Boys Don’t Cry, by Rosicky Jones

I cried this week.  I sat in my empty apartment and bawled.  The last time I cried was during the season finale of Full House – so I was due.

The tears have been building up all week. Hell, I nearly cried during an All State commercial.

I’m on crutches.  I just moved to Detroit.  I have no furniture.  I know a whopping zero people here.  I find myself talking to myself so much that when I notice the self-conversation I bury my concerns and keep on talking.  If you followed along you would have noticed three voices in my head- my own, the one I’m talking to, and the one telling me not to talk to the one I’m talking to.

Should I feel bad for crying?  I love the old-school Clint Eastwood-era, where men had their tear ducts removed to show no weakness.  But I had no choice.

I live in Detroit!  It’s not my intention to stereotype The D, but I’ll likely type some stereos anyhow. It’s hard to avoid when talking about Detroit.

Detroit has bad traffic, which makes no sense to me.  There aren’t any jobs to drive to.

Back home, when I heard noises that sounded like fireworks, they were actually fireworks.  In my new home, when I hear noises that sound like fireworks, they are actually fireworks, followed by gunshots from people shooting back at the fireworks.

I’m in Detroit because I’ve gone corporate. I have sold out faster than Justin Bieber tickets in Vatican City.

Going corporate is a lot like going Black – you can never go back.  My life was so simple.  I was firmly entrenched beneath the poverty line.  I had an amazing beard.  Waking up before noon was reason to celebrate.  Showering became so infrequent that the pipes shook and spewed brown, rusty, aged water when finally used.  The day of the week didn’t matter because my life was one never-ending Sunday.

I could go to the park and play on the swings… at least; I could until the neighborhood watch began putting up signs.

I could go to Chinese buffets and hang out.  My lunch break wasn’t measured in time, it was measured in determination.  Now I have to be in and out; now I have to pay attention to time.

I used to be able to watch The Steve Wilkos Show.  Most of you have no idea what a Steve Wilkos Show is, because only the unemployed watch it.  Steve used to be a bodyguard on The Jerry Springer show.  Then a genius exec – and I’m serious, the exec who thought of the show was a genius – thought Steve deserved a syndicated platform where he could act like a therapist.  Steve begins each show trying to talk intelligently about some serious issue du jour, then he gets mad at the transgressor and yells at them until he gets bored and boots them off his stage – this is the part of the show that sends the crowd into hysteria.  This show is horrible and ludicrous on every level, but if made me feel good during my brief unemployment spell.

I used to be a vagrant genius, who lived off of his reputation.  Now, now I have to perform.  I have to prove I’m not a fraud – FYI, I could very well be a fraud.  I could just be the fuck that read a lot of books, memorized some big words, and earned phenomenal grades because he played the system.  Hell, I came up with some of the greatest cheating methods in history.

Cheat Method #1:  I pretended to have a cold the class before the test was scheduled.  I would constantly blow my nose and have a handful of tissues in my hand.  On test day, the tissue paper would be riddled with answers to the tests.

Cheat Method #2:  I wrote answers on my Lance Armstrong bracelets.  He cheated, why shouldn’t I?

Cheat Method #3:  I would stash my notes in the bathroom stall and use the bathroom during the test and sneak a peek.

Cheat Method #4:   This method is one of my greatest achievements.  I would take two sheets of paper, stack them, and begin to write notes on the top sheet.  I would press so hard that the imprint of my writing would materialize on the second sheet.  Then I would take the imprinted sheet to the test with me, and pull it out as scrap paper.  Then I would shade over it during the test revealing my cheat sheet.

So, you see, I may be a fraud.  Did I get an A in differential equations on account of my brain or my deception?  Or was it my dimples?

I don’t like waking up at 6 am.

I don’t like falling asleep at 10 pm on account of my body shutting down so abruptly that I collapse on top of myself in a sleepy heap.

I went to Wal-Mart and was honked at incessantly by a lady in a Taurus because I was crossing the street too slowly.  I am on crutches, remember.  I wanted to tell the lady in the car with ranch dripping down her chin that, contrary to her self-centered views, I did not tear my ligaments just so I could revel in adding 3 seconds to her commute.
I tried giving a bum a dollar in front of Wal-Mart and he tried biting my finger.  Had I not been able to beat him away with my crutch, I would have been forced to type this column with my toes, or my tongue.  If I typed with my tongue I would have had to somehow flavor the keyboard to maintain my determination.

My apartment has nothing in it but books and clothes.  I am a level below Ted Kaczynski – on both a quality-of-living level and a sartorial level.  What can I say, the dude had sick sweatshirts.

Do you see why I cried?

I know boys aren’t supposed to cry.  Men are only allowed three cries: when they are born, when a parent dies, and when they have a child – that’s it.  I would like to have Full House finales added to the list, but the president of the Tough Guy Committee, Donald Rumsfeld, won’t return my calls.

I know boys aren’t supposed to cry, but I had to.  I had a nervous breakdown.  I was alone, so no one will ever know… unless they read this… but who even reads my shit.  I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel. I had to cry.

It was therapeutic.

I felt better afterwards, and I felt absolutely no shame.

My father will probably disown me – but I was adopted, so technically my father has already disowned me.

My friend Luke will make fun of me voraciously in an attempt to make me cry again – but I’m ready for him.  My buddy Pinky slept with Luke’s mom, so I have that trump card in my pocket ready to go.

I understand psychology and the benefits of releasing pent up-emotional baggage.  But crying still seems sorta… sorta…

“I’m not gonna say gay, Hilary Duff, so go back to hiding in the clothes rack.”

It still seems abnormal.  When I cried as a child my dad would call me a girl and I would replace my tears with seething bitterness.  I hated crying, and eventually stopped by the age of 16 months.  I was hit in the face with a baseball bat and didn’t cry – probably due to the shock, but I still didn’t cry.  I was hit by a car and didn’t cry, probably because I was knocked unconscious.  I was the toughest guy on my soccer team – which is tantamount to being the skinniest girl in Wisconsin – but I was tough nonetheless.  Had I been coddled maybe I would have turned out…

“For Fuck’s sake Hilary Duff, I am not gonna say gay. Maybe you’re homophobic, Duff, since you automatically assume I’m going to disparage the community that gave me Lady Gaga… You think of that, Duff? I hope that clothes rack falls on you.”

Had I been coddled or allowed to cry openly without public castigation, maybe I would have avoided sports, or failure, or anything that may have altered my emotional state.  If I had been allowed to cry, maybe I would have at the slightest appearance of trouble.  If crying hadn’t been verboten maybe I would have cried when Kevi laughed mid-kiss at my abilities in 8^th grade.  If I were allowed to cry maybe I wouldn’t be able to handle to retaliatory abuse my friends shell out at me.  Who knows – maybe I would have turned out the exact same.

I have a godson, and he cried the other day.  My BFF Nate, his dad, told him not to cry.  Then his little life began unfolding.  He’s two years old, let him cry.  But maybe he shouldn’t cry.  Maybe the ability to control, suppress, ignore emotions is a good one to have.  I understand both sides of the crying game.  I know the child psych argument pro-crying.  But I also know the real-life effect of the pro-crying argument.  So I made fun of my god son for crying, and then I gave him a sip of my red bull to make him feel better.  His crying didn’t bother me, but neither did his dad’s reaction to the crying.  It may not be right, but it may not be wrong either.  I’m not gonna cry again.  But I did cry this week, and I’m okay with it.

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