I’ve quibbled over where I would put this disclaimer, at the start or at the end or somewhere in the middle and for right now I still don’t know but better to write it before I forget that this piece requires a disclaimer. Uh! my boyhood was different from your boyhood! or your girlhood! for that matter if I said anything about girlhood that you don’t agree with (which I probably did because I’m only a part time girl). Feel free to tell me everything I got wrong in the comments or restacks, not only will it drive engagement up but it’ll get me reading about a topic I just wrote so much about. thank you for reading :)
I remember my boyhood; it’s the only thing you can do with boyhood, remember. Boyhood isn’t something tangible, boyhood exists in the ephemeral innocence of thinking it’s a good idea to ride a bike off someone’s roof onto a makeshift ramp thrown together in half an hour1. When you’re sitting up there on the roof, or down there on the ground cheering your friend on it doesn’t occur to you that you’re experiencing anything of any importance greater then some miraculous stunt that will be attempted and then forever immortalized in the little scars our childhoods give us. Boyhood exists outside a tangible understanding of safety, it’s watching your friend shoot off that roof and land in one piece and even seeing that survival everyone going yea lets find something else to do. It’s an awe held in limbo. You can’t say “yea this is so boyhood” during the experience; for one because most of boyhood occurs before you can even grasp onto the fact that it’s occurring. Boyhood insist on itself that it remains fleeting. Boyhood is being drunk on a roof your second freshman year2 of college and wondering how you ended up here. The present is hostile to boyhood, boyhood requests a certain kind of innocence to maintain it’s demeanor. Boyhood is kindly asking you give it space to breath.
I think boyhood operates like this because it can’t stand up to the weight of expectations. Boyhood is supposed to be good. Boys will be boys should be about eating bugs and drinking too much root beer, not committing sexual assault. The truth is; Boyhood is scared, boyhood lives in your shoulder blades as you reach out to a friend. Boyhood is knowing that saying I love you; platonic or not, could be met with “I love you too” or a laugh, somehow both feel hollow. Boyhood lives in the yawn when it’s far too late to be awake but conversations never sounded so good. Boyhood is a quiet cruelty knowing what you gain out of it isn’t worth it, but only realizing after the fact.3 Boyhood is wanting to say sorry but knowing the apology will only damn you both. Boyhood is an attempt to immortalize youth and innocence as it’s experienced, to dodge the weight of expectation and allow yourself to breathe, then smile.
Whereas girlhood is about cradling innocence in the tangible form of girlhood, about doing something and being able to say, this is girlhood. Because the concept of girlhood exists freely within itself, femininity has never been pressed to let go of it’s past. For better or for worse, to be a girl and also a women have never been disjointed ideas.4 Boyhoods proximity to masculinity, to the cold hard feelings that we request of men makes it something neglected. You can hold all of boyhood in your hands and deny it’s existence. Boyhood is immortalized in perpetuity of slow summer ice cream slipping down your wrist. In a cold beer on the back of your neck. No one ever discusses boyhood; at least in my circles. Boyhood is a response to masculinity, the two are inherently tied to each other, ones relation with masculinity and the performance of it are directly tied to how they experience boyhood. I’d like to make the claim that the closer you feel to masculinity that the closer you will feel to a positive version of boyhood. I’m still going through boyhood. Even in my admittedly nonbinary mindset I can still admit that boyhood means something to me.5 That I haven’t escaped it’s grasp by seeing my gender as not “boy”. I can’t say that it upsets me, I still yearn for boyhood knowing that it will only embrace me when my head is turned the other way. 6
Boyhood at it’s core is a sadly hopeful thing. The systems7 that uphold the patriarchy, the ones that say boys don’t cry and every scrape on the knee can be walked off. The patriarchy that tells you that the thing you should take home from running around with your friends is grass stains on your jeans and not love. Because love is a wily thing and perhaps a bit too feminine for a boy, a man. Every boy wants to be a man. A desire to be rid of youth and rocket up to the responsibility and glory that the patriarchy promises, a near instantaneous desire that is sparked the second it is understood, no matter how shallow that understanding is. When young boys take those idealized versions of men without the hatred of bigotry and misogyny, of kind wizards, brave explorers and fearless heros and bring them into reality that is the most honest form of boyhood, of taking masculinity and not ignoring the faults, but not realizing they exist in the first place and creating something better from their absences. In a way I’d like to see boyhood as a rejection of the patriarchy. As a we are better and deserve better. The patriarchy harms everyone. I’m not going to get into that because if you’re reading this it should be self evident. I’m no longer a boy but was raised and socialized as one and probably most importantly I look like one so I feel qualified to write all of this.
I don’t think the lack of writing on boyhood is one of aversion to the topic. I think instead that the reason boyhood has remained undiscussed in large is because it is a acknowledgement that you’re slipping out of the phase of being able to experience boyhood. Boyhoods intangible nature also tends to elude capture as opposed to the more physical girlhood.8 By fully reckoning with boyhood, by insisting it hold fast and look you in the eye the mirage weakens and one day might eventually crumble. I don’t think it’ll disappear forever, I was raised on boyhood and no matter what comes of me it will still find it resonating in some deep well within me. Something that can only be experienced in retrospect has so much potential to be missed out on, I urge you to make sure every now and then grab the hand of boyhood before it runs out the door, hold him for a second because he oh so needs it and wish him well on all his adventures and if it suits you, every now and then join in them.
I want to end the bulk of this piece featuring a quote from
“all these times being isolated attempts to make our waning youth matter, to make the real real, to make our years of delinquent friendship mean something,—felt wonderful, profound, an opening, an unsheathing, an ending.” - briffin glue
If you’d like to read more on the topic of boyhood I attached a number of essays that I quite enjoyed myself, they’re about boyhood and boyhood essays or just men in writing in general
In the procrastinating of writing this essay, I spent a good hour asking a groupchat how many beers they think they could realistically drink in a week. Estimations ranged from 30 to 1 million (that was not very realistic, coming in at around 142,000 a day). Personally I think if I had nothing better to do I could knock back 100 beers in a week; 14 a day. The highest realistic10 guess was at 350. That’s 36 beers a day. chat this might be boyhood
In conclusion Boyhood is innocence and naivety incarnate. I feel like an idiot for saying boyhood that many times but how few times can I say something that the essay is about! I’m still improving as a writer, i will not lie I kind of just found out how to use these thingies ;11 and they’re so cool!
ya wanna know what else is cool, other writers check em out below
thank you for making it this far,
a little wistful and a lot appreciative
nadav
true story
long story
I know this all reads as very jumbled and such but i think there’s a painful thing about boyhood in it’s mercuriality, think I could say “Boyhood is…” ad infinitum and I’d struggle to even wrap my full wingspan around boyhood.
don’t crucify me i don’t know anything !!!!! i know zilch nada zip not a darn thing!!!!!
posers will say this is betrayal but scholars know it’s never that simple
shed a few tears writing this, more then a few. lots to think about that I don’t often think about
this includes people
girls also tend to be baller like that and much more mindful of their experiences
unironically a good title, also calls into question what the squid am i gonna name this piece
being irish does things to a mans alcohol tolerance i’m told
;3
this is stunning, nadav. i already want to read it again. just phenomenal writing.
Your writing is immaculate. The fact that patriarchy makes men hide their boyhood as they transition from a boy to a man makes this essay rare. I wish this essay helps men who read it to let themselves free and let their boyhood, trapped in them, breathe. It truly changed my perspective on boyhood. Thank you for that.