Four Rules I Learned This Year

1.) The "Hitler Loved Dogs" Rule (Context Is Paramount)

Everyone loves dogs. I love dogs. You love dogs. If someone stood up in a room full of people and said "raise your hand if you love dogs", most everyone would raise their hand.

However, Hitler loved dogs too, and if it was Hitler who asked you that, chances are you wouldn't raise your hand because, you know, Hitler was an asshole.

The point of the rule is that the source of a statement is as important as the statement it's self. A statement can be true but would you really want to agree with one from a questionable source or use it as evidence to support your own opinions?

The "Sarah Loved Dogs" Addendum: My friend Sarah created the first addendum to the above rule. Its a perversion of the logic stated but I have to keep it. It goes something like this: if someone were to make a truthful statement and they own a dog, you can retort that since they own a dog, Hitler would probably like the dog and thus they have something in common with Hitler and thus the opinion is irrelevant. Its definitely more of a joke than a rule to use but its a nice twist on the logic. Definitely a keeper.

2.) The "Gillian Anderson" Rule (You're Attractive, Fuck-o. Get With It.)

I will not paint over the fact that getting closer than I ever dared expect with Gillian Anderson and entirely of her own volition this year was some kind of weird validation - and I know how completely batshit that sounds, so stay with me.

I'm 32 and yet when it comes to women, I still think like I'm 14. I don't get them. Hell, sometimes I'm so confused by them, I'm outright suspicious - like the whole gender is some kind of collective succubus come to drain me of blood in the cold hours of early morning. And this is despite a pretty okay track record of  some very beautiful women. Yes, that last part sounds totally egotistical of me - but I'm saying that because, well, I'm still not especially confident in some ways. This isn't to say I think I'm a troll, or impersonal but when you live the last 16 years of your life thinking you're (at best) totally nondescript and have the outward personality of a rattlesnake, having *the* beautiful woman / celebrity you had a crush on since the age of twelve grab you and hold you against her goes pretty damn far toward how you feel about yourself. Yes, logically its completely stupid - but for once in my life, the logical part is not what I'm trying to describe; I'm appealing to the honest, emotional side that I keep from most everyone (Even myself.)

This isn't to say that I'm suddenly Don Juan or that my luck has changed. Just that sometimes I deserve to think better of myself than I normally do. And that is okay. Its just so very hard to wrap your head around the complete opposite of what you normally feel is honesty about yourself.

(And if you're reading this, Gillian: I'm free for dinner whenever. Have your people call my people.)


3.) The "JJ Abrams" Rule (Stop Identifying With Things)

If you're reading this, then you probably know of my dislike of everything having to do with JJ Abrams. The man is the literal embodiment of everything wrong in Hollywood: a career based on nepotism, everything  made is a copy sourced from something superior or from an existing franchise and he has no discernible talent in any aspect of writing or directing.

More to the point, you should know that I'd rather take gasoline through a catheter and then piss it out over the open flames of Hell than have anything to do with him. 

That said, his unfortunate presence in the world of the living taught me a very important lesson this year. While it was bad enough that he was behind two completely vacuous Star Trek movies that had no worth what-so-ever except as an example of how to do something wrong, his later assignment to the forthcoming Star Wars sequels sent enough pure bile straight to my brain to drown all joy from my life for several days.

So somewhere between the initial announcement and the half bottle of Jim Beam in reply to it, I came to realize that, once and for all, Star Wars was done for me. Abrams - a man who cannot even pace dialogue  between actors or frame a shot for longer than one whole second - was now being given the holiest of holy assignments. I could no longer identify with the series as I once had; I could not allow something I loved as a child and a teen be beaten down in front of me while I still loved it. Just like watching a vet euthanize your pet, I had to turn away while the needle went in.

So I left. I didn't damn it, I didn't cry "rape" like the common Internet drone nor did I make some crazy-ass YouTube video about what Star Wars is and isn't. I just put it away carefully and closed the lid.

And that made me grow (the fuck) up.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not thumbing my nose at the films already made or that I'm dismissing my adoration of them - but like the song goes "Don't dream, its over". Someone I dislike for so many strong reasons is taking something and will no doubt put his stamp all over it. It also doesn't help that Disney is putting out character-based films outside of Episode VII - because people need to know what Yoda was doing with his off-time or something? (Hint: no one cares)

So I just can't go on with that. I can't. Its done for me and I'm a lot happier for it. I feel no anxiety over if it'll be good or not (though there is some anxiety about John Williams being alive to finish the scores) and by pushing it out, man, talk about your relief of burdens. I have refused to take it on as a person and thus, give no shits to how badly Abrams will undoubtedly ruin it.

Thirty years of putting too much of myself out there and into a non-corporeal concept like a movie series. I feel cleaner already.


4.) The "Executioner's Axe" Rule (Don't Throw Yourself On The Sword Willingly)

This is really more of an Internet rule but I suppose it could also be used in face to face conversations at parties. Its basically "don't volunteer to put your head on the chopping block", which is something a lot of people seem to do with immense haste. Its an easier rule to explain by example though.

I'll use the easiest of examples, since this is so common for me: lets say you have two people talking about a movie. One person loved it and one person hated it and the person who loved it is making a much stronger intellectual argument for his viewpoint.A third party comes in and starts yammering that he hated the movie too - totally unprepared for the conversation, without having any of the context spoken between the original parties and simply throwing their hat in the ring in that "JJ Abrams" rule (over-identifying with something) cited above. Needless to say, this third party person gets steamrollered by the opposing party and usually cries foul for all sorts of nebulous reasons.

But they're the ones who stepped in. Its no one else's fault but their own. They put their head under the axe, so to speak. Anyone who voluntarily sticks their neck out is, by the nature of the act alone, probably asking for a direct rebuttal.

Amanda, Epilouge - Sheinberg's edit, "Love Conquers All"

When I told you about moving to Texas, you told me you wanted to see me one last time before it happened. We make plans quietly - another day or short weekend in New Haven. No presumptions, no plans, just idle wandering. It gets compared to the movie Before Sunrise, where those two people just wander around a strange city and ignore everything but each other.

The Saturday morning rolls around and I'm standing in the train station again, my flat-cap in one shaking hand and the other in my pocket. And as you step up, you're wearing a purple scarf, or a purple beret, a purple something. You smile out of the corner of your mouth and we walk out into the street, holding hands. New Haven is busy and loud and we don't notice any of it. The pull of you has nothing to do with how you're leading me.

You talk about your life and your job and your marriage and your dog and how broken your car is and where you got your boots and how tired you are of your mother; with every new subject you creep closer and grip my hand harder until your fingers are pressing white between my knuckles. You coo quietly and say to tell me about my life instead. My job, my apartment (I want to see it! she says with enthusiasm), my cat Greta, my car that is always falling apart, movies, music, close-calls that somehow never turn into girlfriends. An existence of near-misses that somehow culminate into the misery of lost chances, bodies of dreams strewn about.

We duck into alleys and corners and the windows of book stores.You go to kiss me and miss my mouth and get me right under the eye. I ask how long I have with you and you pull away to an arms length before saying "Tomorrow, noon." The last word curves up to the corners of your voice, almost like a question, easily confused with hope.

I take you home and put on the television and we get to cooking. I'm a terrible in front of a stove but between the two of us we make something passable before deciding on throwing it out for Chinese take-out. Between the phone call and picking up the order, we become a mess of limbs on the living room floor, grinding like machines. I can hear the fabric stretch along your back, under your hair. You guide me once or twice - a hand here, no, move your knee - before we start laughing.

I stand up to get my keys - the Chinese is surely ready and probably cold by now - and you hold me before we walk out. My hands find your elbows and I wonder aloud how small they are in my hands. Weird detail.

The takeout is bland, the movie we watch is half ignored. The lights stay off after the plates are in the sink and the DVD player is still. Your glasses come off, the hair is down, we both know this is the one last time we have in a relationship of one last times. Your legs meet around my back and so it goes, on and on, for an hour and then two. You shake so hard that it might actually be me shaking. You curse loudly. It sounds weird coming from you.

===

Now - none of this happened. This epilogue just above. Its what I thought should happen and likely never will. Because, as life is always ready to prove, love does not conquer all. Love is a building block of life, like water, like carbon. It is a thing that is necessary to exist but it is also an inert element when left to its own devices. It is a thing that does not move on its own, does not change without outside forces, does not have any greater meaning without more placed on it.

And thats the cusp of our relationship I guess. And its inert because of you.

I'll allow myself a little bit of anger and a whole lot of self-loathing over that anger because, well, this is all unresolved. What I wrote above was what I would need to end or continue everything we had instead of the basic building block you and I started so long ago. We never finished what we barely even started.

What drives me nuts isn't that I lost to the lesser man. Its that I lost to you. I never tried harder with anyone in my life, never wrote more, never expressed more, never more more'd - and here I am writing fantasy-fiction as I hold a glass of vodka in the other hand. I am drunk enough to know I am right and sober enough to know I still love you; tomorrow morning, I will be sober enough to know its your own decision to make and I'll still be drunk on my affections. (Ah the curse of the Irish holds strong in my genes.)

I don't like letting go. Ive never abandoned a friend in my life and have gladly welcomed back any who have wandered away. That is just who I am. And maybe you need to wander away for a bit too. And like the rest, you're always welcomed back - but I also have the gnawing feeling you never will. That you shut the door so quietly as you left, neither of us heard it click.

So, you are now a song from a summer too far away. A vibe from a passed era, the watermark from a flood forgotten. I loved you like all men would want to love a woman and you found it best served to be cast aside.

Maybe one day you'll find this blog, this entry, read it in full. Maybe you'll take my old suggestion and look up "When You Are Old" by W.B. Yates and know that that is where we've been shoehorned: part my fault, part your decision. And part of me will be waiting for that reply; though instinctively that part of me waits knowing that the reply will never come, or even if it did, it would be much colder than desired.

So this is it then. This is us in our thirties. The bond you and I had under so many dark nights, awake hundreds of miles away and wondering about the other is now tethered to a still lake, all life and living gone from it now.

My God, how I loved you like no one else in my life.

And how I wish that part of me would stop holding on.

March 2013, 10:14 am

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm sure I'll get all sorts of well-wishes and well-meaning gifts from people and they'll all be nice but none of them are going to be what I want or need. Only I can give that to myself, I suppose. Just sending this to you is that gift - even if you roll your eyes and delete it without reading, thats cool too. You have that right and that option.

This speech, this email was originally something I had hoped to tell you face to face but I fear that time has passed too far and us living in different states nixes that idea. I may be more eloquent here but I'd be more effusive and probably less long-winded if I said it out loud. Blech.

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase. First, my apologies for sending this seemingly at random. I'm not here to kick up dirt or start your day on the wrong foot. I realize we haven't had the best friendship and I realize that I'm pretty much persona non grata as of a decade ago. Its well earned on my part. But now that I'm older and notice how I'm not in touch with those people from my teens and twenties anymore, I need to strike that iron while I still have a chance at saving my soul.

I did a lot of awful things to you way back when and said a lot more. I hate to say the bad things seem to outweigh the good, now. I pretty much hate myself for it. I am so very sorry for the person I was then. It may be water under the bridge for you and I truthfully have moved on a bit myself - but the effect you had on my formative years deserves more respect than I gave them then and at least some acknowledgement in hindsight. I am truly sorry I did not see you for what you were and that I did not love you like you deserved. And this is all some sort of a "Personal Hell In Hindsight".

But I'm not saying I've turned over a new leaf or that I'm a totally new person - just that I'm a little more seasoned, a little more mellow. And looking back at the angry, young man I had been, I feel very little but shame for it all. Its okay if you don't believe me when I say I'm sorry to you every morning I get up; I do it anyway. And I know no matter how many times I say it, what I did to you won't heal anyone's wounds any better but I'll say it every day in hopes it does heal something. 

Believe me when I say I don't expect or require a reply. Its enough that I got to send this to you after years of running this stuff through my head. I feel a little free after typing it and yet the worst part is that everything I said here is an abject failure because what I feel is so much more than what you're reading. I am so sorry for what I did to you. So very sorry.

If you made it this far in reading, thank you. And if you didn't thats fine too. I really, really honestly and truly hope you're happy with where you are and whom you're with and I suspect the best is yet to come with you and I wish nothing but the best for you too. You have, at the very least in your short life, entirely changed my life in the process and taught me some tough lessons in the process.

I miss you, fidget.

J