Years

 All these years, where have I been? I am here, I am looking around for an answer to a question that I am afraid to ask. She said you are not the man you used to be, and I said neither is this guy. As I stood there next to the light switch that had shown the bright light on the betrayal I knew was happening, but was too confused to accept, I had no real words to say. No great wisdom to impart to the woman that had made my son. She just laid there with no real excuse, and did what most people in her situation would do, she blamed me. Not the worse idea in the world, I wasn't blameless. Few of us are. I had, in retrospect, perhaps taken her loyalty for granted. That was my mistake. One that I should have known better than to make, but here I was making the fuck out of it. I always say that if you are going to make a mistake, make it a big one, and here I was refusing to learn from another mistake.

I wish that I was strong enough to just walk away, but I am not the swiftest horse in any stable. I just stood there like the ever increasing moron that I was becoming, and tried to make sense of it all. I could only think of the time that I had lost with her, time that I would never find again. Time being one of the more precious things that we humans have was something not to pissed away like this, but here I was looking at her, and realizing that years of my life were circling the drain. A drain that I didn't have a lot more of years to tip into to. I wanted something beautiful to say, I wanted something to make the light behind her dead eyes relight, but I knew it was pointless. 

It was like swimming in fables, Aesop didn't have a story for this. Her words were weapons, violent ones. Ones that made me want to just be left to the wolves. Let them circle me like the dying buffalo I was, at least to them, let them feed. I just wanted something to say that wouldn't fade away. Something that was beautiful enough to break its way through the walls of her betrayal. But I wasn't then, or probably ever that clever. Cleverness doesn't run in my family, and I doubt that even if I had been clever enough to say something pithy to her it would have made much difference. 

I began to calculate steps away from her. After all, where the fuck else did I have to go? It wasn't like I had some sort of fall back plan. We had, in a moment of madness (at least for me) made a whole lot of promises that I thought were in need of keeping. Away was the only place I had to go, away is not a happy place. Away isn't the south of France on a yacht with Nichole Kidman on my arm or in my bed. No, away was to a dark, dark place where most people don't want to be. She looked up at me with the brown eyes that I had been foolish enough to fall into, and said "I can't explain this, I was so in love in you, and then I wasn't. It was just like falling off a cliff."

I just looked at her, and said "a tout a l'heure." To her credit, and I am not in the business of giving her credit, that was when she knew that we had become enemies. Shockingly enough, I have very few enemies. But those that have made themselves into enemies know it. I do not fuck around. I follow the Roman theory, I create a wasteland, and call it peace. It is something we can count on to the end. There are no embraces after we have become enemies. Why would there be? We didn't just drift apart. We were ripped apart. 

To be fair to her, which is better than she deserves, I wasn't prefect for her, I am not some sort of saint that was hanging on the cross and being told to "come down we need the wood." I  had put my arms around the waist of another woman. However, that was just a moment of temporary weakness, or at least to me. For all my stupidity, I wasn't going to piss away her. She was, in theory, all of that and a box of chocolates too, But here I was looking at an angel from nightmare. Her laying there, unrepentant, blaming me for her betrayal. All I could hear was her voice of treason telling me the lies she wanted me to believe.

They (whoever the fuck "they" are) that only your friends can betray you. The theory is that if you didn't trust them to begin with, how could they betray you. I've spent way too many hours of a otherwise useless life trying to sort out this betrayal. I am, despite what most people think, given a whole lot of thought to this, and I am not as stupid as one would think. I have pondered it upon many a rock, and despite trying to shake it off, and pretend it is all OK, I have come to the somewhat sad conclusion that somehow it is all my fault. I wish, for my own sake, and the sake of ending this post on some "happy/clever" note that this wasn't true, but here I am accepting responsibility for being the type of fool that would make Prospero proud. 
 

Surviour

 Ernst Hemingway once said that "critics are men that watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors." True words spoken by a fellow who probably knew a lot about critics. No one likes to be wrong, no one likes to be criticized. No one wants to be told that their grammar is shit, and that they couldn't spell CAT if someone spotted them the C and the T. But critics exist, they look at our production with a look of distaste that reminds us of a man who has smelt a large pile of dog shit on his Sunday walk to church. I suppose they serve some purpose, they keep us honest. They make us think over hard about the things we put on "paper" They make us look inside ourselves for the bon mot that makes them have to ponder what those words actually means.

There is the fun part of it, trying to out critic the critic. Make them ponder words they have to look up to see the meaning, make them ponder if the word coulour should have that "U" in it or not. Make them think, because when a critic thinks, he or she weakens the nation. They aren't creators, they are destroyers. They look at a misplaced comma or a lack of subject/verb agreement as an offense against God. They look at a split infinitive as a sign of retardation. Forgetting the Raymond Chandler quote that "when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so that it will stay split." And that is coming from Raymond Chandler a fellow who wrote a lot of very, very good books. Hell, even Star Trek tell us that "to boldly go where no man has gone before." Well, newsflash Rodenberry that is a split infinitive. 

Do we care? Maybe the more pedantic of us do. The ones who come down and shoot the survivors. The ones that are too afraid of the 'battle' of writing to give it a try, and prefer to pick apart the works of others. The ones that tell us that it is to go boldly, not to to boldly go. Those cunts, the ones that would probably take candy away from a baby on some sort of general principle. They don't build, they burn. They take apart the works of others because they have nothing else to do. They don't create, they can't create. If they did create they would have to be letter perfect or risk the charge of hypocrisy. 

They look upon the works of Joseph Roth like genius, and try to find a misplaced comma. They aren't reading for content they are reading to try to find mistakes. Mistakes happen, or else the critic wouldn't have ever been born. A fact they happily gloss over in their thinking. They are prefect, never a hair out of place, and stockings always straight. It must be a very, very dull existence to always be just so perfect. I'd wager that the critic has never had an original thought in their miserable life. They can't venture out on the limb of creativity, because out there lies split infinitives. Out here on the perimeter there are no stars. Out here we are stoned immaculate. We don't concern ourselves with subject/verb agreement. We don't know, nor do we give a good gods damn about where to place a semi colon. 

Semi colons, and colons can go merrily fuck themselves as far as we are concerned. We are not here to march to the beat of the grammar Nazi's drum. They can bend over, turn around, and go fuck themselves.  We are here to tell a tale, some of those tales are sad, some of them are scary, and some of them educate us in spite of ourselves. They tell themselves that if every little rule of grammar isn't followed, then there is no point in reading the text. They are small people, people who imagination has left far, far behind. 

Of course, the argument exists that we are just not educated enough to know or follow the rules of grammar, and perhaps there is something to be said for that. We just didn't pay enough attention when we were being taught to diagram a sentence. That we are too retarded to understand the simple rules of grammar. Perhaps we will never be able to square that circle. We write for content, we don't give two donkey fucks about grammar. Maybe that makes us look under educated. But, at the end of the day, we are worried about making you cry, or making you feel, not making you check off a box about split infinitives. 

 

 

My Betrayal

 For reasons I could not understand, my latest playmate forced me to walk to her. Maybe it was another act of cruelty in our dirty, little civil war, or maybe she was just curious if I could walk the 15 feet to her table or not, it didn't matter to me overmuch at the moment. I staggered over to the booth she primly occupied and slid into the seat across from her. "Sit down, before you fall down you damn fool" she said with the anger that I had come to expect from her. I did as I was told, she was one of the few people in my life that I generally 'obeyed' though I am not sure she knew it or not. I knew that this was going to be a difficult conversation, and I wasn't sure that I was drunk enough for it, but drunk or not here I was. 

"You know why we are here, don't you?" I looked at her blearily, "I have a general idea, we are here to discuss my sins, my betrayal." She nodded, "at least you are drunk enough to admit that. It took you long enough to accept it." I sighed, "I am not sure if my acceptance is the same as your acceptance, but I agree that you think I betrayed you. I have admitted this to you many times before, so why are we here?" She gave me a very,very dirty look (she was very good at giving dirty looks), and said "because you retarded bastard, I am tired of this dance. I am here to get answers."

I shrugged, "I think I have tried to give you answers before, and you didn't accept them. Why do you think that I have new and improved answers now?' She smiled "I know you, you son of a bitch. Probably better than I would like to admit, and I know you have been pondering this issue between us for a considerable amount of time. I am here to listen to what idiot excuse you've come up with this time." I tried to think of a witty reply, but I had nothing, "yes, you bitch, I have been pondering it for a long time. I have tried to convince myself that I was in the right, that you deserved my 'betrayal' as you call it. I tried to figure out why I did what I did, and what would have been different between us if I had not made that choice." 

She took a drink, glared at me, and said "I know what you said you the reason was, I know you weren't in the greatest of "head spaces" at the time, well I know that now. I did not know that then. Do you realize that I trusted you? Do you have any fucking idea how hard that was for me to do? Do you have any concept of that?" She  held up a hand, "don't answer that you fucking moron, because there is nothing you can say that will help." I was way too drunk to handle this, but I guess I had no real choice, so I was going to give it my best. "You said repeatedly said  about me that I didn't trust anybody, so why the fuck would I have believed you trusted me?"

She sighed, "because you stupid bastard, we spent an awful long time telling each other things about ourselves that other people didn't know." I shook my head, "I do not accept the fact that we were that close, you fucking hate me now, I think that if I were to turn around, you would put a blade in my back." She laughed softly, "you don't get it do you? You might be the cleverest bastard I know, but somehow still just stone, cold stupid at the same time. It's a real gift." I tried to digest that, "fine, genius tell me what I am missing then."  

She slowly stood up, and placed her money on the table. "If and it is a big if, I ever felt the need to tell you what is obvious to the entire world, except for you, this is not the time nor the place to do it. I want you a lot more sober than you are at the moment to explain this to you, even though I still doubt it will sink into your thick skull." I looked up at her, and it hit me like a surprise left that she was beautiful.  However before I could articulate what was slowly sinking into the aforementioned thick skull, she swanned out of the bar leaving me alone with my thoughts, which is to say she left me alone. 

 

Small Things

 "What in the blue fuck are you doing here?' she asked. (I know it's either passive voice or shit gammar, but fuck you nazis). I peered across the booth at its newest occupant. "Trying to die of drink rather than thirst, why do you ask?" She snorted a laugh "Sully told me that he threw you out hours ago. He also told me that you come to this shit hole when you are slumming it, but he doesn't want you to know that he knows that." I let out  a small sigh, "And here I thought I could keep this place my dirty little secret. I guess you have no secrets from your bartenders. If you can't trust the person who gets you drunk on a regular basis, who can you trust?"

I shook my head in a vain attempt to clear it, if she was here things were a lot worse than I thought. Which, upon reflection, was not good. I was pretty sure that things were already a big, stinking pile of camel shit, and if it was worse than that, well brother I am fucked. I focused, it paid to focus around her, she was the type that didn't fuck around. The one (well the main one) that I never tried to coax into my bed because, truth be told, I was convinced I would somehow 'disappoint' her. The idea of her looking down at me, and saying "that's it, that all?", put the fear of a whole lot of gods into me.  

I had  never told her all of that, or if I had told her I was too drunk to remember, which amounts to the same thing in my book. "You've not been sober for 3 months, don't you think it is time you came up for some air? When was the last time you ate?" I pondered for a second, "what today is it?" She replied "it's Thursday." "If it is Thursday, then I would hazard a guess to say that I ate sometime after noon on Tuesday." She looked at me, "I figured as much, here." She pushed a bag across the table at me. The smell of actual food made my mouth water and sick at the same time. 

"I'll sit here till you eat at least half of it, so you might as well tuck in slim." she said with a smile. I had seen that smile before, it was the one she saved for the moments she was trying to convince a group of people that she was right. I tucked in like a good boy, and said "this might make me throw up you know?" She nodded "it might, but I am counting on your stomach being made of sterner stuff." I started to eat reluctantly, "fair play to you, but if I am here I don't expect to see anyone I 'know'." She smirked at me,"don't you think I know that you stupid son of a bitch? I am not here to drag you out of the stews. I know you'll either do that on your own, or I'll be the chief mourner at your funeral. I am here to let you know, that in spite of your best attempts to alienate all of us, you still have at least 3 people on this planet that want you to stick around."

She had once threatened to cut my head off, and send it home to me mother in a box,  so I knew that she didn't do a lot of mincing of words. I waved over the waitress, and ordered another pint of the slop they served here, after a certain amount of beer it all began to taste the same.  I got my new pint, held it up and toasted her, "here's to poor life choices." She clinked my glass with hers "oh, your latest poor life choice is right over there." She pointed to a booth in the back, "I was just the scout of the battalions of troubles that were coming your way tonight sweetheart." I followed her hand despite my over served state, I could see the person she was pointing to, it was a vague outline but a distant glance was all I needed to see who she was pointing to. "You can't be serious, her? here? that is just cruel." 

She nodded "sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. you'll recognize the quote won't you Shakespeare?" I sighed, I knew when I was beat. "Yeah, you bitch I do, go tell my next playmate I am ready for her to eviscerate me." She stood up "I wish you luck Shakespeare, I really do." 

ave atque vale lupus

 To again steal, this time the correct line from Camus, "Mama died today." Of course, there are two small problems with that statement. One, she died last Thursday, and two I didn't find out till two days later. Also, I guess problem three would be this post is about a week late for the quote, much like her, I am not perfect.

I am also not Camus' Stranger, I am not going to wander off, stare a lot at the sea, and eventually kill an Arab. I don't really go in for murder as a general rule, and I don't have anything in particular against Arabs. Either way, my mother, otherwise known as "The Wolf that Raised Me" is dead. I was told afterwards by her brother that she didn't want me to know she was dying. Not to save my tender feelings, she knew me well enough to know that I don't possess tender feelings, but as perhaps one last act of a mother's guilt. She said that if I couldn't visit her while she was alive, what difference did it make if she was dead. Truth be told, I was 'read' out of the family a long, long time ago, and I didn't go see her. I spent 25 mostly awful years in the shithole county that the Wolf called home, and I felt I had done my time. I could have actually murdered an Arab, or anyone else for that matter, and done about that much time in prison, and that county was a prison, at least for me. 

I took her univite of me to her funeral as a personal affront, and went anyway. I had never 'crashed' a funeral before, and figured it would be a long time (hopefully) before I had the chance to do it again. I didn't bother to tell my surviving relations of this plan because quite frankly, fuck them. I kept a respectable distance, and watched as they put the Wolf in the ground. I said no prayers they wouldn't have been to the same god as the Wolf worshiped anyway. I just watched, I had said all that I needed to say to her ages ago, I guess the pity of it is that she didn't realize that. I suppose it was difficult for the Wolf to look at her prize male pup (I was her only male offspring), and realize what a bastard she had reared.

Much like the paterfamilias, and the rest of the clan that I am related to by blood, we had nothing but DNA, and a love of John Barleycorn in common. That and we are all carbon based life forms, but the connections ended there. I wasn't built for the stage that the shit county the Wolf called home provided me. Mainly because there isn't one in the whole damn county. It is a boil on the ass of the world, and very little, if anything of note is there, and it will never change. It is the land that time forgot, and time forgot it for a very, very good reason. 

She reared me the best she could I suppose and my many, many faults are mine alone and are not exactly her fault. In my more melancholy moments, I blame her for have a child with the paterfamilias because, quite simply, they just didn't need to have offspring. Of course, the problem with that theory is it means I wouldn't exist. I am not sure how to square that circle, and being a rather dull fellow I try not to ponder on it too much. How do you hold your own birth against someone? If you possessed a Tardis, would you go back in time and tell the Wolf to not marry the son of a bitch that sired me? It is a thought experiment that leads nowhere, trust me I have tried to make it work.

I  suppose she did the best with what she had to work with, i.e. me, and overall my sins should not be placed at her feet. She was dead two days before I found out, and I felt about 8 minutes of sadness. I shed about 6 tears for her, and that was it. This should be further proof that the Wolf sired a bastard, what kind of monster can't cry for the dying of his Mother? I suppose we have the answer to that question now. The kind of monster that is me. I spent a few solid years resenting her for birthing me, but at the end of the day (end of her days at least) it really wasn't her fault. I mean she was just getting laid, I seriously doubt I was planned, and I am quite sure that if she had her own Tardis and could go into the future to see the result of that one night of whatever the fuck it was, she might have denied the paterfamilias access to her "delta of venus." Maybe waiting a couple of weeks before giving it up would have produced a better result.

But, that is not how it works, time flows in one direction in this world, and that is forward. She made her decision, and here I am trying to find the grief I suppose I should feel for her. Trying, and failing it seems. The death of Camus' stranger put him on a path that led to murder and the guillotine, I am not some French author's construct, I am the product of the Wolf despite my protestations to the contrary. 

I didn't even christen her the Wolf that Raised Me, that was someone from my distant past that, when confronted with the results of the Wolf's teaching me to suppress my feelings by all means, asked me "if I was raised by wolves?" She was unimpressed with my pithy reply of "just one." Thus, the name "The Wolf that Raised Me" was born. That was more years ago than I care to remember, but since that day she was "The Wolf." A cool nickname for a very, very uncool woman, but at the end of the day it suited her.

That day was last Thursday or maybe a bit earlier, I don't nor shall I ever know. The day the Wolf sorted out she was dying, the day she realized that her and the darkness were about to come face to face. Did she wonder if her season was coming to a close? I don't and won't know, and I don't know that I care. I know that she made the conscious choice while still lucid to tell her brother, my sole surviving (and therefore my now favorite uncle), to tell me to fuck off. Perhaps wisdom does come late, as the saying goes, and perhaps wisdom hit the Wolf at the end. That wisdom telling her that the cub she reared was, in fact, the exact bastard that she deserved. 

I think the major problem with the Wolf and I was, I just didn't respect her. That is my failing not hers, and I take that blame with eyes wide open. She can't be blamed for the sins of her offspring, nor should she be blamed for the man I became. I cut her out of the loop on purpose, and eventually on her deathbed I think she sorted that out. I am prone to think that it was that knowledge that led her to make what would be, between us, her final decision. The decision to tell her brother to tell her only (loving) son to go fuck himself. So, here we are (well here I am) after close to 30 years later, finding respect for the Wolf. Farewell Mother, (not Mom, Mother) and in keeping with your upbringing, I will tell you the same thing I told the man you chose to father me, at his funeral, which I was invited to. Rot.  

 

 

The Other

 "Hello, GI. I figured I'd find you here at your usual station, propping up a bar and darkly brooding about something." Nicklas sat down, ordered us both a pint and a shot, and begin propping up his portion of the bar like the good lad that he used to be, before the world changed both for him, and him. "Hullo Nicklas, fancy meeting you here, come to relive old times? Or has the wife kicked you out of the house?" Nicklas barked a laugh, "no she hasn't kicked me out yet, you old bastard. In fact, it was her idea that I find you and make sure that you were still amongst the living. Other than the odd rumour about your life, it has been an age since I last saw you. I looked over at him, "you last saw me in jail. My playmate Felix, as you like to call him, had put me in stir for being a pain in his ass again."

Nicklas nodded, "ah yes and how is your playmate doing?" I shrugged, "he's left me alone for a good, solid two months, which for him is a record, he must be too busy burning villages and eating children to give me a second thought. Which is usually a good thing for me." I raised my shot "skol! Nicklas, here's to Felix's continuing forgetfulness." Nicklas clinked glasses, downed his shot like the good lad he used to be and said "So, GI what would you be if you didn't follow the rules.?" I quirked an eyebrow at him "what do you mean, and why do you ask?" He shrugged "I mean if you didn't follow the few rules of society you do, if you didn't have to follow your boy Felix's rules, what would you be? A hippie, a gangster, a poet, or a water taxi driver?" 

I sat down my pint and said "what do you think I would be?" He replied "I think you'd probably be a criminal of some sort, probably a high dollar thief, or maybe a hired gun. But the rules keep you from it." I smiled, "those aren't rules, those are laws. They aren't the same thing, but I take your point I think. If I wasn't following the rules I would be a lot happier, I doubt I would be employed in any capacity because no one would want to hire a rule breaking me. This might impact my happiness some, since no job usually equals no money, and no money almost always equals no pints, and probably no food either." He laughed "leave it to you to put pints first." I said "well my body has decided that unless I want to gain a hundred pounds in like 4 days, I can either eat, or I can drink pints. It seems to not allow for me to do both."

"I also suspect that we would not be friends, you and this Other GI of which we are speaking. You probably wouldn't like him, and I am pretty certain he wouldn't be a fan of you either. No, this Other as we can call him would probably be a right proper bastard." I looked into my pint for more of an explanation, but as usual all my pint did was sit there promising me happiness at the end. I continued "I also suspect you are correct, he would more than likely be a criminal of some sort, probably not a particularly good one because he would more than likely be lazier than me, if such a thing is possible. He would also probably not be living in any sort of city either. I would imagine he would loathe people as much as I do, but being unrestrained by those 'rules of polite society' he wouldn't be involved in society overmuch."

I ordered us another pint, and said "I also suspect he would be much closer to an alcoholic than I am, but I am not sure if that is possible either. He wouldn't want to be sober for this," here I waved my hand in the air to encompass the bar, and the world the general. "I would imagine the hazier his days and nights were, the better it would be for him, and maybe the rest of the world too. I am not sure if sober him would be more likely to burn the world or not. Drunk him would probably talk a little about burning the world, think a lot about burning the world, but ultimately get lost in the details about what type a match to use, and would never get around to it."  

"But what brings you to this fever dream Nicklas? You aren't the philosophical type, or at least you didn't used to be, has fatherhood made you forget those drunken feelings we had ages ago?" He smiled back at me, "fatherhood has nothing to do with this GI, I am here to try, once again, to keep you from pushing the self-destruct button. I drew the short straw that the few friends you still possess decided to draw to send one of us to keep you amongst the living. A task, that I might add, has become more and more difficult over the years." 

I sighed, "Nicklas, I appreciate that, I really do, but I am beginning to think that me being amongst the living is more trouble than it is worth. I don't really add anything to the world other than being a bad example, and I am not sure anyone is really paying any attention to me anymore. Which, to be honest, they shouldn't. I don't know that I have anything to add to the world's overall knowledge. At some point my playmate, as you call him, Felix is going to kill me. I am beginning to think that perhaps I should beat him to the punch. It would be a last act of rebellion in an otherwise wasted life."

"Life is hard Nicklas, and I don't know that I can perform the "dance" that society expects of me much longer. He nodded "We've known this about you for years, we have tried very hard to keep you from doing what we think is inevitable, but at some point we have to realize we can't stop you if you are that determined to do it. But before you do take the easy way out, look at this," Here he slide a photo across the table at me, it was a photo of his son. The son that I had suggested they name him A___.  "Remember him? Remember coming over to our house and handing him a book that you promised to explain to him when he was old enough to understand it? That biography of AH that was miles too old for him when you gave it to him, well guess what old man, he's all grown up and ready to listen."

I sent daggers his way, "You son of a bitch, you know why you're here better than I do, they sent you because they know you know the right buttons to push to keep me on this mortal coil." He smiled, "of course they do, that is why I am here, well that and I am one of the few people that think the world is a better place with you in it." I grimaced, "You know that is what that bitch said to me when she left?' He smiled "of course I do why do you think I said it? Sometimes you just need to hear it from someone other than the "hers" of your life. I don't pretend to like her, nor do I pretend to understand your relationship with her, those mysteries I don't need to solve. I am merely here to tell you it what you need to hear. It might not be what you want to hear, but it is what you need to hear. Take it for what it is worth, and come explain to my heir why he is named A___." I sighed, "well since you put it that way, lead on MacDuff, let's teach the next generation why they are here."

 

Not so Civil (additon)

 Sully slide a pint across the bar to me and gave me a look that said "you're fucked mate." Sadly, I had seen that look before, and while I appreciated the pint I began to look around for its cause. It didn't take long for me to spot her, she had a way of standing out in a crowd. The problem was she knew it, and she liked the attention. It was both a reason to hate her and a reason to love her at the same time. Which, to my cost, I did. She waltzed into the place like she owned it, which I am sure she thought she did, and sat down on the stool next to me. My day had already been a bit shit, and seeing her was not an improvement. I didn't have the guts to tell her to fuck off, so here I was stuck with whatever awfulness she was bringing, but at least I had a full pint.

I was staring very intently at that pint when she sat down next to me. It wasn't like I could run away. I didn't have anywhere else to go, and even if I did she knew where I lived. "Hullo Shakespeare, how's tricks?' I sighed deeply, "tricks are the same as they as usual. Why do you ask? It is not like you give a shit, you are just here to torment me." She had the decency to pretend to care "of course I care Shakespeare, I wouldn't be here if I didn't." 

 "Does your husband or your other boyfriend know where you are?" She gave me a glare that would melt chocolate, "of course they don't  you stupid bastard. Why would they? What I am supposed to tell them? See you later asshole, I am off to meet my drunk ass boyfriend?" I let out a small laugh, "well, while all of that is true, I suppose that it would be a particularly bad idea to tell them that." She nodded, "for once we agree on something outside the bedroom. It's a Xmas miracle."  I took a long draught out of my pint, and said "there is only one small problem sweetie." She arched an eyebrow and replied "Just one? and what pray tell do you think that one small problem is?" I replied "the husband isn't exactly the problem, he has to suspect he's replaced, it is the other boyfriend that is the issue. Did you really think I wouldn't sort out that I was just a "stage upon life's way" for you?" I grimaced, because this was not a pleasant chat for me. "A wise person once told me a very simple equation, it was if she will cheat with you, she will cheat on you. I was way, way too stupid to listen to them, and so here I am. Tragically in love with you, and realizing that you really aren't capable of actual love. I doubt either your husband, or your other boyfriend know this about you." This was not what she wanted to hear, she wanted to hear all the good things about herself that the large R romantic in me had convinced himself to tell her. Sadly, he wasn't around. 

 This was the moment that I had dreaded, the moment that led me to Sully's and to the multiple pints I had already consumed before she walked in. "Sweetie, you are by a considerable distance, the hottest woman who has ever occupied my time and my bed. You are, arguably the smartest woman I have ever met, but.." here I trailed off, I didn't know how to finish a sentence that made little sense to me and would make zero sense to her. "But what? I am both the hottest and smartest woman who has ever had the poor sense to occupy both your mind and your bed. A feat that, I might add, is a lot harder than one would think."

I nodded my head in agreement, "I don't disagree with you sweetie, the bed isn't that difficult to occupy, but the mind, well that is a different story. It is the actual problem that we have." She arched a perfect eyebrow, "what do you mean Shakespeare?' I sighed, "if only I was the wordsmith you wanted me to be.  If I was, I would tell you how many times I pinched myself to make sure I am awake. To make sure that I have somehow convinced a smart, sexy woman like you to waste your time on me.  But then I started thinking, and sadly it doesn't pay to be a thinking man."

I glanced over at her, the look forming in her eyes made my resistance to her almost break. Thank fuck for pints. A long drink from my pint slowed the beating of my heart enough to keep me on point.  I had to look her in the eyes and tell her it's over. "I can't be the man you need, and someday you'll realize that, and when you do, you will drop me like a hot rock. I know that you love me, but I think it's time I stop believing that matters in the long run. I will miss you. I will probably miss you for the rest of my life. In fact, I figure you will be the standard I use to judge the next one(s) in my life. I doubt they will thank you for it."

The look of disbelief on her face would have been priceless if I wasn't the one paying the "price." The concept that someone like me would tell someone like her to "fuck off" wasn't something that she could comprehend. I suppose I should have gloated in the "win" for loser men everywhere, but all I could do was feel empty. Eventually it hit home, and she said "you are breaking up with me? you ignorant, fat son of a bitch? You drunk good for nothing bastard. You are telling me that I am not enough for you.?"

I did my best, "I love you, but I hate you. I might be wrong, it might be that I hate myself for loving you, I just don't know. I doubt I will be better off with you. I wish I could bring myself to hate you, to somehow make you hate me, but I am just here as clueless as clueless can be. I wish I could tell you that I can not see the masterpiece in your eyes. I wish I could say that you haven't written words on my soul that I can't erase, but I can't. I can't tell you that there isn't  a little piece of you in every thing I do. However, I have to tell you that all of that just isn't enough"

The look of puzzlement on her pretty face was priceless, but only for an instant. She shook her slowly, and quoted (unintentionally I think) Bugs Bunny, and said "you realize, of course, that this means war." 

 

Diary of a Madman

 The diary landed with a solid 'thunk' on the table in front of me, it even had a pretty red ribbon tied around it to keep it tied shut, and to discourage prying eyes.  "Did you really think that I wouldn't find out?" I looked up at her, and replied "no, not really, but what took you so long? It has been 12 years after all." She snorted a laugh, "Two things I guess. One, I thought that I would be able to let it go, but that just isn't true. Two, I thought maybe you'd change, but that certainly isn't true. So, here we are." I picked up the diary and rifled the pages. "How long have you had this?" She smiled back and said "just about 10 years, you really should find a better hiding place for your sins, or perhaps a different place to commit them."

I shrugged, "well I guess sin begins at home doesn't it sweetheart? It's not like you were interested in anything but the money the business brought into the house. You certainly stopped being interested in me a long time ago." Another snort of derision "you fucking bastard, fucking the maid? How much more of a godsdamn cliche can you be?" I sighed "I am guessing that question doesn't really require an answer, but for the sake of being clear, it wasn't some master plan, and in retrospect it wasn't a particularly good idea." She frowned, and replied "not a good idea Shakespeare? That is the best you can do? With all those pretty little words at your disposal, pretty words that I am sure you employed to talk that little hussy into bed with you." 

She continued, "you realize when the little bitch 'disappeared' I could have told the gendarmes about your little tryst, and they would have probably had a lot of very awkward questions for you to answer? But no, I decided that while you are, in fact, perhaps the biggest bastard I've ever met, that not even you would stoop to murder. I am beginning to think that perhaps I was mistaken." I looked up at her "she left a note, it wasn't the most obvious suicide note, but I think it made her intentions clear enough, and those gendarmes you wanted to feed me to thought so as well." She barked a laugh, "I am sure they did especially after you 'donated' to their Xmas fund, like the loving husband and gods fearing Christian that you pretend to be" 

I pointed at the diary on the table, "you've had this for years, I assume you've read it all?' She sighed "jesus is that what you are worried about? Not worried about me? Not worried about how the lines in that little book ripped my heart into pieces? Not worried about lines sad enough to make me not just cry, but sob so hard I thought my ribs would break. These aren't white lies, you son of a bitch, these are the blackest of black lies. I fucking loved you. You had me believing in the fairy tale that you convinced me we were living, and now I have to cope with the idea that not only is this fairy tale not coming true, but that it was a lie from the beginning. And just for fun, I get to attempt to wrap my head around the idea that you are a murderer." 

That got my full attention, after all being accused of murder by the woman you promised some sort of happily ever after to, does tend to get one's attention. Regardless of the truth of the accusation, it would make for some unpleasant chats with the gendarmes. People who are not known for their sympathy or understanding. I tend to avoid unpleasant conversations, which is a pity, since I was currently trapped in one with no real way out. I stood up, and considered going to her, wrapping my arms around her and telling her how much I loved her (which, in my own fashion, is true), and that we would get through this together. But, I  knew her, I knew that moment had passed, if it ever existed, and that my "pretty, little words" weren't going to get me out of this. At least not unscathed.

She backed up a step, held up a hand, and said "no stay the blue fuck away from me. This isn't something your words can fix Shakespeare. This isn't just you getting drunk, and wandering off, this is...." she stopped there and began to cry. Great racking sobs, not the quiet crying one does at a funeral of a somewhat close friend, but sobs that I thought would break her apart. Ever been there when the nuclear bomb that is you and your actions finally fall? Ever saw someone come all the way apart in front of you and you know it's your fault? I hope, for your sake, that you haven't. It is not pleasant. Not something to tell your mates about over a pint at the local on a Friday night.

She sat down slowly, and said "tell me the truth if you can manage it, tell me why I wasn't enough." That hit me like a proverbial ton of bricks. Ever had someone ask you why they weren't enough? I hope not, it breaks every little bit of you. "I wanted the best for you always, and when I realized that isn't me, I began to drift apart from you. When I realized that I couldn't be the man you needed me to be something inside me sort of broke." She gave me a very, very furious look, and say "broke? something in you broke? you son of a bitch. You're blaming me for what you did?" I raised a hand in protest, "not blaming you, just trying to explain why you just became the voice inside my head, and not exactly real anymore."

She let out a small gasp, "you self-centered son of whore, I am real, I was always real, right here in front of you all this time. I didn't go anywhere, I didn't "fade into the mists of your complicated history" I have fucking been here, right in front of you, all this time. And what do you do? You try to rewrite the 'boy meets girl' story with some tramp almost half your age. I must be as mad as March hare to ever believe any of those pretty lies you told me. You son of a bitch, you even used universal gravitation to explain the attraction we felt for one another. And like a fucking moron, I fell for it, I began to need you like a man dying of thirst needs water. You became my drug, and then you...." 

She again broke off into sobs, and I began to detect an awful pattern, one in which I was the monster that was the cause of the problem. I opened my mouth to reply, but before I could form some limp dick excuse for my behavior, she held up a forestalling hand, and said "resolve yourself to telling me, for once in your godsforsaken life, the actual truth. I can't seem to bear the way you can not love me, and for reasons passing understanding, I need you to make yourself unlovely to me." I sat back down, the heaviness of the guilt she was piling on me was becoming more than I could bear. 

"It wasn't like that, it wasn't me trying to do some number on you. I didn't plan to make her into some new, younger version of you. But there she was, a lovely young creature seeking adventure, and ready to see the world. She just didn't realize the world wasn't so sweet or tender. I didn't intend to break her, I wasn't even trying bend her, but well we made the simplest mistake two people in that position can make." Here I stopped and looked at her. She was, even in her grief, beautiful, and here I was admitting that to quote her "she wasn't enough." Not enough for a self absorbed son of a bitch like me. No wonder it didn't register with her, why would it? She was all that anyone with any sense would want. Smart, funny, gorgeous, and even more importantly, convinced that I was what she wanted in a life partner.

"Your betrayal is not something that I can forgive. You have to pay the price for it. All you had to do was tell me. But no, you chose to lie to my face. We can't be together. "This", she waved a hand vaguely around, "can't exist anymore." I nodded, "I had figured as much. I don't have the pretty words that will make this unhappen. I am sure that you hate me." She laughed at that, and replied "You stupid bastard, I really wished I hated you, I wish I had given up on you, I know I am better off without you, but I can't seem to numb the pain of realizing that. So here we are" she pointed at the diary, "stuck with that. Her words aren't as pretty as yours Shakespeare, but they have the advantage of being the simple, raw truth."

She picked up the diary, and opened it to a random page and began to read "June 15th, today SHE had a doctor's appointment in _____ a lovely hour and a half away, giving me and ____ the entire afternoon to explore each other. I have never felt this way before and he tells me that he has to struggle to block out thoughts of me when he is around her." She closed the book with a snap, "I could go on and on and on but you don't need me to, after all you were fucking there weren't you? Then with a small sigh, she whispered "how could you do this to me?"

How do you answer that? How do you explain to someone you professed to love, that at some point things started to go south? How to tell someone who trusted you, that you're hopelessly afflicted with a wandering eye? That is just the appetizer in this confessional feast, then you have to try to explain why/how the 'other woman' made you feel alive again. Or do you? Do you tell her those hard to swallow facts? Do you tell her that, despite being many, many miles out of your league, she wasn't enough? That you might just be the dumbest man in the history of mankind? 

"You got her with child, you careless bastard. It's all in her diary, she talks about how excited she was to be with child, and how you promised to leave me for her, and raise the child together." She began to shake again, but quickly regained her composure. "She had no idea the lies you were telling her just to keep her silent did she?" I nodded "no she wasn't as clever as you, she believed my lies without fail." I saw the storm begin to brew in her eyes, I waved a conciliatory hand before the storm broke over me. "She gave herself away, and I was there to take advantage, and I understand that was in more ways than one. I am duly ashamed, but...." 

"All the promises you made to her were lies weren't they? Tell me they were, tell me you promised her treasure to look upon just to get in her bed, tell me the river in the time of dryness you promised her was a lie? Tell me that the eyes in the time of blindness you promised were not real." The familiar tone in her voice, made me feel even worse. She was telling me about her hell, the hell that I put her into and through with my stupid choice(s).  She continued "all these years, I made you a daughter and a son. I watched you leave for work, and come home at 5 on the dot, and here you are fucking the help. Don't rub it in how wrong I have been about you all these years. We were married, and I am still here with your children, the children you can't deny. The children you can't abort. The ones that bear your fucking name." She stopped, out of breath, anger making her chest heave.

The mention of the kids broke whatever resistance I had left. I threw up my hands and said "what do you want me to do?" A very small smile came to her lips "I am glad you asked Shakespeare. I have exactly the answer to your question right here." She pulled out a sheaf of papers and handed them to me. "Read that Shakespeare, and let me know what, if anything, you think?" I took the papers, opened them and read her terms. They weren't overly complicated. I was to 'disappear' presumed a suicide (a neat trick, since "she" was eventually adjudged one too), and never darken the Republics door again. "I don't care where you go, just as long as it is anywhere but here." She was, in her opinion, generous with her terms. I was to write a note, get on a train to _____, and never come back. She allowed me enough money from the sale of the business to make my fall from her grace, non lethal. But it still hurt, a lot. I'd like to say I left a better man, but I doubt that is true.

So here I am, a thousand miles from nowhere wondering where I should actually be. But then, as I look around, and realize that time no longer matters to me, and that the bruises on my memory are beginning to heal, and the bloodstains on my hand are beginning to fade, I understand there is no place I'd rather be.