Modest Witness

Dear Amber,

I received your letter in the post. It saddens me that it has all ended up like this. I would like to say that if I have hurt you in any way, I apologize. I have never intended to hurt you. I remember all the good times we had together.

Just to let you know, not everything is good with me right now. My parents are both ill and I need to go home soon. My job is also under threat of redundancy, obviously a big worry. These things take a lot of energy. I wish you and your family all the best Prussian Blue

Dear Prussian Blue,

A thirty-second piece of music.

Your repeated and callous attempts to bypass the core themes of my letters continue to astonish me. I am truly flabberghasted by the level of your cold-heartedness and emotional truncation.

So that’s how you’re going to play it: No Remorse. You are going to try to play past it.

I find your modest-witness stance to be so absurdly inappropriate that if it hadn’t enraged me so much, I might find it comical.

“ It saddens me”

It saddens you! It saddens you! How cold. How uninvolved. How deliciously and gorgeously detached. A tinge of sadness. No remorse. No regret. Not even a little twinge of guilt.

I have endured relentless psychological torture. Your response was so totally devoid of even a trace of real empathy: it tells how little I mean to you and how connected I am to the elusive half-ghost that I once imagined you to be. For the person that you choose to show to me doesn’t exist. I only know the one who entered, penetrated, infected and corrupted my body, my heart, my mind, my pussy, my skin.

But you chose to ignore all that and your deafening silence on these issues echoes in the chambers of my empty, ravaged heart.

How mean, petty and subtly spiteful of you to choose to assume a denigrating stance that so cruelly trivializes the events in which you actively participated. In which you deceived, cheated and bragged. And in which I ached, suffered and struggled for my emotional survival.

The smug, self-satisfied adult persona who wrote this patronizing mail caricatures the affection you once had for me.

“that it has all ended up like this”:

A cool pseudo-objective pompous perspective, speaking as if on behalf of God or mankind.

“It all” — this situation that just happened out of nowhere. It just ”happened“ to you. This situation from which you distance yourself emotionally — to evade once more any accountability or responsibility. You created this. Own up to it. Be who you are. Be a man. Take responsibility. Be accountable for your actions. Say ”yes, I did these things”.

“I would like to say that if I have hurt you in any way, I apologize”. “IF”???? “IF”???? I have spelt out in exacting detail how you made a revolting travesty out of love. “IF”! — HELLO! This is Earth calling! Get real!

“I never meant to hurt you” — . But you did. You hurt me terribly. You lacerated me. Again and again. It is actions that count, not words or intentions.

“I remember all the good times we had together”. They were surely good for you, that you had somebody pandering to your every sexual whim. It was definitely worth a three-hour drive. Sure, you got your dick sucked real good. You had a horny bitch eager to teabag you and snowball you. She liked it too… that was real, you could tell. Mark my words. You will never again experience passion like this in a woman, not in this lifetime. And not only sexually, either.

And you were so grateful for these amazing experiences and you had so much goodwill towards me that you couldn’t even take 5 minutes out of your I’m-such-an-important-busy-guy schedule to answer my simple three-question quiz and do me a teeny-tiny favour. I felt so hurt. Did you remember all the good times we had together when I asked for your help? Did you? Did you?

Not only did you not send me the right birthday book, you refused the olive branch of the “We” book that I offered you.

Where could I have seen your deceit, if I’d been more awake; if, like P.D. Oespensky, I could go back in time. You didn’t look me in the eye. You avoided my gaze. And you deftly evaded the four-minute looking-into-each-other’s-eyes that was the final part of that accursed falling-in-love experiment. You knew then that I would see the truth. And I wasn’t in love with you then and didn’t want you to see it, so I colluded in avoiding it. What I couldn’t know was that the damage was already done, the seed was sown. I asked you once to write four things that were true. You didn’t respond to that either.

And what you assumed was “liking” when I met you the first time was merely relief that you, unlike any of the other 30-odd guys that I met, looked significantly better than your profile photo. I was lonely, I was horny, and the novelty of celibacy was wearing thin after more than a year.

We had something beautiful, something honest, something sexy, something passionate, something visceral, transformative and transcendental. And you threw it all away with both hands. The widow was there, right behind you, all primed and ready to roll (in the hay) and you swore blind there was no-one else.

“Just to let you know, … energy.”

Ahh, you’re playing the sympathy card. But your misery don’t cut no ice with me.

If you were sincerely interested in bringing me up to speed with what’s really going on in your life right now, you might have mentioned that the wife has moved back in with you. You feed your information very selectively. I searched for “Surname, Yourhometown ” to get your address. That’s right! How lucky you are, to have the wife to cater to your every need when you get home after another punishing day on the treadmill. And now you have bullied her into submitting to you because she knows you’ll leave her again if she dosen’t. Ohhhhh… the penny drops…, I guess she, too, was “comforting” you all along…

“I wish you and your family all the best”: Well, aren’t you Mr Nice Guy, so polite, so gentlemanly, all nice-and-grown-up-like. My family, my three fine sons, who now see you as a fucking “uncle” (pun intended) their mother once hooked up with. When my son comes into my room and dosen’t know why I am crying again, I tell him the truth: “I am crying because of Prussian Blue”.

Because my children and the people I love need to know the truth to navigate this world correctly and survive emotionally. I treasure the well-being of the people I care about and I respect them enough to tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Maybe the truth is uncomfortable or unpleasant or shameful or ugly but it has a magic and a power that gives my soul peace and ease. I feel good when I am with people who tell the truth. And they feel good with me.

I want my birthday book, “To Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee. Not a “sidekick” or an analysis. I want the novel that you promised me as a birthday gift all those months ago and HAVEN’T YET RECEIVED. A hardbook edition would be nice but a mid-price-range edition is more than sufficent. (I have to tell you: the cover illustration on the Dostoyevsky edition was fabulous, a real delight to the eye.)

I offered you many months ago a chance to make amends to compensate for the delay with the books.

I suggested that if you wished to compensate for the delay, you could, in addition, get me “We” by Robert A. Johnson. So far, you have chosen to not take me up on my offer. Pity…

Amber

I see that Amazon has failed in its attempt to make a delivery.

I told you that I didn’t want that book after all.

Again, you disrespect my wishes.

Don’t try to second-guess me.

When I said I didn’t want the book, I meant that I didn’t want it.

And certainly not from you, under duress, not anymore.

When have I ever said anything to you that I didn’t mean?

When have I been anything other than straightforward

or direct with you? Or said anything that wasn’t the truth?

What on earth makes you think that I want it now?

When I said I didn’t?

If, in the likely event of me accepting the book,

how do you think it will make me feel if I put it on my bookshelf?

What do you think it will represent for me?

I have resigned myself to the fact that it will never ever

symbolize for me what I wanted it to symbolize.

Do you really think it will give me a nice warm feeling?

Do you really imagine that it will make it all good again?

For six and a half months of waiting and reminders

I have longed to receive that book from you and

just after I tell you I don’t want it anymore

you scramble to send it to me.

Timing is everything and yours is way off.

You could have sent the book back in July, or August, or September

or October or November or December or January or even early February.

But you had “moved on”, as you put it. Which, in your eyes, negates your promise.

That book could have punctuated the end of a beautiful event.

I remember so clearly, you sitting there in your fancy bachelor pad in July and saying,

“I think a book is such a nice gift”

and it warmed me inside that you wanted to please me with a heartfelt gesture.

And at that moment I believe you meant it. But talk costs nothing, it is actions that count.

Not intentions. Following through on your statement would have made all the difference.

You see, when I was a child, nobody ever gave me a birthday gift.

My parents never held a party for me nor bought me anything for my birthday.

So it meant the world to me when you said you would.

Harper Lee died two days ago. Her life is over, just like my tenderness and warmth for you are dead and gone. At the very moment when something inside me died and I tell you that I don’t want the book after all, Harper Lee was preparing to release her grip on life. She, too, was letting go.

How’s that for poetic synchronicity?

Amber

Thank you to the 187 people who viewed this article, the 84 people who read it and the 13 people who recommended it. It means the world to me.

Would you like to know what happens next in the final instalment? Sure, why not?

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