Men Don't Cry

“Are you crying? Is my son really crying?”

He was looming over my curled up ball, eyes narrowed and a real expression of disbelief clouding his features. I’d never understood his aversion to me, or either of my two older brothers, crying. A sign of weakness was what he called it.

A load of bullshit was what I called it.

It was such a stereotype, one that could only have been driven into his head by the years of time spent ordering beer after beer with his friends. Because really, where else but a pub could force him to think in such a way? I could almost see the scene of the gang of men crowding the bar, swaying slightly as they carefully aimed for the beer to head towards their mouths, and even then ending up with froth and liquid pouring down their chins. That was how it went down usually.

Then one of them would slam down his pint, followed by his hand, drawing each man’s attention slowly. He’d sway for a moment, trying to remember exactly what he had to say, before continuing in completely serious drunken stutter.

“Men. Men don’, men shou’n’t... What I mean to say is, men ain’ s’pposed to cry, y’know? Just yesterday, I saw my son, an’ he was all teary and stupid. An’ you know what I said to ‘im? You know?” By now he’s captured each man’s attention, and they’re nodding vigorously, as if he were the Second Coming with all the wisdom of every human being. They’re clinging onto his every drunken word, their own pints now held dangerously loose in their grips.

“I come right up to ‘is face, right up like this, y’know? An’ I say to ‘im: ‘Right, boy. You better stop that blubbering now cause, cause that ain’t what men do. Us men are strong. We don’t let no emotions get us. In fact, all that blubbering makes you seem like a freak, a puff!’” And the men roar with laughter, nodding and raising their pints to clink together once again.

Because I’d seen it so much. These conversations happed constantly, as my dad drank constantly. The consequences being that now his brain was riddled with all these visions of a perfect man, who never showed weakness and never acted like the ‘freaky puff’ that I was apparently being at this moment in time.

“Oi! I said, are you crying?” He asked again, with a harsh kick to my side to catch my attention. I bit down hard on my injured lip to avoid shouting out from the pain of his foot connecting with another of my wounds.

“I-I’m hurt,” I mumbled thickly, my split lip causing blood to spill as I tried to speak and the swelling to get in the way every time I tried to close my mouth. I dared a glance up at him, my eyes pleading desperately with him to see that I was in a bad shape, beaten and bruised. But when I met his eyes, I saw only disappointment and one or two sparks of anger that rose to the surface slowly, but terrifyingly frequently.

“I can see that,” He snarled back, dropping down into a squat to get right into my face. “But what’ve I told you? You should be a man about getting hurt, that’s what men do! We have fights and get all bloody and bruised and then we look even tougher. We don’t cry about it like some stupid little girl!” He hissed at my face. That was another thing about him; he was incredibly sexist. He believed men were superior and stronger, with more of a place in the world than women. The day when I’d told him that I thought girls were just as useful as men was etched into my brain in the form of a scar across my right upper arm.

“Getting hurt isn’t manly. And neither is bragging about it!” I shot back. My limbs were aching, but I found the strength to lift myself shakily to my feet. “And if you’re right, and every bit of bullshit you’ve been spurting out for years is actually true, then I guess I’m not a man!”
I should’ve known better. I only had time to glimpse the flash in his eyes and the stiffness of his body before the rapid string of frames cut across my vision. This was how it happened every time he’d hit me before; my sight would come in only quick flash frames of darkness, flesh, his anger filled eyes and before I knew it I was lying on my back, groaning in pain.

“Don’t swear at me,” He growled, his face mere inches from my own. “And you are a man! Or if not, I’ll make you one.” It was an ominous line, threatening in ways when it wasn’t supposed to be. I expected more, maybe another punch? Or an explanation of the gruelling tasks he would force me to undergo just to turn me into this perfect man that he did not see in me yet. But no. He stood up, still staring down at me with a strange brooding expression on his face. He stood for a few moments longer, before shaking his head in disgust and leaving the room.

“Tomorrow,” He called over his shoulder as the door to my bedroom slammed shut. “We start tomorrow.” I shuddered. Only a day to find a way to get away from the abusive drunken man and his stupid fantasies. And away from this place in general. The bullies, the teasing, the pubs and the alcohol and seeing my brothers being forced to do these ‘manly’ things.

He’d forced my eldest brother, Zac, to learn to shoot a gun once. He’d been fifteen at the time, and I remember him resisting, fighting back with all his strength while my dad dragged him by the collar and into the field. Aaron and I had watched with wide eyes from the car windows. When he had Zac in place, he dropped the hold he had on his shirt, and immediately our brother tried to bolt. Lazily, as if he’d been expecting this, dad thrust out his arm into Zac’s path, before dragging him back into position and slapping him across the face for good measure.

The gun was a huge shotgun that weighed down even our dad’s muscley arms, and caused Zac to almost topple over when the thing was forced into his grip. Dad leaned down and spoke instructions into his ear, ones that we were lucky enough to never have to hear.

With trembling hands and forced back tears, he had raised the gun towards the bird he’d been instructed to shoot. Seconds passed. Silent seconds. Neither of us dared to say anything to interrupt our brother from his obvious moral dilemma.

Then, slowly but surely, his finger crept towards the trigger. His whole body was shaking now with suppressed sobs, but still he aimed the gun.

More silent seconds.

The flash and bang of the gun caught us off guard, and we spent the moments afterwards blinking away spots from our eyes so as not to look at the mess of bird that obviously littered the field. Dad had been in a great mood after that, and had even declined the offer of a trip to the pub when a friend texted him. “Gotta celebrate together, don’t we?”

Zac changed after that incident. He became a harder, harsher person. Dad was convinced that he’d become a man once and for all, his own stupidity not letting him realise that he’d just thrown away his son’s teenage years mentally, and turned him into an angry silent kid without a friend to show for. He was hated by everyone in the school, and he hated everyone in the school.

I couldn’t turn into a Zac Zombie. No. No way. There was no such thing as a perfect man, no matter how much he believed the idea. No matter how much he believed one of his sons was a perfect man.

Aaron would know to get away too. When my absence was noticed, he would be the next victim. He’d know where I would be, and he’d know how to get there. I just hoped he got there quick.

I wearily dropped down heavily into a sitting position on my bed, where it would be easy to put on my trainers. They were torn and muddy, old and too small for my constantly growing feet. But that was what happened when you had a drunk for a father; the money went towards booze and the next round of beers, not your sons and their wellbeing.

I took a few moments to stare round the room, really taking in the details I hadn’t bothered noticing for many years. The walls were a murky pastel blue, the same colour which they had been painted when our mother became pregnant with another boy. Three years after my birth she’d left. Unlike other kids whose parents had left them at young ages, I wasn’t angry or resentful towards the woman, merely jealous. She had gotten out when the sexism and abuse had been too much for her, and I only wished I could have followed her a long time ago.

Now was better than never. I had no prized possessions to take along with me, no iPod or phone to keep contact. I had only a pile of clothes, randomly grabbed from drawers and shoved into a supermarket carrier bag, and the hope that wherever my mother had ended up, it was better than here.

I pulled a large black rain mac-probably a hand-me-down of Zac’s-from my now bare wardrobe and onto my skinny body. I still ached with each movement from where the bullies had inflicted what had seemed at the time to be endless pain. But staying here would be worse than being beaten up; it would be guns in my hands, forced workouts to make me stronger and the complete cancellation of any freedom of personality that had ever existed within me. I would become a robot, with every feeling trapped inside, unable to fight their way out.

It was dark outside, as the winter turned what should have been a bright evening after a reasonably sunny day into a pitch black fog, holding secrets of which I could only discover by venturing out there myself.

The window was easy enough the open, as my room had been installed with the emergency exit, the window we were supposedly meant to flee from should there be a fire. The truth was that however brave our father thought himself to be, he would be the only one using that window and he would be slamming it shut behind him before any of us could get away.

The whole window swung open, enough so that bodies could exit onto the metal roof that covered the bay window jutting out of the front of our house. I slithered out onto this cool surface, distinctly aware that any neighbour would simply have to turn on a light and open their window to see what was going on.

This next part was the real problem though. I easily threw down my carrier bag of clothes to the tiny front garden below, not bothering to worry about what it might look like inside the house, as it would easily be passed off as a bird or a bat. But getting myself down would be a whole other matter. I crawled across the bay window roof towards the right edge, rather than right in the centre where I would be clearly visible.

The floor now looked scarily far away.

Fuck it, I thought angrily. I was getting out of here, not letting a little jump scare me back into the house. Without another thought to make me turn my back on this chance, I swung my legs over the edge and dropped down to the hard floor, all my breath whooshing out of my lungs at the hard impact.

No time to sit here, I thought, crawling towards where my bag had landed (without spilling its contents, thankfully) so I was still not visible from the room where dad would be sat with his beer and his football. As if to prove this point, at that moment I heard a muffled roar from inside that could only mean the team he supported had scored.

Not wasting any more time, I grabbed the bag and leapt to my feet. I knew vaguely the direction I needed to run in, so, not even giving the house of miserable memories another glance, I raced off down the street towards where it met the road.

Where the bus stop stood.

Where I would be leaving my life forever.

Where I would escape.

This was it. This was finally it. After so long of knowing I couldn’t cope in the house with that drunk any longer, I had found my freedom.

And, as I ran full speed down the street with the bag of clothes bouncing around in my grip, I let something happen that I’d never felt free to do.

I cried.

I let the tears fall and sobbed for every moment when I hadn’t been allowed to.

I could cry without feeling guilty or nervous.

The tears were my sign of freedom.