If I were built, I’d own guns. I’d be a hunter. I’d own a partially wooded acreage in the country. The woods would be full of animals and I’d shoot them, I’d shoot those animals with my guns for pleasure. Deer, raccoon, owl—you name it. I’d shoot anything that moved on my partially wooded acreage.
If I were built, my partially wooded acreage would be a place of great tranquility. The woods would be a mixture of deciduous and coniferous–walnut, locust, oak, ash, maple, beech, spruce and white pine, primarily. Sunlight would dance on the forest floor. The call of thrush would echo through the trees. Bees would buzz. Brooks would gurgle. There would be bowers and dales and glens. Small mammals would scamper and frolic and I’d shoot them. I’d shoot them with my guns.
If I were built I’d invite my buddies over to my partially wooded acreage to kill defenseless animals with semi-automatic firearms. As we shot otters and woodchuck and left them to bleed into the damp earth I owned, we’d talk about women’s bodies and extreme fighting and the role of the federal government. My friends and I would all agree, if I were built, that the role of the federal government should be dramatically reduced. “They’re taking away our freedom,” one of us would say. “Man is free at the moment he wishes to be,” I’d say. “Voltaire,” I’d add as I aimed at a distant porcupine, but just as I pulled the trigger one of my friends would walk in front of me, and my bullet would enter the back of his neck and exit through his face, and my other friends and I would dump him in a nearby pond and promise never to tell anyone what happened. I’d have to live the rest of my life knowing I’d killed a man, if I were built.
Sometimes after that day, to let out pent-up guilt, I’d shoot inanimate objects with my guns—tree stumps or garbage cans or beer bottles or pound cakes. “Have fun,” my wife would say as I left the house, but I’d know she wouldn’t mean it, I’d know that what she was really saying was, “I don’t believe in the Second Amendment.”
My wife and I would have very different political views, if I were built. I’d believe in the dignity of human striving, while she’d believe in bureaucrats taking my money and giving it to lazy people, but that wouldn’t affect the health of our marriage, our marriage would be grounded in a mutual respect that included respect for each other’s politics, and also on animal lust. My wife wouldn’t be able to keep her hands off me, if I were built. She’d cut her fingernails sharp, like claws, and she’d run them down my chest and abdomen, taking bits of skin along with them, leaving trails of blood. And she wouldn’t stop at my abdomen, either, she’d run her fingernails over my thighs and genitalia, all the way down to my ankles. My body would be just dripping with blood. I’d let out of a scream of pain and desire. My wife would sink her teeth into my calf and I’d lose consciousness.
When I woke up I’d be somewhere deep in my woods. I’d be naked and scarred and everything would hurt. I’d badly want a drink, but there would be no water nearby. I’d crawl along the forest floor in the direction I hoped my house would be. Gunshots would ring out and I’d duck behind a tree. More gunshots, then silence for a minute or two. I’d say a prayer to myself, though I wouldn’t believe in God. But the moment I moved out from behind the tree I’d hear more gunshots, and much closer this time. “Don’t shoot,” I’d say, as loud as my parched throat would allow. “Please. Please, don’t kill me.” My wife would continue shooting, but I’d know that she wasn’t aiming at me, that this was all part of a game we liked to play, to turn each other on. “Give me one good reason why you deserve to live,” she’d say.
That night, after sex, my wife and I would sit on our patio drinking margaritas. We’d talk about nothing in particular—our grown children, our plans for the week, Renaissance faculty psychology. We’d watch the sun set over our woods. “Honey,” I’d say, still looking at the sky. “What is it, babe?” she’d say, turning toward me. “I’m just so grateful for everything I have,” I’d say, and I would be, if I were built.
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Tags: andrew palmer, brian platzer, guns, nicole wanted this to be on sports day but can’t really articulate why, sports day
This makes me laugh so, so much. Do you know that there are websites out there where built men complain about not being able to find jeans that fit them, or that their families give them crap about being too muscular?
If only built and slender men could come together in the world…
The Toast is the women’s interest website that perfectly articulates the thoughts of manly men and Dads.
This is so, so great. Y’all are almost male Melises (that is a compliment of the highest order).
Ah ha! I know these guys! Not well, but I know you, Brian and Andrew! You were in the Hopkins fiction writing program, I in the science writing program, and our ships crossed, if not in the night, then at dusk. But I always liked you guys and loved your writing, and it’s only improved since then! Awesome to see you guys pop up here.
LOVE IT, especially Voltaire: Official Literature of Built Guys
“As we shot otters and woodchuck and left them to bleed into the damp earth I owned, we’d talk about women’s bodies and extreme fighting and the role of the federal government.”
I love this. If any of you have spent ANY time on Reddit’s sub-reddit–forum–thing?–I actually don’t really know how Reddit works but I knew this guy who spent all his time on a Reddit forum for “swole” guys and SWOLE is just like..the best…thing…
I am strangely familiar with r/swoleacceptance, if that’s what you’re thinking about. See my above comment about men complaining about how they can never get jeans that fit their thighs and their waist.
That’s the one! I remember recommending a Jim Gaffigan thing to this guy. He just looked at me coldly, and said “Jim Gaffigan is guilty of swole hate.”
OMG. Did you just giggle at him? I just giggled reading that.
r/swoleacceptance was meant to be a joke, until it wasn’t..
I read an interesting post about Hot Jerks in the past, but I can’t find it to link to so I’ll summarize it as I remember. You’ve heard the many complaints and internet arguments about Nice Guys in fiction, but the flipside is that the (super hot) Female Love Interest always falls first for the Hot Jerk before getting her heart broken. Maybe he’s a liar or a cheater or a rapist, but a man who is sexually attractive is always a total jerk–almost always malicious, usually very stupid, often a woman-hating boor. The super hot love interest always gets burned for trying to pursue someone based on shallow attraction before seeing the light and going for the Nice Guy. It seems as if women must be taught over and over again that beauty is no virtue and the inside is what counts. Ironically, the audience is supposed to cheer for a mousy, shy little underdog of a hero who’s so stunned by the super hot love interest’s looks that he blushes and trips over his tongue whenever he’s in front of her. If the medium is visual, we’re usually treated to a slow-mo up-and-down lingering camera shot of her bending over and glistening in the sunlight or something. Also ironic is that a woman who wrote every attractive female character as cruel, evil, or stupid would be dismissed as catty and jealous. The writer who was talking about this was saying that it’s a really disheartening and even sexist cliche because it kind of demonizes and suppresses female sexuality when every single hot guy is an airhead or a jerk or, maybe, a politically conservative, accidentally murderous tragic victim of masculinity. It’s funny because the guys who make fun of Hot Jerks usually write these sexy strawmen as Gaston-esque chauvinists, but unironically embrace the idea that A REAL MAN wouldn’t care about maintaining an appearance to please women (see also: the way men reacted to “metrosexuals”). I’m inclined to agree, because I’m really into fitness and know plenty of super fit guys who are just wonderful, liberal, feminist people, and they (and their hetero female admirers) both suffer when catty men act like men can’t care about their appearance and be decent people at the same time.
This is, of course, entirely off topic. Why, I can’t even remember why I wrote this post in this thread. Ho hum.
No, that last line was too passive aggressive. I’ll just openly say right now that I find this post to be a mildly insulting little piece of short fiction that reinforces negative stereotypes all around (including “it’s okay if women are nothing but decoration whereas men should have more substance than that,” whether you were intending that message or not), and I really doubt The Toast would have published this if it were about how conservative and ignorant and tragically stupid women become the instant they lose weight or dye their hair blonde.
“Built” men are just as ponderous and intelligent and multidimensional as you guys no doubt imagine yourselves to be. If you were “built,” you wouldn’t turn into a drooling troglodytic libertarian gun nut. You’d be the exact same person you are now.
The only difference between you and “built” men is that they’re fitter and, subjectively, from the perspective of a select group of men and women, hotter. Don’t be catty.
well now we disagree, because I think “”Built” men are just as ponderous and intelligent and multidimensional as you guys no doubt imagine yourselves to be. If you were “built,” you wouldn’t turn into a drooling troglodytic libertarian gun nut. You’d be the exact same person you are now.”
is the whole point, and why this article is so funny. Because of course they wouldn’t turn into murderers if they were built. But I think we all tell ourselves tiny versions of this shit (If I was more/less X, then Y”), so magnifying and exaggerating it to this point is absurdly hilarious.
Well, this is the point where interpretations will diverge and some people would claim “Poe’s law!!!” because depending on how much credit you want to give the authors, you can read it either as a parody of catty nice guys or that same cliche but played straight (which is obviously my takeaway). I’ve seen people who will argue to the death that stuff as diverse as Family Guy, Boondock Saints, V for Vendetta, Fight Club, Lolita, The Matrix, Tucker Max, and Stephen Colbert were entirely sincere and others who will argue to the death that they’re parodies or condemnations of the topics they cover so I understand that satire isn’t always as blatant as A Modest Proposal and obviously, the post is more complicated than a straight up essay but I do stand by my interpretation because it seems to me that the thrust was more a criticism of toxic masculinity than a criticism of those criticisms (esp. the more childish forms they take) and the sweeping generalizations they often make.
#neverapologize I loved this comment, so there!
“As we shot otters and woodchuck and left them to bleed into the damp earth I owned, we’d talk about women’s bodies and extreme fighting and the role of the federal government.”
I really liked this sentence.