More Men Who Are Afraid

A follow-up batch of men who tell us what they're afraid of.

Because I’m fascinated and struggling as a dull middle-aged man in many new and suffocating ways, I decided to do a follow-up to Tuesday’s “What It’s Like to Be a Man Who Is Afraid” issue by inviting a new round of submissions. Today is the first day of these sorts of check-ins: bylines.

I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to find enough writers ready to put their names on something like this, but almost everyone I asked did so. (There will be more coming next month, too.)

Today, we’ll hear from writers John Saward, Aymann Ismail, Luke O’Neil, John Devore, and Mangesh Hattikudur about their fears, hang-ups, and hurts that may eventually swallow them whole if they’re not careful.

Plus, there’s a hard-ass Jim Harrison poem at the end of it.

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Comments are open on this post. Please show your support for everyone who generously wrote in.

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Men Who Are Afraid Part II

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“I’m not afraid of them losing their religion…I’m afraid of them losing their lineage…”

by Aymann Ismail

My biggest unequivocal fear? I wish it were something cliché, like my daughter dating, or my son growing up to be a Lakers fan. But no. It’s that I’ll be the weakest link, the first in countless generations of Arab Muslims to raise kids cut off from where they come from.

I spent my teenage years squirming out of Quran lessons, resisting prayer like I was allergic. Now, here I am with kids of my own, terrified I don’t know enough to pass on the very culture I once tried to outrun. And worse, that my kids won’t know enough to pass it on either.

They’re still only toddlers, but the signs are already here. Their great-grandmother called from Egypt once and said the sweetest things to them in Arabic. They blinked at the phone like she was just making random sounds. Her voice cracked, something between embarrassment and heartbreak, realizing they had no idea what she was saying.

I keep imagining my little almond-milk-drinking American kids getting greeted with “Salaam” and replying “Bonjour?” Like Arabic is only something they hear when they bad guys are on screen in a Marvel movie. I imagine them, years from now, saying they’re “culturally Muslim,” which to me feels like… ew.

I’m trying now. I bought a gadget that plays the call to prayer, mosque trips on Fridays when school doesn’t get in the way. But will they ever feel what it means when someone says, “I hope you’re the one to bury me,” a phrase that sounds grim but is actually the most tender expression of love in our language?

I’m not afraid of them losing a religion. Kids are famously unsophisticated when it comes to purpose. I’m afraid of them losing their lineage. That I’ll be the Baba who failed to teach them who they really are. And they will name their kids Allen or Courtney. And after all of what my parents, and their parents, and their parents before them fought to preserve, it will all be lost to the murky soup of the American melting pot. Honestly. That’s my biggest fear.

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Aymann Ismail is a staff writer at Slate, the author of Becoming Baba, and the president of AMEJA. He was formerly the staff video and photo editor at ANIMALNewYork. He grew up in Newark, NJ, received an art degree from Rutgers University, and was arrested by the NYPD for trespassing on the Williamsburg Bridge in 2016. In 2018, he received an ASME Next award. In 2021, his essay The Store That Called the Cops on George Floyd was nominated for a National Magazine Award in Reporting and won a Writers Guild Award. His work has been featured by CNN, The New York Times, NPR, GQ, among others. He still lives in Newark.

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“I am afraid that I have lost that lust of spirit I had when I was younger…”

by John Saward

Tearing my Achilles playing pickup basketball, there’s one; being stranded and left to repair myself with the pitiful health insurance plan I’m on. I am afraid, or maybe not afraid but traumatized, by the time I mispronounced David Mamet’s name at a dinner; I put a French sort of finish on it, Ma-may, that one still rocks me, this fear about some deeper intellectual fraudulence up there big on the Jumbotron, that I am seen in every room as sweaty and desperate to impress people. Going bald, there’s another; not being bald, but reckoning with it as an in-progress thing, mounting all my pathetic little resistances against it, the strategies for regrowth and follicular health, learning to relinquish some part of me. I am afraid that I have lost that lust of spirit I had when I was younger, that all that hunger and angst that moved me at serious velocity back then – all those hacks and pretenders who just didn’t get me, man – is dimmed and de-throttled now and I want it all back.

I am afraid, I have to confess, that the NBA will one day add a 4-point line.

I am afraid of being broke – not the way people say it the morning after they order $46 of drunk takeout but broke with no way out, having-to-sell-stuff broke, afraid of there being some new cataclysmic development in online media, and this river will keep hurling me into the rocks until I have to make some hard decisions. Do you know if you visit your state’s unclaimed property website there could be money waiting for you? Not a lot but a few bucks, no catch; stuff like this just accumulates, over-charges from your college or some class action settlement by the company you once got your internet from. There’s $25 in the state of Connecticut waiting for me, and you file that stuff away in the back of your mind just in case, this is part of your went-broke strategy, but of course the constant preparation for Being Broke is another one of its violences.

I am afraid of coming upon the imessage thread with my mom when she’s not around anymore, searching for a keyword or something like that, looking for an unrelated conversation and seeing her there waiting for me, we change the clocks this weekend! with this immortal current in it, this jackpot of all her love, still living back there in this little room in my phone, in her nasty old slippers, watching Blue Bloods next to some Starburst wrappers, nothing on her mind but summertime and little more daylight.

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John Saward is a writer living in Chicago. He is on bluesky @rbuas.bsky.social

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“I just watched Adolescence and I would be scared I would raise a son like that…”

By Luke O’Neil

We never had children. That's largely due to me not caring one way or the other for many years until eventually saying fuck it why not? Then finding out it was a bit too late for non-rich people like us. Slow motion video of the championship losing shot. I'm scared I squandered an important part of existence for her is the point.

Then again I just watched “Adolescence” and I would be scared I would raise a son like that had I had a son so those two things even each other out. I'm back to square one baby!

I was sincerely always scared of bringing some fucking asshole into the world though. Some random pud. A guy. Which is part of why I never pushed for having a kid. I worried that I would be my exact father to my hypothetical son and I sort of am but the kid we both raised is me. Father and son at once. Now I just gotta figure out what the Holy Ghost in the metaphor is.

Anyway the point is I'm scared I'll regret this forever! Mostly for her but also a little for me.

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Luke O'Neil is the author of newsletter Welcome to Hell World and a co-owner of Flaming Hydra. His most recent collection of fiction A Creature Wanting Form and his forthcoming book We Had It Coming can be ordered here.

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“I used to be proud of my anger…”

by John Devore

I fear my anger because it is a small voice that whispers, "You can break the world into pieces." But the only things I can smash—I have smashed—are the hearts of those I love.

That voice used to bubble up from the bottom of whatever I was drinking. It's the same one. "Obliterate yourself," it says. No one will miss you.

I fear my anger because it can be fun. The intensity, the endorphins, the illusion that your ferocity can scare the world into submission. This can be exciting, but fantasy is exciting. Self-delusion is a drug; if only it came in a powder.

When I was drinking, I used to pretend I was in control of my life when I wasn't. That's a fantasy.

There are people whose anger is righteous, who can channel that volatile emotion into constructive words and actions. Then there are those of us whose anger is easily triggered because anger is a cheap toot of adrenaline.

My sobriety depends on many practices and attitudes and beliefs. One of the cornerstones of my program requires that I constantly be brutally honest with myself about what I deserve in this life, which is nothing, and what I owe, which is everything.

I owe a joyful debt to my friends and family, to strangers who have listened to me sob over the years, to the dude last week who was three days off the bottle and shaky as hell. I am responsible for my actions because the world does not frustrate me. Life is what life is, and I am thankful for so much of the remaining life I have been given.

I used to be proud of my anger. It made me feel special, a sign of strength, like my ability to drink all night. That's all fantasy, too. My tantrums were just that: a grown man unraveling, enraged, a giant, bearded toddler with soft, meaty fists.

My anger, like my drinking, was just another way of avoiding living an authentic life—a messy, unpredictable, beautiful life. There were times I preferred to be drunk and angry to alive and open-hearted, and I can't believe I ever made such choices. That's terrifying to remember.

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John DeVore is a writer and editor based in New York City. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and other publications. He has won two James Beard Awards for an essay about Taco Bell, and his debut memoir, Theatre Kids, was published last summer.

Listen to John on The Small Bow Podcast!

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“For someone who only ever wanted to see the world, somehow the passage there is now filled with fear…”

by Mangesh Hattikudur

I have no shortage of fears; especially now– about the state and the way it wants to control my non-binary child; about age and when my luck for making things will run dry. But there’s only one I take a pill for.

In 1999, I studied abroad in Nepal and Tibet. At the end of my semester, I finished finals early and took a flight from Kathmandu to Delhi, then traveled south to see my family. My friends, who couldn’t come with me, were planning to take the same flight a few days later. The experience at the airport was ludicrous. At security, there were two officious young men angrily rearranging luggage, making sure that you put your bag on the x-ray machine correctly with enough space from the luggage before it. And there was one man on the other side, diligently stickering every bag, to show it had gone through security. But no one was actually screening the contents! To me, it was sweetly funny and bureaucratic and perfectly Nepal.

As our flight was delayed for 6 hours in this insanely overcrowded airport, one group of passengers found out that another group had been taken off campus to a luxury suite for free food and beverages. A hapless riot ensued. The scrum moved from one end of the airport to the other, complaining in 4 distinct languages—Hindi, Nepali,English and bad English. I got swept up in the mix, shoved and pushed from one section to another, and I grinned like an idiot as it happened; taking notes about the horrible passengers and their bizarre rants and the bewildered airport managers who had thought they were easing the situation. And then, eventually, the flight took off. It was barely a story, but something funny to journal.

Then two days later, the flight I knew my friends were on; the same one I’d taken, got hijacked. It didn’t make noise in America, but terrorists redirected the flight to the Kabul airport, and it sat on the tarmac; passengers sick and stuck inside. People didn’t have their medication; people threw up; people pissed and shat in their seats, told they couldn't move. I was glued to the tv; my stomach in knots, just praying for my friends. It turned out they’d partied the night before and pushed their flights. But I couldn’t get in touch, and my anxiety was out of control. I refused the delicious food my grandmother had made for me, unable to eat, until finally the plane was raided. A few year later, after 9/11, but before TSA had proper procedures, I was stopped by men with guns at every airport in the name of security.

On one trip to Birmingham, I was stopped 7 times; often for 10 or 20 minute stretches, as someone took my shoes and ran off with them, leaving me barefoot and guarded by someone carrying a machine gun. None of it was organized; this performance of security. Officials kept asking me where I was from, as if my Delaware drivers license didn’t say enough. I kept saying, exasperated “I’m American. I've never even gotten a speeding ticket. I was born in Jersey.” But somehow that swirl– the chaos of airports, the claustrophobia, the performance of security; the "will my plane get where it’s supposed to" and "will I be blamed?"– each of those little elements are triggers, and for someone who only ever wanted to see the world, somehow the passage there is now filled with fear.

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In a previous life, Mangesh co-founded a little magazine called Mental Floss. Today he co-hosts a delightful romp for knowledge junkies called Part-time Genius and runs editorial for Kaleidoscope— a podcast company focused on documenting and explaining the new scientific renaissance.

Comments are open on this post. Please show your support for everyone who generously wrote in. Thanks.

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MORE IN THIS SERIES:

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A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:

Vows

by Jim Harrison

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I feel my failure intensely

as if it were a vital organ

the gods grew from the side of my head.

You can't cover it with a hat and I no longer

can sleep on that side it's so tender.

I wasn't quite faithful enough

to carry this sort of weight up the mountain.

When I took my vows at nineteen

I had no idea that gods were so merciless.

Fear makes for good servants

and bravery is fraudulent. When I awoke

I wasn't awake enough.

— From “Dead Man’s Float” via Poetry Foundation

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