I’m a man in a thousand memories
For millennia, we’ve sexed our fellow humans by simply looking at them.
You don’t have to play the game if you’re fine with what you’ve got, but the most privileged among us who aren’t fine and who do play because have to play because, believe it our not, like anyone else, we want to fit in — like it or not —
We win.
Cry and preach and legislate, boast about my chromosomes, but I’m already a man in a thousand memories.
With medication and privilege, through surgery and sisu, I’ve played your game. And your lizard brain lost.
I’ve shoveled your driveway and written your code, biked past, walked past, run past, entered your train car and taken a coffee, lent you a hand and nodded and waved.
Whine all you want if you know my reality, but in a thousand more realities, I’m a man about his day.
My family and friends, my neighbors, my team — every single human being subjected, offline, to a moment with me and not the concept of me — all of them outnumber you, one hundred times over.
But beyond those hundreds, the thousands in passing.
Knoxville, Atlanta, Sevierville, La Grange—you’ve seen this Southern boy in passing. I’ve greeted and smiled, browsed and bought, checked in, checked out, transacted, strolled past —
Thank you, sir.
Wonder where he’s going.
I’ll help you after I help him.
Their lizard brains lost.
Him, him, him.
Your lizard brain lost.
To ten thousand strangers, your nitpicking lost.
For I’m a man in a thousand memories — a passing flash of harmless little he — and when I am dust, a million memories of male-shaped stranger remain.
And then, unceremoniously, they flicker away,
long after the game that none but you play.
