Hombre fuerte, sexo fuerte… hay que equivocado estas. ¿Por qué? Or maybe I should be asking why not? Why can’t we be the macho men and still have a sensitive side?

El Macho Logo by Damian Jones

If you know me personally you know that by all accounts I’m much more teddy bear than anything else.  Gente are forever telling me how cool and collected I always am under almost any situation.  And for the most part that’s true… but every once in a while lo malvado se me sale también.  So why is this of any importance?  Why write an entire post on my mood swings and temper tantrums?  In fact this post is about anything but mis arrancos.  I will tell you though, de herencia, my nerves are pretty bad and often get the better of me.

That’s entirely beside the point here, however.

Tonight, as Edgar and I were driving home from my parents’ house – about an hour away from our own home – as is our usual custom anytime we’re in the car, we were singing our hearts out to the songs on the radio in my beat up old pick up truck.  As soon as we heard Adele’s Someone Like You, we turned up the volume and began belting out every single word of this beautiful song.  Nos hubieran visto.  We really thought we were jamming!  And as we hit one of the highest notes in the song, and coincidentally, also one of the bumpiest parts of the freeway, it struck me that here we were, riding my Dodge Ram 1500, he with his new Mexican Energy Monster tee-shirt, me with my botas vaqueras and my tool box in the back seat, maneuvering our voices to match that of a British mega-songstress on the radio.  I started to chuckle and then decided to hit the record button on my phone instead.

In front of Anjelica, and a very few select others, we sing like this all of the time, but for the most part neither one of us would dare hit such high or low notes in front of many more people.  Well, maybe Edgar would.  I don’t sing in front of other adult men, besides my younger brother and that’s only because we used to do the same thing when we were in high school.  I don’t sing like that in front of my mother or father, my mother in law or any other of my in laws, my coworkers, distant relatives, or people I don’t know.  It’s just not something I do.  It’s embarrassing y para un macho no se ve bien.  Or so I’ve always been told.  That got me thinking about all of the other things that I do because I AM A MAN!

• I wash the dishes, but I don’t like anyone to see me doing it, or for Anjelica to talk about it to anyone.
• I can turn on my tough don’t-mess-with-me-if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you look in a second.
• I can clean house, but again, I don’t want nobody talking about it.
• I can use special creams and scrubs for my face, but would never admit to it in front of the guys.
• I won’t readily admit that I don’t know, but I won’t stop Anjelica from telling me what she knows, especially when it comes to driving directions.
• I’ve shed way more tears than I’d care to own up to.
• And as you all know a lot of my evenings are spent in front of the television set watching my novelas.

There are more, but I think these are plenty to get my point across, and who knows what the repercussions are going to be of sharing these many with you all already, but even as I’m reading these in writing now, it’s not that I’m opposed to any of the machismos I grew up with.  I’m okay with them.  I think they are a part of me as much as the rest of my life experiences to date.  Over the years I’ve defined each one of them myself in my own way… fitted them to me if you will.  I’m not super machista if that’s what you’re thinking, but in a lot of ways I am very traditional.  I’m okay with that too.  Only every once in a while when I catch myself wiping away a tear or rubbing apricot based cream on my face I can’t help think: nombre Juan, you’re such a Macho Sucker!