experience connection and relationships free of suppression. like my eighth grade best friend wrote,  to make friends that “make me happy and push me to be the person [i] know i can be”.

in love and somber prayers,

- ek

"confidence” and growing down

dear readers, 

    once again i have come to eleventh hour meaning to lock in and have fallen victim to the siren call of my beloved blog. i think this will be a short post, but i start every post thinking that so we shall see. 

    on the bus a few days ago, i had a spiritual experience. i was listening to young miko’s new album (it’s mid), feeling a surge of motivation to lock in on my spanish learning grind. i was on the eleven going downtown, but sitting on the right side of the bus, so my view the entire time was of the rock wall on high street. i felt like that cartoon of the two guys in the bus and i was the one looking at the stone cliffside. regardless, i felt joyous and pensive as always. 

    i forget how i started thinking down this path, but i was thinking about the people i admire, and trying (as i do pretty much every day of my life) to discover the secret sauce that makes them admirable to me. i have written many lists of their physical similarities, piercings or specific articles of clothing. i stalked spotifys and instagrams, thinking that maybe if i posted or listened to the right thing i would be put on the right track. i took up their interests (most of which are genuinely interesting to me as well, i should say) like djing, graphic design, painting, and cigarettes. 

    my biggest fixation was always what they looked like. since most of these people are admired from afar, i was obsessed with their online presences, trying to deduce whatever i could from their curated digital footprint. what i constantly got stuck on is the idea of “ancestral swag”. that might be a bad way to put it, but let me explain. a majority of the people i am exceedingly in admiration of are people of color. this is perhaps a coincidental pattern, but not inexplicable. this is because a lot of what i admire can be reduced to “ancestral swag”, or the way a person deeply incorporates their ethnic and cultural characteristics into their unique style. for example, grillz on black women, mexican girls braiding ribbons in their hair, indigenous beaded crafts, tattoos in other languages, any type of traditional clothing, jewelry, or motifs that people use to craft their personal style. 

    i’m sure a lot of it is grass-is-greener thinking. i’ve never received implicit or explicit messaging that my features aren’t beautiful, certainly not from a racial or ethnic standpoint as i’m white living in america. maybe it’s just our society’s fucked up beauty standards, race aside, that you’ll always be missing something. this being said, and my white advantage being acknowledged, i really resonate when people talk about resenting or feeling dissonance towards their features. i feel as though i’ve improving my relationship with my appearance recently, but i still sometimes dislike my forehead, my pale skin and dark body hair, my jawline, etc. 

i’ve always been inexplicably attached to this image, it makes me feel very safe.

    the first of my bus epiphanies was (and don’t make fun of me for how obvious this is): it’s not all physical. in my pondering stupor, i came to the completely blatant realization that my idols are simply self-assured and confident. they all have vastly different styles, aesthetics, niches. i worshipped a multitude of things, but was searching for one singular key that would grant me self-satisfaction. none of them are top models, they might not even be considered conventionally attractive. but i admire them because they’re creative, kind, self-assured, unashamed- confident in who they are. the secret sauce isn’t genetic, it’s not about who can wear certain clothes or who has the most instagram followers. it’s simply a matter of trust and love in oneself.

    it feels embarrassing to admit- even to the Void that is this blog, that it took nineteen years to seriously realize these things. it’s easy to brush off confidence as something that grows naturally with time, but i’ve found it’s actually incredibly difficult to cultivate and very labor-intensive. maybe this says something deeper about me, but it feels a lot like breaking out of the addictive cycle. every time i berate myself about something small, or feel the urge to resist an interaction to minimize potential damage, i have to manually correct the patterns. i feel like i’m beginning to put myself through behavioral therapy, and with that, i notice all the ways a lack of confidence was truly wrecking my life. 

    again, this might hint at deeper issues than the average persons’ insecurity, but i would always wait until passing periods were over to walk around campus so i would minimize people looking at me. i used to brush my teeth in my room and spit into the trash can to avoid possibly seeing people in the dorm bathrooms. i try to walk on the right side of the road, so drivers and passengers couldn’t see me as well as they passed. i duck into bathrooms or “go the long route” to avoid people or crowds. i used to despise mirrors, clothes shopping, and photos. i have gone through nearly every one of my college courses without raising my hand one single time during class. 

    i’ll never forget what my former boss/mentor said to me once, in a one-on-one check in. she, a licensed therapist and social worker, had asked how things were going at school (senior year). i opened up about my social anxiety- my hiding in classrooms, my awkwardness in my body and my “inability” to be self-confident. 

    she looked me dead in the eyes and said, “are you really trying to blend in?”

    i was caught off guard, but i said yes. something along the lines of “that’s the way it is, i’m just an awkward person”. i think she laughed at that. to paraphrase the following conversation:

    dennie: “i don’t think you’re really trying to blend in. you dress so colorfully, you’re so tall and have good posture” (true). i was genuinely speechless.

    “maybe you’re trying to blend in because you’ve been taught to, but your subconscious is trying to make you stand out.” 

    i think about this conversation constantly. she read me like no one ever had, and made me realize the biggest contradiction of my life. since i was a child i was participating in talent shows, friends with every kid in the grade, always participating in class. i would wear feathers and fake flowers in my hair, piling three skirts on all at once and dying my hair bright blue. 

    i could blame it on covid, on the transition to high school, on my career-obsession with “normalcy and professionalism”, on being told my teeth and height were unattractive. all probably contributed, but i honestly don’t care to go down the path of soul-searching for a reason why the shift happened. tldr is; for whatever reason, i shrank into a shell of myself, socially. but for the most part (besides junior year, that’s a whole other story), my style didn’t change a lot. i still dyed my hair and gave attention to my posture. i cared deeply about school and did well. i let my self expression flounder, let my values be swayed and my flame dim, and i let my social confidence wither away entirely. but still, i was the same little kid, just grown up.

    this is what i mean when i say i need to grow down. i need to reconnect with the inner flame of my younger self that made me excited about the world, about making friends, talking to strangers, dressing up and standing out. my sense of identity was solid because it was coming from the inside out, not the outside in. i feel like in my recent years i’ve been seduced by the “cool girl” aesthetic. the packaged and consumable model of success, girlhood, and most offensively- honesty. for a more in depth take on this, i liked mickey galvin’s video stop trying to be cool girl. it furthered my self-intervention, and made me realize how important internal sense of self is, regardless of the exterior form it takes (especially in relation to fashion and thinness). my favorite quote is: “your job as a human and in your own development, whatever age you are, is to create new conditions in which a new personhood could happen.” 

    additionally, i think as i reconnect more to my ancestors and their spiritual practices (blog post on this otw hopefully), i’ll come to appreciate my physical beauty more. i always remember the quote that goes something along the lines of: your face is the result of thousands of people’s love. i think once i center myself to that anchor, in relation to the grief and reclamation necessary for “white” people like myself to become whole again, it’ll get easier. 

    further on this point, i think i have a new thing to embrace. although i recognize how i should really be focusing on my inside → outside re-grounding, my new focus is impurity. i saw a video about how some random white celebrity (idk her name) is radical for embracing grime and physical dirtiness in a society that wants white women to be pure, soft, clean, etc. i got thinking about how so much of my internal pressure against my spirit is in pursuit of this soft, clean professionalism. it’s the reason i haven’t gotten hand tattoos or more facial piercings, or why i want to have a “normal” hair cut and color, and wear fairly normal clothes. it’s why i’m obsessed with whitening my teeth and why i layer on perfume to cover b.o. it’s why i anxiously shave or pluck my facial hair, even if i think i’m “natural” by having leg and armpit hair. if i want to deconstruct these (white supremacist) beliefs in society, i surely have to start with my own body and mind, which i intend to do starting now. this is the path to my own ancestral swag, true internal self love, and subsequent confidence. 

    although i still struggle with the aforementioned insecurities and anxieties, i think my fortitude has improved over the years. this blog is a letter of gratitude for how far i’ve come, and a promise to myself to continue with increased clarity. writing this, i am filled with the motivation to continue to improve. i have to admit, i’ve been failing. the same day i rode the bus and had this realization, i passed someone i knew at eleventh hour, and although she didn’t see me, i didn’t say hi. honestly, i’m proud of myself for even choosing to walk by her and risk an interaction, instead of going “the long way”. but next time, i will speak to her. and the time after that, i will talk to my bus driver and interview the strangers in dunkin donuts. and the day after that, i will chat with the interesting man sitting next to me in eleventh hour, or the girl next to me on the plane. i accept that failure and struggle is part of the process, especially in unlearning something as deep as self hatred and the avoidance of rejection. i know it’s a protection mechanism, but i think it’s time to grow down.

with love and self love, 

- ek