TRUTH IS

“For years now, and perhaps in a bid to increase a type of productivity, we have been split into roles. These roles then became real things from which we all as humans grow into rather than representations of optional ways of being.”

To know this and attempt changing for the better, you do so at a frequency your body is used to. You do the same things you did in the world you left behind, but for different causes. Serial monogamists find a safer pair of hands to spend their years with. Commitment-phobes still never call back – but this time to people who deserve it. The ever thoughtful reach deeper into other wells and loose themselves. The public speakers still feel no way to jump on the mic and discredit their former selves. Which one are you?

I wouldn't say I'm a feminist. I normally tell people that I am a misogynist in rehab. Just to feel as though my journey is never stagnant. Just to come to terms with the fact that – like long term smokers on the quit – some days will be better than others.

Changing – as in turning from trusted institutions – means juggling the fine line between guilt and shame of past events, and also, seeing – through a new lens – the harm caused by the culture we once followed blindly.
Operating in that fragile trio makes you realise why afterthought is a banned economy when gifted with privilege.

I feel like, in my case anyway, the act of changing and act of keeping people safe go hand in glove. A curious silence normally follows after I say that to people. We have heightened the meaning of safety just as we have heightened the idea of danger; danger is the suicidal terrorist. boogie man rapist, the loud racist, the attack happy homophobe.

To be safe is to be protected from those people. I haven't committed any of those crimes, but I have lived most of my life with no strong argument against being the greater sex. Against having the louder voice. Against my able body being normalised. Against my vocal sexism and homophobia being normalised. Against my floored assumptions about the experiences of others. I'M A MONSTER!!!

Then I remember my blackness. And how calling myself a monster in a world already quick to paint me as one might be unsafe; For me. Make me spend more time pretending to be the colour of safe hands, forgetting the ceaseless monster cultivated in all races of men.

Then I think about the precarious issue of consent. Wrote about it in a poem part candid part cryptic but like most men in the consent arena, it typically lacked in emotion.

Though as little toddlers, we boys cried out our emotions more than girls, we have grown to forget that past. So now we men groan rather than whimper and cry during sex. Feverishly doing only the things we are taught are admissible: “I didn't start having sex in a fascist country... 'cus I was watching porn in a fascist country.”

Men! Men and fucking. Men fucking as if they'll never orgasm; men being fucked as if their dicks were the only sensitive spot; Men afraid to reveal their kink - still getting over how the last person took it.

I wonder, beyond the patriarchy what effects our prefrences more? Could it be our parents? Could the raging lovers of the world stem from tactile parents who loved them wildly? Could the constantly searching lovers come from parents who didn't know quiet how much love to give?

Am I my fathers son? But he has passed away now so I am either my father or my son. That doesn't

make any sense.

The truth is much simpler. Truth is my knee hurts. Truth is me and many men are overdue a checkup. For my prostate.
Truth is trouble – Toni Morrison wrote. Truth is my friend recalled that Toni Morrison line after I had read the book and he had just skimmed through it. Truth is he is a better man than me. Truth is I don't know what being a man means.

Truth is a confessed unease. Truth is made political because we can. Politics are actions – and actions are chosen. Truth is I only dare to judge that harshly in my thoughts.

Truth is I am in love.

Written by Chima Nsoedo