you lousy bastard. you liar. you game-player. i believed you. how stupid of me. are you laughing? i’m willing to bet you are. such an amusing game to you. fisherman. i bit hard, didn’t i? oh, that i had teeth to bite you in truth. i’d leave marks in your ass like you’ve left in my heart.
i think about your happy weekends in the garden, at the pub, and i choke on anger. you knew i wanted to be part of that. you dangled it in front of me like a god damned carrot and idiot that i am, i chased it with mouth open and full of trust.
big surprise — your way or the highway. be happy with the occasional crumb and be willing to call it friendship or do without. how silly of me to think that the notion that i would leave rather than be your shameful little secret might matter to you. might make any difference whatever. i’m not sure how i managed to keep believing, the hook taunt and tugging at the corner of my mouth.
i left this just after the last paragraph and return the next morning and read it again and know from toes to top that i wouldn’t change a word. this last month, laying in the corner of the attic in my mind, howling for the once again as usual and ever and always, the girls speak black words and tell me all the many ways vengeance might be had.
i listen. i listen and i savor the thought of hurting you as you have me. the difference between us, of course, is that i won’t. i will listen, and i will imagine and i will do nothing more.
and, as always, i thank you. i thank everyone who delivers lessons like this. what else might be done? the lesson is a good one. i should never have allotted you the space in which to manage this. i should never have spoken to you. you should have been ken, genderless and impotent. i could never have become the barbie had i kept you so.
the admission – it is not you i am angriest at, of course. it is me. fooled again. again. you’d think i’d learn. i never seem to.
perhaps that changes this time. already i am putting you into past tense. there has been no cutting; emotional or otherwise. only anger. that you could know it all, have heard it all, and do this. damn you. damn you to the blackest, hottest, most lonely part of hell there is.
i will find the way to forget you. i decide the best thing i can do is to afford you the one thing i never did anyone else — to be completely, utterly, and permanently forgotten. the girls tell me it’s possible. they asked if it was what i wanted. i couldn’t help but laugh…
what more fitting end for the man who doesn’t exist than to be stricken from memory?
one tear. i give you one tear. i would have given you so much. here, now, even this one tear is begrudged.
it is august. time to move on.