Despertar

dear marcus

Justin was looking over my shoulder when you called on my birthday. He saw your name in the Caller ID, sat thin-lipped through our entire inconsequential conversation, and then, after I hung up, asked how long it had been since I had spoken to you last. Months, I told him, lying. The lie wasn't in my answer itself (it really had been nine weeks or so, I checked my call log afterward to clear my conscience); it was in my avoidance of the question I knew he was really asking. He, like everyone else in my life, wants to know why I don't just stop answering your calls. Am I just a glutton for punishment, or do I still have feelings for you? It's neither, but no one can fathom why I'd keep taking your crap if you're not still hiding someplace in my heart. And I don't have the words to explain it, so I just say it's because I'm too nice to ignore you, or that it's against my principles to hate someone I used to think I loved.

Today, you called for the same reason you always call: to dump a load of your personal issues at my feet without bothering to ask me, even politely, about mine. Not that you're my first-choice confidant or anything, these days, but still, it would be nice to feel like what you're looking for is a friendship, a give-and-take, and not just a sporadic ego boost. Anyway, you called to tell me about the new girlfriend, how she quit journalism school, against your advisement, and flew halfway across the country, from California to Louisiana, to move in with you, again, against your advisement. How for six weeks she's been living with you, broke because she can't pull in any more student loans and because she didn't bother lining up a job before she came, she was just in that much of a hurry to get to you. How your roommate is over it and finally sent you the passive-aggressive text message announcing he's going thirds on rent if you're going to have a long-term guest breathing a third of the air and eating a third of the food. How your parents are heartbroken, how your mother calls wailing about how you can't keep living in sin with that girl.

I'm sure it's worth it, though, I said, snidely, because snide remarks are as close as I ever get to actually telling you off. Because now you get to live with the woman who makes you want to be a better man--that must be much better than doing it long-distance.

(You didn't catch the reference, you've already forgotten the last thing you said the day you dumped me for her, which is lucky for you, because I never will.) You said it isn't worth it, that the two of you aren't ready to live together yet, that, believe it or not, your girlfriend is actually sort of...controlling.

Really? I pressed on my end, sorry you couldn't see the expression I was making, the sarcastic shock. I guess you've forgotten how I bore the brunt of that controlling side, last spring when she called me, a stranger, to decree that you and I aren't allowed to be friends without her permission.

Yeah, you said, and, too, she's fucking things up between me and my parents, my Mom just learned to email and now she writes me every day to remind me how we're angering God and she's not helping if we run out of money. She even called her, one day while I was in class, and they got in a big fight, and she called my mom a bitch. You reminded me, even though I remembered, clearly, that your mother hates this girlfriend of yours, and has in fact hated every girl you've ever dated except me, and hates this one most of all because she is the least like me. And I still don't get why, you said, helplessly.

I swear I didn't know you were this dumb till recently, or I wouldn't have waited around for you to reject me. Of course your mom hates her, why wouldn't she? Better question, why would you look to me for sympathy about a rift between your mom and your girlfriend? Why wouldn't it occur to you that I'd side with your mom, given that I hate your girlfriend, too? You know I've only interacted with her once, and that that interaction consisted of my listening mutely while she yelled at me, this only a few months after she took you from me, to whatever extent one person can do that to another--why would you even think of me when you find yourself needing someone to talk to about her?

And it's probably this: You're looking for something, the same way I'm looking for something, and what you're looking for isn't genuine sympathy for a tough situation you're in, just like what I'm looking for isn't a solid friendship built on a foundation of positive shared experiences. You still call me because you held more power over me than you ever have over anything else in your life. I'm a relic of your heyday, a time when you were popular and doing well in school, loved by your college's administration, making shit-eating appearances in historic documentaries about the black elite. You could do whatever you wanted during the day and have sex any night you wanted to, you didn't have to share your physical or emotional space. I was affectionate whether you were nice to me or not, so you weren't. I didn't do anything without your permission; I lived in a teeny box because I was afraid to intrude on your gigantic one. You got away with being an ass for four years and you remember it fondly. And now you're stuck sharing your two-bedroom apartment with a roommate who resents you and a girlfriend who doesn't care that you didn't want her there, who sees fit to prowl through your things and scour your phone records just in case you've had the nerve to talk to someone besides her. So you call me because I remind you that it doesn't have to be this way, for you, that you have within you the dormant power to crush someone weaker beneath the ball of your foot.

Meanwhile, I've never had a decent, successful relationship since or including you. I treat people with a minimum of deference and respect, yet the guy who worked the hardest for my affection was the anomaly I treated like shit, instead. All around me, everywhere, I see women being spoiled and cherished by men they treat like dogs, and I'm finally piecing together the sad conclusion that you almost have to be bitchy and unreasonable to win a guy's favor. Case in point, your girlfriend: aggressive, irritable, clingy, controlling--and definitely not pretty enough to explain away the fact that you worship her. (That hair!) You used to blow off our dinner plans, and we always went Dutch, but you let her move in penniless, uninvited. I bought you silk ties for your birthday, she ruined the last scraps of your relationship with your mother. I internalized every negative thought and feeling I ever had about you to avoid overstepping any boundaries, she brazenly alienated you from one of the best friends you ever had.

I just want you to tell me why. That's why I keep answering when you call. I want you to finally give it to me straight, tell me I loved you too much, that you were craving abuse and she answered the call. Tell me I was too good to be good enough.

Or: Tell me it was me after all, that I wasn't enough for you and I'll never be enough for anybody, that you don't blame the other guys for what they've put me through. Admit you damaged me, ruined me for anyone else, admit you don't feel guilty for it. Give me a reason to delete your number.

Because we aren't friends. I've always treated you with more kindness than you deserve. Just because I don't tell you to fuck off now doesn't mean I've quit resenting you for how sad I still am. I wish I could tell you I wish I'd never met you, that my life is worse because you were in it, but I'm not that girlfriend of yours, I don't expect to get away with saying terrible things.

I should badmouth you to Justin, just for the sake of reciprocity, but I don't even have to, that's how much he hates you. He thinks you are like poison to me, and supposes that you probably have a small penis. He's right on both counts.