Men We Love, Men We Hate

200 men we love men we hate Tears were falling down Smokey’s eyes, and he told me that they were not for Ega but for me. He said that he couldn’t stand to lose me, that every time I got on a plane to go somewhere it made him nervous. He said that I was the only person he would go crazy over if I left him.

Smokey took a deep breath and looked at me. The initially slow rolling tears careening down his cheeks illuminated for the first time a softness I had never seen.

I didn’t cry. Instead I watched every tear fall off the slope of his face.

I tried hard to think of a silver lining in the gloomy, dingy cloud hovering over the moment. I couldn’t find one and told Smokey to bring me home.

People might call Smokey and me survivors, survivors of our own rowdy past, of our mistakes, of our secret disappointments and horrors.

But the question looming in his mind that night in the car is the same as the one that has taunted and pushed me my whole life. How long?

I tried to answer this question for Smokey. Instead I uttered, “just hold on.” I found that same question seething in me at that very moment. I had never really told Smokey that just like him, I have been and still am in the fight of my life. For him, just like many others of my close friends, I’ve always seemed to have it easy. I grew up with two great parents who didn’t do drugs, who didn’t beat or curse me. I have loving brothers and sisters, and I always managed to do very well in school without ever having to study. I could never form the habit. What Smokey doesn’t know is that I struggle with the thought that maybe I wasn’t supposed to survive.

Like Smokey, I do not come from a family of achievers. Most of my family members have never graduated high school, let alone college.

None of them have traveled outside of the state or country as I have.

Most of the women have become teenage mothers before reaching the age of 17, and if drugs and alcohol didn’t stunt the growth of the males, then their young fatherhood and the responsibility of it has. Most of them are proud of me and maybe a bit jealous. I am often treated like the special one. I get inquiries about my jobs, my experiences, my life. I am glorified as the odd man out, but why do I feel strangely similar?

I have been examining myself for years. I have mentally noted all of my worst traits and tendencies. I can have a monstrous temper with a serious violent streak to boot. I find myself sometimes hanging with the wrong crowd just to be reminded of the me I was years ago. I have even succumbed to the urge to dumb myself down in certain arenas so