James has been either my best friend or mortal enemy for nearly eighteen years. When I asked him for a suggestion regarding the recent NYC event in which I had to take a “personal risk” I expected him to say something smart and interesting.
When he said be wrong I was unnerved and angry.
But I’ve been thinking about his comments: he followed up on the first email with a couple of paragraphs specifically saying that I should tell a story in which I am clearly the antagonist, and definitely doing something destructive.
There are many stories I could tell to satisfy James. Some are more entertaining than others, but we’ll set aside the torrid ones as I’ve never really cared that much about sexual politics.
After the accident I asked James if he would have cried over my death. He said no, and although I knew he meant that he simply could not cry about anything, I stopped talking to him for an entire year. He was invisible to me, even though the distorted adolescent world we lived in dictated we sit next to each other all day at school. After we reconciled I had not in any sense forgiven him.
Over the next eight years, through various moves and scandals, as we baited and cared for each other, I never forgot. I didn’t scheme or plan my revenge, but I did eventually make him cry, standing on the corner of Division and Twentieth in Portland the night before I married Byron.
But it is unlikely that James wants me to tell his secrets to confess my own wrongdoings.