I might not be a people’s person, but I talk to people. I have to. It’s my corn. It’s my bread. If I didn’t talk to people my little girl would starve and start eating her nails, then when her nails are all gnawed out and sore she would start eating my nails. So I have to talk to people and I talk to them all the damn time. I talk to people because they have stories to tell. And you wouldn’t believe the stories people harbor in them. Stories of pain and triumph, of lust and fears. Stories that you want to read about. So by extension you could say I’m a storyteller, but only by that flimsy virtue.
So I talk to people I like. And sometimes to people I can’t stand. I talk to people who think they are a special gift which needs to be unwrapped carefully…people with a misplaced sense of importance. I talk to humble people who rise from their seats when I walk into the room. I talk to people who stare at me in the eye, and people who can’t stand to look at me in the eye perhaps afraid that I will glimpse at the real person inside, the person they dutifully hide from the world.
I talk to people who talk with food in their mouths. And to people whose nourishment comes from books. I talk to people who ask me more questions that I ask them. I talk to people who think they know more than I do (they are right half the time, I suspect), and to people who want to impress me with lame quotes and senseless philosophies. I talk to people who show me pictures of their children in their wallets, and people who ache for a childhood they never knew. Like someone I interviewed last week.
I talk to people who are in love. And people who love to them is face of someone they’d rather forget. I talk to women bitter from a youth robbed from them by motherhood and of men who define fatherhood by the number of toys they buy. I talk to people who would rather not talk to me. I talk to people who were told that the interview would do good their tattered reputation. And of people who don’t care about their reputation. I talk to powerful people, who use every conceivable chance to rub it in my face. And to people who are totally oblivious of their power. I talk to people who make me laugh and to people I try to make laugh. I talk to people who are nervous and shifty, people who fiddle and grope at words and are always apologizing for not being as much fun as I expected (It’s not the dentist’s visit, I never have much expectations) I talk to people with such lofty ambition and to people who are so successful their success seem to embarrass them.
I talk to people who think they are doing me a favor. I talk to people who don’t have stories and people who aren’t even aware that they have a story. I talk to mothers, boyfriends, ex-wives, retirees and to children who their inherent goodness blinds my soul. I talk to people who are afraid of their own shadows, haunted and cursed into a life of looking over their shoulders. I talk to people with secrets and to people in search of secrets. I talk to happy people, people whose smiles warm my heart. I talk to people who don’t want to talk about their private lives, even though their social lives are as exciting as an episode of Mke Nyumbani.
Once in a while I will talk to someone I imagine naked (a woman of course) because they posses something that breaks down all the walls of professionalism. I talk to people who are curious about me, and others who couldn’t give a ratsass. I talk to people who want me to send them their stories for approval before it’s published. Those are the people I particularly can’t stand, because they insult my professionalism. I talk to people who seek friendship after the interviews, and people who I bump into in a bar and act like they’ve never seen me before. I talk to people who are genuinely touched after reading their own stories and to people who wish they would have said less, or more. I talk to people who regard my profession with disdain and yet others who are curious about it. I talk to people who remind me of my own loving mother, before sickness crawled into her heart. Those are people who break my heart profoundly. But then again, I talk to people who never knew their mothers, and they make me call my mother after the interview.
But the greatest conversations are perhaps the ones I have with myself.
If ever I have learned anything from talking to people its one thing; people are just people. They laugh, they cry, they are scared, they make faces, they are nervous. They are black. They are white. They are mixed race. They eat beans for dinner. They brush their teeth thrice a day. They sing with their eyes closed. They have peed on someone’s tire in the parking lot. They love. They hate. They sleep with their mouths open. They fuss over their weight. They cry in darkness when it’s too much. They bite their nails as a habit. But ultimately all these people speak in the same tongue. The language of humans.
The best people I have ever enjoyed talking to are people who don’t smile. People who smile are okay, but they are boring and phony and if you were to bother scrapping under the surface of their trivial smiles you will encounter macabre revelations. People who smile often don’t offer traction to the conversation. I want to have a drink with someone who smiles, but I don’t want to interview someone who smiles. People who don’t smile are a bottomless intrigue. Their lack of warmth beckons you.
I talked to this guy a fortnight ago. The hot shot type. They type who stick a Mont Blanc pen on their shirt pockets. New money. He smiled a lot. Treated me like we grew up together, kissing girls and making them cry, and although he clearly knew his trade, although I was stumped by his brilliance he was terrifyingly uncultured. He pretended to address the waiters with an amiable tone (for my benefit I would imagine) but you would have to be stoned not to detect the condescending tone just underneath it. He wanted to sound confident and driven, instead I heard arrogance. He wore his success on his sleeves and he made everyone feel unworthy. He made me feel sorry for myself. Sorry that I was going to write his story without mentioning that he was a prick.
Then there are guys who inspire me. Humble, brilliant and yet so grounded. They are people who will say something sacrilegious but true then tell you, “I wish we could leave that bit off the record because it might hurt someone.” These people believe in honor, dignity and honesty and I can’t think of any higher virtue. Then there are people who haven’t been to school but who possess a wisdom that embarrasses those who claim to be learned. Then there are the people who say the wrong things but mean well, and people who say the right things but reek of malice.
After shoving my voice recorder before talking-heads for five years now, I think I can tell the phonies from the real people.
But at the end of it, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a job; you pick the wheat and leave out the chaff. Many faces come and go and before long my life is one huge blurry mural of faces. But they come with stories I love. They come with stories that echo my aspirations and some that explain life in a way Dr. James Dobson wouldn’t. They come with stories that gnaw at them at dusk. They come with stories they are excited about, and sometimes stories they’ve made up.
And I listen to them, not because I’m Jesus or anything, but because no child should be left to feed on his father’s nails.