There is a specific kind of masculinity here, in the south.

“If you threaten my family that will be the last thing you ever do.”

And, “my wife just died. I am getting the electrocardiogram of her last heartbeat tattooed over my own heart. I am staying with my sister at our parents house. I may have my own house again someday, but without her I will never have a home.”

And, “I got kicked out of that club, once” and “if you put skittles in vodka it turns pretty colors.”

Men who have worked as bouncers and prison guards and served in the military. A man who will describe in detail how he shoved a catttleprod up the other guy’s nose and then went for the knees because the other guy kept bothering one of his friends.

Such a profound and deeply ingrained fear of the other which makes a man say to his wife, passing a stranger in the dairy aisle in the grocery store, “get behind me.”

It is breathtakingly sad.