By José Gandue @Gandour
(Editor's note: This is a story originally published a few years ago in an illustration workshop, an exercise for a group of misfits who never quite understood what we were doing there. Nevertheless, the experience was enjoyable and, in my case, resulted in a couple of pieces, including these words which, I hope, haven't aged.).
Being a man today, at 49 years old, means remembering that the world has changed rapidly. and that all the role models who surrounded us when we were children have fallen one after another And perhaps that is why we are now beings out of place, entities that go about with a different disguise than the one our parents used, and traditions definitely contrary to those followed by our grandparents.
Being a boy meant believing without a doubt that there was a stronger sex (us) and that this brought obligations (bringing food home, being the one in charge, to be tough to the point of insensitivity, lest one fall into feminine ways, to challenge anyone who stood in our way, under penalty of appearing cowardly in front of others) and it entailed certain rights (to have the right word and the right cry, to have violence on our side, to possess infinite stupidity and believe that this was wisdom, (to be masters of infinite forgiveness and never grant it to our adversaries). That was what the man who sat at the head of the table told us at mealtimes, and we believed it to be divine word.
Then, during the time of the first shave and acne, Being a man meant dreaming of one day seeing Virginia Vallejo or Nohra Perfecta Pereiro naked, and getting excited by any pretty girl who appeared on local television sporting the much-copied Farrah Fawcett haircut. It was about learning to dance close at an early age to have a chance at picking someone up at school parties, whispering the latest merengue song in the ears of your dance partner, and trying to intertwine your legs. while the chucuchucu The moment allowed us to use the turns on the wooden floor as an excuse to make some progress, some sign. Being a man in that teenage years meant knowing we'd walk home alone, but having the chance to tell our friends on the way back how brave and daring we'd been that night. A few years later, we understood that, on that tough path of growing up, We were more men when we laughed at our failures and realized that everything that had happened had nothing to do with guilt or contempt. We gradually stopped calling women whores for letting us kiss them quickly, and we stopped insulting them by calling them bitches for refusing to be with us. That's when we began to be different from those who came before us.
Then we had the opportunity to travel, and being men meant facing new landscapes. It meant listening to different songs, reading different books. It was realizing that we were much more conservative than we thought. We, who believed we had the vanguard on our side, were almost at the back of the line. It was time to decide whether we wanted to accelerate the journey or stay in the corner defending what we had already gained. It was understanding something that still surrounds us today: We are only masters of our doubts, we only possess our weaknesses. The words of the man at the head of our table were of no use to us at that moment. They had been useful to him, and that's why he had lived to a ripe old age, but for us, those words only accompanied us as an unfair burden.
We have lived through fast-paced decades, years where certainties last only a few seconds. The Chinese express to their enemies, almost as a curse, their desire to see them go through interesting times. Times of change, times of chaos, where everything turns upside down and nothing is stable. To be human, then, It's welcoming that curse without really knowing if it's a good decision on our part or not.
We are a generation of men who look to the past and see too many antiquated textures And when we see those who follow us, we think they will be too light to bear it. We remain confused, and now we understand that we won't be the ones to save this world, and cynically we know that no one will. We simply feel, at best, like a strange bridge between the cruel and unjustified long-standing apathy and an uncertain improvement where others will unquestioningly accept and celebrate our differences, while failing to acknowledge other problems they will try to deny. Perhaps those who come after us will not have to make the effort to define themselves as men and will laugh at us without remedy.
