The Stand

The sign was pretty freaking clear.

Henry, Jake, and I had found an abandoned hunter’s perch in the depths of woods behind our neighborhood. We hung the sign outside the wooden tower, thus claiming it as our own.

It would be our hideout, our sanctuary, our Fortress of Solitude as we navigated middle school with its slow growth of personal freedoms and bodily changes that our parents never addressed.

We had considered calling it "The Castle for Men,” or “The Mastle” for short, but it didn’t stick. “The Man Hut” and “The Man Stand” sounded weird, but we couldn’t tell why. In the end, we decided to simply call it The Stand.

To mark our kingdom, Henry, who had the best handwriting and spelling, wrote the message on the back of an old triangle-shaped road-sign. He used red paint and large letters. When he was done, we slid it between the floor and the railing, which held it in place for all to see. It was simple, yet to the point:

No Girls Aloud

#

But then one day Jake brought a homemade chocolate chip cookie into The Stand.

When one of us came in with a delicious treat, each corner of the triangle had their own portion of the snack, in this case, a single homemade-chocolate-chip-cookie disc. It was a sacrament to our sacred friendship, the body of the cookie broken for us all. Kind of like at church, but less singing and less fuss over the meal preparation.

“Got any more?” Henry asked. I nodded in hopeful anticipation.

I was famished, and my portion only left me with a deeper hunger.

“Yeah, uh, about that…” Jake said.

“If you guys are still hungry, I’ve got more down here.” The voice came from Jake’s twin sister, Janet.

We glared at Jake, who scratched the back of his head like the flea infested weasel he was. My mouth smacked of betrayal. Henry and I looked out the window at the black-haired mimic of our brown-haired friend.

“Go away, Janet,” I called out. “Or can’t you read the sign?”

“I’ve got cookies,” she said plainly. “Would you really follow some dumb rule instead of having more delicious treats?”

“No—” Henry began.

“Yes!” I said, backhand smacking Henry’s shoulder. “Absolutely.”

“Janet, can’t you just leave the cookies?” Jake said from inside The Stand. “I told you this was a bad idea.”

His attempts, while nobly trying rebuild our shattered trust, were fruitless. Janet stared up at us. I could sense her eyes searching me for something, probably admittance into our hallowed abode.

Getting nothing, she turned and stormed off, plate of cookies in hand.

“Guys, maybe we can bend the rules for my sister,” Jake said quietly. “She did make us cookies.”

“No! That defeats the whole purpose of the Man Stand.”

“I thought it was just The Stand—” Henry said.

“We agreed that no girls, even sisters, can come into our tower.” I hit the railing to emphasize my point.

“It’s not a big deal. I think she just wants to hang—”

“Not a big deal? Not a big—" I climbed down the ladder and scooped a handful of dirt without really thinking through how I would climb back up with only one hand. But I had a point to make, and after a little bit of a struggle, I ascended the ladder.

I had seen movies where people cut their palms to make a pact. Henry wouldn’t be able to do that, so I thought dirt could be a substitute.

“We made a promise. Now, open your hands,” I commanded. My two friends dutifully complied, though Jake still protested.

“Dude, it was just a cookie."

“It was a Trojan hearse,” I said, vaguely remembering a story from social studies. “Sent by Janet.”

“My sister’s not a car.”

“I think he means, horse.”

“But he said—”

“A girl, Jake, trying to get into our tower!” I shouted.

Henry nodded. Jake sighed. I assumed he saw his error. We couldn’t let anything come between our friendship. No secrets. No rule-bending. And certainly, no girls. I shook a little bit of dirt in my friends’ open hands.

“Repeat after me: girls are dirty.”

“Girls are dirty,” my friends said in unison.

“We wash our hands of them.”

“We wash our hands of them.”

I rubbed the dirt between my hands, letting the coarse granules dig into my skin. My friends followed suit.

“And now we clean our mouths of the cookie we just ate.”

“And now we—”

I full-tongue-licked my palm. My friends groaned and did not follow suit this time.

“Guys, we have to do this,” I said. “And then we shake hands to seal the promise.”

Instead, Henry held a hand to his ear as if intently listening for a distant cry.

“Gotta go, guys. Dinner.”

Jake and I peered off into the woods, thinking we’d see one of Henry’s parents. All we saw was the verdant canopy of green leaves and the rough brown columns of bark.

“Henry, I didn’t hear—”

But he had already descended the ladder and was scampering down the trail. Jake glanced at me, perplexed.

“Isn’t it, like, 3 o’clock?”

#

For the next week or so, the concern that girls, namely Janet, would continue to try and breach our hideout floated away. All felt right. We were purely boys being boys. We roamed, we climbed, we played, we returned to The Stand, where we talked and we didn’t.

But something loomed ahead of us, and when Jake came to The Stand with his dad’s magazine, our lives changed forever.

That month’s edition of Modern Gentleman’s Monthly had our city’s star quarterback on the cover. We thumbed through the interview, gleaning little besides restaurant recommendations in Bakersfield, California and Madison, Wisconsin.

But page 54 provided the content we needed as middle-school boys. It was almost providential in its appearance.

20 Skills Every Man Must Master.

We pored over every bullet point to assess our proximity and our necessary trajectory to manhood.

Of course, there were things we promised to learn when the time came, like parallel parking, shaving, and shooting whiskey, which, of course, we would need a gun to do. The ‘handling a snake bite’ benchmark was agreed to be a task for next year. And doing taxes and tying a tie was something our dads could do for the rest of our lives.

But there was one we could master, even the next day.

“Taking off a woman’s bra.”

I looked at Jake, who nodded at me, then over to Henry, who was peeling at a loose splinter in the railing. For the next ten minutes, we hatched a plan. Jake would make up for cookie-gate by procuring a bra, and then we would take turns practicing until the skill was perfected.

“Tomorrow?” I asked sternly.

“Tomorrow,” Jake replied firmly.

Henry said nothing.

#

Henry and I waited the next afternoon until we heard the thunk of shoes on wooden rung leading to the emergent solemn-faced Jake.

“You got it?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Your mom’s?”

“No,” Jake said. His eyes dropped with the weight of some uncomfortable thought. “Seems weird.”

I understood and I didn’t.

“So…Janet’s?”

Jake nodded and reached into his bag. For some reason, my heart began to beat in wild expectation. I had never held one, let alone really examined one besides a passing glance at the store. And the chance to practice this test of manhood felt so important to me at that moment.

Jake withdrew his hand from the bag and dangled a white cotton bra, more reminiscent of a bathing suit top than a rite of passage.

“Dude, are you sure—”

As I spoke, Henry bolted down the ladder and across the forest floor repeatedly mumbling “nope, nope, nope”.

Jake and I watched him disappear through the trees, presumably back to his house.

“That was weird,” I said. Jake agreed.

We stood for a moment in silence, mourning our friend Henry, who had failed this test of masculinity. After we gave enough time to pay our proper respects, I snapped back to the task at hand.

“So what is that?” I asked.

“It’s a training bra.”

“What could Janet possibly be training for?” I said as I analyzed the unremarkable piece of women’s clothing.

“I don’t know. The Olympics?”

“There’s no baking at the Olympics.”

Jake shrugged. “Maybe it’s training for us.”

“Doesn’t seem that difficult to remove, though.”

It looked easy to slip on, easy to slip off. Not the great challenge as posed by Modern Gentleman’s Monthly. But Jake came prepared.

“I didn’t know if it was the right one. So, I grabbed another from her drawer.”

Jake pulled out a tan top, more strappy, more glossy, and vaguely more mature, though I couldn’t explain why. When he rotated the bra, I could see there was some sort of clasp and instantly realized this was what we were looking for.

“So I think you just…” Jake fiddled with the back, but I stopped him.

“It has to be worn. That’s the whole thing, right? To take it off a woman.”

“You’re not a woman.”

“There’s no difference,” I said. “A body is a body.”

“Yeah, I guess. But why do guys need to be the ones to take it off?”

We looked at each other, seeking some answer that neither of us really had.

“I don’t know. But the magazine said it,” I responded at last. “You can try first.”

“But I can’t even open it right now. How can I put it on?”

“Just slide it over my arms.”

Jake held up the bra. It seemed between the three spaces up top, one would be for my head and the other two for my arms. I bent over and held my hands out like I was diving into the pool while Jake yanked the bra over my shoulders and down my chest.

“Dude, this is tight. I feel like it’s suffocating me.”

Jake stopped tugging and stepped back.

“Well, it’s definitely on.”

I glanced down to examine the task at hand.

“Why would Janet even wear this?”

“Well, uh, I think there’s a reason…” Jake got quiet and red-faced. He refused to look at me or my chest. “Let’s just get this over with.”

I agreed, and he moved behind me.

“Ow, dude…OW!”

“Stop moving!”

I tried to stand still. But it was difficult with Jake snapping the straps and pulling the fabric so hard that whatever was built into the front of the bra was digging into my skin.

“I can’t. You’re going to tear off my ribs.”

Jake relented and stepped back.

“I don’t know. It must be broken.”

I tried to pry my finger under the material to push it up, but Jake, in all the twisting and tugging, had somehow tightened it.

“Haven’t you seen your sister do this?”

But Jake didn’t respond. In fact, his face turned bright red again. This time, it looked worse than the day we forgot sunscreen at the pool.

“No, I—why would I—that’s…”

Jake was practically dancing with all the fidgeting he was doing.

“Do you need to pee?”

“Yes—no…maybe.”

“Well, take this off before you go.”

Jake tried again. His hands were trying to grip at the clasp. But all he did was jab me in the spine with his fingers.

“Ah, ah! Stop! Stop!”

“I can’t do it." Jake was practically in tears. He stepped back towards the ladder, and his voice cracked as he spoke. "I’m sorry, man. I gotta go.”

He began to descend, then paused. He gave me one more look, as if he were going to try again. But he quickly shook his head, climbed off the ladder and sprinted away into the woods, away from our sacred spot in the world, leaving me abandoned alone in my tower of masculinity, trapped in a piece of woman’s clothing.

I frantically tugged and pushed, but nothing budged. All that happened was my skin chafed and my rib bones ached. It was almost as if the bra was clamped to my chest. Again, I wondered, why would anyone in their right mind wear such a thing?

I considered my next moves. One option was to run home, hoping none of the neighborhood kids would see me. Then, I would have to confront my parents and the host of questions they would ask, or worse, the ones they wouldn’t.

I could spend the night in The Stand. But that wouldn’t solve anything beyond delaying the inevitable.

My blood bubbled. I could feel my brain sweating. Though I didn’t have the language for it, I cursed my situation, I cursed my friends, and I especially cursed Modern Gentleman’s Monthly.

I considered running away. I could hide in a train car and start over, somewhere far away from my so-called friends, from this moment, from the place where I had tried to fight against—

“You don’t look so good.”

And there it was. My fear came to visit me in the form of my former-best-friend’s twin sister, who was at the top rung of the ladder peering at me with a mixture of concern and amusement.

“Janet, you can’t be up here. The sign…” I said, but my voice was weak, unsure, defeated.

“So you don’t need my help then?” Janet responded. But her voice wasn’t dripping with sharp satisfaction. In fact, it almost seemed softly compassionate. Maybe she wouldn’t take advantage of my situation. But what choice did I really have anyway?

“Okay. Fine. Come in. But you can’t tell anyone.”

“I don’t think you are in a position to negotiate.”

Janet had already hoisted herself up before I could find my response. She strode to my spot in the tower.

“You’re stuck?”

I nodded.

“And you need my help?”

I nodded again.

“And you…want my help?”

“Janet, just—” I didn’t know what she wanted besides to torment me.

“Yes or no.”

“Yes!”

She smiled and walked behind me. She reached out and touched the spot at the center of my back. I felt a slight tug of pressure, but the tension was not fully released.

“Why’d you stop?”

“I want something from you first.”

“What? What could you possibly want?” I knew I sounded whiny and utterly unmasculine, but I was tired, and my ribs and back hurt, and I just wanted to take off that stupid bra.

“It’s easy. I promise.”

“What is it?”

She was quiet. It seemed she was deliberating what to say. With all the strength of a light breeze, she laid out her condition.

“A kiss.”

“No. Not that. Anything but that.” I didn’t really know why I was against it, but it sounded bad. It sounded un-Modern Gentleman. I would have preferred the snake bite.

“Okay. Good luck, then. I’ll send your mom—” she took two steps away, but I hastily reached out and grabbed her.

“Wait. Wait!” As unmanly as kissing a girl seemed, being caught in Janet’s bra was worse. “Fine.”

Janet grinned. A kind of fire, not the violent kind, was kindled within me, both from touching her arm and seeing her smile. It was kind of nice, actually.

When she moved in front of me, I noticed her green eyes glistened in the sun, and her black hair hung like silky curtains around the smooth pale skin of her face.

“Close your eyes.”

“What, why?”

“Because it’s weird with your eyes open.”

I sighed, but still, I clenched my eyes shut.

“Have you done this before?” she asked, her voice sweet like chocolate syrup.

“No. Have you—”

Her lips smooshed, not all too unpleasantly, into mine. I smelled cherry in the waxy coat on her lips. My mouth and face sizzled. The rest of my body was like a summer storm swirling and kicking up things I didn’t know could be kicked up.

Even with all those surging feelings, my heart felt free. Like a birthday balloon floating happily between the ground and the ceiling. Her lips were so soft, like cotton candy, like a warm blanket, like a sunny day. I wanted to bask in all those sensations for the rest of—

“Are you going to stand like that all day?”

Janet was nowhere near me anymore. Her lips curled in a smile while she dangled her bra from her index finger. I was too dumbstruck to speak.

“I’m...going to go.” She started climbing down as she spoke. Her head disappeared for a moment before popping back up once more.

“We aren’t going to tell Jake, right?”

I nodded. He was all but dead to me before, but in that moment, well, I found I could forgive him.

“Okay. But also…” Janet’s cheeks turned a lovely shade of pink. “Can I hang out with you?”

Without comment, I walked over to the sign and pulled it from its place on the wall. I turned it so the bright red triangle was outward facing, hiding the ridiculous message Henry had crafted.

I realized we had made hasty decision to ban girls. Clearly, we did not have all the necessary information to make a good, informed decision.

I blamed Jake.