Manly Man

Femininity. Femininity was a light, it was like the warm sun embracing a weeping sky after the clouds had shed their grey brutality on the blue. A picture, the superior piece of art, enthralling, almost intimidatingly, with its sweet tenderness. It gave away delight, a kind of peace that did something soothing to a very specific part of your being. It was everything to Olive, it was what made his soul. His.

“You’re a boy,” he heard his parents say, followed by the regular smack of the ruler on the hands.

The beatings left scars that never healed, scars that reached way below the skin. They pierced through his veins, shot through his heart, making themselves a small little space in it.

It started when he was seven, when he stole his sister’s dress and his mother’s make-up.

“A mugger,” the occasional smack, “and a fag.”

He learnt those words way before kids his age did.

In hindsight, Olive thought, that was when things started going downhill.

Then when did they start going uphill?

He considered it when he was thrown out. His loved ones didn’t love his femininity, when they tried to throw it out they forgot it was who Olive was, so ended up throwing him out. Four jobs barely paid for his food and rent, his dream of studying make-up artistry washed away with one of the dishes he cleaned at the bar. Internet rendered him as an amateur; two years of practice weren’t professional enough for them. He considered it when he first tried those mystery sleeping pills, which were intended to end his life but made it better, because pills they were, just not for sleeping.

That’s where he sat now, in the middle of his apartment, messy and plain, as if wailing for a partner to end the loneliness. But he wasn’t lonely, he put on his make-up like there was no end.

He took another whisp of the smoke.

And in went the small void, making his head spin around in glee, the world around him turning a pretty pink. Glitter and tints spun around him, giving him the happiness he hadn’t felt in a while.

It was when things had started going uphill, or so he thought.

Because enter Ryan, the oh so beautiful Ryan, whose kisses took away every pain, whose hugs made him weak in the knees, whose presence gave Olive the high his drugs never did. Pain in every word he said to him, misery in every he didn’t. They weren’t meant to be but they were, which is what led Olive to the doorstep that night.

“If you could just listen to me!”

“Olive just leave or I WILL call the police!”

“Ryan you really won’t listen, I love you—”

“Love?” A scoff. “It isn’t love Olive when all you do is use me to take care of you! I keep you away from your stupid drugs but at the end of the day you go back to them, saying you missed me! I’m not some drug you can take why don’t you understand?”

“You have it all wrong Ryan!” screamed Olive, the storm drowning his voice, “Ryan please I,” he took a step forward, his voice softening, “Give me another chance, I’ll, I promise I’ll make it right.” The distance between them shortened, so much they could now whisper through the cries of the storm.

“Come back to me,” Olive whispered in his ear, watching as Ryan muffled a sob, “Back home to me,” Olive put out his hand to gently hug Ryan, who slightly resisted. Upon the resistance, Olive tightened his grip, afraid to let him go.

“Olive, leave me,” Ryan said, his voice stiffening. “I said leave me—”

But Olive wouldn’t budge. His grip only turned stronger, hurting Ryan’s arm.

“Let go of me!” But Olive only glared back. He was desperate, desperate to be loved.

“Olive I said leave!”

Pain.

He had felt this before.

It came quick but lasted long, the stinging feeling too familiar to him.

It was all he had felt growing up, the same pain he received just now.

No tears fell. He simply walked away, leaving a Ryan breaking down on the roadside, who let out inhumane screams.

But he spoke nothing. Nothing when he reached his apartment, nothing when he filled the bathtub. Nothing when he picked his bong, his blade.

Nothing.

He woke up to his phone ringing. The moment he opened his eyes, the familiar shooting headache hit him, making him shut his eyes immediately. The ringing phone made his head pound, as he frantically searched for it within his bedsheets.

When he finally found it, he froze upon seeing the caller ID.

“Mom…?”

Silence. Then a sob.

“Olive.”

“You called after five years…”

More silence.

“I only called to inform you that your dad passed away.”

The voice was cold. It was sad, but full of loathing. Olive didn’t mourn his father’s death, he was never fond of him anyway, but his mother’s tone. She was grieving, but the hate for her own son surpassed her feeling of grief. Grief, for the passing of one’s loved one, the meanest type of grief, one to leave you numb for weeks, her hatred passed that.

Olive hung up.

Femininity. Femininity was a light, it was like the warm sun embracing a weeping sky after the clouds had shed their grey brutality on the blue. It gave away delight, a kind of peace that did something soothing to a very specific part of your being. It was everything to Olive, it was what made his soul. But Olive was a boy.

In hindsight, Olive thought, that was when things started going downhill.

Then when did they start going uphill?

“Never,” said he, the rain drenching his clothes, the raindrops blocking the view down the roof, they were always downhill, he thought, and it was the last thought Olive ever had.