Let’s continue this practice of questioning.
I have a lot of questions, to you: me!
Why did you need to follow the pressure from outside, when you were so little, so fluid. When you were so soft in you skin and bones. Why did you follow the pressure? The one, saying “he”. Those say “the boy”. You, Noah, you are “boy” – you are “men”. Why? Why am I man? Am I man?
To survive I became man. I was made man. I made myself man. Each time I was suspect to gaze, that gaze would cover me in fermenting slime that produced this man-ness, this masculinity. You, “he” Noah, you do this. I “me, man” as the speaker would claim, “I do this, because of man, and you, Noah, you man!”.
Men do this. Men do that. They laugh, specifically, those boys, those male friends, those tiny worms of feeling and flesh, shaped by the labyrinth of our local society. You small little men, you are like this and that, and because I am like you, or so you say, I should do like you.
Whenever I wasn’t “man” enough, I would be punished. I feel punishment. Laughter, gaze, comment and even physical pushing. “You better be man”. “Man are better”. “We need you to be like us”. Or – more likely: “You are like we”. We are the men. He. I. Doing. Taking. Making. Men.
And oh those many little stingers, as if a billion mosquitos stinging you, you would turn into a mosquito yourself. With this same absurdity you write into me and onto me, “YOU MAN!”. Oh how I duck, how I hide, how I run away. Me, Noa, not Noah. Noah, the one called “Arche”, the “he”-Noah.
You are made a shield, you are made a wall, you are my fortress. You, oh Noah, you who speak of being and un-being of man, who has so many words about man. Whenever my Noa inside hears them say, “der Student”, “Mechatroniker”, “Punker”, “er hat gemacht”, “bei ihm”, each little gendered bit of personalization, a needle under my skin. And only the representation of exactly that shape as my defense. My defense was to become what I was running from. I run from you, Noah. I hate you, Noah. My self-hate and my despise for you, for me, for Noah, is tremendous, it is exaggerating.
There is this one of my non-male friends, and another of them, and so many of them that keep me warm and sheltered in safety of a reflected non-manliness. Each of them molested. Each of them broken. Each of them hurt and left behind.
By men. By man. By me, my Noah, who you chose to become, to survive.
The sadness is too great to cry tears about it. The pain to big, to dream of relief. A scream that howls wherever you go, a scream, a scream, so loud. Constantly covering my ears. And if I let go I crunch into my own small tinyness, reduced to the shape left over, after using all of my bits that I once had, to shape you, Noah, the “man”.
Quite some suffering that we went through together. Noah and Noa.
I am sorry. And I am doing my best to forgive you. My Noah. My Noa. You have so much love for each other, that you can’t express. Because your form is hate. Your form is dominance. Your form is violence and defense. From the mosquitos, the needles, the bulldozers shaping your meek and feeble self into the masculine monolith, the phallus of creation.
Strength. Hardness. Persistence.
You made yourself, despite your own disgust for what you had to become, unknowingly hating yourself more and more. Each “he” that you accepted and acknowledged without resistance, each “him” that was asked of you that you gave in silent acceptance, through a need to survive, to be human, to be seen and to be heard.
Left alone you would have died. You were not able to think, that you could preserve your life in the shape of Noa so you killed yourself to make Noah, and vanished none the less.
This is where I start to fight back.
I have engaged myself in resistance, in non-conformity, I have trained to be a counter-cultural revolutionary, to unsubject myself, to be fluid, the non-existing. Anti-Anti-Anti, inside, outside, jumping into the washing machine with liters of bleach and diving into any kind of mud I find. Renew myself every day, recreate myself after each destruction. But not on the battlefield of the past, not on the battlefield of love.
Stellvertreterkriege, du bist so dagegen, dass du dein Selbst nicht mehr bist. What is it exactly that you want to lose, Noah? Lose yourself, finally, now that you sing those songs of it so loud that anyone would hear, don’t hesitate!
Der Noah is dead. Es lebe Noa.