Several times in my life I’ve been pointed out as a man, a mature man. Sometimes by men, other times by women. I have distilled it to three areas and it’s what I look for in other men and what I teach to boys and males as students, mentees on the road to manhood.
Accountability.
I will answer to what I’ve done. If some shit goes down, light or heavy and it’s on me, I will say I did it. If I say shit about you, I will both say it to you and to others about you. There will never be any confusion. If I mess something up, I don’t shift blame, I don’t try to hide it, I’ll step up and say, I did that. Here’s what I was thinking, my bad, I apologize.
Just this weekend I had to fly out of town for work, get there insane early and check in to a hotel so that I could sit there and wait for the meeting the next morning. I’d done this a couple of times before. No problems. I get to the hotel, different desk clerk. I give my name. It’s 12:45pm. Not is my room not ready, no rooms are ready. But I’ve been here before. At this time, from the same flight and once I waited because it was a holiday but I expected that. Wait? No, no, no, I’m not waiting. I went ballistic. I normally don’t go ballistic. I demanded the manager, phone numbers, show me the policy, I took out my phone to post this onto Yelp. The desk attendant actually ran away from the desk after having a meltdown/argument with me.
I stood there, thinking that I didn’t want to cancel the reservation and wander around for a room. I was pretty okay with the space, the timing, the closeness to the school I had to present at. Why was I so upset?
I’d had an argument 48 hours before with an insane coworker who had asked me weeks ago to help them write better. I made some general suggestions but explained that I was working on quite a few projects and didn’t have the time. he insisted he could help me. I then explained that as he presented, he needed a lot of help. I was unavailable. He kept pressing, no, really he wouldn’t stop. Finally I tersely explained that not only was I busy but I didn’t like him enough to make time and I didn’t believe he had the resilience or nascent ability. Was it the N, the O, or the period that was confusing?
Now, when you tell someone No, in many different ways, at least 3 and they keep pressing, they’re trying to control you. By No # 2, I’m probably not going to do it just because you didn’t hear # 1 & #2. I hate tapping. Figuratively or literally. Asking me AGAIN. You’ve insured No. I will die before shifting. If busy, I try to give some fillers, some hoops to occupy you and show your commitment, if you do those, it will prove your commitment and I’ll offer a few more, you do those and I see you’re serious. I’ve mentored lots of students, teens and adults in a wide variety of areas, I have cast iron boundaries. I don’t care if your AIDs riddled mother crawled out of Hell with you on her back and you were snuck into the country up a dolphin’s ass before become a sex worker, if I don’t have time or desire, i won’t help you. I don’t have sympathetic empathy.
But the inability to press me to help him, pissed my coworker off so when he got an opportunity a couple of months later he turned a grain of sand into a mountain. He had to be ordered and escorted out of the building.
But that energy, though I had slept, thought about it, done meditative exercises… lingered. Like washing tar off, which I’ve down once as a child playing at a construction site, it takes awhile.
At the hotel desk, standing there, I realized I wasn’t pissed as I’d projected, I was still carrying some tar from the coworker.
The attendant came close rand I turned to him and told him he was right, I was wrong and I profusely apologized. I explained generally about my coworker upsetting me, leaving tar on me psychically and I’m not a morning person, it was hot, I was well dressed but sweating—-I wanted to just turn on the A/C and lay quietly in the room. I told him how out of character this was for me. I would shut up, go get a cool drink and go sit my ass in the lounge and wait patiently. I did so. I put on some Brazilian jazz, read some of my work to edit, played video games (Space Invaders!) and sat calmly. He came and said my room was ready at about 3:10. I thanked him, apologized again and then when he was next at the desk insisted and brought him a very nice dinner, again as an apology.
He wasn’t my bitch and I was laying my shit on him.
I am accountable for my energy, my actions and will rewind discussions in my head and search for my errors and apologize, try to make right the many times where I’ve been wrong or wronged someone, wherever possible. I am a human man, I will screw up many, many, many more times, it is my attention to that real reality and vulnerability to honestly admit it that I’m always monitoring and acting from.
Responsibility.
I will take responsibility. I will step up. Even if it’s going to really bite me in the ass, cost me resources or reputation.
A mentee at Columbia was interning in the office. A coordinator suddenly brings myself and another teacher into the inner office we share, some Metrocards she had pinned to the wall were missing. She suggests that the mentee did it and therefore he should be removed form the scheduled trip to Price Cooper Waterhouse trading floor as he might “steal something else.”
Do you have proof?
No.
Why are you pinning valuable Metrocards to the wall?
That’s what I do.
I explain that I had just taken him to buy some class supplies and lunch. We sat in the park and he actually started crying at his efforts to find a job, having this minor internship but needing more. It was genuine and surprising and I’d comforted him that we would help him further, that the internship was a good resume builder. As I live near the campus, I routinely give students my monthly unlimited Metrocards that maybe have a week or so left on them and just buy a new one. I explain in the office, he didn’t need the Metrocards though I admit that even I know the bodega spots where one can cash in Metrocards for 50% of the card value. If she’s sure that he did it, I will take him into the conference room and use my relationship and interrogation techniques to get the answer out of him. But if she’s not 100% sure, I will not insult him in such a way. She has be 100% sure. She admits that she isn’t sure. Dozens of people have been in and out of the office.
Another teacher, East Indian but West Indian, chimes in. The first lady is White, teh intern is Dominican but dark skin and the Indian teacher has admitted to having racial issues. I’m ;like I’m uncomfortable with there this is going to punish him for something you’re not sure about. Now, he goes on the trip, unless you have proof or admission from him. If he doesn’t, I will personally leverage and level all kinds of racism claims at you both formally, within the managerial structure, the school newspaper and as I’ve regularly gone to the school President’s house, I will bring you up there. I will go to fucking war on you two personally for trying to punish him because he’s poor and brown and you’re stupid and scared of the brown people.
As a man I am responsible for assisting, defending, helping, protecting men, women, children and animals that cannot do so for themselves.
Integrity.
I answer for what I’ve done. I am perfectly capable of lying to you or anyone else on this planet. I have on several occasions had to lie and convince someone so that they wouldn’t take my life, as both a child and an adult. I’m so good, you probably couldn’t tell because I’ve purposefully invented tells, signals of duplicity, that I routinely show people to obscure my real tells. Yeah, I’m that fucking thorough.
However, I rarely lie.
Sometimes it’s beneath me. Like with the upset coworker who wanted my tutoring. I will try and deflect politely, ease out with neutrality, saving faces and egos. If you push past No # 2, I will flatly tell you it’s because I don’t personally liek you enough to invest time in you, I don’t think you possess the ability for me to take interest in and you’re not going to manifest an outcome that will speak to my ability due to your lack. Now, whether I’m right or not, which one of us is teh idiot for continuing this conversation. Walk away. You’re only proving me right in my conviction that I don’t want to engage with you, more and more. You want to win? Go prove me wrong. I’ll take credit for lighting the fuse at that too. LOL.
But I’m a straight shooter. I will tell you the hard, searing, acid truth and ask can you pass the lemonade. In a hospital bed, my mother asked: What’s going to happen to me? You’re going to die, I answered. Now, as adults let’s deal with that. No bullshit, no sugar coating but I will stand with you, and I did, until her last breath and through all of her requests shifting my whole life and career for the time she needed me.
If I am your friend and you haven’t fucked me over—-and trust, if you have—-I know—-I’m smart, all 24 of the days’ hours and all 7 days of the week—-you but have to ask and I will come with resources, smarts and guns blazing.
I’m the Olivia Pope that you call at 3 AM next to a dead body. (Actually I thought she punked out a few times. I’m more of Rowan. Which is hilarious because my parents were exactly like Olivia’s parents in their political work, crimes, strategic thinking, demanding personalities.)
I’ve been the one who has had to describe to a distraught daughter and her two friends exactly what to go into her just dead mother’s house and get out, sight unseen, before her drug addict brother came back. I would act as look out. When they came back with it and I explained how to sift through someone’ s life, after asking detailed questions about her mother to understand her mentality, and we had all of her important documents, they asked how I knew to do this.
Having and holding integrity allows one to see light and dark, good and bad, with an equal neutrality. I completely understand the limits of what Bill Gates’ foundation can accomplish. And I understand what Hitler was trying to achieve. My moral compass is set. There are one or two lines I would not cross. Unless I had to. And trust by having integrity, I I’m clear on why, when and how I would cross those lines. I would’ve have directly blown up that office’s racism had they not backed down. I would have outed them all. And it was my first year there. I will speak up and outplay and out plan fools and villains and I will look you dead in teh face and tell you I did it. Or if it suits the purpose, the endgame, I’ll lie to you. I respect, hold and control my integrity. By knowing that, I’m rarely in a moral quandary.
Having had to make decisions, life and death, money, love, ruthless, hiring and firing, setting folks up, things I slip into my fiction writing and discuss with God, the spirits and things seen and unseen I have arrived at being a man, full of obsidian, vulnerability and a willingness to do what is necessary, if I think it’s worth it.
I am sovereign unto myself.
I am in truth, the truth I seek.
Smile, Kyle
KylePhoenixShow@Gmail.com
KylePhoenixShow@Gmail.com
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