Catharsis

Dear Low Rent, Water Buffalo, Horse Teeth, 666,

As I held my daughter in my arms, rocking her to sleep tonight, I thought about you.

I wondered if your mother, your father, if anyone at all ever held you and felt such love, ever rocked you and crooned gently as you slipped from wakefulness to warm, limp, innocent sleep. I wondered if anyone ever felt protective of you, looked at you and felt hope, dreamed of your future, seeing it as a terrific brightness, a huge, happy maybe.

I wonder if that was absent, if perhaps the way you behave now is rooted in the lack of strong arms holding you while you wept and wailed and wriggled against inevitable sleep. I felt pity, imagining an infant unloved, perhaps unwanted, left to her own devices to grow into a woman.

Until, that is, I thought about who you are, what you do, all these many years later. Perhaps your roots are sunk deep into a dark history, but you are long past the days when you can claim ignorance or injury as excuse for the hurt you cause others.

I could have forgiven that you knowingly sought out my Someone and offered him what must have seemed like a haven at the time. I could have easily understood and gotten past the idea that you were both acting on the need of the moment, fully conscious of your actions and willing to accept such consequences as there were. He and I have an understanding, have an open, polyamourous relationship with a few simple rules. You were aware of that. You may not claim ignorance, because we discussed it openly and at length when you found out, to assuage your curiosity.

While I may question the depth of your intellect, I am not so uncertain of your ability to think, to process information, that I can believe you didn't understand the small, concise words I used to describe what our particular polyamourous relationship was like.

While some others may say you're brain damaged, that your intellect suffers from old injuries, I have seen the cunning, the sly calculation, in your eye, and I know better. You knew and understood what you were doing, and you chose to do it anyway.

Fair enough - Someone and I had some angry words and he convinced himself that I didn't want him to return to camp, to our shared bed, that night (perhaps ever). His other love was not there to offer succor (she had wounds of her own to tend to), and so he was, he thought, alone. Alone and hungry for touch, for sensation. You moved in, seeking to gain for yourself what I and Lady R had...and he, in a drunken, angry, hurt state, he responded.

Did you think I would not find out? When the community saw you, the community of which I am a part (albeit minuscule)? Though many saw, it was Someone himself who confirmed that you had spent the night together. We talked long and hard about it, about why, about the many things in our hearts and minds that led up to and followed that night. Perhaps you didn't think that would happen. I wonder if you are capable of even imagining a relationship in which there is such openness, such honesty.

So two people were left stung but still standing, both hoping, both trying to understand and to heal ourselves and each other. There was still anger, but it was simmering, cooling, becoming something Other. Our relationship took a direct hit and did not crumble.

But two people weren't enough, were they? You had to seek out Lady R and tell her all about your night's pleasure, about how wonderful it was and how you were going to have a relationship with Someone. You did so pretending you didn't know who she was, but again, I know better. I know better because I had introduced you to her at one point, mentioning casually that she was the Other in our poly relationship, and that we are friends. You knew that your words, your actions would wound, and you made your choice.

Someone spent much of the day looking for Lady R to tell her what had happened - his sense of honor dictated that he not hide, not shirk. He sought you, too, for a conversation of a different sort, but you ran like the low cur you are, hiding yourself from the consequences of your actions, from the light of day, from truth.

And so came night again, and Lady R and I had both spoken to Someone, who was willing to take his licks because he knew he'd broken our rules, knew he'd hurt us both, and was remorseful and determined never to do so again.

Lady R and I had occasion to pass by you in the night as we walked from one place to another. Had you not been rubbing yourself against her Primary, her man, her Husband J, we might have kept on. Indeed, we might have kept on, anyway, but you had to stop me to talk, to spin lies, to gouge deeper and create greater separation so you could...what? I think you actually believed that Someone would choose you, would bring you home and send me away, because you have no concept of Home, do you, nor that I am his Home as surely as J is Lady R's home?

You spoke like a victim, as though you did not know that we were together (despite the fact that we have a daughter, sleep in the same bed, share a house, a yard, four cats, and dreams), as if he'd said it was OK and that I wouldn't care (in a sense, that was right...although not as you meant it), as if he'd sought to be mean-spirited by making it clear he was in your tent in the cruelest way he could think of. You plead that you told him you were my friend (how could you be my friend? We'd only met two days prior...hardly time for acquaintanceship, let alone friendship, to flourish) and didn't want to hurt me, that you didn't want to go with him if I would be unhappy, and that he said he didn't care, that I didn't matter, that we were through. You told me that you'd made it clear to him that it was over between you. "It"? What "it"?? There was no "it". You were someone to touch, to fuck, when he needed contact and release. You weren't a person, you were a receptacle.

Lies, and more lies.

Even when I told you "We've spoken, and we're good", you kept trying. Fool.

You asked me how you could make it right. I told you "The next time you have a chance to go with someone who has an Other, you make certain the Other is OK with it. Ask them. If it takes three days for you to have the opportunity to speak to the Other, you wait until they tell you, themselves, that it's alright."

Three times, I told you that. Three times, as Lady R was talking to J, arranging to meet with him later, I told you that.

Later, when Lady R and I were walking back to her camp, you and J were gone, and we knew what was happening. They did not meet later.

The next day, as Lady R and I were spending time together again, J came to her. He was ashamed...and Lady R could not ask, so I did. "J, I am asking this from love...did you sleep with...?" Yes, he had.

You told him that you and Lady R were bosom friends...that Lady R said she didn't love him anymore, and that Lady R wanted to come and live with me and Someone. You told him that you knew all about polyamoury (funny, I had to explain it to you that first night we discussed it), and that Lady R was fine with you and J being together. You spoke poisonous words with a honeyed tongue and he lapped them up in his pain and confusion.

We talked, did J, Lady R, and I...we talked, and sought to be honest and true,...and Lady R was doubly wounded because with Someone, it could have been a mistake, but that you went after J, too? No, that was no mistake...that was calculation, pure and simple. You clearly thought us blind, or foolish...and you were wrong.

When neither Someone nor J professed their undying love for you, you found another couple having difficulties and enticed the man into your bed, this time a man who was not in a poly relationship (and you knew it).

Throughout all of this, you continued to make yourself out to be the victim, the innocent, the one who was hurt because you didn't know.

Bullshit.

Later, you told anyone who would listen that Lady R and I both decided we didn't want our men and were going to join you as lesbian lovers.

Should I ever choose to go with the Taco and not the Sausage, rest assured I will choose one that is not rotten, rancid, and ridden harder than Seattle Slew.

I have droned on with history because I want you to know, even if it's only in spirit because you will never read this blog (and if you do you will never recognize yourself because you can't bear to look that deeply into the mirror), that I know what you are and am not afraid to name it.

Now comes the part where I tell you what I think of you. I refrained in person because I didn't want to bring more drama into that community. Here, though? In my minuscule part of Blogopolis, far out on the edges? In this tiny little corner of the Blue Nowhere? Here, I will speak my mind openly, knowing full well that I am showing myself to be unkind, petty, mean-spirited myself. That's life, sugar. I can own what I am.

You are an odious toad. You are a liar, a disease, a blight. Where others seek to build, you seek to tear down. Where others seek to achieve, you seek to loot and destroy. You are rotten to the core, and more, you delight in your rot and seek to spread its filth as far and wide as you can. Your body, as well as your spirit, is an ulceration, a suppurating wound oozing infection on all you touch. You hide behind a veil of weakness, but no one is fooled for long, and so you must move on to prey on the next weak, blind fool until his eyes are clear of alcohol's fog (for only drunken men in a place of hurt or confusion go with you, and only after you have touched, rubbed, encouraged, and enticed them). You are toxic in every way, foul and vulgar. You are a thief, seeking to cast your thievery as need, and if others have and you need, they should give unto you, and if they won't give unto you, you have every right to take because otherwise it's not fair.

You demand your fair share of love, refusing to believe, to accept, that sometimes sex is just sex, desperately adhering to the idea that sex means undying love. When that love is not given, when they recoil in horror over what they've done, you tell all who will listen that you are a victim, that you were led astray.

Not content to rend individuals or couples, you attempt to divide entire communities.

In the past, you've had a measure of success, leaving a trail of devastation and mourning behind you.

Not this time.

This time, you fucked with community, and community will fuck (is fucking) back. You cast your malevolence into the water, and the ripples are spreading.

You are lucky that I and a few others who love her kept Lady R from killing you, or at least doing you great harm. You are lucky that I refrained from delighting in some petty meanness of my own because I had wit enough to know that small vengeance would feel good in the moment, but the consequences were lifelong.

You are a lesson that I am done learning. After this, I will give you nothing more of me. You are nothing, and will always be nothing, to me. Should we chance to meet again, I will give you what you are to me...nothing. Believe this: You do not matter. Your lies do not matter. I do not care. You are not welcome in my camp, nor will I ever offer you shelter, food, fire, or water. I do not give Hospitality to nothing.

I wonder...what would that oh-so-long-ago person who held you, rocked you, loved you, what would they think of the person you have become today?

I believe I hear weeping...