an inside post

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[and one that'll probably bore you silly, so feel free to skip it. but i needed a safe place to put this particular email exchange so i'd have a record of it, and that's what blogs are for, right? or maybe that's just what this blog is for.]

in response to this post, an old friend's email contained the following:

So, I guess that explains to me a little about you because although you came out later, I do not think that you passed your prime. But apparently you did. To me, you were actually in the ripe years. But, for you, you thought of yourself as already on the downhill arc.

I say this now at 40 because I can certainly imagine myself at 25 VERY attracted to me at 40. I doubt you think so. Indeed, I think you would not even give yourself a second look if you at 25 saw yourself in a bar at 40.

Of course if this happened, it would also cause a tear in the space-time continuum and we would all be destroyed.

to which i replied:

ah, life would be so much easier if i was into white guys in their 40s, since so many of 'em seem to be into me these days. but i never was, and never will be. and as far as finding myself attractive--hell, i wouldn't have done me back when i was 19, and i certainly wouldn't now.

i remember though, back around 1991 when i first hit town, more than one guy told me i was at the height of my studliness and i'd better enjoy it while it lasted. i just laughed.

to which he replied:

I don't know how to respond. I guess the only thing I can say is that you have never been able to generate much enthusiasm for an emotional attachment--a relationship. Because that changes everything.

[he completely forgot about v, of course--and how that sadly didn't change everything.]

Your primary basis of reference is who you trick with...and while that has its place, you seem to have no other reference point, no other perspective. And you do not seem to want any other perspective. You were so excited when you first met Roman...his name escapes me for the moment...and to have an actual first love. Whatever happened to that?

[...]

Basically, you have not changed a lot in the 17 years that I've known you. While it is true that I can say that about a lot of people, it's also true that I can't say that about too many people I respect.

So, why not?

If I'm being harsh, you know it's 'cause I love you. If I really wanted to wound, well, now, you would know that too.

to which, just now, i replied:

au contrare, mon frere--i've changed tremendously over the past 17 years. problem is, it's mostly been for the worse--i've magnified my failures and minimized my successes to the point that the idea of sticking my head up outta the ol' foxhole again is pretty much more than i can bear; i anticipate defeat to the point that my world has pretty much shrunk down to what i can see around me. i work and i go home.

his name was rummel, btw. i "loved" him because he was safely unavailable; had he returned my interest in kind, i'd have probably run screaming. the experience--that failure and its associated pain--did pretty much cure me of such foolishness, though, i'll say that for it.

you know me well in many ways, r__, but you've never really understood me. you can't look far enough past the way that you yourself relate to the world and other people to recognize that the way i do it might be irremediably, unfixably different from yours; even as smart as you are and with all the therapy you've had, when it comes to me, you're still, like, "oh, snap out of it." it's a lack of empathy on a level i see (and expect) quite often in the stupid, the unreflective and the lame, but rarely do i come across it in people i respect.

makes us even, i guess.

seventeen years, summed up neatly.