How Not To Be a Boy

by Robert Webb

Of all the things I currently want these Cambridge people to think I am – witty, clever, sophisticated, ambiguous, sexy, ironic, exciting, artistic, self-possessed, self-aware – it doesn’t occur to me that ‘kind’ should be at the top of the list. Nor ‘brave’ or ‘honest’ or even ‘reliable’. I think, at this time, that these virtues are too obvious, too boring and too typical of some kind of normal man. No, as long as you’re very serious about not being like your dad, you don’t really need to be ‘good’ at all. What is ‘good’ anyway? This is the method by which I give myself permission to start acting like a liar and a sleazebag.

To be well enough to reject suicidal thoughts is not the same thing as being well enough not to have them in the first place. We are not responsible for our thoughts, of course. We’re responsible only for our words and actions. There are no ‘bad thoughts’, only bad deeds. But obviously there are some lines of thought that are unhealthy to pursue, two extreme examples being: ‘How exactly am I going to murder this person who just barged onto the train when people were trying to get off?’ or ‘How exactly am I going to murder myself?’ We all have wayward thoughts. We don’t choose them, but we can choose not to follow them. With feelings, there is no choice at all. Zero choice. How are you feeling right now? Right. Whose idea was that? I don’t mean to be rude but I doubt that you had much to do with it. Not because of what you’re reading now, so much as what you had for breakfast and that annoying thing your friend said to you last Tuesday night. We are not the same thing as our emotions. With practice, you just get to watch them bubbling up and simmering down again. And you can sometimes tilt the playing field in your own favour. You don’t discreetly lift the surface of a game of table football (or foosball) unless you’re an outrageous cheat. It’s acceptable to do so, however, if your opponent is the one in your mind who keeps saying ‘stop being alive’. Going for a brisk walk or having a cup of tea are a couple of harmless ways to change the chemistry of your body enough, mayb...

So, on that particular night (and I’m tempted to put the negative emotions in bold here, but I wouldn’t do that to you), I was afraid that I was in the wrong place, afraid of losing my old friends, anxious that my new ones didn’t love me and, as usual, in grief. On top of that, someone just correctly pointed out that I’d behaved in a selfish and self-indulgent way, so we can add shame and challenged pride to this bountiful platter of Reasons to Get Drunk. If you’re thinking right now that this catalogue of mishandled feelings is, in itself, all a little bit self-indulgent, then I suppose my reply is this: for men of about my age and older – those whose fathers had fought in a war, or those who were raised by the sons of such fathers – there can be few more powerful accusations than the one of self-indulgence. Paul got it from Ron, and I got it from Paul. This is the voice I hear all the time: Be a man. Man up. Act like a man. Get a grip. Get real. Get over yourself. Pull yourself together. Sort yourself out. Stop moaning. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You don’t know you’re born. BE A MAN. MAN UP. ACT LIKE A MAN . . .

Wedding Day This, they say, is the best it gets – this glorious day, so let’s have this glorious day and kiss Goodnight, and wake up hungover, and fight. And make up and kiss Goodnight, and wake up and make jokes: some good, and make plans and kiss Goodnight and sleep and hold hands. And wake up and insist and be wrong and laugh like monkeys, without understanding, and be right. And then let’s kiss and kiss and kiss and kiss and kiss and kiss Goodnight, and sleep and keep each other warm and wake up and take up each other’s cause and forsake all others, for as long as the light lasts. And then let’s kiss our last Goodnight And oh! Christ let me dream of your sweet face then.