YOU

I saw your picture on the internet. It’s odd to see pictures of someone you were lovers with on a website devoted to meeting men. The eyes I looked in hundreds of times now belong to a man who does things I’ll never be part of. It’s been years but you look the same. You didn’t lie about your age in your profile, you never did, and that’s an impressive feat. You write you are “stable and single” and teaching now. It all sounds so nice.

I was there when you weren’t so stable. I was there when you were a drug addict, hospitalized because crystal meth made you partial to strangers slapping you around. I was there when you tried to kill yourself in the pool of a Fire Island house. You called me from a pay phone during your brief stay in the Loony Bin. I was the one who worried about you when you’d dissappear for days and noone knew where you were. You had a Big Job, made lots of money. To lots of people you looked like the Poster Man and I got to see behind the scenes. Lucky me.

You were taking me to Europe, first class all the way, and the week before we left you went out and binged again. I’d had enough. I could not face spending two weeks with someone who lied so easily to themselves. I was tired of your friends looking the other way - “Oh everyone gets wild now and then” - while I listened to you drowning in fear, in pain, in the drugs you used to do what the Deep End couldn’t.

I was there when you were wallowing in shit. It pisses me off. I’m angry at me for investing time in a hopeless cause. I’ve learned to forgive myself because I was naive. I can control my feelings about myself but I can’t control my inability to forgive you.

Go on. Have fun. Great pics. See ya next lifetime.

4:04:06 PM    sro home /