46: Sissies
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From PRI, Public Radio International, from PRI, Public Radio International. What could be more horrible than the moment when you realize that everybody in the world can see some aspect of you, something about you, that you never even knew that you were revealing, that you didn't want to reveal. So Mubarak, was it a trackmate? This is back in high school. He was at this trackmate, and he's setting up those runners' blocks, you know, you use in track. And I was, you know, sort of pampering my blocks, moving the blocks back and forth, like ever so slightly hair-linked, you know, testing out how they felt and standing up and putting my hands on my hip and, you know, putting my finger on my cheek and looking at it, as if I was in deep thought, and like bending down and probably even like dusting off the blocks. And what I didn't know at the time was there was the whole group of track members from the opposing team who were standing watching me. And laughing, they were like, you know, this big sissy is what they're putting up for us to be. Remember, please, high school, high school, where in the hierarchy of put downs, the worst thing you could call a boy was sissy. Mubarak won his match. The coach came up after I won, and he actually gave me this big hug, and he was like, that was great. And I was like, you know, thanks, but my time wasn't anything particularly better than before. So I kind of had this puzzled look in his face. It's like, that was great the way, you know, act like the way you like, psych those guys out by acting like a big sissy in front of your blocks and then like, showing them. And as he said that, it hit me like, what had happened? And I was like, you know, you know, I played along. Yeah, hey, well, good thing I thought of that. Welcome to WB EZ Chicago. It's this American life, and my red glass. Today on our program, sissies, weak ones, defiant ones, brave ones, and the ones who do not even know they are sissy. Act one, anti-edipus, act two, instructions for sissies, act three, the pansy kings sing songs of love, act four, syndicated columnist Dan Savage answers the question, who loves a sissy? He does. Stay with us. Act one. Well, the tragedy of the story of edipus, if you remember this from school, is that his son kills his father and marries his mother. And then, of course, rips out his eyes when he realizes what it is that he's done. And the thing about the story is that he does all these things unwittingly. He doesn't know that that's what he's doing with his mother and father when he does it. Well, the first story in today's program is also about a family that ends up getting ripped apart. It's also about a family where the son ends up with the mother, the father gone. And it's also a story where the tragedy of it is that it all happens without any of them really wanting it to happen this way. It's the ending they all wanted to avoid. Nancy Uptake prepared the story of an American family and of what it means to be a man. This story is like one of those Russian dolls where there's always a smaller one inside. The smallest doll, the core of the drama, is the fact that Mubarak, a childhood sissy, grew up to be a different kind of sissy than his father. His father is nerdy and bookish. Mubarak's gay. Everything around that core gets bigger and bigger until finally you can't believe the biggest and the smallest have anything to do with each other. The one is so bloated and the other so tiny. At the beginning of this story, Mubarak's parents are married and in love and both prepared to live far from everything they know to be with each other. At the end of this story, they may still be in love, but they're divorced and an ocean apart and not speaking. And Mubarak is caring for his mother the way a husband might. "Okay, Maggie Ruth." "I don't get too hot."
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