IAL??
The envelope that arrives in Alden's mail comes as a missive without a return address. The envelope is addressed to Charles Spencer Alden III, like a formal announcement or a wedding invitation. The paper is a heavy, expensive stock, and the handwriting is neat, flowing strokes of black ink. But lest you be frightened, it is not a wedding invitation.
Charles Alden,
When last we met, I had a fight with a woman we both know. She believes that I owed you a height of courtesy; that I owed you the humbling of my pride, to beg for your forgiveness. I believed that she was not so much wrong as that the burden she demanded of me was too weighted and unwieldy for me to bear, as well as being deeply insufficient for the healing of the damage that I have done to you, to your self, and to your soul. I believed that the greatest courtesy that I could do to you is to behave monstrously, to give you a focus for the loathing you rightly bear, to remove myself from your life as anything beyond the shadow of what I had done to you for you to grow beyond and surpass.
But now she is dead, and we respond differently to the fallen, somehow. We wish to unsay words, as though that were ever possible. To unwrite sentences, as though their impression is not forever on the page. Supposedly even electronic text can be recalled when you delete it. I don't know anything about computers. I do know a few things about words. Words like rape, and victim, and hatred. Words like fear, and guilt, and loss.
It is not that I expect your forgiveness for what I did. I do not deserve it. I have come to accept the weight of my incredible selfishness. I have come to understand the fear and panic and shallow self-centeredness that filled those halcyon days with sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll (well, figurative rock 'n' roll; well, opera, but never mind). I have come to know myself, to recognize the wrongs, and to move beyond them, in the only ways that I can. Forwards.
Kelsey wanted me to do you courtesy. She wanted me to beg you for your forgiveness. She wanted to live in a world where her friend was not the kind of disgusting bastard who could do rend control from someone, deceive them, take them, and smile at them afterwards. She did not live in that world, and wherever she is now, if there is a next world where our friends go when we lose them, I imagine that there is a clarity there that she lacked when the confusions of the flesh were on her.
I do not beg you for that which cannot be sanely given. I do not ask forgiveness. But I do want to tell you that you are better than what I used you for. I took control for a fleeting instant of so many because I lost it so often for myself, because these gifts I was born with gave me the power even as they took it away from me. I have come to a tentative peace with the boy I was then. He was terrified and desperately alone and surpassingly selfish. Nothing mattered except the rush. Nothing mattered except the devastating pleasure of a few minutes, a few hours at a time. There was no future. The past was too dark to even contemplate.
Now, though, I have a future. I have a present. I will not gloat about these things to you. I do that enough. Believe me, I do that enough. But there are new words, beyond guilt, and fear, and hatred. You can have them. They're yours. Because despicable as I was, callow as I was, empty as I was, I grew; I came to understand the past, to move beyond it. It is my deepest hope that so shall you.
I don't like you, Alden. You are an uncomfortable memory. The image of a past I had moved beyond and set beside. But life does not allow us to simply cast aside what is inconvenient. It would be best if I simply avoided darkening your horizon ever again. It is my first and strongest instinct to avoid you, to hide away, to defend myself from your knowledge, from your very existence. To write these words is against the very basis of my reason.
But I am sorry that I deceived you. I am sorry that I took from you what should only be freely given. I am sorry that I was worthless and wicked. And I am sorry that when we met again, I did not have the decency to let you be the one with the grievance.
And I am sorry about the hangover I am reasonably certain we shall both have after the writing and receipt of this letter.
Percival Randolph Talhurst
Charles Alden,
When last we met, I had a fight with a woman we both know. She believes that I owed you a height of courtesy; that I owed you the humbling of my pride, to beg for your forgiveness. I believed that she was not so much wrong as that the burden she demanded of me was too weighted and unwieldy for me to bear, as well as being deeply insufficient for the healing of the damage that I have done to you, to your self, and to your soul. I believed that the greatest courtesy that I could do to you is to behave monstrously, to give you a focus for the loathing you rightly bear, to remove myself from your life as anything beyond the shadow of what I had done to you for you to grow beyond and surpass.
But now she is dead, and we respond differently to the fallen, somehow. We wish to unsay words, as though that were ever possible. To unwrite sentences, as though their impression is not forever on the page. Supposedly even electronic text can be recalled when you delete it. I don't know anything about computers. I do know a few things about words. Words like rape, and victim, and hatred. Words like fear, and guilt, and loss.
It is not that I expect your forgiveness for what I did. I do not deserve it. I have come to accept the weight of my incredible selfishness. I have come to understand the fear and panic and shallow self-centeredness that filled those halcyon days with sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll (well, figurative rock 'n' roll; well, opera, but never mind). I have come to know myself, to recognize the wrongs, and to move beyond them, in the only ways that I can. Forwards.
Kelsey wanted me to do you courtesy. She wanted me to beg you for your forgiveness. She wanted to live in a world where her friend was not the kind of disgusting bastard who could do rend control from someone, deceive them, take them, and smile at them afterwards. She did not live in that world, and wherever she is now, if there is a next world where our friends go when we lose them, I imagine that there is a clarity there that she lacked when the confusions of the flesh were on her.
I do not beg you for that which cannot be sanely given. I do not ask forgiveness. But I do want to tell you that you are better than what I used you for. I took control for a fleeting instant of so many because I lost it so often for myself, because these gifts I was born with gave me the power even as they took it away from me. I have come to a tentative peace with the boy I was then. He was terrified and desperately alone and surpassingly selfish. Nothing mattered except the rush. Nothing mattered except the devastating pleasure of a few minutes, a few hours at a time. There was no future. The past was too dark to even contemplate.
Now, though, I have a future. I have a present. I will not gloat about these things to you. I do that enough. Believe me, I do that enough. But there are new words, beyond guilt, and fear, and hatred. You can have them. They're yours. Because despicable as I was, callow as I was, empty as I was, I grew; I came to understand the past, to move beyond it. It is my deepest hope that so shall you.
I don't like you, Alden. You are an uncomfortable memory. The image of a past I had moved beyond and set beside. But life does not allow us to simply cast aside what is inconvenient. It would be best if I simply avoided darkening your horizon ever again. It is my first and strongest instinct to avoid you, to hide away, to defend myself from your knowledge, from your very existence. To write these words is against the very basis of my reason.
But I am sorry that I deceived you. I am sorry that I took from you what should only be freely given. I am sorry that I was worthless and wicked. And I am sorry that when we met again, I did not have the decency to let you be the one with the grievance.
And I am sorry about the hangover I am reasonably certain we shall both have after the writing and receipt of this letter.
Percival Randolph Talhurst