The Real World Manosphere
I am sauntering down Rochdale Canal
in twenty-eight degrees of burning heat.
We have not been getting on these days.
I need fresh air more than I need answers,
so I leave the flat behind
and let the heat take over thinking.
Somewhere along the towpath I see him –
a local man I half remember
from these shared streets in earlier days.
“My bro!” he shouts, “You are a godsend!
He has been waiting here for hours.
He asks me for a light to burn a cigarette.
I give him one and watch him draw it in.
“Do you want a beer?” I stub mine out.
“Why not,” I say, “I’m not in a rush.”
We sit together in the heavy heat,
two men suspended in this small relief
and all the mercy that we can afford.
A woman passes in a red dress,
candy apple bright against the canal.
She does not turn her slow her pace
as he calls “hello”, but she keeps striding.
So then we talk more serious than that,
about the life that broke itself apart:
twenty-five years and now six months alone,
a daughter still at fifteen years of age,
his mind is negotiating this absence.
“She does not want me back in her life.”
“She loves me still but she’s not in love with me.”
“My drinking,” he says, “ruined everything.”
She does not drink or smoke at all.
Her life is closed off, his still open to her.
“But I work six days a week,” he says:
“Don’t I deserve something for myself?”
Then come the passwords, his still fully open,
her account locked and shut away from his eyes.
Suspicion grew where love used to be.
“She must be seeing someone else now.”
“Probably not,” I say, but he is gone,
already breaking open into tears –
no performance in it, just a pure overflow.
I do not have language for it!
I just use borrowed, broken lines:
“Are you sure it’s not you being paranoid?”
“She may be bored of you after 25 years.”
“You are hurting, mate, give it time.”
They fall away like stones into canal water
and vanish without changing anything.
“I like you,” he says, “you make sense of it.”
Then abruptly I need to piss at this moment,
the most ordinary escape from it all.
“My brother, thanks for the beer.”
He asks me to come back and talk,
but I already know I will not return.
I turn away and leave him sitting there.
Up the road at Cask, windows breathe out air –
German beer cold and simple in my hand.
Then my phone lights up on the table.
Her message comes, another argument?
I read it once and go all crazy again.
Let me gingerly meander home,
Tumbling into the falling sun, even
The scorching day has had enough.
Back to Identity, Self & Fragmentation
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