Category: Craft & Confession · Tags: Vulnerability, Masculinity, Visibility, Writing Life
I realized recently that part of what fuels my writing is judgment.
That sounds like a confession. It is not. It is an acknowledgment.
There is a specific charge that comes from knowing someone might read what I wrote and feel something they were not prepared to feel. Not shock. Not outrage. Recognition. Discomfort. A shift.
Friction sharpens the blade.
I am forty-two years old. I manage responsibilities. I understand consequences. I know exactly how reputation works. I also know that once something is attached to your name, you do not get to control how it is simplified.
That awareness has not stopped me. It has clarified me.
I grew up absorbing quiet rules about what men are supposed to be. Strong, but not tender. Sexual, but not articulate. Confident, but not vulnerable. Desire was allowed in implication. It was not meant to be examined closely, especially not between two men, and certainly not narrated with precision.
When I write explicitly about what happens between grown men in a bedroom, it still carries a charge. Not shame. Not exactly. Something older than that. A residue of lines that were drawn long before I knew I had the right to step across them.
There is still a practical voice in me that asks what this might cost. That voice is not weak. It is strategic. It understands that people categorize what they do not fully engage with. Some will see the explicit surface and stop there. Some will decide they know me because they saw what I chose not to hide.
I understand that risk.
If I am honest, the possibility of judgment keeps the work alive. If no one could react, misread, or quietly disapprove, some of the voltage would disappear. Impact requires tension. Visibility requires vulnerability. I do not write to provoke. I write without sanding down the edges to guarantee comfort.
To the younger version of myself, the one who did not have language for his own desire, I would say this: you were never wrong for wanting clarity. You were never excessive for wanting to see your interior life reflected without distortion. You were not too much. You were simply waiting for permission that was never going to arrive.
At forty-two, I stopped waiting.
I still feel the trepidation sometimes. I am not fearless. I overthink. I edit sentences into submission. I occasionally imagine a distant relative discovering my blog and needing a long walk afterward. I am human.
But I am done negotiating my interior life for hypothetical approval.
Strength and tenderness are not opposites. Masculinity and emotional literacy are not opposites. Writing clearly about sex between men does not diminish me. If anything, it reveals how much control I actually have.
If someone reads my work and decides it changes how they see me, that is their right. What I will not do anymore is change how I see myself to prevent it.
There is a calm that comes with that decision. It is not loud. It is not rebellious in the way youth performs rebellion. It is steadier than that.
I write what feels true. I accept that truth narrows some doors and opens others. I accept that clarity can unsettle people who prefer implication.
And I am willing to be seen anyway.
—
Calder N. Halden
Writing with clarity, even when clarity unsettles.
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