The Loudest Guy in the Room

Here I am again, lying in bed while the early morning light bleeds through the blinds. There's a beautiful woman asleep beside me, recovering from the four-hour drive we made back to Santa Fe last night.

She talked me into riding to dinner.

Not Nyx. She's still broken after Friday night's little protest. Aurora got the call instead. My faithful speed demon. The laws of fucking physics have learned to step politely out of our way when we come screaming down the street.

Have I mentioned lately how much I fucking love this woman?

I have never wanted to become one of those people who just bash men. I used to be one, after all. I know what gets piled onto boys growing up. They're expected to solve problems, lift heavy things, fix broken shit, know how to build things, know how to protect people, know how to lead. Society loads them up with expectations.

Then society turns around and stops teaching them how to do half of it.

We don't teach boys how to work on cars anymore. We don't teach them how to fix a washing machine, wire an outlet, sharpen a knife, sew a button back on, or build a damn bookshelf. We hand them a smartphone, a gaming console, and a YouTube account, then expect them to somehow become competent men.

It's a shit deal.

But women get their own shit deal too. They aren't sitting around wishing for someone else's laundry to fold or toilets to scrub. They've got expectations piled on them from the day they're born.

So let's just call it even.

What I'm getting really fucking tired of isn't men. It's ego. The kind that mistakes volume for competence.

I spent a couple hours recently with a man who talked over me so many goddamned times I lost count. Not because he knew more. Half the time what came out of his mouth was completely unrelated to the conversation or just flat-out wrong. He simply couldn't tolerate someone else holding the floor for more than thirty seconds.

Normally I'd push back.

Instead I shut up.

Not because he was right, but because I was one interruption away from saying something I'd regret, and I don't enjoy becoming that person. Especially around Dawna. I like being the steady one. The calm one. The rock she can lean on.

But Christ, it gets exhausting.

I get talked over at work often enough. I don't need it bleeding into my personal life too.

Last night, we stopped at a little bar to shoot some pool. Dawna was drinking. I wasn't.

The other patrons made up for both of us.

One skinny little asshole was carrying on a loud conversation in Spanish, apparently under the impression that nobody around him understood a word he was saying. I don't speak Spanish fluently, but after three semesters in college and twenty-five years in Santa Fe, I know enough to catch the important parts.

Especially when someone throws around the word "jotito."

I raised my glass toward Dawna and said, loudly enough for him to hear, "To Spanish speakers!"

Funny how anonymity starts disappearing when you realize someone might actually understand you.

Later in the evening, liquid courage convinced him he should come introduce himself.

The conversation opened with, "I have no problem with you living your lifestyle..."

My lifestyle.

Imagine walking up to a complete stranger and deciding that's an appropriate opening sentence.

Being sober has its advantages. I was about one sentence away from shutting his mouth the old-fashioned way. Instead, I let reason take the reins, and we left.

Maybe I'm just noticing it more lately, but I'm getting really fucking tired of small men.

Not physically small. Spiritually and intellectually small.

Men who have to dominate every conversation.

Men who think every opinion deserves to be spoken.

Men who mistake confidence for competence.

Men who need the room to know they're the smartest person in it because deep down they're terrified they aren't.

I've spent my life learning. Nuclear operations. Maintenance. Information technology. Leadership. Every one of those careers taught me the same thing: if you want to become competent, you shut the fuck up long enough to learn from someone who already is.

Maybe that's why all of this has been wearing on me lately.

Between people questioning my relationship, strangers deciding they should weigh in on my existence, guys talking over me simply because they can't help themselves, and the daily bullshit that comes with work, it starts feeling like a constant barrage of people demanding to be heard while saying absolutely nothing worth listening to.

Then I come home.

I climb into bed beside the woman I love.

She reaches for me in her sleep without even waking up.

And I realize something.

The loudest guy in the room almost never matters.

The people who matter don't have to shout.