THE MENS

I have been looking for the men everywhere.

I look under rocks and behind trees. I look in bars and under pool tables. I look in old pictures of
old lovers. I look under my bed and then under my bedsheets.

I need to find the men to fix them. But they are missing, the men.

And then, when I have given up looking, the men are everywhere.

The men are under my sheets – more of them than I thought could ever fit. They have smoothed themselves flat like paper dolls. The men are under my bed too, chiding me for the layers of
dust. The men are staring out from old pictures. They are hiding in the eyes of old lovers. The
men are leaning against the bars holding glasses and glasses of brown liquor. The men are drunk
under the pool tables. The men are under rocks too, squirming and burrowing in the dark. The
men are standing tall as shadows behind every tree.

I approach carefully because all the men are in delicate states. I move slowly toward every man,
my arms open like a hand.

I am not broken, one of the men I’ve found says.

Well, then, could you pretend? I say.

Mostly, the men teach me how to play pool, even though I am winning.

Some days, when the men are lost again, I go hunting for them, but by accident. What happens
is they are hunting me, but at some point the gun ends up in my hand, and they turn feral and
scatter, and the whole search starts over again, from scratch, just like the new pool game after
the one the men are always losing.

This is how you shoot, they say, right after they lose, and I do not know if they are talking about
pool sticks or guns, but I don’t think they know much about either.

You don’t know what we know, one of the men says. You barely know what you know, he
continues. And he is right. And, of course there is no gun even though there are triggers
everywhere.

You are objectifying the men, my mother says when I call them feral, but that’s not true. I am
animalfying them. When a student calls this “personification” in an essay, I give him the word
“zoomorphism”. But that’s not right either. These men are not in a zoo. There is nothing
contained about them. I cannot even keep one still enough to love him.

When I am in the bathtub shaving between my legs, I think of the men.

I think of their beards.

I think of how they have taught me, the men and their beards, to shave not against the hair but
with it. I think of how this is the only thing they have taught me, to go along with rather with
than against.

Call me Daddy, one of the men I have found says. But I cannot do it.

What, says this found man, it’s not like I said “call me your dead dad”. He is midstroke, my hips
in his hands, so he points his chin towards the jewelry box on my dresser which holds my
father’s ashes.

I try it out but my voice cracks and crumbles. When I say the word, all the vowels fall out like
old teeth. Pieces of my voice and the vowels fall onto the found man’s face. He wipes them
away in surprise.

It is like how we don’t say the name of God. We take out the vowels. I say. But this man is not
listening. He is still stroking, midstroking, mildstroking. Straining and scratching and losing at
pool. When it’s over, I bite my cuticles to keep from saying all the vowels in father and god.

This is not working. I am trying to find and fix the men because I am trying to find and fix my
father within the men.

That’s not how it works, says one of the men. He is shooting pool and losing. I sink a ball by
accident and remind him he has recently confused menstruation with ovulation. I’m not sure you
know how anything works, I say. You are too lost and too young and too men. But it’s not your
fault, I say.

It appears that none of these men will help me redeem my father. That’s because he is dead, says
one of the men as he looks over my shoulder while I type. I stare at him until he turns to smoke.
I twist the smoke around my finger and think. If I cannot save my father what will become of
me?

My two-year-old niece has taken to carrying tiny men in speedos around with her everywhere.
They are drink markers with names like Chad and Brad and Dan and Mike on the speedo backs.
They are meant to hang on the lip of a wine glass so glasses of wine do not get confused. But
these men will never be drink markers because they now belong to my niece.

I love the mens, she says, holding them in her tiny fists. My baby mens, she says, looking at
them with a patience purer but as vast as mine.

Me too, I say to her. I love the mens too. Even though they are always lost and losing at pool.

I think of all the lost men hanging from my lips. I think of how I have marked each of them with
a name, right across the back of their colorful speedos. The rapist, the too young for me jack of
all trades, the bartender, the other bartender, the other other bartender, the social worker, the DJ,
the lawyer, the other lawyer. It occurs to me there are no doctors. It occurs to me my father
would be disappointed.

My niece opens her mouth and fits two or three of the mens inside. She bites half of Brad’s
name off his speedo. I understand, I say. Sometimes it is best to consume the mens before they
consume you. She is not listening because she has now dropped the mens on the floor of the
living room and run to the window. The mens punctuate the gray carpet with the colors of their speedos. The men are like loud confetti. They look like they are celebrating.

Cloud, my niece says. Dog. Tree. She is pressing her finger to the window, pointing everything
out. The world, I realize, can exist without the mens. This is news to me. I gather the tiny speedo
mens in the palm of my hand. Oh the mens, I say, oh you baby mens.

Goodbye.

I lay the men back down across the carpet.

My father chuckles from a shadow in the corner. My niece turns around. Hi! She says, as
brightly as the men’s speedos, to the shadow. I do not hear what happens next, but my niece
says, I good, and smiles. The men lie face down. My father is a grandfather ghost now.

Of course my niece doesn’t see the ghost of my father. Of course I never find him in the men. Of
course the missing O of g-d rings its hollow tone through all my nights. Of course I see my
father everywhere and nowhere. Of course I am unsettled in the seeing and sorrowful in the not
seeing.

Dad, I say, I don’t want to look for the mens anymore. I don’t want to keep winning at pool. I
can’t fully hear his answer, but it sounds like a smile. My niece leans against my knee and
reaches a hand to my necklace. I good, she says again, this time to me.

I good too, I say. And she laughs. My conjured father shakes the shadows.

The mens, who are tired of being lost and found and losing at pool, breathe softly into the
carpet.

Leanne Drapeau (she/her) is a writer and teacher from Connecticut. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an MFA candidate at Randolph College in Virginia where she studies poetry and creative nonfiction. Her work is in or forthcoming from B O D Y, perhappened, Booth, The American Journal of Poetry, Sierra Nevada Review, and other places. You can find her on Twitter @DrapeauLeanne.