The Most Important Meal of the Day

"The girls have, what I like to call, 'dick envy.'" I hear this time and time again, but how would you explain the first twelve years of my life. Raised by women, the man I was expected to become was different from the man men in my family attempted to mold me into. As a child, I was very sensitive and emotional, never feminine, but more in touch with my inner feelings. Amongst women, that was ok, but when surrounded by the men in my family, crying was a sign of weakness. Thinking that they were what I had to become, it felt like an obligation to learn to hide my feelings, and show no weakness, but at home, with the girls no one fought their feelings. If we wanted to cry because it hurt when we slammed our finger, or just because we were offended by what someone said, then we'd fucking cry. Plus at home, there was no competition, so the feelings were mostly positive anyway. As I grew older, and girls lost their cooties, and my eyes finally dried up, and finally my uncles could relate to me, I began to see that becoming a man does not have a clear definition. 'The girls' would want me to work hard in school, keep my eyes on the prize, and stay driven. Society wanted me to collapse, succumb to the drugs, the violence. Society made itself the most appealing, but the influence from 'the girls' kept me on a somewhat steady path. When I finally had experience under my belt, pun intended, my uncles and I would talk more, swap stories, and it was clear what being a man was to them. "Fuck as many girls as you can while you're still young, and never get married." Well, obviously. "Everybody does a little dirt, its part of life. As long as you don’t get carried away." Sound advice and probably the most realistic. Everyone fucks up, lord knows I already have, but it's what you take from the experience that makes the man.

* * *

I closed the door of the Ford F-150 and adjusted my seat to a nice recline. It was going to be an hour long drive to New Hampshire and it was already dark out. My uncle went up the entrance ramp to the highway and began the conversation. “I remember one girl…” I glanced around. My uncle had put his cell phone in the ashtray and plugged it into the lighter outlet to let it charge. The red light on the phone stuck out among the dark dashboard. Right in front of me were the words “air bag” and the ‘b’ was chipped around the top left. I started to play with it. “Come on dawg, stop fuckin’ with my shit!” and he continued his story. My eyes soared over the dashboard and caught sight of the windshield. My uncle had made this trip frequently and even at night I could see the splats of bugs from the treks. I chimed in, “Yea, that’s like this one girl I…” My contribution felt natural. But still my mind caught on to the trucks characteristics. The CD drive within the dashboard had jammed and throughout the entire ride I heard the ‘vloom-pufft-pufft’ of the machine. The noise drew my eyes to the radio, even as I told my story, and I looked at the lighted numbers. It was 11:03. I have 8 minutes until the time to make a wish, I have to pay attention. The station was 97.5, some country shit my uncle was listening to before I got in the car. My mind ran on tangents: 1103+97=1200. 1200; midnight. It was almost midnight and here I was in a truck with trash surrounding my feet, my voice cracking from the excitement of my story and my uncle laughing and applauding as he drifts the car over the caution bumps on the side of the road. Those vibrations: they fit the story well. We both came to the conclusion, yet again, that had we grown up together we would basically own Boston.

* * *

Earlier in the day, I made breakfast with my aunts. I was on egg duty. One of my aunts was on bacon, the other pancakes. “The eggs are what really make this breakfast, you know,” I looked at my aunt, the younger one, knowing that she’d come back with something. “It’ll make your breakfast, maybe. Keep talking shit and you won’t get any bacon or pancakes.” I chuckled, this was the third week we did this weekend breakfast, and I really enjoyed it. The weeks had become gruesome for us all, and it was nice to just be with each other. We had been making pancakes, scrambled eggs with cheese, except for my eldest aunt’s portion because she despised cheese, and bacon made in the oven, to prevent any burning. We sat down at the kitchen table to eat our gourmet breakfast and as the meal was wrapping up my eldest aunt asked me, “You know what college you’re going to yet?” I thought that at least on the weekends I could get a break from the college stuff, but I guess I was wrong. “Not yet. I’m looking at a couple, but nothing for sure yet.” “Nowadays you need a degree to get just about any decent job. And you know that if you don’t go to college, that money isn’t yours.” I knew that, but she still didn’t get it. I remembered a conversation we had months earlier on the way home from a trip downtown about what I wanted to do with my life. I said I wanted to be a detective, I knew the salary wasn’t anything impressive but that’s what I wanted to do. She said I should be a lawyer, because the one lawyer she knows has a very successful firm and is making three times what I would be making as a detective. I tried to tell her I didn’t care about the money; she still doesn’t get it. “I know. But even if I don’t go to college, I can still do what I want to do. It’ll just be a lot harder.” The conversation went on, but there really was no progress on either side. We’re all so goddamn stubborn. She wanted me to go to college and make a lot of money. That was a man to her. My younger aunt wanted the best for me, wanted me to be happy, but thought that not going to college and possibly chasing my dream was a cop-out. She called me lazy, said I was looking for the easy way out. I said to myself, “Ok then. But my easy way out still makes more money than you’re making.” I would never say that to her, I love her too much. But why couldn’t they understand that I want to do a certain thing, a humble thing some would say, and college just might not be for me. I’m going to try it, at least for the parties, but if I feel I’ll excel farther in the work force, then I’m going to get on the grind. Simple as that.

* * *

When Erica, my cousin, dropped out of school and went out to get shit-faced and got pregnant at 18, the girls were disappointed, but did not come down on her. When I had my grandmother vouch for me and say I was sick when I wasn’t, so I could get a day off because I was stressed, the girls came down on me hard. When I got my grades back from school and didn’t have all A’s and B’s, the girls gave me truckloads of shit. This is the ‘dick envy’ my uncle continuously warned me of. “They never came down on Erica, but they come down on you for every little thing.” Who in my family can say they accomplished so much academically as young as I have? And isn’t that what they want. I should be allowed to slack off when I want, as long as I get done what I have to get done. My uncle acknowledges the troubles and temptations of being a young Puerto-Rican male, and does not criticize me if I make a mistake, because he knows that mistakes are bound to happen. However, he does advise that some mistakes be avoided completely, and when we swap stories I learn from his mistakes. My aunts will never be completely honest with me. Why don’t they trust any guy? What happened to them to make them so critical of me? Why can’t they tell me how they fucked up, so I know its okay to tell them how I fucked up and I won’t get showered with curses and criticisms?

* * *

We were nearing our exit and I pulled down the visor, just because I had nothing left in the truck to touch or analyze. I looked into the light next to the mirror. Since it was so dark outside the light hurt, and I bowed my head in slight pain, and rubbed my closed eyelids with my right forefinger and thumb. When I looked up I saw myself; eye to eye. I was a man. I am a man, by both definitions of my family. I am an intellectual, who will break bread, and who will fuck as many girls as I can while I’m still young. But I won’t be a millionaire, I won’t be a lawyer, or a drug lord, or the father of a dozen bastard children; instead I will grow and prosper by my own standards. I will get a job that satisfies me, a marital status I’m comfortable with, and live a life with no regrets, only mistakes and experiences I have learned from. The thoughts swam through my head with more struggle than salmon swimming upriver. I slapped the visor up against the ceiling of the truck as we pulled up to a red light. “Almost there, you hungry?” my uncle turned to look at me. “Starving.” I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.