She's Not the Man I Married by Helen Boyd

Author:Helen Boyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seal Press
Published: 2011-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

The notion that it’s difficult to be male isn’t news to me. Whenever I’ve read or heard jokes by women about men, something in me has felt a little sad because those jokes seem unfair—at least as inaccurate as the ones about women. Many of my closest friends have been guys through the years. I’ve had consecutive sets of adoptive older brothers, such as my two punk rock friends, Marc and Peter; later there were Doug and Maurice, my roommates during my early twenties. I’ve had guys in my life who were mentors, who challenged me intellectually, men who related to me as an equal, who admired me and whom I admired in return. I’ve had guy friends I talked to about sex and dating and love, and guys I talked to about politics and history. Some of my guy friends are gay, but a lot of them are heterosexual.

It would be easy to assume that I related to guys because I was a tomboy, but actually my friendships with men often made me feel more female, and more aware of being female, than I might have otherwise felt—but not in a sexualized way. A lot of the time I felt more like a sister, or a cousin—older or younger depending on the guy in question. They talked to me about music and actually listened if I had an opinion, but they also teased me for having crushes on musicians exactly because it was such a “girly” thing to do. My former roomies, especially, took care of me as if we were siblings, and I did my best to return the favor. It was quite useful having male roommates, even if the Dominican ladies called me puta5 on the elevator, because I could bring home a date if I wanted and not have to worry much about my safety. Doug and Maurice were the ones who organized my bachelorette party, and while we all recognized that maybe that wasn’t typical, none of us thought it was weird, either. I was just a woman who got along well with guys, and they were guys who liked having a female friend.

Sometimes I wonder if my own internalized sense of maleness, and my ease in being friends with men, is simply the imprint of having been the youngest daughter in a family where men were highly valued.6 I’ve often joked that my brothers behave like crown princes. But I also always admired their life, their independence, their surety, and their vulnerability. I admired the way their charming selves could make women such as my mother and grandmother happy in simple, stupid ways, by telling jokes or doing impersonations or being otherwise larger than life. Betty has a similar skill with women no matter how he’s presenting. My mom was quite relieved when we met because he was an oldest son and I was a youngest daughter. She puts great stock in the way birth order determines the way people communicate; in other words,

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