An epilogue?

At long last the final chapter has closed on a long and sad saga.

E.T.'s wife left him a month ago, as I posted a bit earlier. Someone who had once been amongst my closest friends, someone who I once called a brother, and who screwed me over bigtime in his rush for tail. Anyway, what happened, it's all long in the past, and anyone reading this probably knows the whole sad story by now. If not, and if truly curious, feel free to spend a few dozen hours looking through two years of posts to find the rest.

After all the shit went down, I was never quite sure I'd move out from under the shadow of it all. At times I felt the regret of relationships lost and betrayal every minute of the day. At others, I had enough to do on my plate, enough to bury myself in, that it was merely in the background. Yet it was never far, since the effects of those actions are a very real part of why my daily life is as it is today. But increasingly the pain has gone. I didn't realize how far it had receded until he called me to drop the bombshell a few weeks ago. In a way I ought to have felt vindicated, to have felt that I had been right, that if he had followed my advice he'd never have had to live through this, and so on. Yet in the end, when I learned of it, the only thing that kept me from hanging up was his apology and my curiosity to hear how it ended. Beyond that? I couldn't bring myself to tell him to fuck off, not so much because he didn't deserve it or I felt too nice to, but because I just didn't give a damn anymore. It was like another life, long ago, that I will never return to.

Yesterday, he called me again. Out of curiosity, I once again answered. He repeated some of the same stuff to me; apparently he had forgotten some of what he had already told me. He was under the impression he and Leah had asked me to leave Oly. Asked me to leave! Wow. Umm. Talk about out off touch with memory and reality. Josh would remember that far better. No, dude, I walked out without warning. Anyway, he wanted to meet. I had other things to do, so I pushed him off to the next day, Friday. Naturally, by the time he'd called, a certain person who I'd probably have confided in and gotten some advice & support from was not to be found, and no other friends were around who I could speak to about it. I was on my own. No crisis, but no reality check either. I'd have to figure it all out for myself.

Why meet at all? I posted about that before too. I didn't want to be petty. He had begun with an apology and a strong desire to speak to me, and I never wanted it to be said that I hadn't given him a chance to say what he wished to. I also wanted to satisfy my curiosity and hear the rest. And beyond that, I wanted closure. I wanted to be able to finally tell him the limits and be done. Steve thought I was nuts and encouraging him, but I believe in mercy for defeated enemies, and he'd just defeated himself royally. Bushido, Bushido, Bushido. A code E.T. would never understand.

This (Friday) morning, I managed to snag some cash from the 'rents, since my aid hasn't shown up yet. They only knew I was spending the nice day out, no more. Then I hit the freeway and went down to the Dockside, where we'd planned to meet. At 10:45, 15 minutes early, he showed. He was wearing a WST hat and a polo shirt and the same goofy facial expression he'd always had. Had he changed? Didn't seem so to me.

Our conversation went in fits and starts. He began trying with cozy, small-talk catchup shit, but I cut him short when he kept asking questions and I refused to give direct answers. I still didn't know if I wanted him to know anything. When he said he wanted to know more because we'd been out of touch for some time, I'd replied, yes, we had. By choice? Yes, mine. I then asked him for more about what had happened to their marriage. Not much of a story. She began hanging out with a neighbor guy and trading sly emails and yada yada. One night she announced she wanted a divorce. No counseling. Not interested. Any off you ever seen / heard divorce stories? Just fill in the typical details, the typical woe-is-meisms, the typical recriminations and revenge fantasies.

He had an extra layer of icing, claiming he'd been suicidal. "If Crown Point had been two hours closer, I'd have been dead now." He's the type who'd think of it, plan it, get it all together, psych it up, tell others and threaten it, and then get to the edge, and hesitate. They say suicidal people are cowards, and to some degree it's true, but there's a level of cowardice even lower, and thats the type that threatens it but never can go beyond the edge, the kind who can't even muster the courage to jump. He's that type. Big mouth no action.

Since he had had the courtesy of filling me in on what had happened since we'd last been on speaking terms, I decided to grant him the most basic facts of my life since. He had enough good sense to refrain from more than "good for you" -- at least he was not foolish enough to claim credit for it. He made a few more apologies. He acknowledged that he didn't expect that we'd just go back to where we were, but he wanted to know if we could patch together "some semblance of a friendship". It's a phrase he'd practiced I could tell. It's really difficult to respect someone who you can see through. He understood, however, if I really wanted nothing to do with him. Now you must understand that I knew he had spent some time with a certain foamer fire chief recently, and he had just told me that another friend from up north had gone foaming with him. My reply to this line of conversation was to tell him that as long as he kept doing some kind of foaming we would have mutual acquaintances. I told him I had no intention of making his life miserable, and I expected we would not be able to avoid each other unless I simply chose to boycott times and places he was, and I had no intention of doing such. I also told him however that I didn't expect to ever want to spend social time with him either. No calling up and seeing what he's doing that day. None of that sort of thing.

Eventually we wound up the conversation. I had had a call from a maintainer friend and had another lunch appointment with him in Sherwood at 1, which gave me a deadline to meet to get out of there. As we stood in the parking lot, I gave him a sarcastic "Welcome back to Portland", which he took literally and thanked me for. Some people just don't operate at the same speed, ya know? He hates this town though, as he reiterated. I smiled. I've never felt more a part of Portland, all it's insanity, all it's messiness, all its oddity. Everything about it he hates is something I love, and no finer illustration can there be of just how different we are from each other. He won't stay. In fact he wants to go back to Oly. He's applying for crew van driving again, and he wants to get on at the coal scab outfit, maybe even out of the state in Colorado where Josh is. (As I write this I'm shaking my head.)

I might see him again. It could happen. Not by choice, but by happenstance -- he thinks Portland, the city he hates, is large, but I know all too damn well how small the world is at times you least expect it. But most of all, he understands, at last, that we'll never be friends again. I wished him luck, tossed my hand out the window with a "see you around," and drove away.

The rest of the day was with my current maintainer friend, and my former maintainer friend, out on the Willamina in Orangeandblackiastan. A blast of a day, and too long and off-topic to go into here, but even though they are not close friends, they represent home and who I am far better. Smoking cheap cigars on Sheridan Hill waiting for the Willamina to climb up to us in the starlit darkness, lightning rumbling of the distant Cascades, Venus shining like a Goddess in the Western sky, pizza box empty, beer bottles empty, 645 rumble in the valley below. It's my world. MY world. Now the book has finally closed, I finally realize that the dream is over. My world is mine again.

np: Nobody does it better / Carly Simon