The Men You Meet Out Here

Day two hundred and sixty-seven, Georgia. You meet them more often out here than at home. Independent, sharp, entirely unbothered about questioning how things are done. Confident and introverted at the same time, which is the part that confuses people.

The usual word for them is sigma. I am suspicious of the word and I recognise the men.

They say the true thing rather than the polite thing, and get called rude by people who were raised on politeness. Their view of a situation can be excellent and still sit sideways to every social norm. Status doesn't reach them: the world is full of people who believe they know the way because they carry a title, and a man like this looks straight past the title at what the person actually brought.

He isn't a rebel. Rebels need an audience. He simply stands for what he holds and is comfortable enough being himself that adjusting to a fashion would cost him more than it is worth.

He keeps his thoughts to himself and solves things his own way, which protects him from promises that were never going to be kept, and makes him hard to read.

He has few friends. The few are real.

I have been writing this in the third person for two hundred words and I notice that I am not fooling anybody.