bleckblog: musings of a community college english teacher

I'm up to 47,150 but I have to leave the house for a meeting downtown. I hope to churn out more words, to make 50k by the end of the day, but I have the meeting for a couple of hours, with a 30 minute walk each way, and then I have to pick the kids, Tobias and his two car pool mates, from school at 3, which won't give me time to write until I get home with them. But with just under 3000 words to go, I think I can get it done. It won't be good, that much I'm sure of, and that much I'm okay with. But I'll have gotten it done. Here's what I wrote in the last two hours:

So, what’s to say? Happy New Year? What she told him, based on what she told me, was that he should have known better. Ouch. The gist of her point was that it was none of his business who she was having sex with, that she didn’t owe him anything, that he should be grateful for the time she commit to him, if commit is the right word. I know that she’s been a bit conflicted as of late, but I didn’t expect her to come off quite the way she did, at least in the way she reported things to me. I guess in some respect we, as people, don’t owe anyone anything. It’s not like we set up accounts that need to be balanced, but I’m also not sure I buy this “we don’t owe anyone anything” bit. It seems pretty self-serving. Maybe if its reciprocal, that might be okay but I don’t know that anything can be wholly reciprocated. There’s always some imbalance, something out of whack, whether it’s emotional, psychological or what have you. Maybe it’s some ying-yang thing to think there can be balance, and maybe in the broadest of all senses, there is some balance, some harmony, but that doesn’t mean each of us will experience it. Imbalance in one life balances the imbalance in another life is probably the best we can hope for in that regard. Life just isn’t fair. Bad people profit and good people get screwed. That’s the way it has been and always will be.

So, do we owe people anything? Maybe we go back to the golden rule, to treat others as we’d like to be treated. I guess that means we owe others what we’d like for ourselves. But I’m having trouble with this whole lack of obligation to others to whom we are close, to whom we share ourselves with. Maybe it’s better if we tell them “you owe me nothing” rather than “I owe you nothing.” That seems the better way, to not require obligation of others, but to welcome and appreciate what others offer us. That’s something I can understand and appreciate. That’s something that makes sense to me. I’m going to have to let these ideas rattle around the open spaces of my mind for a bit, and maybe some connections will get made. This is another of those “more will be revealed” moments. Let’s just hope it makes sense of some sort.

1 January 2006

B-----,

I have to imagine you’re a bit surprised to receive this letter from me. I’ve been doing a bit of writing in the last few days. You never met her, my former girlfriend Portia, but I ended up writing a considerable letter to her. I also wrote a considerable letter to L-----. It’s odd, but it wasn’t until I wrote these two letters that I came to see how things were a bit out of whack with my relationship to him and Alexis. I haven’t fully explored, not yet written about, things with Alexis, but I’ll probably do that next. So why am I writing? I think you’ll enjoy the answer, but I hope you won’t gloat, seeing as we share some blood through L----. Getting right to the point, I’m starting to see things and how they make sense from your perspective. I’m starting to see, and maybe even do see, how things have been manipulated and not so much for my benefit, and certainly not yours.

What brought this on was kicked off by a pretty simple event. I forgot my cell phone when going to visit a friend yesterday while staying with L---- and Alexis. Portia was there with me for the visit. She and I had been having our own concerns, but nothing quite like what came to be. Anyway, I was on my way to a friend’s when I realized I didn’t have my phone, so I turned around and headed back to L-----‘s to fetch it. When I walked through the door and reached for my phone, I saw L---- and Portia together on the couch. And by together, I really mean together, not in any innocent way. It’s hard almost to write about what I saw, them having sex. My father and my girlfriend having sex. On the couch, in his house. While they figured I wasn’t going to be around. And believe me, there was no mistaking what was going on.

I’ve described it to others a few times and can’t bring myself to do it again, but, to quote Shakespeare, which I know you’ll appreciate, or allude to him since I’ll probably get the quote a bit off, they were the beast with two backs, there’s no doubt. It’s funny, but I think those are the words of Iago in Othello, and he’s about as despicable a character there is in any piece of literature anywhere at anytime. It’s funny that he’s so moralistic in his manipulation, but I’m starting to see L----- as something of an Iago. I’m not sure that makes me an Othello to his Iago, unless I kill Portia. The big difference is that, unlike the unfairly accused Desdemona, Portia has most definitely betrayed me, though she doesn’t see it as much of a betrayal. I don’t know that I can ever think of that play and those characters again without thinking of the last few days.

So, I caught L---- having sex with my girlfriend. I don’t know yet what Alexis knows about all this, if anything. I know L----- has been unfaithful to her in the past, but I tended to look the other way as long as the two of them seemed to be getting along. I didn’t see anything, but I guess that’s what makes it so hard, to know that L---- is as smooth and manipulative as he is, and maybe Alexis is complicit in the whole thing. Maybe she does know exactly what’s going on but she choose to ignore it in the way I did, so she can just keep going forward.

So, what’s the point of this letter? I don’t think I’ve figured that out yet. In part, it’s an apology for not seeing things in the light you’ve portrayed them. I chose, I guess because it worked out better for me, to see things the way L---- and Alexis portrayed them, with you as the root of the problem, as the disrupter of our lives and family. Maybe you were the disrupter because you wouldn’t just get along to go along, or go along to get along, however it’s said. Rather than appreciate that, which I think I’m coming to do, I resented it for the trouble it caused. But now I can see that it’s trouble that needed to be caused, unless I wanted to keep being the way L---- seems bent on being.

I’ll be interested to hear what you think about all of this. It is pretty bizarre, and I have to imagine that you would never have thought something like this might be going on, that it could go on. It’s just too bizarre. To give you a little background, before Portia and I headed down to see L---- and Alexis for the holidays, she told me she had been seeing, and sleeping with, someone else. As you can imagine, I was pretty bummed by that news. Who wouldn’t be? I thought visiting L----- and Alexis would keep her away from whomever it was that she had been seeing, that maybe we could, or I could, salvage the relationship. I have to wonder why I would even want to after hearing she had cheated on me, but I did. I guess I was desperate or something. Anyway, I was hoping to get her away from the other man and see what I could do to keep our relationship, to keep her.

All this time, I never even considered that the way L---- was treating her had anything to do with what I was trying to prevent. When I think back to the other visits, to the times Alexis and I left the two of them alone, and how Portia acted toward me afterwards, it all makes sense, and it makes me sick. We’d go for a visit, Portia and I, and she’d been having sex with L-----. Then we’d go home and have sex ourselves. Several weeks back, she’d been seeming and acting different when we were having sex, less into it. That’s not wholly surprising as that’s happened in the past between me and women. It worried me a bit, but not that much. Not that it would have mattered anyway. About all I could have done, had I even known, was to get her out of my house and bed, but I don’t see myself being able to do that without something as drastic as what happened over the past few days. I had to be hit with some blunt instrument, bludgeoned in some way by the things they did behind my back when they came to light. And a bludgeoning it was. The cliché is that seeing the two of them took the wind out of my sails, but it also took my breath away, knowing the wind out of me in a sense, really stifling my sense of myself, as someone who could trust. Maybe stunned is a better word. Stunned seems to fit things, like being hit with a stun gun kinda stunned. Something powerful, strong, disabling even. I’m still stunned.

So, I saw the two of them having sex, and I left. I talked to my friend Justin. Maybe you remember him. I think the two of you met once or twice. Anyway, it was his house I was headed to when I turned around to get my phone. Since he was expecting me, and having gone back to the house I was running late, I called him to let him know, and I ended up telling him some of the story, a lot of it. I was pretty freaked at the time. Really freaked. He told me to get over to his place, to not go back to the house, but I went back anyway. I had to see if it was really as I thought I saw it. It was.

When I got back to the house, L---- wasn’t there. Neither was Alexis. But Portia was sitting on the couch, drinking a glass of wine, almost as if she was expecting me. It was almost like she was waiting to meet a friend somewhere. She looked so relaxed, no hints of distress like red eyes from crying, no tear streaked face, no signs of remorse. She just sat there, waiting calmly, flipping through a magazine, drinking her glass of wine. I’d seen her like this so many times at home, or out in restaurants and bars, just sitting, relaxing, seeming to enjoy herself, which I have to think she was, enjoying herself that is. So we ended up talking about what I walked in on, what had been happening for the last few weeks. It sucked. It really sucked.

She told me that she owed me nothing. That I should appreciate all that she had shared with me up to that point, and that her life was hers to use as she saw fit. In a lot of ways, I don’t think I can or want to argue with that sort of thing. Her life is hers to use as she sees fit, as is mine, as is everyone’s. But I don’t see how that can be so when it means harming and hurting others. That’s where I can’t buy into that line of thinking. It’s too self-centered, too selfish. I see now that it’s not a way I want to be. Being like that sucks just as much as being hammered by someone who is like that, someone you trusted, someone I trusted I should say. It sucks. That’s just all I can say. So, I won’t bother trying to repeat that conversation. Suffice it to say that she made it pretty clear that she didn’t have any real problem with what had happened, how I felt about it, or anything in that regard. It was just what she had to do, or wanted to do, for herself. What can you say in such a situation? Feeling defeated at that point, I just left. Well, not right away, but that was about all I could take at that point. So I did leave, finally going to see Justin, and that’s when I started to see things a bit more clearly, maybe a bit more as they actually are.

I just wanted to share these thoughts, to let you know that things seem to be changing. I think now I have to write a note to Alexis, probably a note like this. I left pretty abruptly, without saying goodbye in any expected way, and I have to think she’s wondering what happened. I just said I had an emergency. I left Portia there. Where L----- went when I had come back to the house, I don’t know. Something tells me he went to find some way to cover his butt, to protect himself from any fallout from this mess. I haven’t yet heard back from him. I guess what I can do is share whatever he has to say so you can see how things are going. Let me know the next time you’re going to be in town because I’d like to hook up, see if, as you said last time we met, if we do have anything in common beyond our father, and whether that’s enough, whether it matters, or whether we might just give up the struggle of a forced relationship, a relationship that has no real value in either of our lives. I look forward to hearing back from you, from seeing what you think about this mess that has become our family.

Best, Roddy

4 January 2006

Roddy,

I have to tell you, I was stunned to receive your letter. Not so much stunned to receive it, but to read it and hear all that had gone on. One of the problems I’ve had with L---- based on my comments that you and I had little in common, mainly because we had been raised apart from one another, is that he was always pushing me to be the one to establish some relationship with you. I had to be the one to reach out, and I resented that thinking. If I didn’t reach out, that was a sign that I didn’t care, even though I did. But I wasn’t about to be put into a corner by L---- and Alexis with regard to you or anyone. Maybe I was wrong about that, but that’s the way I was feeling, and pretty much still feel, about the whole thing.

Despite all that, I’m glad to have heard from you. Yes, I’ve seen L---- as being manipulative of me and our relationship, between me, him and Alexis, and you to a lesser degree. I hated how they always spoke with such great pride in the things you had done, when they all but ignored me, put me down. I wondered why they continued to support you as you blew through one opportunity after another that they gave you, while they gave me nothing. Maybe it’s because I was already supporting myself that I could feel that way, a bit smug. I never, not often anyway, took into consideration how you were, in essence, being groomed by them, almost in the way a pedophile grooms a victim. You could do nothing wrong and everything you did was viewed in some remarkably positive light. Me, it was just the opposite, doing right was all but impossible and even accomplishments were dismissed and downplayed. They harped on me about drinking diet pop. They were always suggesting a different job or career for both me and Grace, one that seemed to fit their expectations for us. They wanted Alexander to be raised the way they thought he should be raised, not the way we thought, as his parents, he should, and we should, raise him.

When you left school without finishing, when they gave you the job at the ranch, when that floundered and they bought you a coffee shop, and they did nothing for me, I resented that. Sure, they gave me a few gifts every now and then, but they always seemed to be bribes, that the strings attached were more than I was comfortable with. In that way, while I appreciate those gifts they had given, I never could appreciate or accept that they came with strings attached, that I was to accept things as they saw them, that their way was the right way. That they knew what was right for me, and you, and for us as a family, even though the language L---- and Alexis used indicated that the three of you were “the” family and I was some outsider, some interloper. Well, that sucked. It still sucks when I think about it. I can’t imagine that changing. Maybe it will.

The best thing about hearing from you, from receiving the letter, is that it validated a lot of what is going on, had been going on, in my mind for sometime. It lets me know that I’m not so screwed up in the way that L---- made it seem, that Alexis made it seem, and sometimes, until now anyway, you made it seem.

Maybe there is more that we have in common than just L---- and his being our father. It all probably starts with him. I guess it has to, but maybe we can make it something of our own. Maybe we can be a family. I can’t make any promises in this regard, but it’s something I’d be willing to talk about, in the same way I was willing to talk about these things with L----- and Alexis. They blew me off when I suggested we try family therapy. They blew me off on a lot of things and I can live with that. I was living with it anyway. But maybe this is something we can do. I’ve already begun on my own. You’ll have to let me know what you think.

B-----