I realized something recently for the first time in six, tormented years: when Kresten betrayed me, I did not hate him. I was not even ANGRY at him. I did not even mean ILL towards him, much less wish DEATH and DESPAIR upon him. What did I feel? Almost nothing. I lay awake in bed all through the night, and what rushed through my head I could not fathom. I was caught under a wave, submerged, incapable of grabbing ONTO anything. I did not wish. I did not want. All I could comprehend was this: it’s over. He wants this.
As it turned out: that was not how
he saw it. He EXPECTED me to be a little angry but to readily get over it. To
HIM: this was normal. This was not a sudden, rapturous departure from any
lingering hope of salvation. He did not regard that night of March 8th,
2015 as being the Beginning of the End, much less the End of the End. So
divorced was he from the consequences of his own actions upon those around him
that there was nothing ABNORMAL AT ALL HERE. He expected me to be angry and get
over it.
Yet it was not until I SAW that
that I truly got angry at him, and it was BECAUSE I saw that that I could NEVER
possibly get over it.
I came to accept this as the final
straw, believing it to be over, and if I felt anything the following morning,
it was RELIEF. At least I’d never have to talk to him again. I’d never have to
hear his voice, his snide remarks, his schizotypal rants and “theories”. He
would hold hands with Alanna for about a month, and then she would leave him.
Life would go on, and I would be better off for having tried and failed to bring
him back to health. The burden lifted. I was free, for once.
Yet he did not agree, and neither
did she, apparently.
I thought perhaps they kissed, but
I put that thought from my mind. I knew I had the higher ground, in secret. I
was still in school, I was attaining rank and influence on the Debate Team, I
was associating with Strong Men and Intelligent Women, and I was accruing
praise from both. Above all: I loved Alanna and I cared for her. It was only a
matter of time before we resumed our courtship.
When I met with her again, after a
month (or several) had passed, I’d already taken a few mental blows on her
behalf, but I was ready, nonetheless. I took the train to San Diego State to
meet with her. I knew that this was still a “party school” notorious for sexual
diseases, but that did not bother me, for I was on my way to meet my light of
love: a virgin and an academic. This was a fresh start. We both would extricate
ourselves from ugliness and doubt.
What did I want, truly? Closure.
Moving on means not having to feel. It means no longer needing hatred. It means
POSSIBLY forgiving, letting go the grudge, and wishing well, but from a
Distance. It means doing what I should have done with Alexandra, my first
girlfriend, and of course HE knew I should have let her go more quickly. I did
not hold any feeling of contempt towards Alanna. I did not “expect”; I merely
hoped. I might have DREAMED of having sex someday, but I did not have reason to
believe that that would ever happen, either for myself or for Alanna. Yet so be
it; I could see her SMILE, and maybe that would be enough. Perhaps we’d even
start to meet more regularly.
She knew what I really wanted: to
EXCUSE. If Kresten had no power over me, then what should anybody care what he
did wrong? The treachery was blessing in disguise. Yes: he messed up. That
meant my debts were paid; I owed him nothing. Yes: he traded his most valuable
human resource for a month of holding hands.
Yet it was not just holding hands.
I knew, back even when I met her,
that these college kids were having sex. It was a problem they addressed quite
often. Some had sex consensually, others not. It made hardly a difference to my
mind. Some of these kids had sex against the rules; when they were caught, they
blamed the people who reported them!! It did not matter. I was innocent, and I
made sure my roommates followed all the rules during the National Tournament.
If and when I managed to EARN consent, it would NOT be by social deviance.
Alanna was really the first woman
that I COULD have had sex with. It was socially appropriate, which was what
made Kresten’s treachery so repugnant, not only by contrast, but by avenue of
what it destroyed. But I did not DARE to imagine that he had taken HER
virginity. Not when I was yet a pious virgin and HE had taken HER from ME.
Yet even when I learned the Truth I
saw the bright side. How ecstatic I became!! Sex was a possibility. If HE could
do it, *I* could, and she KNEW that. Furthermore, her debt to me was even less
than his to both of us, for he had yet to clear his name with me, to earn
forgiveness for his treachery, and she, who’d let him so ascend to the highest and
most rapturous and forbidden of physical ecstasies, would forever hold her sovereignty
over him, for to betray even the slightest of her expectations, WILLINGLY,
would be to confess that *I* was the more Qualified Lover and the Superior Male.
It was with all of this in mind
that I agreed to restore ties with him on her behalf. Yet all of this is known.
The secret motivation for my generosity has only surfaced recently: I wanted to
EXCUSE him.
Of course, he could not be excused.
Not only did he spite the woman whom he’d claimed to love, but doubly he spited
the same man whose love for her he’d spited in the claim. He was done; there
was no one that would find Character within him. She agreed to never speak to
him again, and I was yet again permitted to Forget. I did not wish him harm,
for he could do no further harm to me, for he could do no further harm to her.
I’d won; her love letter to me was proof. Since she elected to be celibate, we
parted ways, but merely bodily. I had her promise in my Heart; thus I took to
the World again, took up an occupation at a local restaurant, (two days after
it opened and some years before it rose to fame, years still before it closed) and
I began to dream of other women, though Alanna’s love was always in my Heart,
encouraging me to persist, though, like the shore, yet tempting my return.
That was before she sued me. This
of course I had some warning with regards to; Anthony had told me that she
spoke with him again. Breaking the pact was not enough; she told him things
about ME I’d not thought her capable of thinking. What had changed? She’d
promised an eternal vow, and I’d not broken.
It was only then, two years after we’d
met, that I agreed to sever ties. Three months then passed, I got another job
downtown, and, on the third of August, two-thousand and seventeen, as if to
spite the years I’d spent trying to save her Life, she took it.
When I learned the news, much
later, my first instinct was to call some friends and meet at Denny’s Diner. This
was my intention: find some closure, QUICKLY. Hatred was a sin; I had to find Salvation.
Thus I called a young, aspiring actor, a recovered alcoholic we had met at that
same Denny’s, who was both an Artist and a Pious Christian Mystic. He helped,
somewhat, but perhaps it was that very night he left before our conversation
was concluded. I did not hold it against him; even then, I was searching for a
way to EXCUSE evil. It was the only thing keeping me from beating evil’s face
into a staircase.
She’d always loved staircases.
He did not deserve to live while
she was dead, but I had to come to terms with the fact that he did. To call its
existence “life” became absurd. Yet I did find love again, some two years
later, in the words of Laila Kalantari. For five months we courted as the
Internet availed; we both were solitary Souls but academics and composers, as
well as creative writers. Things went slowly, but a love unfolded; it was time
to try again. As the semester and the year came to a close, we both were busy.
I’d stayed up for thirty-six or thirty-seven hours for my final Composition
Project of that year. Yet once it was presented I was free, and I was left with
little left to pass the time over the Winter but to play some of her favourite
games on the computer and to write to her. One of my classmates had composed a
piece about a “stalker” that, to my mind, felt just like a sentimental melodrama,
and this was performed by an alumnus who had always treated me with some bizarre
and awkward distance. A lot was on my mind, and in the midst of agonizing
loneliness I told Laila my story. She was not the first I told it to; perhaps I’d
told it to some thirty people by that point, yet she was probably the Last. When
she returned to me, it was some days prior to Christmas, so I saved her Letter
as a Present.
That same Christmas Morning was the
worst. I’d hardly slept; I only managed to read Laila’s Letter once.
She alone condoned Alanna’s
suicide. She alone defended Kresten’s treachery. Friendships were not binding
if not stated, and relationships were not existent if not outwardly proclaimed
by “autonomous individuals”.
Perhaps those words were not hers,
but the disease was all too familiar. This was sociopathy. Yet I internalized
it. For the following year, I sought to prove myself, to Laila, to be a Changed
Man. This became exceedingly difficult, since she eventually cut all online
ties.
This part messed with me: in spite
of utterly deriding me, implying I was never FIT to save Alanna’s Life,
insisting women did not WISH for men to save them, even as I’d told her that
she’d FAILED to save Herself, Laila still pretended to “respect” me, and she even
believed that I “could still have sex”. With whom, I knew not, but those WERE
her words, as I recall them. Her “respect” was, of course, within the context of
a requested favour to review her work. My only fear was that she would cut ties
with me before I finished and sent my fifty-slide PowerPoint, which was simply
a Demo for her consideration, for I’d had to scrounge what little of her Music
I had access to. I told Joseph to send a copy on my behalf; I never learned
whether or not she received it. Had I kept my promise, truly?
Laila believed that Goodness was
its Own Reward. But how could one be Happy if Goodness, the only Constant, was
never rewarded, and evil prospered? Kresten was still alive; Alanna remained
dead. Yet I found closure very recently in this conviction: had it not been for
Kresten, Alanna STILL would probably have never slept with me. Sex is
practically impossible, at least within one’s twenties. This did not EXCUSE his
treachery, but it made the treachery bearable. He had no power. He could go on
surviving, without incident. I was SO eager to tell Joseph this. He would be
thrilled.
Joseph was not thrilled. The six
months since we’d last spoken, for about seven HOURS on end, and on my Father’s
Birthday, no less, had not inspired him towards forgiveness. He was not
DESPERATE to forgive me for calling him a hopeless, destructive narcissist. Neither
was he desperate to prove me wrong.
Yet what a Relief came then,
perhaps six years too late. For I saw my REASONS FOR going to Joseph. I wanted him
to VALIDATE the EXCUSES I’d made for Laila, for Alanna, and for Kresten. I’d
wanted LAILA to validate the EXCUSES I’d made for Alanna and Kresten. I’d
wanted ALANNA to validate the EXCUSES I’d made for KRESTEN.
None of them could do this.
I could not excuse Joseph’s contempt.
He was just too much at FAULT in that situation, and he knew it. He knew just
as well to what extent these OTHER sociopaths had been at fault.
I did not deserve this. I COULD
have had sex with Alanna, if I could ever have Sex with ANYBODY. I merely made
it up that it would never have happened. Even though I SAID it was not
an excuse, I only BELIEVED it because it was.
[({R.G.)}]
