Dating : Myron

The Eyecontact — The Smirk — The Uncle — The Hustle — The Exchange

The Eyecontact

Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Yeah. I really wasn’t doing that. At all. Out loud I always say I don’t think in boxes, but the matter of the fact is we all do, somehow or some way.
Exhibit A. I was supposed to meet with Myron Goedhart [EN: Goodheart].
My brain assumed he would be a Caucasian.
Guess what, he wasn’t.

I saw a tall man waiting outside the coffee place, a light went off in my head. Must be him. Nah, but he doesn’t look like a Myron.
I passed the young man, we even made eyecontact, and I sat at my table.
Few moments later my friend Alex, who referred Myron to me for the interview, informed me that Myron was already there.
He gave a quick description.
Tall. Uh-huh. Lightskin. Check. Ballcap. Shit. I knew it, it was the guy at the door, outside.
I stood up, dashed outside, made eyecontact again.
I said, ‘Myron?’
He smirked.

The Smirk

Myron sat across the table. He was wearing running shoes. Which confirmed what Alex said. They run a lot together. Myron runs more often. Stays fit. Which I could confirm as well. Myron must have been six feet something but was built thin. Much like a runner. His cap was blue, with a white NY on it. He was wearing a hoodie and jeans to complete the casual attire. He had a goatee but without the mustache. Just the chin part.
His clothing reminded me off Alex’s. Hm. Like finds like. Their casual appearances somehow reflected their inner laidback personalities, and subconsciously they both seem to mirror each other in the way they dressed.
But that wasn’t the interesting part. I had been told, by Alex, that I’d like Myron. Open mindset. Full of energy. Positive attitude. Focused on personal development. The whole shebang.
I looked at Myron and in a sense, back then, I could feel a bit what Alex meant. And we hadn’t really said a word yet. Not that Myron would, not that much at least. Quite the mysterious fellow.
I looked at him.
And there it was.
The smirk. That was the interesting part. The smirk was there, but not quite there. I’d seen it, outside, at the door when we crossed eyes. The first and the second time.
And now a third.
His smirk reminds me off a line I read in a book once. The smirk gives the illusion that the person giving it seems to be in on a joke that he hasn’t told yet.
There was something in his eyes, too. Focused yet dreamy. As if his mind was somewhere else. Focusing on some kind of vision or reality he was creating in his head.
Thinking back now, he reminds me of how Conor McGregor looks. For those in the unknown, McGregor is a proponent of the Law of Attraction. Which simply states: What you see in your head can manifest itself into reality.
Later I’d find out that the smirk, the eyes, the mystery, all of them foreshadowed what was really going on in Myron’s head. Or at least what I think was going on. Or what he made me think was going on.

The Uncle

Myron said, ‘That’s a secret.’
Somehow we stumbled upon talking about ideologies and ideas and the way we think. Which happens a lot, when talking to me. But the conversation just happened to be steered in this direction. Which would happen more than twice in our talk. Things just happened to go a certain way. Not in a way that I intended, as if meant to be.
I asked him some questions like:
Where did you learn to talk and think like that?
The positive attitude.
What are you looking at?
The look.
Then he said, ‘My uncle.’
The uncle. A seminal figure in Myron’s life, who would return in the conversation consistently.
He gave a vague information and description of him, after I insisted he tell me more. Not that he didn’t. Classic Myron mystery. I just decided I’d cut to the chase.
‘What did he teach you?’ I said.
Myron said nothing. The smirk. The look. The mystery. Silence.
A beat.
I said nothing. I have experience with people, who don’t talk that much. And I recognized the fact that Myron didn’t know me, at all. He had no reason to open to me, for no reason. He needed to warm up.
But, a secret is a secret. I respect that.
Then he said that it was secret.
Now, looking back, it reminds me of the book The Secret. The way Myron talked about taking your destiny in your own hands reminds of the lessons in that book. The Law of Attraction, how one attracts what one thinks, is the governing principle that is laid bare in the pages.
To this day I don’t know what his uncle taught him.
But for the sake of the flow of the talk I had to keep moving. In fact, I had to start the flow.
Myron held back. For some reason.

The Hustle

Myron said, ‘My mom is from the Antilles [islands above South-America].
That was his reaction when I asked him why he looked like he was from Morocco.
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
We talked about his family some more.
His dad used to own a video store. Videoland. Then came the DVD’s and the future and his dad had to find other kinds of jobs.
His dad kept busy with all kinds of jobs, very much like an entrepreneur.
Now he was on wellfare.
I said, ‘Your dad play sports?’
Myron looked quizically but didn’t ask why I asked.
I said, ‘You seem sporty. Maybe it runs in the family.’
‘Yeah man,’ Myron said. ‘I played basketball, like my dad used to. He was pointguard, though. Not tall. In fact, small like a garden gnome.’
We laughed.
I wrote that down in my small notebook. Garden. Gnome. I stopped, looked at Myron.
‘Can I write that down?’ I said.
He smirked.
‘Yeah man, go ahead, you can write that down.’
For some reason I felt I had to ask permission.
His mom is a teacher, in math and Dutch. He has one sister, older. She is twenty-six and Myron is twenty-three.
‘Is your mom tall, then?’ I asked.
‘Not really. And I’m not that tall. In Amsterdam I’m like a Smurf, seriously.’
We laughed again. This guy had a thing with little creatures and funny hats.
Myron used to do kickboxing, in the past more then when I talked to him.
I asked about his studies.
Myron said, ‘Not studying anymore, man.’
I said nothing.
‘Completely nothing. No diploma. Young. Rebellious. I was forced to learn.’
He seemed to give off a vibe that he didn’t like to study.
I asked, ‘What do you do now then?’
‘Hustle, man.’
Hm. A son after his father maybe.
Entrepreneur. Hustler.
‘Like what?’ I said.
‘All kinds of stuff. I sell to restaurants. Food.’
‘Like what?’
‘Luxurious products. Lobster. Saffron. Wagyu beef. Truffels. You know, high-end stuff.’
‘The spice.’
‘Yeah, man.’
I was quiet for a spell.
‘Want to see?’ Myron said, smirk dangling on asymmetrically on his lips.
I smiled back.
‘See what?’
‘Saffron.’
‘You have that on you?’
‘Yeah, man, in my pocket.’
Myron put a small cannister of saffron on the table.
‘That’s what you do, just sell stuff,’ I said.
Myron said, ‘If you sit on your ass, nothing happens.
Then he was quiet again, I felt he was warming up. Not that he was saying that much, or sharing personal deep details. It was just his entire way of being that gave away that he was warming up to me.
He started sharing, by himself.
Myron said, ‘My uncle helped me.’
The uncle. The secret.
Again very vague, without much or any context.
Later in the conversation he’d show me some insight with what he meant by helping.
I finished this part of the conversation.
I said, ‘You do this and that. You hustle. Your uncle helped you.’
‘Right. Exactly. You know.’

At one point I said to Myron that I was grateful for coming up to meet me, and talk to me. He didn’t know me, and the fact that Alex referred him to me, wasn’t a given for him to show. But he did.
‘Yeah, man, no problem,’ Myron said. ‘It’s an exchange.’
Exchange. This concept he’d use throught the whole talk. In his mind there seemed to be some kind of cosmic balance, and that if you do something good, good will come back. Karma.
I looked at his tattoo on his arm. Keith Haring. The man likes his art.
I wanted to talk about the tattoo, and possible more ones. But we ended up talking about something I really love.
Myron was a moviebuff. He loved David Fincher movies. His favorite was Se7en. Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt. He also liked Tarentino. We talked about classics for a spell. And he said I should really watch City of God.
After a while I said, ‘Tell me more about your tattoos.’
‘Which one?’ Myron said.
There are more.
In total he has seven, so far he and I could keep count.
The first was the Keith Haring on his arm.
‘What’s the reason for that tattoo? What’s the story?’
‘It’s random,’ Myron said.
Another thing he has in common with McGregor. All his tattoo are just because of how they look. Art for art. Just because they look good, and he likes them.
Most of his tattoos are more than three years old. One of them symbolizes his passion for producing beats and music. One was for protection against the devil. Another was an ankh-symbol, which stood for Life according to Myron.
He liked music. He had the name of a Kendrick Lamar song tattooed on him.
‘Why did you choose that one?’ I asked.
‘That song. In one word. Just listening to the intro, it’s just music.’
The song was the hurt part 2.
We talked a bit about food and diet.
I asked what he liked, and he said he likes rice and chicken and vegetables. The usual stuff.
I said or asked something, which led Myron to say the food just has to taste good.
‘You think everything through,’ Myron said.
Now it was my turn not to say anything.

By this point in the conversation we talked about food, diet, films. And sleep.
Somewhere in the talk, Myron said a line that stuck with me, since I wrote it down in my notes.
He said, ‘I don’t like sleep.’
That is something I would say.
‘Same here,’ I said.
‘Yeah right man,’ Myron said. ‘Sitting still will get you nowhere.’
It was a line that came up a lot in the talk.
Sitting on your ass. Sitting still.
This was someone who had a troubled past. And I think he said something along those lines to me as well, later in the coversation. Evidently, Myron didn’t do good in his life. Or not as much good as he’d like. And now he was trying to better himself.

The Exchange

I felt a dip in the energy of the conversation, assuming it would come to an end. We were fidgetting, right before getting up. Our eyes darting left and right. I didn’t have any real questions. But I still felt as if I hadn’t hit the mark on this interview. The previous interviews had a sort of climax. A point where I felt the connection, or as Myron would say, the exchange, would feel solid. Where a genuine bond was forged between two people.
Then suddenly, with a smirk, Myron said, ‘One last important thing. I know you’re going to like this.’
And sure enough, I did.
Myron had made a twenty-four hour trip to India. Eight hours in the plane. The rest was just travelling through the country to get to one of his relatives living there.
After arriving in India, he wasn’t at his final destination. He had to grab a taxi, to a train station. Which almost made him get conned, not once, but twice.
He noticed the pattern. The way they asked the question: What time does your train go?
They would make you miss your train, so you had to wait a very long time, and then you were forced to take a ride with another cab, costing you more money.
At one point he just asked a police man, thinking he could trust him. The cop said what time the train was coming and where Myron could wait.
He was waiting for a long long time. Six hours almost. He just studied people. Coming and going.
There was this streetkid, dirty, no clothes, everything.
The kid came to Myron, and asked the time. Then he turned around, and walked to the other side of the station, there was no roof or anything like that, open-air. He stopped at the rails, squatted and took a dump on the rails. He wiped his ass, with his left hand. Then he walked away.
Then he had to sit in a train for another six hours. The cabin where he was sitting was full, schoolchildren everywhere.
Finally he had to to take a taxi, up into the mountains, the Himalaya’s. The drivers drove like madmen, made you wanna throw up. And there were no traffic signs. Chaos.
At the end of his long long journey he came across the Zen-paradise, as Myron called it, where his aunt was staying. She was sick. Terminal, I believe. And she was trying to cleanse herself, at this resort. Alternative medicine.
Then I asked Myron if she got better, and he didn’t respond.
I saw him thinking deeply.
One last important thing. I know you’re going to like this.
Myron said, ‘You believe in karma?’
I said nothing.
‘In a way, it means the reason you get sick is because you did something wrong. You can’t just get sick, without you having done some bad stuff in your past. Or maybe in your past lives. If you believe in karma.’
‘Are you saying your aunt did something?’
He didn’t say anything.
Then it struck me.
The look. The smile, at least the smirk. The uncle. The hustling. The not wanting to sit on your ass. The wanting to do more. Do better.
The climax. The exchange.
‘But why do you believe this?’ I asked.
Myron said, ‘I did some bad stuff. Then I made a switch. My uncle helped me.’
The secret.
‘That is the exchange,’ he said. ‘You do good stuff, in return good stuff happens to you.’

Months later when I asked Alex about Myron, he said he was doing fine.
‘Myron was thinking about studying,’ Alex said. ‘In the US.’
I nodded, and smirked. I must have wondered about Myron some more, as I do now. And I believe I’ll just keep wondering what is behind the cover of the secret that is Myron.
All I know for sure is that wherever Myron is, he must be busy.
Off his ass. Hustling. Making exchanges.