and tuck him back away again
Note: This isn't about Adam or Tommy or any of the things I usually post here. It's mostly just for me, because I need to put it somewhere; somewhere where there is no chance that this person will be recognized. It's not fic, I almost wish it was. But it just needed to come out and this is a safe enough place for that. You don't have to read it, I just needed to write it.
I don’t know what made me look him up. I haven’t thought about him in years, I wasn’t particularly thinking about him today. But he was a question unanswered and I guess I just wanted confirmation that he hadn’t disappeared into the ether. He was ridiculously easy to find.
I looked at his photo and felt, just for a moment all the sadness of the time when it all fell apart. It wasn’t me that he wronged, and he is not someone that I ever loved. But he was someone I respected, someone I looked up to and I was standing a little to close when it all came tumbling down.
I remember the last evening, out on the deck and in the inescapable yet impossible knowledge that something was badly wrong. I remember thinking, so clearly, “He has a secret. What is he hiding?” and it was only days later I got the news. He was divorcing his wife. There was someone else. Their 20+ years old marriage was over. I thought back to all the weddings I had seen him perform - did I mention he was a pastor? - and I felt so betrayed. Did he ever mean any of it? Could he really believe that God was in those vows and yet walk away from his own so casually?
I’m a little older now and I can see that no one ever walks away from a marriage casually. Not ever. But even so. I remember thinking I wanted to be like him, I wanted a faith like his and then in one action it was like the villain in a cartoon who lifts the hood of their cloak and the kind face is gone, a horror in its place. Maybe I just felt foolish, he duped me.
He’s set up in a new business now, his resume carefully edited to sing in a slightly different key. He doesn’t speak of God, of the churches he pastured. He calls himself a student of spirituality. He speaks of gathering together a community. He counsels people now. And when I saw that it made me angry. “Who are you?” I asked the silent screen, “to tell others how to live?”
I don’t know if he has grown, if he has learned, if he ever apologized. I don’t even know if it matters. He still has the goatee that he grew all those years ago just as he was changing - the only outward side of an alchemy that could not be denied. His self was roiling, boiling, becoming something else, someone else. Do they know, the people he helps? Does he tell them his story? Or has he rewritten that too? Does he say that it was mutual now? That they “grew apart”? Does he admit that he ran away?
Does it matter?
Can an imperfect man say exactly the right thing just when you need to hear it? And is that enough? He writes of integrity and I want to shout “what do you know of integrity?” But it has been a long time, maybe he has learned after all. Have I?
He used to make such beautiful things with his hands - music from a violin, a chair for his son, a magnificent set of floating stairs. Does he still craft beautiful lies with his tongue? I want to shout a warning. I want to walk away quietly and pretend I never saw it. Most of all I want to pretend that I wasn’t there, that I didn’t see, that I do not know him. And there’s the truth of it: I do not know him. I doubt I ever did.
I don’t know what made me look him up. I haven’t thought about him in years, I wasn’t particularly thinking about him today. But he was a question unanswered and I guess I just wanted confirmation that he hadn’t disappeared into the ether. He was ridiculously easy to find.
I looked at his photo and felt, just for a moment all the sadness of the time when it all fell apart. It wasn’t me that he wronged, and he is not someone that I ever loved. But he was someone I respected, someone I looked up to and I was standing a little to close when it all came tumbling down.
I remember the last evening, out on the deck and in the inescapable yet impossible knowledge that something was badly wrong. I remember thinking, so clearly, “He has a secret. What is he hiding?” and it was only days later I got the news. He was divorcing his wife. There was someone else. Their 20+ years old marriage was over. I thought back to all the weddings I had seen him perform - did I mention he was a pastor? - and I felt so betrayed. Did he ever mean any of it? Could he really believe that God was in those vows and yet walk away from his own so casually?
I’m a little older now and I can see that no one ever walks away from a marriage casually. Not ever. But even so. I remember thinking I wanted to be like him, I wanted a faith like his and then in one action it was like the villain in a cartoon who lifts the hood of their cloak and the kind face is gone, a horror in its place. Maybe I just felt foolish, he duped me.
He’s set up in a new business now, his resume carefully edited to sing in a slightly different key. He doesn’t speak of God, of the churches he pastured. He calls himself a student of spirituality. He speaks of gathering together a community. He counsels people now. And when I saw that it made me angry. “Who are you?” I asked the silent screen, “to tell others how to live?”
I don’t know if he has grown, if he has learned, if he ever apologized. I don’t even know if it matters. He still has the goatee that he grew all those years ago just as he was changing - the only outward side of an alchemy that could not be denied. His self was roiling, boiling, becoming something else, someone else. Do they know, the people he helps? Does he tell them his story? Or has he rewritten that too? Does he say that it was mutual now? That they “grew apart”? Does he admit that he ran away?
Does it matter?
Can an imperfect man say exactly the right thing just when you need to hear it? And is that enough? He writes of integrity and I want to shout “what do you know of integrity?” But it has been a long time, maybe he has learned after all. Have I?
He used to make such beautiful things with his hands - music from a violin, a chair for his son, a magnificent set of floating stairs. Does he still craft beautiful lies with his tongue? I want to shout a warning. I want to walk away quietly and pretend I never saw it. Most of all I want to pretend that I wasn’t there, that I didn’t see, that I do not know him. And there’s the truth of it: I do not know him. I doubt I ever did.