American Heroes

American Heroes is about assumptions of male power: where it lies, who has it, and how it is acquired. From the beginning of a boy’s life, he is told to “man up,” “be a real man,” “be masculine,” and many other harmful instructions that ultimately lead him away from his own heart. His developmental process as a whole being is interrupted at best, and at worst, it is arrested. Masculinity becomes a performative act. He cuts off parts of himself that put him in touch with tenderness, empathy, and compassion. Only some men are able to seemingly carry out these instructions without being noticed, often straight men. The dominance that the quintessential male seems to possess is likely built upon a substructure of falsity and the hope that no one will see him quaking on the inside. He typically relies on money, size, strength, authority, and merit in order to fly under the radar.

Gay men take on an enormous amount of projected male shadow, shame for our natures, disproportionate to the tenderness that we truly can offer the world. Yet, our gay sex reflects our deepest wounds; the men that we frequently desire bear the marks of our oppression. Bottoms are frequently shamed, “no fems” is a subcultural preference, and racism intersects sharply leaving non-white men further down the ladder. 

Beneath our fucking, the erotic surges within us, enflaming our passions so that we might burn through the projections and heal the root that has been severed into sex on one hand and spirit on the other.

American Heroes is an invitation to dismantle our shared ideas about men and to see them as complex beings that exert not only strength, but a spectrum of traits--beauty, nurturance, sensuality, gentleness, and love--traits that only a real man could possess.