The way that I learnt masculinity was first through using wood: trips to Bunnings in the red four runner, choosing long slabs of timber, building bookshelves and beds in the garage.
And then it was dirt: digging holes to mend pipes, jeans covered in mud, dad getting angry when I didn’t realise I’d be getting so dirty and didn’t want to kneel on the bare ground. Just give me a tarp, Dad. A plastic bag even. Just let me go change.
Let me go change for you. Into anything. Just tell me what it you want and I’ll become it, but I can’t become anything if you’re only disappointed in everything I try to guess you’re thinking.
After that I learnt masculinity through everything I wasn’t: emotionally stable, polite, ladylike. Everything I was supposed to be, according to the ‘raising good, clean children’ books. According to the story you wrote yourself about what finally having children would be like.
It took so long, surely God will bless us with good ones.
Sorry, Dad. Sorry, God.
Sorry that I can’t ‘stop crying, princess.’
Considering they were the object of every bedtime story you ever told me, you sure did use that word condescendingly.
I’m realising now that I burned too bright for you,
and instead of finding a way to not get burnt,
you let me burn out instead.