Is There Grace for Men?

I need someone to help me out, instead of a scrub like you, who don’t know what a man’s about. – Destiny’s Child

Can you pay my electricity bill?

I asked my significant other this when she moved in, and not out of a debilitating fear brought on by the prospect of slipping financially.

Rather, I was protecting her, hopefully. I can imagine the thoughts that run through a good woman’s mind when she brings her home to one that she didn’t buy.

And brought it, she did.

All the senses changed Anno Nicki. Before her, reheated chicken grease densified the air on Sunday afternoons while my best-friend-turned-roommate and I composed a score of ball scratching for NFL Red Zone.

Now I have two cats, a bathroom garbage that is hexed to be perpetually overflowing and because of a nervous habit, tiny red nail chips sprinkled in the oddest places. The Little Rascals have scheduled my hearing for the end of next week.

Yes, there is less house — but she did the impossible; she gave me more home.

And what have I given her?

Albert Einstein was noted for going on long walks when he could not arrive at answer and was reported to have been seen talking to himself in public during them.

It turns out that only is acceptable when you’re a well-known genius; a number of confused looks were thrown my way from strangers observing me trying to solve the WhatShouldNickiPay? problem.

I needed a friend, one who looks like a dad. My dad. He’s been unreachable for quite some time. My mom gave me the same advice he would — putting in mental jeopardy the idea that I needed advice from a man, let alone anyone, considering I knew what he would have told me anyway.

We landed on a plan, one Nicki put forward when I brought up the matter. She understood that helping with some bills would alleviate any feelings she may have of being a guest and not a co-owner.

I understood her longing to contribute, driven out of tandem loves for both me and independent womanhood. If you’re a woman and this isn’t your goal too, then you are a girl and not a woman.

But I was wrecked.

Temporarily, at least. Beginning at birth, both genders experience a cultural indoctrination in accordance to the ideals most lauded in their community.

What else could drive Southern mothers to dress their girls as adult women — sexualizing them necessarily, considering part of what defines a woman is the advent of sex organs — and then display them in bikinis at child pageants?

What else could drive my father to ask a 15-year-old me to spend a day cleaning out my deceased Aunt’s house — carpet to ceiling, vine to wine, and in complete silence — only to hand me my first beer as the ceremonial drink before calling me a man for the first time?

It is impossible to in good faith disagree with the degree in which providership is implanted into the brains of boys not only in America, but most of the world at large.

What’s more, the tool to deliver stability and security, at least in this country, is self-sacrifice. Men are expected to surrender everything necessary to ensure all in their charge have the least amount of financial worry possible.

In exchange, we’ve categorized child-rearing and whatever non-offensive word you prefer for homely duties as the woman’s domain, via a skewed logic suggesting that once the goods are delivered a man no longer has responsibility for them.

Men masquerade this shortcoming as part of the bargain. It is nothing more than a coping tool for good men who simply aren’t good enough but don’t have the courage to address that problem head on.

In fact, we’ve (I, and stupidly) have coined the term providership as a trick. It implies the others can’t be provided for. They need me. Us. And in this self-defeating loop men have become the only creature to fall in love with a prison they’ve erected around themselves.

“Silly me, why haven’t I found another? A baller, when times get hard.”

– Destiny’s Child

Can it be? Arguably the most successful female artist of all time and her pals — a trio of norm-breaking, voluptuous and pioneering women — introspecting on why she hasn’t found a provider to alleviate her financial pain?

Most men my age might not admit that they, too, stole their older sister’s Destiny’s Child CD and memorized all of the words. They’re losers and the reason this short essay exists.

Nonetheless, those words embedded themselves into my psyche. To land a Queen B, I must be a King M. If even the most wealthiest girls are saying so, then what must the less fortunate think?

There isn’t ink enough to delineate the forms this indoctrination took. The hardly-any-income, priest-yet-father of 7th Heaven giving his one million kids the best suburban upbringing possible. The Soccer Mom and Dad Bod jokes. Tales of how my Nazi-Killing grandfather returned home to become a mechanic, pushing past his alcoholism and PTSD to turn his offspring into occupants of a higher class than he.

Still, the question remains.

Is there grace for men? Have the depths of our social training sunk low enough to justify it? Or do we have more agency than assumed — which is assumed currently by women in general — to retain full culpability for the continued mistreatment of our better halves?

I’ll admit, I’m struggling. Seemingly everything I thought I’ve provided has begun to crumble, literally. Tens of thousands have been spent over the last 24 months fixing everything from shower valve leaks to dilapidated ceilings — all unforeseen expenses and fuel for my anti-home inspector manifesto.

I know I am meeting the obligations bestowed upon me by Gender Past, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. Lately I’ve begun to wonder what will become of me if the ship isn’t righted, and soon.

Those thoughts have appeared as the specter I knew they would; a ghoulish form of mental jeopardy adopting the very opposite of my dad. By being unreceptive, uncaring, and ultimately present, my spiritual anguish has embodied my eternal battle — navigating manhood without one to show me how.

I am not asking for what you think I am

Don’t feel sorry for men and the crisis we find ourselves in. But know the scale. After all, if Beyonce feels like she needs providing for, then who can I provide for?

The pathway we’re told to blaze has more challenges than ever, and although it is not our fault that the homes our fathers had are now costlier than ever and the paychecks they received comparatively larger despite work staying the same, the duty to surpass them remains our cultural responsibility.

I eulogized my father, ending the speech by talking to him directly. I told him he was “My best friend, my role model, my hero.” More than ever the odds of becoming him are in danger. I cannot express enough how difficult that has been for me.

I am not asking for you to pity us. Contrarily, push your standard for us even higher. We need it and you deserve it.

There are still men desiring to be good and simply put, the definition of good has changed. It is harder now. But we want it. Along the way we may need a little grace to become the men everyone wants us to be.

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Previously Published on substack and is republished on medium.com.

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Photo credit: iStock