A man deserves to be treated well.
The above headline was my final word to one Miss Leslie, who has proven herself beyond the shadow of a doubt to be 100% crazy as a motherfucker. And you know I like to be slightly silkier with my prose than that, but man, all I can say in this case is motherfuckin bitch has got to go.
To boil a long preamble down to its bare bones: some several weeks ago I meet this Miss Leslie, and we dance together through Zlatne Uste's Balkan brass music party, the Golden Festival, in Brooklyn. She professes to fall for me in some capacity, and proceeds to engage me for a date on the following night. So, down at Barbes that next evening we dance, we glow, we make out raunchily and publicly, more raunchily in fact than I have ever done publicly (except for that time with Oona). But then the bomb drops: sad as she is to say it, she must cancel Part II of our date, wherein we sojourn to Pete's Candy Store, because right now at Pete's Candy Store there is, it appears, another boy who is waiting for her--a boy to whom she's already promised herself for the final part of the evening.
Now, to tell you the truth, I'm neither as cynical nor as unflappable as I may generally let on. So initially, I don't see what's really the only appropriate response to this delightful new bit of information. No, really, I'm pretty confusable and sensitive, so instead I say lots of things that pretty much amount to, "Oh. Well, gee." Because at the root of it, I have no idea how this great girl who danced with me and invited me out on a date (she even called it that! repeatedly!) and who singled me out of the billions of great folks at the Golden Festival and who bought me whiskey and poured it from the glass into my mouth giggling as we danced to Aurora's Western swing band in Park Slope, and who pressed her mouth into mine on the freezing cold street corner and undid my belt as her jaw swam smoothly past my lips, shark-like, as she dove to kiss me roughly on the top of my neck, I have no idea how she's suddenly leaving me here like this.
And then the embarrassing part happens; I don't understand what I'm supposed to do, how to handle this, and I'm still starry eyed and stupid from the sheer force of her professed attraction to me. So when she says we should ride the train north together, I agree. And when she wants to be kissy on the train, I agree. And I don't lash out, I don't question, I just resign myself to this less-than-ideal outcome. We ride the trains, I speak cleverly and eloquently about yes, how curious the universe can be in its capricious sense of timing, oh ho ho. Somehow though, while during the course of this she continuously tries to conversationally corner me into a position where I'm supposed to state my case for why she should take me, here, at least, I do not take the bait. Because a man has got to have some dignity. I'm not about to argue my reasons for why someone should like or choose me, a) ever, to anyone, and b) certainly not when the girl has already chosen me and then shelved me for some other asshole.
...more in the middle here. Me feeling heartbroken, followed by my feeling furious. Just furious. Terrible texts back and forth. My attempts to talk to her to try to sort something out, and her lashing out at me because of it. Then, more of her lashing out. Then, a deluge of cruel texts from her, a biting rain that carries on for a week after I've stopped responding. Then, God bless them, Robin & Jen Snead and my sister telling me that I'm crazy to be heartbroken, and opening my eyes to why this girl's a crazy ass vampire cunt. Agreed. But those texts keep coming.
And then Tuesday, this week, when a text comes in saying, "Want to start over?" I do not respond. Because really, what could I say that would be useful to say? You can't argue with crazy people.
So tonight, Friday night, at 11:30, my phone rings. This is and says when I pick up, "Oh, you picked up!" Yes, I say. "I guess I can take that as a good sign," she says. I say nothing. She says that she is calling not to talk, because she's busy tonight, but to see if I want to talk at some other time. I ask her to say that again. "Well, you know, I was in a bad place emotionally last time we were together, but things have been going really well this week, so I thought I'd call you tonight and tell you that we can talk." I am flabbergasted by the audacious one-sidedness of this. "Why are you being so quiet?" Well, I say, I'm being quiet because I'm not quite sure what the right thing is to say. But no, my answering her call doesn't mean that I'm interested in talking with her. "What? Why not?" Well, I say (as evenly as I can muster) because you treated me badly and I'm not interested in more it. "No no," she says, "you don't understand, I don't want to talk now. I just want to know if you want to talk later."
Now, you reading this might be wondering something along the lines of What the hell does that mean?, and I will tell you that that is a very reasonable question to ask, and one that I, fortunately for you, have, in my recent hard-luck experience, not only learned the answer to but learned how to summarize in one crisp, resonant word. Crazy. My friends, what she means is, "I am a lunatic. Let me prove it to you in a way that's as emotionally manipulative and painful as possible."
So, I say no. No, I would not like to talk later. I don't want to start over. I don't want to continue talking with her. She shouts, and she sounds hurt and indignant, and she demands to know what I mean, and she asks me if No, then Why Not. "Well," I say, "you treated me badly. You didn't treat me with dignity, even though you expected nothing but dignity yourself even after you treated me poorly. But that shit's a two-way street. And I'm not interested in more of that one-sided stuff with you." No no no, she says, I have it all wrong: "I was in a really bad place then. Things are different now. But wait, you don't understand, I don't mean that we should talk about it now; I just wanted to call about talking later. I wanted to see if you wanted to talk." I tell her again that I can't see a good reason to want to. "I don't know what that means!" she says, "and anyway, I can't talk about this now, I'm working a party tonight." I want to ask her why in heaven's name she called me to talk if she can't even talk, but think better of it. This would, after all, be violating one of Daddy Bisker's three golden rules: You can't argue with crazy people. "So," she persists, "can we talk later?"
"So let me get this straight," I ask, although not quite like that, because that's one of those phrases you only use when you're trying to start a fight and I'm really trying quite hard not to. I can already feel the weight of this in my gut, a hollow heat in my diaphragm like I was gut-shot, and I know that a fight would just hurt like hell and leave me crying and sore. Because for one thing, her horrible, myopic self-centeredness is hurtful and bewildering in the same way that your very faith in mankind is tested by seeing an I-had-no-idea-he-was-sociopathic child pull the legs off a grasshopper; and for another thing, I am still just hurt, personally, me, by the way her words pull at the very many, very deeply piercing hooks she'd sank into me. "So let me get this straight. You only want to call and see if I want to talk." That's right, she says. "But you don't want to talk about why." That's right too. "So really you're calling to see if I want to talk but only as long as the answer is Yes. That's not a question at all. You're only interested in knowing what I think as long as it's what you want to hear. If I say no, then you ask why, but you don't really want to know why; you don't even want to hear why, let alone know why. You don't want to talk about it. You only want to talk to me to tell me that I'm talking to you. But I'm telling you no, I don't want to." She curses, she yells an attack, and she hangs up.
I'm not sure what she expected to happen here (again, crazy people). But I do feel that this time, closure will be my friend and a tool I can wield and wield well. So this is my final kiss-off text message to her. I tried, and by that I mean I tried very, very hard, not to attack or lash out at all...not that there isn't a lot of opportunity (and a lot of good reason) to do so. But. I wrote:
Suck it, bitch.
People who DISlike each other still treat one another with more dignity and equanimity than you seem interested in or capable of approaching me with. I deserve much better than that. Start over? No, thank you. You would never treat me well. I mean you no ill, sincerely, but I'll be damned if I open up my throat again for you to bite. A man deserves to be treated well.
