There’s a room in a man’s heart. Inside, a lone chair with a small circular table off to one side. Most men – when no one is looking – are sitting in that chair in that room with the door closed holding their face between their palms and sighing. Inside their room minds, a spider web of yarn connecting a thousand things they feel responsible for. People they feel responsible for all interconnected together and knotted together and tied together under tension. Pull one of the yarn strings, and they all vibrate. Pull any one line too hard, and the whole web collapses.
On the outside of the room and the man, it’s impossible to see the web or the man with his virtual face between his hands. We don’t talk. Much. You’ll see a smiling face. If you ask him what’s on his mind, you’ll more than likely receive a, “nothing” in return.
“I’m fine.”
Most of us are not fine. We Google, “anxiety medication” when it’s just us and a terminal. Delete our browsing history afterwards. Some men I know are constantly doing math in their heads. How much longer to they have to work to support everyone in their lives before they can stop. Rest. A constant calculation.
When my father lost his job after nearly twenty five years. When the juggernaut airline PanAmerican closed its doors to their employees, his room was our attached garage. A hidden six pack of beer behind the air compressor made his eyes red and glassy. Resupply trips to the deli down the road tensioned by family silence like thin glass as he grabbed the car keys. A man on the edge of his chair in the room. Face fully and hopelessly planted between virtual hands counting tensioned yarn strands.
I watched Will Smith slap a man last night on an internationally broadcast television show. I listened to people afterwards explain it in their way, mystified how no one could see what I saw. An absolute breakdown of balance. A tearing of the yarn strands inside the mind inside the room. Hopelessness. A man desperately wanting to let go of it all and the all always being the same. A family. A job. A home. A wife. The scale never matters. Millionaire or middle income beer hider. It’s always the same.
I heard Smith’s quivering voice as he shouted up to the comedian on stage. To keep his wife’s name out of the comedian’s mouth. It wasn’t a command if you listened with the ears of a man in a room. It was a desperate plea. “Please keep my wife’s name out of your mouth.”
“Things are happening here at home, man. I can’t hold any more yarn strands. “
I saw Chris Rock’s face when he replied, “Okay, I will.”
I knew he knew. Heard what I heard.
“If you can’t help me, please don’t’ make this any worse.”
“Please help me.”
There’s a room in a man’s heart.