Je Suis Fuccboi
by Huda Awan
Wildfire 352pp ISBN 9781472293107 £16.99
I love men, and I love all kinds of them. I love skinny ones, ripped ones, ones with dad-bods. Funny ones, serious ones, tall ones, short ones. Men who regale you with facts, and ones that make you listen to all the obscure music they like. Men who are complete messes, and men who have their shit together. Men who talk about art and literature and politics, and men who are happier to listen to you talk instead. Don’t get me wrong, I love women, too. But men! Men will always hold a special place in my heart — even when they’ve hurt me (and God knows they have).
All this to say: I was predisposed to enjoy Sean Thor Conroe’s debut novel Fuccboi, a book by a man, about a man, that purportedly tackles contemporary masculinity, according to multiple reviews and the book’s own dust jacket. Sign me up, I said. And I wasn’t disappointed. I laughed, I cried. I ranted and I raved. I sent manic text messages to friends saying ‘i love fuccboi!!!!!!’ and they sent texts back saying ‘are you serious.’ A fair question, one you might ask yourself if you begin reading the book with no prior knowledge of it, or if you’ve read some of the less favourable reviews, or if your only interaction with its contents are quick scrolls through the passages people have posted online, mainly to make fun of the text speak and one-line paragraphs. But, I am serious. I think Conroe is, too. My own seriousness goes so far that I feel compelled to say that on this occasion the discourse (and there has been a lot) seems to have missed the point, the point being this: yes, this book is about a man. Yes, it is nominally about masculinity. However, reading Fuccboi as a parable of male fuckery in the 21st century is ultimately a narrow and boring way to interpret the novel.
Genre-wise, Fuccboi is a künstlerroman, in that it tracks protagonist Sean’s pursuit of what he terms ‘That Art Life.’ It’s also a work of auto-fiction: fictional Sean’s life borrows heavily from Conroe’s own, to the extent that (seemingly) real emails from real life people (namely fellow autofiction writer Sheila Heti) are included in the text. The book covers the period between December 2017 and July 2019; during this time Sean lives in Philadelphia, biking around the city working as a Postmates delivery guy. He’s a fan of rap music, recording and uploading some of his own tracks to SoundCloud. He’s also written over a hundred thousand words of a manuscript titled ‘Walk Book,’ an account of a hundred day walking tour around America that he undertook before the novel begins. Early on in Fuccboi, Sean links up with a woman he refers to as editor bae and sends her his ‘Walk Book’ manuscript. She reads it, loves it, then agrees to help him edit the manuscript so they can submit it to the publishing house she works at. Very soon after, Sean tells us that he cheated on his ex-girlfriend (‘ex bae’) with this ‘editor bae’, and throughout the novel he reflects on the various reasons that relationship broke down. Other things happen, too — Sean develops a strange and ultimately debilitating skin condition that forces him to travel back to LA, where he’s from, before returning back to Philadelphia. Editor bae ends up deciding she doesn’t want to edit ‘Walk Book’ anymore (the implication is that she finds the manuscript, and then Sean himself, problematic) and towards the end of the novel Sean begins writing Fuccboi.
Fuccboi can’t be described as a plot-heavy book, or at least one in which the plot progresses in a linear way. The chapters consist of predominantly short sections, many of which are in turn composed of the infamous one line paragraphs. Almost all of these chapters begin with a section setting up Sean’s circumstances at the time the chapter is dated, or introducing another character — usually a male friend, or one of the baes, or a family member. Following this set up, the narration dips back and forth as Sean reflects on the changing nature of his relationships with these characters. Much of Fuccboi also contains Sean’s thoughts on contemporary society more broadly, as he contemplates what place there is for him in it. The dynamics between men and women — romantic, professional, familial, platonic — are a major theme of these philosophical and sociological reflections.
There is a line in one such inquiry that hints at the novel having greater ambitions than its own publicity campaign would have us believe. About halfway through the book, Sean, an avid listener of Lil B, mounts a defence of the rapper’s song ‘Suck My Dick Ho,’ the title of which critics have apparently found offensive. Pondering the backlash, Sean says: ‘Who was to say “Suck My Dick Ho” meant hateful misogyny? “Suck My Dick Ho” meant a gender-nonspecific feeling.’ His point being that the word ‘dick’ and the pejorative ‘ho’ in the song’s title do not necessarily refer to a man’s genitals and a promiscuous woman who is being ordered to take said genitals into her mouth. Rather, the imperative could (and should) be read more abstractly. It’s a mood, a feeling. ‘Suck My Dick Ho!’ could mean ‘Respect me!,’ or it could mean ‘Fuck off!’, in the same way a cowardly individual, irrespective of gender, could be a termed a ‘little bitch,’ and in the same way that Rihanna is frequently said to have ‘Big Dick Energy.’ Though the phrase connotes a misogynistic dynamic, it nonetheless has the capacity to transcend this meaning, and Sean believes that it has done in the context of Lil B’s lyrics.
Some will disagree that phrases can ever transcend their gendered origins. I, for one, have not heard that Lil B song, so I can’t remark whether or not it is misogynistic, nor do I care to. What I will say is this — potential grammatical flaw notwithstanding, the idea of a ‘gender-nonspecific feeling’ was something I came back to again and again as I read Fuccboi. It was something I came back to as I considered the idea of the ‘fuck boy,’ and of ‘toxic masculinity’ more broadly. The defining characteristic of a fuck boy is his inability to commit to a romantic relationship, his chronic pussyfooting so to speak, and throughout the novel, Sean tells the reader things that seem to exemplify a typical fuck boy mindset. He reflects on his relationship with ex bae, his most serious ex-girlfriend, with whom he had once hoped to build a life, despite doing very little to demonstrate these intentions. A degree of openness characterised this relationship; a ‘side bae’ crops up and overlaps with the end of Sean’s relationship with his ex, and we’re also told that ex bae herself had a lesbian lover who similarly overlapped with Sean; she claimed this relationship wasn’t serious, that she was just ‘exploring’, but after they break up, she moves in with this woman. The breakup itself is precipitated when Sean confesses to ex bae that he had a fling with editor bae (apparently before they were open), but it also seems that their relationship had been on the rocks for a while, and for a few different reasons. Chief among them is his inability to commit wholeheartedly, not just to ex bae, but to the idea of stability itself; the walking tour of America is eventually made out be less a madcap adventure, and more a symptom of Sean’s restlessness, a drive in him to be constantly on the move. Relatedly, his pursuit of ‘That Art Life’ leaves him broke and seems to necessarily involve precarity which, again, does not a reliable partner make.
I love men because I see myself in them. When they hurt me, I persist in my love because I see myself as equally capable of inflicting that hurt on them, too. And I have hurt men, specifically the ones I’ve been romantically involved with. So let’s just say I relate to Sean. I see myself in his fallibility, his inability to commit, in his desire to run away. I found myself laughing at his utopian understanding of open relationships, and his subsequent pivot to a more ‘trad’ conception of partnership (after him and ex-bae break up, he considers the worth of cohabitation, of marriage, of pro-creation). His commitment to ‘That Art Life,’ though it might seem ridiculous, actually resonated with me. And so all of this made me feel that the fuck boy archetype could be more encompassing. A fuck boy is someone, anyone, who flip-flops. Someone who has commitment issues. Maybe even someone prone to grandiose ideas about their own potential, some of those founded, some less so. The fuck boy is a gender non-specific feeling.
It feels vaguely anti-intellectual to write about how I personally related to different aspects of Fuccboi, but so much of the novel’s success lay in its ability to invoke a feeling of often disquieting recognition. In any case, it feels very much as if the idea of relating is central to the novel, consciously or not. In fact, it is difficult not to talk about what it means to relate when so much of Fuccboi centres on Sean’s genuine attempts to understand himself in relation to the people around him; he compares himself to his male friends, evaluating how they’ve messed up their romantic relationships, only to later find himself messing up in the same way. If Sean tries and fails to connect to the women immediately around him, it seems to be because they have different priorities to him, priorities which place them in a different social strata to him. The women in Fuccboi are repeatedly shown to have greater social, cultural and economic capital than Sean: ex bae is doing a PhD; editor bae is an editorial assistant at a New York publishing house; ‘derm bae’, who treats Sean’s weird skin condition, is a doctor. All of these are far more stable, acceptable career paths than being a Postmates delivery guy. While it isn’t revealed what side bae’s job is, it’s implied that she at least has a nicer apartment than Sean during a slapstick scene in which his bed falls apart while they’re trying to have sex. Side bae looks around Sean’s ‘closet-room’ and says he has to come to her house until he gets a ‘better bed. / A better room.’ She then Ubers home, ‘in tears’.
The Uber mention again highlights the gap between them, how they’re on opposite sides of the gig economy — she’s able to afford these services, while he’s making ends meet by providing one of them. Even his younger sister makes more money than him, and ends up paying for his flight to LA when his skin condition gets worse. His relationships with all the aforementioned women are difficult to read about because they’re so uneven — they’re high-functioning women who end up taking care of him, and in doing so, a dysfunctional dynamic emerges. ‘Needy’ Sean leeches off these women, unable to offer much in return in the way of support, save one measly foot massage he gives side bae.
The unevenness of this dynamic causes a disconnect. And so, Sean looks for connection elsewhere. On a late night smoke break early on in the novel, he strikes up a conversation with a (presumably) homeless man named Shawn, who eventually reveals himself to be less interested in the cigarette that Sean offers him, and more interested in initiating a sexual encounter with him. Initially Sean is enthusiastic at having met another Shawn, even if this one’s name is spelt differently. When Shawn asks Sean if he’s ‘hung’, this enthusiasm dissipates momentarily, before Sean’s curiosity gets the better of him, and he asks his new acquaintance how he’s able to sustain himself on the street. ‘I’m able to get what I need,’ says the other Shawn. ‘Food?’ asks Sean, confused. ‘Not food,” Shawn responds, “. . . But that fire. When I need it, I do what I gotta do to get it.’ Given the context of their earlier conversation, ‘fire’ here could mean sexual gratification, but Sean’s response makes it seem as if he has found some other meaning in the statement that resonates more deeply with him, though also, maybe not. ‘I feel you, bro. I fucking feel you,’ he says. Humour aside, though their circumstances are different, socially, economically, even sexually, Sean is open to the idea of connecting with this man, to see some of himself in him beyond their shared name.
What does it mean to connect with someone? What does it mean to see yourself in someone else? Is the former even possible without the latter? It’s potentially a solipsistic way of looking at the world, but then, what’s the alternative? A self-conscious and reflexive engagement with experiences that are ostensibly not our own? That feels worse because it is, to my mind, ultimately inauthentic. It means you’re interested because you ought to be, not because you genuinely are. Understanding and empathy become a moral imperative, not something instinctive, intuitive. Sean’s drive to find traces of himself in others plainly has its genesis in a confusion surrounding not only his position as a man in society, but also, more acutely, who he is. Being half-Japanese, he self-describes as ‘white-adjacent’, and efforts to understand the implications of his ‘hapa-ness’ are waved off by one of the baes as essentialist racism.
Indeed, many of his interests seem to feel incompatible with each other. Wokeness and more reactionary proclivities cause friction in social settings. His anti-intellectual streak clashes with his interest in philosophy. He takes down a track from his SoundCloud, cringing at the idea of someone ‘outside of my target audience, like distant family members, potential employers, or reviewers of my literary submission, hearing it’; he struggles to reconcile these sides of himself, bemoaning
the fight at every party I pulled up to for being a Valley Wigger Kook . . . present how I did and also be valedictorian like I didn’t mean to fuck all their bitches those white girls were the ones fucking me, fetishising me. . .
Unsurprisingly, the space in which Sean sees himself most clearly is art. And it turns out that he actually is able to connect with women — it’s just that when he does, they also happen to be writers, and it is through reading their work that he finally sees something of himself in their experience. He considers a chapbook of poems called Philadelphia, by a poet named Gina Myers, who writes about ‘living itinerantly post-college till settling in Philly and coping with the urge, every time new feelings surfaced, to flee again.’ Sean sees this book as the ‘obverse’ of his own ‘Walk Book,’ and says of Myers’ work: ‘Philadelphia wasn’t a book that tickled my literary sensibilities. That instructed or entertained me. / It did much more. / Each poem a mantra, to be read every morning. / Every time I felt I was about to spazz out. / Every poem medicine — calming agents.’
These reflections are moving because they point to the power of writing. And strangely, they reminded me of my own experience reading another book Sean brings up at various points throughout the novel, Sheila Heti’s Motherhood. A book that similarly did not tickle ‘my literary sensibilities’, but passages of which I have also reread as ‘mantra’, passages that pertain to fighting chronic restlessness and the desire for newness, such as the one below:
The other night I had a dream which said it was good to keep walking down the very same streets; that the longer I walked down them, the more I would find. Slowing down is important, said the dream. Repetition is important. Be in the same place, differently. Change the self, not the place.
Motherhood is a book about a woman deciding whether or not to become a mother, but it also contains much more than that. In many ways, Fuccboi feels like it’s in conversation with Motherhood — not only because it is mentioned by Sean in the novel, but in how it reflects on relationships between men and women, on commitment, on a more abstract urge to leave, and the importance of sitting still. So much has been written about Motherhood, mostly by women, but it has been refreshing to see a young man (albeit a fictional one) engage with that book without excessive reflexivity. ‘Sheila, to me, was Jesus . . . meaning I was gonna fully consider everything she said, even if it ran counter to everything I’d been saying,’ says Sean of Heti. Sean’s feelings on Motherhood are ultimately complicated, and the complication arises because his opinions on relationships and pro-creation have changed since his breakup with ex bae, moving from an interest in polyamory to a perhaps more pragmatic interest in marriage and children.
Is it naive for Sean to even try and relate to Motherhood? Is it narcissistic? But then, what is more narcissistic? Understanding yourself to have an experience, a feeling so unique, so tied up to your identity, that no one else could possibly share it? Or identifying an experience, a feeling in yourself, and being able to abstract it, find it in someone else? Regardless of what it says about me, my aim as a reader is the latter. It makes me feel less alone. And what is writing, if not the identification of a feeling, the articulation of an experience, in the hope that it might resonate with someone, anyone, even if not entirely? At some points during my reading of Motherhood, it felt like reading a horoscope, a map. But as individuals comprehending the loss of our respective relationships, Sean and I come at the idea of motherhood — the ultimate commitment, if you will — from a different vantage point. The loneliness and guilt that attends a breakup in which you understand yourself as having inflicted pain on someone, to the extent that all contact is broken off, is enough to make a commitment-phobe reconsider whether the pursuit of freedom and independence is compatible with the idea of romantic relationships, whether that pursuit is even worthwhile, if all this desire seems to do, when it comes in contact with another person, is cause irrevocable hurt. Similar to Sean, my feelings ran somewhat counter to Sheila’s, who comes to the conclusion that art and creation are equivalent substitutes for child-rearing. Though he doesn’t necessarily agree with her, he understands that Sheila is ‘pivoting momhood’s meaning. / Shifting her definition of ‘momhood.’ / Momhood, eventually meant being an art-mom. / Having an art-baby.’ I, on the other hand, conceive of my desire to remain childless, much like my desire for freedom, my difficulties in committing, as being rooted in fear.
Fuccboi explores the consequences of freedom and the pivot from freedom to commitment elliptically. It does so cleverly under the guise of examining male fuckery, but of course, these themes are greater than this context. What is freedom? Is it worth it? The fictional Sheila asks these questions again and again in Motherhood, and though they relate to child-rearing and the limits it places on a mother’s life, anyone could feasibly ask themselves the questions that Motherhood raises. And, though brief, though expressed in one-line paragraphs and text speak, this is also what Conroe does through fictional Sean in Fuccboi In doing so he creates a bridge, a conversation, and I see my own feelings reflected in his, despite the differences in how our respective feelings have emerged. If a gender divide indeed exists, finally it feels surmountable.