do men weep as women do?

on being inhabited by a cry

The Pont des Arts is a bridge in Paris, and it is made of steel.

On one side is the Institut de France. On the other, the central square to the Palais du Louvre. Upstream, the pyres of the Cathedral of Notre Dame are visible to passerby. Years ago, when the bridge railings were interlocking loops of steel, it was a lovelock bridge. Romantic hopefuls would seek it out, stand upon it, hold each others hands over the slow crawl of the Seine. Armed with smiles and starry eyes and a padlock freshly scrawled with their names, they’d secure their love to the bridge for safekeeping. Almost a million locks were attached to that bridge. A million promises, a million honeymoon phases, a million second chances - a million steel hearts, beating hard and beaten soft by the city of love.

In 2014, part of the bridge railing collapsed under the strain. City officials deemed the locks unsightly, unsafe and obstructing. They ordered the removal of all love-locks a year later, and the railings of the Pont des Arts are now a transparent plastic.

I wonder if any men cried over it.

When men are young, their hedonic desire to date several women is explained away as an abundance mentality. Male podcasters infer it with a pride and joy and a chest inflated. Women infer it, ruefully, to describe the man they love - because it persists, undignified, long after he is no longer young.

If you are a large man, the women you date will ask you what it’s like. They will ask it with a wish in their eyes, and an envy made tiny by the impossible. I mentioned this question’s common recurrence to the third or fourth woman who asked it. She was dismayed and a little disgusted, but I was curious. I wondered if it was a wish for safety as an inherent quality, even and especially amongst other men. I wondered if that was an infantilising projection. I wondered what men envied. I just kept thinking about it, over and over, that little flash of envy. I couldn’t help it. I was fascinated by the idea of something to be jealous of.

On average, a woman’s tear ducts are smaller than a man’s. Anatomically, it allows tears to fall with a greater ease. Hormonally, prolactin and testosterone levels similarly staunch the flow of something that should come easy. Watch me closely, see how easily the bioessentialism springs forth! I should know, it is a man’s first excuse for all things.

When a man says he hasn’t wept in years, he describes it the way a womaniser describes his sinfulness - with pride and joy and a chest inflated. If he’s saying it to a woman, there will be a mournful edge added to it, an almost pathetic begging to be understood and absolved. It then vanishes quickly, replaced by a boyish pride - like that of a schoolboy brandishing a fresh cut on his knee. Men valorize being inhabited by a cry because it is undignified, and because it is manly to valorize an undignifying thing.

In contrast, the prerequisites for male weeping sound womanly. It only happens if everything is just right. I can’t know you’re watching me. Can’t think about it, or it won’t happen. The big light can’t be on, the right song has to be playing, my eyes have to be closed. When it’s over, I’ll put myself together. Wonder when it’ll happen again. Most of the time it’s over too quickly to satisfy.

Do you cry often? If not, you’re understood. If yes, what’s it like? Watch me closely - are wishes welling, like jealous diamonds, in the corners of each eye?

I truly wept three or four times last year.

The last time I cried, it was a video edit of an acclaimed UFC fighter. He was being interviewed, and he was talking about the loss of his three-month-old daughter. She had passed in a car accident, twenty years ago. The video was overlaid with a forlorn, folkstyle song, and interspersed by videoclips of his fights - flashes of him beating others, and being beaten in return. It just kept playing, on loop, and I sat my phone down because I could feel it. The onset was very slow. I didn’t feel my eyes well up, only goosebumps on my arms. I don’t know what happened. I remember wiping tears from the grooves under my eyes. I remember them being so wet my palms slipped. I wiped my face over and over, left hand then right, right hand then left, all the while growing more and more distraught. It was like I couldn’t hold onto my face. I distinctly remember being so upset that I wept through a slight feeling of confused disbelief. Sobbing that much frightened me, and the video still upsets me, because it’s too sad and I remember the sobbing.

It’s not always like that.