For years, I wrestled—seriously, it felt like a match with a ghost—to share the story of what happened to me when I was a kid. Talking about the molestation was like playing this bizarre game of hide-and-seek with words. Instead of straight-up telling it, I dodged around it, like a ventriloquist without a dummy.
First off, I had this poem. It was supposed to be my confession but ended up being more like an artistic smokescreen. Or maybe it was just me hiding behind fancy words. Who can say? My poetry usually spills my guts, but I was nowhere near ready for that level of naked honesty, so I couched it in metaphor and all the poetic fluff I could muster.
Then, fast forward five years (exactly five—funny how time marks these moments), and I took another swing at it with a novel. This time, the characters lugged around the abuse for me. They experienced the details that were once mine. It felt like therapy but not really. Fiction has that way—like looking at someone else’s life through your own eyes, and it’s not supposed to be yours. I followed the lead of some fantastic writers I looked up to. Like, ever read Lehane’s “Mystic River”? Or, heck, “Sleepers” by Carcaterra? Those stories wrapped male abuse in fiction like a gritty gift. And it was never about the authors having lived it themselves. Real-life events can be dull when dumped verbatim into fiction. No thanks.
Watching some bold novelists step out, though, man, it’s been a trip. Take Alexander Chee—he cracked open his experience in “Edinburgh.” He didn’t quit there; essay after essay, peeling back layers. Then Junot Díaz comes out swinging with a short story in “Drown” and eventually lays it bare years later in a personal essay. That was the bombshell—seriously, shrapnel everywhere.
Reading these dudes helped revise my perspective, like finding a little more gumption to tackle the subject myself. But, whew, when I started piecing together my own memoir—about my own messed-up childhood sexual ordeals—take that teenage boy babysitter and the whole storm around my mom’s violent experience—it seriously felt like I had no blueprint to follow. Sure, countless women have shared memoirs boldly laid bare with their stories front and center. Us guys? Yeah, well… we’re more likely to stand off in the shadows, brewing in silence.
It’s wild, though. Finally finishing that memoir was like dragging a boulder across the finish line. I even reached out to Lacy Crawford, who wrote “Notes on a Silencing.” Her book surfaced in 2020—right on time. Something she said really stuck: “In my experience, receiving hundreds of disclosures and talking about sexual abuse all the time for four years, I have seen over and over how impoverished this discourse is for men and boys.” Talk about a reality check, right? Not because we’re less affected, but because, well, let’s face it—we’re just quieter about it.
Stats pop up now and then reminding me—one in six men faced it, sexual abuse. So imagine, at a soccer game sidelines, among the podcasting dudes or the authors we admire—one out of six men in those circles carry this burden. But when we tell these stories in non-fiction? They’re more like whispers amid screams.
Exceptions pop up now and then like random street musicians hitting just the right chords—Stephen Mills with “Chosen,” or Charles Blow’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” They tilt the spotlight onto their stories like it’s some defining Rorschach to be interpreted but never fully explained.
And it’s not widespread, this sort of admission. So we turn a bit blind to abuse, hesitating to side with victims. Look at the political landscape! We reelect who? Why ask?
So yeah, even though those of us abused are less likely to blurt it out—imagine if that shifted a bit? Turned up the volume on our stories? Not in some rush, mind you—healing looks different for everyone. Maybe it’s simply enough to share with close ones around—a rough exchange of stories over the kitchen table.
Truth is, most guys don’t get personal experience to shape their understanding of sexual trauma. They’re left reading our stories—to chew over the ideas sparingly doled out. Imagine closing that empathy gap with more openness, with facts like the low stats on false claims—those pale slivers of 2% to 8%. That knowledge could draw empathy along quicker than a slow dance under dim disco lights.
Maybe then, we’d be more inclined to believe women like E. Jean Carroll, accepting verdicts as truth and not rush headlong to defend perceived innocence against damning evidence. Our collective resistance to facing these truths might falter, paving a swift path to showing abusers a swift exit from stages they’ve overstayed.
Jay Baron Nicorvo, signing off—all pen-tapped reflections from the scrambles of writing “Best Copy Available,” tromping through fiction in “The Standard Grand,” and mucking about with verses in “Deadbeat.”
