MN Manmacker's mansploitation
His teacher was a nice old lady with two sigogglin’ heavy-hangers drooping low like a paira sleepy grapefruits.
His teacher was a nice old lady with two sigogglin’ heavy-hangers drooping low like a paira sleepy grapefruits.
After a minute or two of recompositioning hisself, Goose reckoned Mister Jones was serious about liking the motorcycle. He was looking at it like he always wanted one. Prolly got a wife who don’t like motorcycles. Women mostly don’t, in Goose’s experience.
After a minute or two of recompositioning hisself, Goose reckoned Mister Jones was serious about liking the motorcycle. He was looking at it like he always wanted one. Prolly got a wife who don’t like motorcycles. Women mostly don’t, in Goose’s experience.
A man falls apart like a jigsaw puzzle; a woman falls apart like shattered glass. Without women, men holds each other together like log cabins. Without men, women holds each other down like a bucket of frogs.
But that feller got his own troubles, his own dams blocking up his self-same river. It’s good for a man to get away. Among women and children, a man had gotta keep his head up, keep his shoulders straight. A man falls apart like a jigsaw puzzle; a woman falls apart like shattered glass. Without women, men holds each other together like log cabins. Without men, women holds each other down like a bucket of frogs.
He was in America. Tennessee? Maybe. Pennsylvania? Indiana? Were those real places? Goose never was convinced Delaware was real.
“Stop! Stop right where you are! Hands in the air!” One the gooks had stellar English, with drawl and a trace of twang. Sounded like he was from somewhere proper, maybe Tennessee.
The peal of a siren shattered Goose’s rainy shards into panes of togethertude, and he stupored into stillness.
Cops surrounded him. Guns aimed himward. The sun blared in his eyes. No endless canopy clouding overhead. No wetlands under his boots. No helicopter sounds.
He was in America. Tennessee? Maybe. Pennsylvania? Indiana? Were those real places? Goose never was convinced Delaware was real.
“Put your hands in the air!” shouted the insistent cop in the lead. His gun glinted in the sun. He had a groomed mustache liketa grow into a beard but never quite got there.
“Aaaah… shit,” Goose said. He ain’t know where he was or what done happen. For a moment, he couldn’t even remember leaving Vietnam. Had he rotated out? Gone AWOL? Fragged his commander? Or did he die there?
A man’s gotta keep his nose up, no matter what. Women cry and go limp when they get in a bad situation. A man’s gotta take action. Can’t take action when you’s bothered up hot, bawling like a waterfall.
A man’s gotta keep his nose up, no matter what. Women cry and go limp when they get in a bad situation. A man’s gotta take action. Can’t take action when you’s bothered up hot, bawling like a waterfall.
The one soldier who couldn’t quite live up to expectations was Samovich, who was skinny as a toothpick and sloppy as a bear. He couldn’t never do enough push-ups or clean his rifle proper-like or keep his bunk in good order. Whole dang unit got in a bad row of stumps again and again for that sumbitch.
The one soldier who couldn’t quite live up to expectations was Samovich, who was skinny as a toothpick and sloppy as a bear. He couldn’t never do enough push-ups or clean his rifle proper-like or keep his bunk in good order. Whole dang unit got in a bad row of stumps again and again for that sumbitch.
Ain’t nobody wanna punish him. They hoped Samovich to improve, but Samovich cried for his mama and he tried a-sneaking like a clumsy ninja, even cheating on an obstacle course, stogging around the obstacles out in the woods where Drill Sergeant Tucker couldn’t see.
That was some low-manhood, high-sissy behavior, so far as Goose was concerned. And per his buddy Harley, who Goose ain’t barely know yet, but they later ran together cuz they shipped out together.
Once Tucker found out about the obstacle course, he shit his lid, and Samovich returned to the barrack with a heavy head, a black eye and a limp, and word soon got back that they wasn’t getting leave this weekend cuzza him.
Whole dang unit got no leave cuz Samovich couldn’t handle his shit.
That pissed ’em all off. It was Harley who badmouthed Samovich so bad them’all took a turn gutpunching him.
By then he was bawling in the corner of the barrack like a rank pussy, god did that weakling shit piss Goose off. It wasn’t even just that Samovich was a pussy — god knows the world’s fulla ’em! — but he was getting the whole barrack in trouble, and Samovich was going off to war! What’d he think this was? Prep for a trip to a circus? He gonna hafta toughen up or the Vietnameys gonna send him dirtwards. A man rises hisself to the situation at hand.
For sure all the parkbodies thunk he shoulda been here, strong enough to control his household like a man, he shoulda been watching over Ellen, providing for her so she don’t gotta sling her cat for horse.
Sly as snakes, oodlins of eyeballs judged him. He wished he weared a black shirt at least. But he done return to Smashwood in his wrinkledy workshirt like any other day, flecks of paint and sawdust clinging to the denim. For sure all the parkbodies thunk he shoulda been here, strong enough to control his household like a man, he shoulda been watching over Ellen, providing for her so she don’t gotta sling her cat for horse.
But there weren’t no work round here for a man like Goose, so he had no choice but to go away. He wanna blame Ellen for spending dollars on drugs steada feeding the boy, but a real man don’t blame a woman. A proper man shoulda been here, shoulda found a way. That’s how the cow ate the cabbage. T’is a woman’s nature to dream and dally. T’is on the nearest man to handle reality. That weren’t a duty Goose was living up to at the moment.
His brain steady came back to Ellen’s death, telling him he shoulda been here. He did heroin in Vietnam, and he quit before coming over on back to America. He coulda, shoulda and woulda made Ellen do the same. A man should be the master of his home or leastways his own self.
“You gotsta be tough, Buck. Stay strong. A man lives in the here and now, takin’ on burdens that ain’t fair, beatin’ back the night by buildin’ up the day. You let ya mama stay in ya heart, where’n e’erythang’s perfect,” Goose said.
The world seemed right before the war, right in a way he couldn’t perceive then or articulate now. Expectations done broke, he thought. Goose went to war, he pulled the appropriate trigger at appropriate times, he followed orders mostly, he came back alive, he got money, he gave it to a woman to spend. He did his part. He completed the minimum requisited of a man.
Goose kissed him goodbye, and he kissed Ellen goodbye too but in a different way, then he went on back to bush in the wilds up behind Smashwood. He ain’t wanna whisk off, but he ain’t wanna stay even harder. It was better this way, for him to be gone. He gotsta get a grip on hisself, and a man gotsta do that alone.
The world seemed right before the war, right in a way he couldn’t perceive then or articulate now. Expectations done broke, he thought. Goose went to war, he pulled the appropriate trigger at appropriate times, he followed orders mostly, he came back alive, he got money, he gave it to a woman to spend. He did his part. He completed the minimum requisited of a man. But it felt like he done jack up every single thing in the world. He was a retard in boot camp, he dropped his rifle, he got scared as a bunny, he was captured, needed rescue, he lost, he failed, he fell, he wailed. He could get done up by the Vietnameys prolly crawly-trawling the countryside anytime. He done develop a sixth sense about ’em, and it been twinging like a siren. Ain’t quit off since Muck Dan Foo. He don’t wanna go look in the woods lest he either get took captive again or see that he imagined phantoms.
And he felt bad that he felt good about leaving. He gotsta skedaddle while the heat was on. And he gotsta go less he lose control of his fists again. That boy ain’t a wall, and the lady ain’t a soldier.
Ellen was Goose’s wife. They ain’t never done live in matrimony, as they jumped the broom only days before Goose shipped out to the steamy greens. Ellen done come up in the family fashion, so they got married with a hurry and a hoop-dee-hoo. Now Goose returned to the joyness of meeting his newborned son Moses and to the sadness of Ellen admitting she been turning tricks to pay the bills. Army don’t pay diddly.
Goose did more shouting than he cared to admit, and he blistered and kicked up purple, raring and pitching, then he punched a hole in the wall and regretted letting his son see that and afrearing from it, and nothing Goose could do would make him stop crying. He said no wife of his gonna go and sell her God-given ladyness to any pecker-toter with dollars and a stiffy, cuz what was the point of being a man if you can’t keep your little lady from hooking it? But he done got drafted to the other side of the ever-blesséd world, so what was he sposedta do about it? Can’t do squat! Goose screamed like a river at a dam, til Ellen begged him to stop or the neighbors gonna call the sheriff, and Goose wanna ram his noggin into the wall until something somewhere broke.
The whatnots rising in him, Goose only regained hisself when he saw Vietnameys watching him like sentries from the woods behind the trailer. That turned out to be an illusion, but it got Goose calm as a clam, sending Ellen and Moses inside. Then he felt hisself a fool when he reckoned t’was just some shadowy tree swaying in the breeze, and he pretended ain’t nothing happen. He don’t want Ellen to think he couldn’t cope or Moses to think his pops was fearful.
So he steeled up for the woman and the boy. They got needs, and a rock don’t. He ain’t think twice about giving Ellen the cash-money from the robbery. “Don’t spend it all at oncet,” he said.
And he felt bad that he felt good about leaving. He gotsta skedaddle while the heat was on. And he gotsta go less he lose control of his fists again. That boy ain’t a wall, and the lady ain’t a soldier.
She nodded, and she whispered, “Thank you…”. She kissed Goose upon the cheek. That felt good. Damn good. Something about tenderness from a lady reassures a man he is alright and cures a touchous soul. Her lips wouldn’t tremble so soft-like if he was a monster. Ellen wouldn’t kiss a john the way she kissed Goose. He ain’t tell her not to whore it out no more cuz it was implied from the hole in the wall and cuz he ain’t want her to lie and say she would quit off when she really wouldn’t.
Koa was big and tough, brimming with machismo and power, all traits that women here liked — but he was too much of all those things. He was so big he’d hurt any woman he was with, and he was too crude to be seductive or charming. But he was exactly the kind of man whom Makana liked.
“I… I had no one here for me when I returned from battle. There was no one to clean me and to apply salve to my wounds. Warriors need a woman to come home to.” His voice rang out as deep as the moon. “A woman to mourn them if they fall in battle.”
Koa was big and tough, brimming with machismo and power, all traits that women here liked — but he was too much of all those things. He was so big he’d hurt any woman he was with, and he was too crude to be seductive or charming. But he was exactly the kind of man whom Makana liked.
From The Hawaiian Warrior