![]() I recall as far back as sixth grade, when one new boy managed to win over our class by mounting the monkey bars outside and, ropey muscles bulging, completed several chin-ups in quick succession. Sitting in the theater, I had, without asking, reached into his enormous exactly. On this particular evening, my friend Syd (not his real name) and I had gone to the movies. For reasons I’ve never understood, the wealthier and better educated the suburb, the less appetite there is for difference. It’s not like this had escaped my notice, up. ![]() I stared at him with what must’ve been a stupid expression, but it was less the threat and more the truth of what he’d said that stung. “If you weren’t such a wimp, I’d punch you in the face right now,” he said. The normally mild-mannered Syd frowned and threw me a hard look. ![]() It was an impulsive move, even an aggressive one, or maybe it suggested to Syd a level of intimacy we hadn’t achieved. But latitude is typically not the case in the suburbs especially not so in wealthy, overwhelmingly white ones like the southern Ontario town where I grew enormous bucket of popcorn and extracted a handful. Given this was the early 1980s - an era best remembered (and not without irony) for its androgynous male rock stars - you’d think that some gender latitude might have been in order. ![]() Sometime in the middle of high school I was confronted with rather irrefutable evidence that I wasn’t much of a man. ![]()
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