Jeremy walked into the auditorium amazed.

The ushers didn't give him fake reassuring smiles, nor did any waitress try to flirt with him; this was supposed to be a safe zone. There was a pass code device attached to the lock on the door.  He put in the password that was printed on the flyer:

123EyesOnWe

The auditorium painted dark blue welcomed him and his jaw dropped in amazement when he saw the people seated in the hall. Men of different shapes and sizes, ages and colors, it was extraordinary.

They were coming together for a common purpose: The need to hide who they were.

He strolled in, ignoring the whispers and the surprised look on one man's face that he recognized from his neighborhood. He greeted Jerry, the man who introduced him to this group and took a seat beside him. The lights went out, as was the rule. A man shared only in the darkness.

Society made it so, society made them that way.
Someone began to cry.

Deep guttural sounds, coming from a place where other things; other more brutal and painful memories were hid.
"My mother said it was wrong for me to be skinny," he began.

Jeremy was taken aback. The pain in his voice bared years of self-disgust and feelings of inadequacy.

"She'd lock me in my room when she had her rich friends over at the house, saying she didn't want them to see how unpleasant I looked; said it was bad for her image," He continued. "I would cry for hours and when they leave, she would barge into my room with a tray filled with junks and unhealthy foods and force me to eat them. On some days when I refused, she would tie my hands and legs with a rope and force it down my throat. If I throw up, she packs it and puts it in my mouth again."

Jeremy heard a sniff from the guy beside him. He couldn't blame him as he was finding it hard himself not to burst into tears. What kind of mother would do that to her own son?

The speaker continued, his voice laced with hatred, "She didn't buy me suits because she said suits were not for skinny people, they dont have the physique to look good in it. I believed her. When I finally went to college, I visited the gym each day hoping to gain some muscle to keep my bones from sticking out!"

He was shouting now.

"I hated the sight of my own body and I still do. I wear clothes twice my size and long-sleeved shirts to shield myself from the eyes of the world He paused. No one wants to see a skinny man; it just doesnt look good.” He concluded.

Silence ensued.

Jeremy was here with his own issues, but something about the way this man cried made him forget them, and he focused on the skinny speaker who had now gone silent, trying to make out his features in the darkness that covered the room.

"If you don't want to be seen as gay, then don't cry, society says," another voice full of resentment spat out.

"They say, 'Be a man, true men don't cry.' I dont know why it's wrong for me to let my emotions out whenever I want, I still don't understand how I was supposed to keep quiet and be a man when I caught my wife in bed with my best friend, my seventeen-year-old son was not even mine. It's hard but I guess I don't want to be seen as gay." He swallowed. "Men don't want to be seen as weak  its a societal abomination." He concluded eliciting murmurs of agreement from different corners of the hall.

Something told Jeremy that the man was looking round in the dark, silently assessing each person's silhouette.
Jeremy nodded and found himself speaking against his volition.

"For the longest time, I've been told that I'm fat. Not chubby, not big," he chuckled bitterly remembering how his junior school years comprised of him being teased for his flabby thighs and arms.

He continued "And then as I grew, I gained some muscles  slaving myself at the gym everyday, trying to make myself fit in with the society's description of a hot guy. I tried to do all the stuff men are supposed to do..." He reminisced at the bittersweet memory of him trying to 'man up'.

A gruff voice interrupted him.

"If we say we don't like fat women, they complain, but these same fat women go around telling us that we should be lean, but not too slim, they throw shade at us, calling us all sorts of body negative names." Loud laughter emanated from the group, as each man stated how absurd it was that women got to be body positive and not them.

The men were mimicking different slogans of women, mottos like; Inner beauty is all that matters, Love yourself and the popular Men are scum were flying all around the hall accompanied by laughter.

"I remember," Jeffery started, "I remember a girl once walking up to me and telling me out rightly to lose all my fat, that my physique irritated her."

He continued; a bitter taste rose up in his throat at the memory of that day.

He pushed it down and continued. "She told me she wouldn't date a guy who looked like me. I was so shocked and felt disgusted by myself that I was depressed for weeks. I later found out I had Lipedema."

Jeremy gasped. He laughed.

"I rolled my eyes at her and told her I wasn't even interested in her, and you know what she did? She turned around and said the same thing she would have killed me for if I said it.
She said my physical features were not manly," He finished.
Jerry held his hand in the dark and squeezed it.

"I have bulimia," the skinny speaker said. "And when I tried to tell a therapist, she looked at me in the most disdainful way, I could literally read the words behind her looks, 'but you're a man'," he sneered.

"I only go to the gym to fulfill all righteousness. My cousin is a sports person, and I couldn't feel like the odd one," a husky voice added.

"Society is always watching," a young voice said, quivering as he spoke.

"We men are not allowed to have eating disorders. We're men, that's who we are, that's who they see us as. This is a safe space, anybody interested in talking about an eating disorder can just come in here, the lights will be put off, and there's always someone to talk to. Let's form a community and help ourselves. The Eyes On We community is officially open!" Jerry said, the room erupted into loud clapping, and soon every man was hugging each other, congratulating who they thought they were in the dark.

Jeremy mentally face-palmed.

That's the problem. The noise drifted into an uneasy silence. Even in a safe place, you still have to put the lights off  were the cause of our own problems. If we can't put the lights on here how would the outside world see us?

Jeremy could sense the hesitation but there was nothing he could do to change it. Baby steps.

Outside of this zone, nobody would respect their feelings.

The society would continue to make comments on how their men should be shaped in every aspect.

His wife, Marie Anne, had told him to stop working out because he was scaring their children.

He won't blame her though, she doesnt know about his illness yet, he has endured a lot of insults from her. It would soon be over.

He sighed and hugged other men nonetheless.

Author: Lydia. Purple_Deeza