A Facebook friend posted a list of things that "men should teach their sons." One of those things was to never, in a negotiation, make the first offer. I was inspired to write this in response:
Slowly, the ticking second hand moves once again past the twelve. Tick. Tock. It's midnight. Just as it has been so many times before. Just as the minute hand, and the hour hand have made so many of their own revolutions across the leering face of time. Tick. Tock.
One of the men sitting at the table raises a hand to wipe away a drop of sweat from his brow. After the first week, he'd almost felt used to the stillness of the air inside the office. After the second, he'd realized he was only fooling himself.
He looks up at the man across the table. The night crew janitors, of course, have cleaned up the remains of the past month's worth of meals eaten at the conference table. But they always make their rounds in the wee hours, and several large brown takeout bags from Sala Thai and Subway still rest to one side of the faux-wood expanse. The smell of curry hangs heavy in the air.
Tick. Tock.
The sweating man thinks again of what he hopes to get out of this meeting. But it's hard. Thoughts of product runs and delivery terms are easily crushed by thoughts of his husband; he'd only been able to see Bill a few cherished times in the past month, when he dropped by with pile of clothes or with a refill of the medicine he'd realized only last Thursday that he'd run entirely out of.
'If only I could suggest...' he thinks, but swiftly cuts off that line of reasoning. No. It just can't be done. Must not be done. It would be counter to the entire core of his identity as a man. A man must *never* make the first offer. Never!
He looks up once more at his opponent in this negotiating session. At least he's wearing a fresh change of clothes. After doing his best to at least put on a fresh shirt every few days, he'd been boggled by his opponent's unchanging attire, stained with perspiration and rumpled with days of endless perching on his rolling office chair.
'Maybe it's some kind of negotiation tactic,' he thinks to himself. 'Maybe he was hoping the sheer *smell* will get me to make the first offer. And God help me, sometimes I want to. Sometimes...' He shakes himself out of his reverie with a shake of his head and reaches for his glass of water. Empty. Empty again. Where was the delivery man with the new jug for the water cooler. Is this some other kind of vile trick? This is hell. This is hell.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
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