Stop Telling My Story

 When someone is telling a story, just do the civilised thing—shut up and listen. Even if you know how the story ends, just shut up and listen. Every tonal variation, each sigh, all the pauses, the immersive eye contact, and the occasional outside gaze—they are there to make my story land, to make the ending hit like a punch. All for your entertainment. And mine too, for I love how smart and eloquent I sound when I tell a story.

A story is like a journey—it starts with a simple step. It's a journey of pleasure, though it's rough at first, because I have to forage inside my arsenal, finding the perfect vocabulary that will better serve my story for your maximum pleasure. Towards the middle, I will wander away from the topic, just to stimulate your intelligent faculties—to keep you invested and impatient for the lofty ending. Climbing from the middle towards the inevitable climax—for all my stories have climaxes—I'll expect you to mute your vocal chords and employ your ears. And then you'll marvel at the ending, the gut punch that you'll feel, and you'll wish you had my intelligence and eloquence. You'll laugh, whether you want to or not, for my story will hypnotise you and you'll dance to my tunes. I'm sure your doctor will feel useless and pray that you don't realise how my stories are antidotes to the viruses of old age and depression—for then you'll know how useless he is.

See how perfect that ordeal is? See how Godsent I am, an enigma to your simple and bland life? But the problem with you is that you don't want to follow my lead; you want to steal my shine and dilute my eloquence into children's animated chatters. Well, I just want to let you know that it pisses me off, and sometimes your lack of sophistication prompts me to keep my earned wisdom to myself. But I am merciful—I still want the best for you. Besides, I don't really have much of an audience apart from you.

Here's how you can keep drinking from my endless spring without pissing me off. It's a win-win—not really—for you're the one who has everything to gain. I am exercising my sense of charity. That, and I want to appease my approbation tendencies. First, lean in but not too much; I'm trying to share a slice of my wisdom with you, not listen to your breaths. Second, maintain eye contact without sexualizing it—that is, no alternating between my eyes and my mouth. Third, let my facial expressions guide you. I'll let you know when the time to nod comes; just let it guide you. Fourth, please desist from succumbing to the cheap seduction of the emptiness and hollowness around us. Just because someone is slapping his girlfriend doesn't mean you should interrupt me with rudeness, telling me to look at them too. Interrupt me only when there's an emergency. A lady with a nice piece of ass passing by qualifies as an emergency. Fifth, use your ears, not your mouth. Don't hit me with 'hmm, and then? really?' That will fucking piss me off, and I'll be tempted to starve you—and I'm a man who acts on his impulses quite often.

Have I mentioned that you should stop finishing my sentences? I'm quite capable of finishing my own sentences, thank you. You may think finishing them means you're listening, but you couldn't be farther from the truth. From my experience, people who finish other people's sentences are afraid of the hollowness of their minds—so they fill the inevitable silence with literally anything. Just let me finish, think a little—or pretend to—then ask any follow-up questions. Don't you dare formulate questions in your head when I'm still talking, because that will tell me you are the worst kind of listener—the one who says something and immediately starts thinking about what he'll say next, paying zero attention to what the other person is saying.

With stories, especially mine, just let me own my story. Let me wallow in the luxury of my own creation. And maybe one day, when you've drunk enough from my spring, I'll teach you how to craft your own stories and to tell them as well.

Stop telling my story.