Men

Good luck bitch! Ciara responds to my story welcoming my Saturn return. I’m jealous that so many of my friends have just finished their’s, but I’m excited for mine in the same way I was excited to give birth in the same way I used to get excited for finance exams.

Before leaving the house to go to Michelle’s baby shower, I stand on the kitchen table to announce to my testosterone filled apartment the cosmic implications of this two year transit and the three boys and the three cats look at me and nod and smile and support my speech.

When I get to the hotel where a friend of mine ended up in random room with Elon Musk one new year’s eve not long ago and not in a good way, everyone is happy and it’s 10am. The elevator door opens to take me to the rooftop and I expect the man inside the elevator to get out but he doesn’t. He’s holding two drinks and he says he can’t get to the roof. I notice him pressing and unpressing the button and I tell him you keep unpressing the button as I reach over him to press the light back on. He says I must be his good luck charm and I roll my eyes under my sunglasses. Men.

It has been a month since we got back from Miami and we brought Marcello’s brother Maalem home with us for the summer. Maalem looks like a movie star and slices avocados into roses and adores my son and I adore him. He is 19 and motivated and does backflips on the sand and has Marcello waking up every morning at 6:30 to workout and goes to work with him and they come home inspired and excited to my spiraling, hopefully temporary, madness.

At first it was amazing, but then three weeks later and during my luteal phase, I realized that as much as I don’t want to admit it I am feeling jealous and lonely and left in the dust and moody and controlling and crazy. And it’s one thing to feel like this every month alone but another thing to feel this way while trying to be cool. A cool mom and a cool host and his older brother’s cool girlfriend.

But manic is not cool so I hide in my room and make everything worse for myself. Because there was something horrible that happened to a boy my son’s age on TikTok and my entire algorithm poisoned me to the point that I got so scared of the people on TikTok that I made my account private. And then I considered never writing again. And all this is happening while the boys are getting strong and doing business and playing on the nintendo switch at night in the living room.

And after five years of begging Marcello to share his feelings, he finally does — on the second night of my cycle — by hesitantly admitting I’ve been negative lately (I know) and should be more grateful for what I have now instead of what I’m waiting for (EW I KNOW). He brings up the not so nice text messages I sent the day before and I tell him a cockroach jumping out of Mateo’s bath toys to attack us would ruin even my happiest of days. Mel agrees with me that freaking out over the roach is not a good example of me being negative. Mel used to kill the cockroaches in my room in college. Of course I freak out but I know he is right and he knows I am right and it’s not a competition but sometimes I just want to fight.

I feel good this Saturday morning because I spent an hour getting ready and I am relaxed and know I look beautiful and am excited to have a glass of champagne and chitchat with the moms I usually avoid. I love them and now that it has been three years I know that they love me but they don’t know me and I don’t really know them. That’s how I prefer to keep things for now.

The thing is there is no alcohol at this baby shower which is a major culture shock because Miami would never but nonetheless I enjoy their company and after three cups of coffee we are all trembling. Breakfast is lovely but once the games begin I take it as my cue to leave because I’m not the kind of person that can play games sober.

As I approach the elevator guess who’s joining me for a second time with two new drinks, man from elevator round one. He asks me how my event was and I say it was nice, it was a baby shower. He goes oh so you live here? He’s from Vancouver and tells me that his daughter is getting married, today, which immediately disarms me. We stay chatting for a bit outside the elevator and I tell him that I hope he has a beautiful weekend and congratulations and he says thank you and have a nice day. I’m already walking towards the door when he turns around and yells across the lobby actually I hope you have a beautiful life! and I love men. More than that I love the intimacy of not really knowing someone, but wanting them to be happy.

If I were a man I’d be completely insufferable. Quick to anger, passionate in a way that’s worse than romantic, and arrogant. I’d be the worst male lead you’ve ever read about and I’d get into physical altercations over stupidities. But I’d be handsome. And tall. If I were a man and you are a woman I’d ruin your life. And if I were a man I’d never have endometriosis and all the studies on health would be done in my favor not that it would matter because I would feel, physically, the same way every day because my hormones would regulate every 24 hours. And maybe I would never ghost the people I love whose messages caught me on the bad days.

So when Marcello says I pick a fight once a month, he’s right. I crave this fight the way I crave the carbs I devour the week before the fight.

from the chisme section of The Miami Native

It seems to be trendy to hate men. I see it mostly online, mostly from girls who haven’t yet become mothers (BUT WHO HAVE EXPRESSED THE DESIRE TO BE ONE DAY- so relax). I smile because I know they will have boys. And hopefully those boys will become the men that teach them to embrace what it is to have a man in your life. Because there’s nothing worse than a bad man, but there’s nothing better than a good one.

I think I had this preconceived notion that the village had to be women. Women and children. But there’s a reason this summer it’s me, Mateo, Marcello, and Maalem. They’re not overthinking everything the way I am. They’re not scared of everything like I am. They’re laughing and singing and fighting pokémons and making me hot coffee in the mornings and telling me that they love me.

I’ve lived most of my life dominated by estrogen, so maybe it’s time to lean out of that and into the boys. Maybe this has nothing to do with me at all. Maybe it has everything to do with my son who gets an entire summer at a crucial age with the side of his lineage that I am not really a part of but nonetheless play a crucial role in.

If what I want is to thrive in divine femininity, there needs to be divine masculinity. And that requires total surrender and trust. Good luck bitch!