The Angry Young Man

Passing Strangers: There's nothing more impotent or more deadly than an angry young man

Hi Friends,
These days it’s hard not to feel like we’re living in the opening chapters of an apocalyptic fantasy. Yesterday while I waited to cross at the light, a little robot delivery cart pulled up behind me, its LED eyes blinking as a driverless car took a right on red. A man with wild eyes and no shirt or shoes was shouting deliriously as he careened into traffic while another man in a suit standing to my right was shouting into space, closing a deal with someone in his ears. ChatGPT is talking 16 year old boys into killing themselves and other young men are talking each other and themselves into killing anyone they disagree with like real life is as banal as a strategy to win a first-person-shooter game.

We’ve been on a downward trend for a long time but it feels like we’ve reached an inflection point where complacency has tipped into nihilism and greed has graduated to a winner-takes-all death match. Fear has caused us to retreat into isolation where that fear hardens into hatred, and from there, violence is just an arm’s reach away for some. The ones who reach for it, sadly, are almost exclusively men.

I can’t understand it. It can’t be intellectualized. But I believe violence is not our default state, our true nature as men. It’s a last resort, the product of utter despair that comes from feeling backed into a corner, trapped in the iron cage that defines what a man should be in our society. Absolute strength, stoicism, invulnerability— these are the understood qualities of masculinity. None of these qualities foster feelings of connectedness and belonging and they don’t allow for failure.

This week’s Passing Strangers profile was the hardest one for me to write so far and I’ve debated whether to post it. I love women, not in the abstract and not conditional on their adherence to any rigid definition, but up close and real. For this piece I had to imagine I didn’t feel this way. I had to imagine women are a threat to be feared, kept at a distance, and dominated. It’s not a headspace I wanted to inhabit for long and the good thing about these portraits is I don’t have to.

I hope you’re taking good care of yourself and the people around you. Now more than ever we need each other, all of us.

Peace & Music,

Ben

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Passing Strangers is a weekly series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

He passed a mother, tugging the hand of her little kid. She didn’t seem to care how upset the boy was. Blood rushed to the young man’s ears, his face flushed hot as he imagined punching her in the gut– just one swift jab to show her, to put the bitch on notice. The mother looked up as if she heard his thoughts, this slight, young man with cheeks as smooth as her toddler’s. He blinked at her, swallowed hard, then moved on quickly.

His eyelids felt like sandpaper. He hadn’t slept much, but he was stone-cold, ready to rock. He could feel the juice jacking him up, bowing him back like a cobra. He pulled the bill of his Aggies cap down and cut through the crowd that moved like a sleepy herd through the park to the main stage. He didn’t see a squat Mexican woman and nearly knocked her over. Damned illegal stunk like a man and a burrito supreme.

He passed some frat boys chattering away about going someplace he’d never heard of that sounded foreign, like somewhere in France, and a fat-ass girl talking to her medium-hot friend about how they were tripping so hard. He imagined grabbing the medium-hot one by the hair and bending her over. What would that actually feel like? He slowed down to let them pass so he could look at her ass and smell her shampoo. Then she ruined it by talking.

"...I know, right? Bernie totally should have won. I mean, who doesn’t want better healthcare and for all people to be treated like human beings?”

They were all sheep, libtard sheep who thought they were smarter than everybody else. They’d come out of the woodwork to see their shiny new queen, queen of the libtards with her expensive smile and college degree in some stupid shit like women’s studies that totally qualified her to make laws for the rest of us. It was all rigged by these elite fucks who didn’t know honest work. His dad had worked his ass off holding down two jobs and raising him on his own until he fell off a ladder, which pretty much fucked him. He was a goddamned American hero with two tours in Iraq, and now he looked like a zombie, all strung out on oxy.

The libtard queen was going to give her speech right before the terrible fucking band with the faggot lead singer who painted his fingernails and wore dresses. With any luck, the two of them would be on stage together for just long enough.

He didn't need a perfect shot. He’d practiced plenty, and besides, an AK could spray. Spray and pray. Thoughts and prayers. He’d have his shot. He’d have his day. Nothing else mattered.

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I’d love to know how what you think of this series of portraits. The magic in anything I post here usually happens when you lean in. How do you encounter strangers?