Our Boys Speak: Adolescent Boys Write About Their Inner Lives

Introduction

At War with Ourselves

WHEN I FIRST approached publishers in New York City about writing a book from the boys’ point of view, many of them were reluctant and unconvinced that it would work. Boys are not that open, they said. We don’t think boys can write on that level, they said. We’d need to see the letters to believe it, they said. At first, I was taken aback by their response. After all, hadn’t hundreds of girls bared their souls for the book Ophelia Speaks? Why wouldn’t young boys be able to do the same?

Frustrated and confused, I began losing faith in the project.

Maybe they’re right, I thought. After all, boys are not encouraged to speak out on behalf of their feelings. Much like I was raised, most boys are brought up to keep their emotions bottled up. Maybe we really are unable to achieve the same level of self-disclosure as our female counterparts.

Girl Power had become a sort of buzzword in the media. Everyone from societal pundits to celebrities was concerned with preaching the good word of female empowerment and strength. Just look at the number of magazines geared toward young girls as opposed to the number of magazines geared to solving boys’ problems.

Girls, we were instructed, are extremely complicated and require special attention in order to counteract the many pressures exerted upon them. Boys, on the other hand, are made of a much tougher fiber and able to take care of themselves. Although I was quick to see the merit of espousing Girl Power to young, impressionable girls, I still couldn’t help feeling that boys were in dire need of their own special brand of empowerment.

I resolved not to give up on my fellow man. Despite all of the criticism and skepticism that was heaped upon my project, my gut instinct told me that boys had a story to tell. And aren’t their experiences, fears, and goals just as important as those of girls?

Just as I received what seemed to be my umpteenth rejection and felt my motivation was beginning to flag, an editor from St. Martin’s Press came to the rescue. He also believed that boys were in dire need of a voice, and set me to the task of collecting letters from boys all over the country. Instead of coming up with a million reasons for why the book wouldn’t work, he had faith that boys would come out in droves to support their own cause. Man, was I relieved. For a minute there, I’d thought I was the only one who was interested in championing the plight of boys and helping them express their views.

Spurred on by my editor’s enthusiasm, I began the long process of collecting stories, poems, and journal entries from boys aged twelve to eighteen. With every stamp I pasted and every envelope I sealed (there were more than five thousand), my confidence and anticipation mounted. I couldn’t help wondering how many boys would write, and what their tales would reveal. I actually became a little worried about what I would discover along the way. Like a cave explorer with only a small light to guide his way, I grew apprehensive about what I would find at the end of the tunnel.

You see, like everyone else, I, too, had been saddled with my share of stereotypes about boys. Boys, I thought, were more aggressive than girls. Boys didn’t care about much, except fulfilling their sex drives. Boys didn’t complain about their problems. And most of all, boys didn’t feel life’s disappointments as keenly as girls. I had grown up with these misconceptions, but as I matured and came in touch with my own feelings and emotions, I began to suspect that I had sold myself and my male peers short.

I’ve often heard it said that girls are much more difficult to raise than boys. To bring up a healthy young man, a parent need only leave him to his own devices, and hope he turns out to be a productive member of society. Of course, the idea that boys somehow need less attention has backfired, and parents and educators are only now beginning to understand the adverse effects of not paying attention to our boys.

Left to fend for themselves and to learn many of life’s lessons from peripheral sources such as friends and television, many of our boys don’t have the chance to develop mature and healthy outlooks on life. The recent outbreaks of violence in Littleton, Jonesboro, and a spate of other Middle American communities across the country show that boys are suffering from too many pressures, not enough attention, and an inability to find the very modes of expression that so many girls take for granted.

Knowing what I did about society’s and my own misconceptions about boys, I hoped that the letters I received would somehow dispel my delusions. I wanted the letters to make an important statement about growing up male in this country. But what I got was so much more.

After poring over one letter after another, I could see that no matter how much credit I gave the young men growing up today, it had only been a small fraction of the respect and consideration that they actually deserve. Until I read their often poignant and painful admissions, I never knew just how difficult life had become for our youth. For me, high school had been a nice place to visit. I could meet my friends, talk to my girlfriend, and then cruise over to a local restaurant during lunch with some of my best buds. Pep rallies, sports games, parties, and school hangouts are what come to mind when I think back to school. My biggest problem at the time was figuring out how to better my grades so I could get into a good college.

But as I read the letters, I discovered just how sheltered my life had been. One boy likened the experience of returning from school to returning from a war. And on April 20, 1999, that particular analogy took on more meaning than the students of Columbine High School could ever have imagined.

As I watched the horrific footage from the Columbine tragedy, my feelings of shock and concern were also mingled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude, a gratitude for the fact that I had grown up in a time far removed from all the madness. Although I didn’t graduate from high school until the early nineties, the marked lack of weapons, metal detectors, and mandatory mesh backpacks makes that time seem like a full generation ago. Looking at the shell-shocked faces of the Columbine students as they stumbled out of their worst nightmare gave me an uncomfortable sense of relief. I felt as if I had narrowly missed the chaos and terror that permeate the lives of students today. Instead of thinking about those students who did not survive the fatal shoot-out of that morning, I couldn’t help but focus on the faces of the students running out of that now-dreadful building. I could identify with them, because I, too, had escaped just in the nick of time.

Or had I? Thinking about the Columbine tragedy and its victims, I began to realize that I, along with millions of boys who had survived adolescence, had not made it out without one or two battle scars of our own. I, too, was bruised and beaten by the expectations and rules beneath which all young boys must constantly labor. I, too, was still smarting from the pangs of trying to grow up too soon in a world that seldom cares, rarely understands, and hardly ever pays attention.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to identify with those students who hadn’t made it out alive. I realized that I’d had to destroy, crush, and bury important parts of myself along the way to adulthood. And as I mourned the lives that were taken much too soon, I began to mourn myself, the boy that I’d once been and have long since forgotten.

After the networks finished dissecting the Columbine massacre, giving viewers a round-the-clock view of the kind of terror and violence few of us will ever really know, an arsenal of personalities, psychologists, and politicians were called in to make sense out of the madness. Many of their egos, voices, and platforms still ring in my ears today. Blame it on the media, they said. Blame it on the parents. Guns, those are the real culprits. The arguments were as well thought out as they were carefully researched, and as a graduate student in psychology, I could understand the need to try to explain, identify, and analyze. But in the end, after all the opinions had been weighed and the votes had been tallied, the consensus was that we have to pay more attention to our boys.

No matter how little time we have or how many defenses we have to break down, we must find a new way of communicating with the young men who will one day be the leaders, the educators, and fathers of a new generation. I feel as if I know all of the boys who contributed to this book personally. And all it took to get to know them was a friendly gesture, an invitation to speak. You see, our boys are willing to speak out. All we have to do is listen.

Part I

Our Inner Circle

1

In You We Trust

MANY OF YOU are going to be shocked by what I’m about to say, just because it is an extremely uncommon sentiment, but here it goes: I cannot think of one bad thing to say about my parents.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if there’s never been any discord between us. Sure, we’ve had our share of disagreements, times when I would have gladly stomped out of the house or thrown a vase at the TV. But I never did do that. Why? Simply because I always knew that no matter what the subject of contention, my parents were always arguing from the viewpoint of what they thought was best for me. This made it very difficult ever to stay mad at them for too long.

The truth is that in their relationship with me, my parents have always behaved in the most unselfish manner. For as far back as I can remember, whenever I needed anything, whether it was a ride to soccer practice, help with my schoolwork, or advice on a relationship I was in, they were there for me. Forever putting my needs before their own, my parents acted as if they couldn’t truly be happy unless I was.

However, having parents who fit the above profile does have one main drawback. In a word, guilt. We’re talking capital G guilt, colossal with a capital C guilt. No two ways about it, since I had the ideal parents, I had to be the ideal son. That meant never getting into trouble at school, never hanging out with the wrong crowd, and always striving to achieve the best grades.

On the rare occasion that I did transgress the boundaries defining my self-imposed perfection, I suffered great anxiety. The only way to relieve myself of these feelings was to push myself harder and make my parents proud. In essence, the avoidance of guilt acted as the main motivation for my academic and social successes. Anytime I would find myself in circumstances that involved making an important decision, whether it was to take drugs, get into a car with someone who had been drinking, or simply procrastinate when I had to study for finals, I always thought of my parents. What would they want me to do? How would they feel if something harmful happened to me?

Answering these questions was never too difficult; the hard part was actually conforming my behavior to them. Although I’ve been known to stray from the path that bore my parents’ seal of approval, most of the time my course of action has been in tune with their wishes. Frankly, I could not bear to think of the heartache my parents would experience if one of my decisions had had ill-fated consequences. The notion that constantly haunted me when presented with a risky proposition was My parents have always done their best for me, and this is how I repay them.

My parents were not strict disciplinarians; my choices never reflected a fear of punishment. It has always been the guilt. I tried to think of their well-being over my normal coming-of-age impulses. When contemplating my adolescent years I realized the great influence my parents had on me as well as my attempts to model their own behavior. Our relationship had become wholly symbiotic—it was as if I couldn’t truly be happy unless they were.

The bottom line is that no matter how flawless our relationships with our parents are, the absence of conflict can be a problem in its own right. Take the essay Dysfunctional Mediocrity from Chey Pesko, for example. The writer sets up the story as he would a movie. His poker buddies are the ones with the real problems. Chey is just an observer, watching the action from a safe distance. In his poker game, good families are as rare as good hands, and Chey feels as guilty as if he’d cheated misfortune at his friends’ expense.

The next story, The Game, by Joel Ashcraft, also depicts a happy childhood. Joel talks about how his relationship with his father has enriched his upbringing, instead of focusing on the ways in which this bond might have alienated him from some of his less fortunate peers. In fact, while there is indeed a downside to growing up without any major family turmoil, the stability and joy that a solid family provides are priceless treasures that Joel, much like myself, wouldn’t trade for the world.

In writing the pieces that appear in this book, many of the boys were very open about the problems afflicting their homes. Of course, such uncensored self-expression is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to our behavior in the real world. Whether our home life is satisfying or dysfunctional, we all see our own families as somehow abnormal, and live in fear lest someone discover our dreadful secret. After requesting that his last name be kept anonymous, Jason describes a typical scene at his besieged household in America the Beautiful. While the chaotic scene should strike a chord with anyone whose house is ruled by pain, anger, and resentment, it’s Jason’s ability to see past his own selfish needs and empathize with the rest of his family that makes this story so excruciatingly heart-wrenching.

The poem Junkyard, by Mike Grohsman, picks up where the preceding selection leaves off. As his childhood lies dying a painful death, the speaker explores issues of abandoment and loss. He is unable to save himself, and has long since given up any hope of his family coming to his rescue. Unwilling to blame his father, Mike gives him credit for trying his best. But in the end, he believes that both of his parents turn a deaf ear to his distressing cries for