It’s in His Eyes
I can see it in his eyes. He’s tuned me out. I’m not sure if he’s heard a word I said at all. I think he’s just standing there, politely pretending to listen to me, because that’s what he’s supposed to do. I wish I could crawl inside his brain, find the teeny little spot that has my name on it, and figure out why he despises me so.
Maybe it’s because of my weaknesses. You can tell that he’s never permitted himself to yield to any little temptations. And if he has, he’s convinced himself otherwise, so it’s all the same in the end. A man isn’t supposed to have any weaknesses, according to his credo. Ergo, a weak man is less than a man. Something to despise. Maybe that’s it.
Maybe it’s my lifestyle. I’m a rocker, and I walk the walk and I talk the talk. He finds my long hair offensive, so much so that he can hardly look at me straight on. Funny how his eyes wander to the hair, and then snap back to my face, but still with that same dispassionate look in them that tells me he’s already discounted me. I’m a damn good guitar player, and a good singer, not that it will affect his opinion of me or my lifestyle.
Or maybe he’s one of those people who thinks that since God didn’t see fit to grace me and my wife with children, we must not be good people. Because heaven knows, all good people are able to have kids whenever they want to. Or at least adopt, and we didn’t do that either. So maybe he thinks we’re bad people who are even too selfish to adopt. Of course, he doesn’t know about the nights my wife and I have cried together over our childlessness, how hard we tried, the failed adoption attempts. And maybe he doesn’t know that there are plenty of people with kids who mistreat them. So I think that whether you get to have kids or not has nothing to do with what kind of a person you are. I think there’s something else to it. Dunno what. Wish I did.
Have you ever seen that movie, A Knight’s Tale? My wife likes it because she’s a freak for Chaucer. And she may not admit it, but she likes seeing Paul Bettany walking bare-assed down the road. There’s this one arrogant asshole in the movie who’s always telling the lead character, “You have been weighed. You have been measured. And you have been found wanting.” Well, that’s the feeling I get whenever I talk to this guy. He’s taken my measure a long time ago and decided that I wasn’t worth the time of day.
Kind of sad, really. I believe that as long as a man or woman is alive and walking on this earth, he or she can change. A bad person can become good. A good person can become bad. And someone in between could swing either way.
I know my flaws. I don’t need anyone to list them off to me, or tell them around the gossip circles. But man, I keep trying, you know?
I’m not a fool. I’m not naive enough to expect everyone to like me; after all, I don’t like everybody. But I just figure that even people I don’t like have good qualities, even if we don’t click. I wish this guy did, because I’d like to be his friend.
So hey, dude, the next time you’re talking about me and my wife, and discussing all the reasons that we’ve turned into heathens, maybe you need to stop and ask yourself if you’re part of the problem. We try to be good people. Like most others, sometimes we fail and sometimes we succeed. But like my wife always says, each time we do fail, we get up, dust off our britches, and try again.
I wonder what would happen if I told him that.
But I already know. I can see it in his eyes.
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This is fictional but based on some very real people and emotions and situations. I don’t know if it works, but it helps me to write it out.
