Ben,
I thought about you a lot today. I think you don’t write back just to piss me off. Its working and that might not be such a good idea. Whenever I go around town and see things, especially with other friends I think how you would like it and I worry about you and wonder about you and then realize that the only reason I don’t know where you are is because you are the most childish asshole who ever walked the face of the earth. Then I put you out of my head.
That was a gift you have given me in the last few weeks. Your conduct, or lack of it, has been so shitty that I have finally been forced to realize what life without you is like. It’s actually quite free. I began to realize that as long as I was in that apartment, in your world I wasn’t really in mine and as long as we were doing whatever we were doing it meant you got to have someone who understood you like a significant other and then, when I left, someone you could fuck. And what I had was not much of a chance of finding a real relationship. As soon as I left all that I had to go out into the world. Or the town. Be single again, put on decent clothes, hit the scene, meet people.
I did something I have never done. Last Thursday we were at the hearth listening to a band and Laura pointed out the keyboardists. I said I didn’t do that, go up to people and I didn’t feel like being with anyone. That I realized now that I wasn’t in it I’d been in a protracted relationship with someone who was fucking somebody else and I really wanted to be left alone.
And then I looked at him and looked at him the whole night and finally sussed up the situation and went to go meet him. I’ve actually started talking to people, seeing people. I realized that I was glad you didn’t give me a chance because I think I’d be unhappy with you. As a significant other I mean. Not as a friend. You make a good enough friend, but I think you’d be a shitty anything else. I need the chance to meet other people, see what it could be like. I’m not talking about the One True. I’m talking about getting to meet people. Everything was so difficult with you. You never told the truth, you always wanted something, but didn’t. Wanted to touch, but didn’t. Were gay, but wanted to be straight. It was just one long session of frustration and indecision. And that got old after a while. I didn’t know how to look for someone else without being disloyal to you and them. This apparently never bothered you while you while you cooked for me, took me out places and then turned around and fucked someone else. With the keyboardist it might be nice. It would be sane. I’d like sanity.
I am thinking about you in a different way right now. Not in the old way, not really able to believe I thought of you in the old way. I think of you as the friend that I will see again when he comes around. I don’t expect you to respond to anything because at last you’ve ceased to be able to disappoint me. I don’t expect you to do anything. In the course of the last year it’s pretty much what I’ve seen you do—or not do. You call it laziness because laziness sounds cool, but it’s really timidity. You’re so into non-violence, not doing anything I wonder if you realize that doing nothing is its own form of cruelty. It’s cruel and childish not to return my messages—which is the reason I got rid of you the first time around—it’s cruel and childish not to confront issues and answer questions I’ve asked you too. You have your moments—my birthday was nice—but a lot of what you do is petulant and spoiled which is cute when you’re twelve, but pathetic at twenty-three. Actually it’s pathetic at twelve too.
--Chris
P.S. write back. Imagine all these letters posted on a public forum.
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