Late last year, I asked my good friend @BowtiedCrow if he was interested in writing for the substack on the topic of masculinity.
In the two years that I’ve known him, I’ve been fortunate to share a few discussions with him about the current state of society, so I knew that he’d be able to provide some insight.
Boy was I unprepared
Crow sent over ~1000 words filled to the brim with meaning and reflection.
Many of the topics he brings up are very familiar, and everything he says resonates with me in a deep way.
It took me a few days to let this digest, I’ve read it over three times so far - there’s a lot of truth here.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Manhood
It’s always a strange time—the days between Christmas and New Years. A time of contemplation of the year that passed and the year to come; a time of reflection and planning. I watched a few episodes of Anthony Bourdain last night. It put me in a mood, as it always does, thinking about suicide at the end of a life well lived, and our world—a world that was captured so beautifully on his show in ~2015, but it’s a world that doesn’t exist now.
The internet is a funny place. Obviously, social media sites exist as some sort of hivemind to the world. But on the western world. Not the rest of the non-English speaking world. That’s there, too, of course, but you likely can’t read it, and even if you did, I doubt it’s on your feeds. There’s some debate happening right now. It feels like a global conversation, but it’s not. Nobody in Beirut gives a single fuck about what a woman posing for a calendar shoot is wearing. I don’t, either, but many “men” do.
The endless discourse surrounding this conservative pinup calendar is coming from folks who do not live lives. These ‘men’ shaming the women for the ever so slightly proactive pictures are the same accounts touting some return to masculinity as an answer to societies problems. The reality is these folks are just incels on the other side of the coin. Devoid of life experiences they rattle off some Christofacist ideas that they themselves parrot to shield their psyche from the reality of their frail existence and obviously latent homosexuality. I don’t believe for a second they have a spark in their soul—a spark that drives them to create or build or conquer the world in front of them because at the end, that’s what this existence on this plane is all about. We live to build and drive ourselves, family, and species forward. Without this drive forward, what it means to be a man disappears to the aether and we’re left with sniffling creeps offended at the beauty of women.
I remember the day Cuda asked me to write an article for his Substack about what it meant to be a man. It was a few days before Thanksgiving. I was grocery shopping. The day was warm and the sun was out. I agreed, immediately, because Cuda is my friend, yet I wondered why he wanted me to write on this—I was buying milk and the world seemed a little more cohesive then than it does a month later. It was homework. I needed to think. A few weeks later I sat down to write, having the lightning bolt of inspiration strike me I believed I had all the answers.
I deleted that draft. CTRL+A + Delete. Gone. To the wind.
This Christmas my mom showed me a picture of my grandfather. A slim, handsome man. Eyes narrowed and sharp having participated in a combat role in war. Brutal war. Chosin Reservoir. He was holding his shotgun and a dead goose. Proud.
I thought, “That’s a man.”
But why? Was it the aesthetic?
No. That photo captured something. It captured a moment in time where a man was doing what he had to for his family. In that moment, he was the master of his domain having killed an animal to feed his family. His death had yet to come for him in that photo and the joy he had come from killing, providing.
My original thesis for the first draft of this article was “A man is someone who projects his internal world to the external world through the mastery of his mind, body, and spirit.”
I don’t disagree with my original thoughts. They’re true in many ways, however I’ve come to the conclusion that a man isn’t thinking about his mastery of his world either internal or external. He’s existing. Doing what needs to be done. I wrote a whole article about ways one could work on this mastery, from training the physical body, sharpening his intelligence, and honing his inner fire but all of it is bullshit. All that stuff already exists in the manosphere and, you know what, it hasn’t helped a single person. Every guru out there trying to sell you his latest pdf book on manhood is as disingenuous as the grifter selling you tickets to talk to your dead relatives. They themselves aren’t men. They’re reactionary organisms vying for a sliver of resources you have accumulated. This is not something that you can train or practice nor is it something you can teach.
I wonder, when man was new and the world was ancient, how much different the pressures to live must have been.
Life was not easy, not fat, and not plastic.
I wonder if there were seemingly more successful hunters selling opportunities to hunt to meager men looking for an edge. I wonder if this was humanities first transaction. Perhaps it’s the oldest grift of all.
When I was a kid, my dad took care of a sick friend who was dying of cancer. Army veteran who did classified work during the cold war. This man had no family or friends except for my dad. His cancer was terminal. He was in the hospital, spending his final days getting his affairs in order and he asked my dad to empty his apartment of everything he owned except his bed, a few items of clothing, and his Smith and Wesson Model 19 revolver. It was the same gun his brother and his father used to commit suicide when they faced down their own mortal illnesses. This gun, a tool, a piece of metal, took the lives of two men this guy admired most, and he wanted my dad to keep it in his apartment in case he made it home, and he could decide his fate on his own terms, using the weapon bold enough to take the lives of the two men he admired in his life.
I think of this man and that story often. He was a man by all accounts who lived his life on his terms and had plans to continue to live it to the bitter end, on his terms. This man has crept back into my consciousness as of late because I admire him. I admire his choice. He died in the hospital never making it back to his apartment, but he left this world with agency; with the ability to end things, if he chose, the way he wanted to go which was the same as those men who proceeded him. It’s the same sort of admiration I have for Lions that die fighting to defend their alpha status of their pride. A young lion dethrones, but the old lions fight to his last breath for his world, his pride.
If you’re some young kid reading this who wants to “be a man,” I would say a few things.
One, don’t listen to a word I have to say. I don’t have all of the answers and likely nothing I say is correct or meaningful.
Two, if you must listen to me, I would tell you to hang out with artists and scientists and do your homework at strip clubs. Yes, seriously, do your homework at a strip club. The fringes of this world are where the fake world die, and you get to live experiences few really do anymore. Study for your college final while naked women dance in front of you. Tip them well and get to know everyone there.
You’re not there to fuck, you’re there to study, but when you’re 70 and your dick doesn’t work, you’ll remember your Junior year of college where you studied at a strip club and felt alive. I can promise you, you will become a person, a man, who’s mastered the art of projected the art of externalizing his internal world. This person doesn’t think about his manhood. Doesn’t question it. He’s just existing in this world, living by his own ideals and doing what needs to be done, driven by the divinity that’s blessed him, surviving to the end.
A man, then, is who’s fire in his belly rages for the spice of life.
Who smiles at the face of beauty and the face of death.
Short skirts and their grave.
The sun and the moon.
Closing Remarks
The more I experience, the more I KNOW there are some fundamental truths/experiences a lot of us walk through in life.
When I read Crow’s suggestions about strip clubs, it reminded me of how I used to frequent places of ill-repute, not for the lap dances (like some troglodyte worm), but because something about the energy of the place was interesting.
Something about places like that, and in general places that aren’t frequented by the masses, the “road less traveled,” is where you stumble upon truth, and most importantly, upon yourself.
Many many thanks to Crowsef for this write up, it far exceeded any (already high) expectations I had, and I’m looking forward to future guest features.
Until next time 🫡
-BTC