the wussy boy manifesto! i am a wussy boy.

its taken me a long time to admit it i remember shouting in high school: no, dad, im not gay! im justsensitive. i tried to like hot rods and jet planes and football and Budweiser poster girls, but I never got the hang of it! i dont know whats wrong with me INTRO then, I saw him, there on the silver screen, bigger than life and unafraid of earrings and hair dye and rejoicing in the music of the cure and the banshees, my wussy boy icon: duckie in pretty in pink. and i realized I wasnt alone.

and now i look around and see a whole new school of wussy boys living large and proud of who they are: jake gyllenhall in donnie darko, wussy boy! tobie mcGuire as peter parker in spiderman, wussy boy! and lord god king of the wussy boy movement: elijah wood as frodo baggins in the lord of the rings, wussy boy! unafraid to prove to all of middle earth that two wussy hobbits can take the dark lord down! now i am no longer ashamed of my wussiness, hell no, Im empowered by it.

when Im at a stoplight and some redneck testosterone jock fratboy butthead dumb jerk pulls up beside me blasting his trans ams stereo i no longer avoid his eyesight, hell no, i just crank all 12 watts of my car stereo and i rock out right into his face. i am wussy boy, hear me roar! meow!

bar fight? pshaw! you think you can take me, huh? just because i like poetry better than sports illustrated? well, allow me to caution you, for im not the average every day run-of-the-mill wussy boy you beat up in high school, punk, i am wuss core! dont make me get renaissance on you because i will write a poem about you! a poem that tears your psyche limb for limb, that exposes your selfish insecurities, that will wound you deeper and more severely than knives and chains and gats and baseball bats could ever hope to do.

you may see 65 inches of wussy boy standing in front of you, but my steel-toed soul is ten foot tall and bullet proof! bring the pain, punk, beat the heck out of me! show everybody in this bar what a real man can do to a smack-talking wussy boy like me! but, youd better remember my bruises will fade my cuts will heal, my scars will shrink and disappear, but my poem about the pitiful, small, helpless oscar meyer weiner you really are will last forever!

crushworthy i want someone to have a crush on me for a change to notice when i dont come to class and wonder if im okay to get nervous when I enter the cafeteria, to fumble with her papers and books, to pick at her clothing and check her reflection in salt shakers and napkin holders

to catch her breath when she sees me from across campus, tug on her best friends collar and point with her eyes and whisper loudly, there he is to run around the block as quickly and nonchalandtly as she can just to walk past me make eye contact and smile

to look into my big brown eyes from across the room and think, yesss to look at my full kissing lips and think, oh yesss to hear my voice and imagine how her name would sound if i said it if i whispered it if i oh yesss i want someone to make up nicknames for me to talk about me in code i saw BACKPACK BOY today in the library in the romantic lit. section!

i want someone to go straight home every night and check her answering machine just in case just in case and check the phone cord and check the battery and check the tape and make sure the blinking light isnt burned out just in case i called i want someone to say youre wrong about him because you dont know him the way i know him!

because she can just tell im a good person must be a good person gotta be a good person because i write poetry about my grandma and my cats and because she likes me so much for some reason some unexplainable psychic supernatural reaction to me me

i want someone to mark her calendar he talked to me today to wonder what i would smell like after a long warm sleep under a down comforter to close her eyes and picture what our kids would look like to write silly wretched wonderful poetry about me for a change