Tonight I'm going to make eye contact with someone at the climbing gym. It's my only social destination between work and home, and it's getting late.
I scope out people during my climbing time but wait until I'm done to approach someone. There are a few people I consider approaching, but hesitate, and don't. I spy a guy who looks like my good friend Habib and I want to make eye contact with him. After sitting on a bench for a while, being in my head, I get up and approach him and his friend.
He consents and we start.
He is very focused. I notice that he doesn't blink for a long time. His breathing appears to be very intentional. Because he doesn't blink often I notice when he does blink. His eyes are brown. I swallow twice, and I'm very conscious of it. I'm also very conscious of my breathing. Steady, slow, and deep.
*beep*
We get to talking, and we talk a lot about the experience we just shared. I usually don't ask my participant many questions about the experience from their perspective, but he and I get into it.
He's a conscious, analytical fellow and was aware of his blinking (or lack thereof), which of my eyes he was looking at (mostly my left), and his breathing. In fact, he tells me he was counting during the session, and was very close to counting 60 seconds when the timer expired.
I give him a card and ask him if I may use his name and photograph on the blog, to which he consents.
His name is Joe, and his friend's name is Tommy.
We talk some more about the experiment. The topics including who I approach, what the responses have been, what my intention is when making eye contact with someone, the assumptions I've brought into the experiment and how they've been wrong, and how I am pushing myself to approach people when they aren't alone so that there's an audience for my potential rejection and/or a witness of the eye contact event itself.
The conversation goes really well and the three of us get up to leave. I am looking forward to seeing Joe and Tommy around the climbing gym since I'll be going there every day for the rest of my time in Portland.