Breathe in deeply through your nose and then back out through it again, because nobody wants to see any of that mouth breathing and especially not in the moment itself; check that your eyes are almost meeting theirs, but hold them slightly lower so your looking at the bags below and not directly at them; Let your shoulders slump, you should probably start with that, because straight shoulders are the second worst of the signs; make sure your hands are open, but not too open like one of those fans people buy and spread and wave back and forth when its hot, because either extreme is going to have the same effect; talk slower than you want to or are used to, letting the syllables fall like boulders; but don’t say the words you’re thinking about saying–give them back the words they give you all chewed up and nice the way a bird does with a baby; this is how to be good; this is how to act like man when you can’t really act like a man wanna act; this is how to stay safe and make them feel safe; this is how you take it when they’re coming down on you with hot breath and spit and all the things they are angry about and afraid of and they know that whatever you do it is going to be you who gets the short end, you who gets the blame, you who is the problem and the instigator and the one ‘they were always afraid would do this’ but never paused to think of how they would drive you to it because they don’t have the same rules but all the same passions; you want to be the kind of man they can do this to because you can’t afford to be the kind of man they can’t.
Some Thoughts:
- Rough day at work. See above.
- There is too much of a disparity birthed by the color of a person’s skin and the perceived behavior thereof for me to respond to people the way they come at me. Still, I can only hold back for so long.