My buddy called up about six weeks ago. I hadn't RSVP'd to his wedding. He wanted me to be his best man. I expressed that I didn't really feel like going to Singapore, thanks, and that I certainly wasn't dragging my kid to Singapore, thanks, and he was disappointed but insisted that it was super-important I be there and maybe we could leave the kid with her grandparents for a week because it just wouldn't be the same without me and he needed me to "come up with terms" (giggle) whereby I could appropriately punish him for his prior transgressions and come to his wedding and be his best man. there would be no requirements other than that I be there. No bachelor parties, nothing like that, and all the people that I hate, that he screwed me over for, probably wouldn't even be there. I sat on it for about three days. Talked it over with friends and loved ones. There was a lot of "it won't be all bad" "just get through it" "the easiest thing is to hunker down". None of it sat right. I decided that in order to get him to hear, I needed to write a letter and mail it. It was a solution I'd puzzled out prior to being asked to be best man; the request added urgency. He called twice in two days for my answer. I didn't pick up. I was in the process of drafting my response, as carefully and concisely as I could, when it boiled over. I was doing the thing that had the least impact for him, not for me. So I called him up and chewed his ass out for assuming that (A) I wouldn't get royally fucked over as per usual (B) I wasn't 100% right to be insanely pissed at a guy who fucked me over so badly I've stopped mixing post (C) he could saddle me with something so momentous and inconvenient without even the barest attempt to take my temperature about any of this shit. I hung up on him. I hadn't seen that bachelor party thing before. Looked it up after I got off the phone. Pure hateful schadenfruede. Yet there it is. While he was passionately assuring me that I just needed to be there, his fiancee was expecting me to throw a "skanky" "age appropriate" bachelor party "within Singaporean laws thank you." In case you're curious, Singapore is where you get fined for chewing gum, caned for vandalizing a car and marijuana? Ten years in jail or, if you're feelin' lucky, the death penalty for half a kilo. Eleven in 2018. I've been grappling with this ever since. It's fair to say I can't go running without getting mad. 'cuz I'm the bad guy. He texted me twice before Christmas; I didn't answer. he wrote me an email last week because obviously if I'm not getting back to him it's because my life is in shambles and there must be something dreadfully wrong (he's been liking my posts on Instagram and Facebook, none of which illustrate familial catastrophe). I wrote him back saying I was fine I just didn't want to talk to him. Within 48 hours his fiancee had sent me two invites to their reception in Pasadena in July. My subconscious has finally surfaced why, exactly, it doesn't want to go to Singapore SO BADLY. It reminded me of the literal years I have spent in daily hour-long calls talking him off the ledge about this girl or the other who isn't responding to his phone calls the way he likes. It reminded me of the ex-girlfriends of his I've had to reassemble after he gets bored, talks them up again, and then finds a shiny and ghosts them. It reminded me that I can be expected to appear somewhere at 6am the next day but when my car blew up he didn't pick up the phone. And it reminded me that if he has to choose between mildly inconveniencing anyone he's sleeping with or fucking me over royally? He won't even feel bad about it because that's the price of love. So the metaphor I've settled on is that if we were on a cruise? And I fell overboard? He'd check to make sure his girl's drink didn't need topping up before he'd reach for a life preserver. And that more likely than not, he'd watch me drown satisfied in the knowledge that his sweetie wasn't parched. He's never been engaged before. By now he's married. And my subconscious has been screaming at me about danger for about eight weeks. It took a while to figure out that Lassie was saying Timmy was about to fall down a well but I hear it now. It's brought me a little bit of peace but not enough. Because the thing is? He's been through headshrinking enough that he doesn't say "I'm sorry" he says "I can see how that would be your experience and I validate your emotions" and he's still about the necessary transaction to get what he wants without even understanding that I'm not even dealing with him anymore, I'm dealing with his fiancee and you know what? I ain't dealin' with his fiancee. I wish I could run without getting mad.
It seems to me like this guy wants you in his wedding primarily because when something inevitably goes sideways, he wants to put the responsibility for unfucking that on you. You really don't owe him that. Also, it is pretty disrespectful to say, effectively, "let's reconcile but we're doing it on my timeframe so you can do a bunch of work to make my life easier." Yeah, it sucks that you have to be the one to say no here, but this guy is clearly the asshole for expecting you to do the work of sorting out the issues between you two by fucking July.
It's complicated. I told my wife last night that fundamentally, I could be defined by the fact that no one in my life supported me until I met her. We had an interesting discussion last night about "education" and what it means; I've been doing a lot of self-guided exploration of watch brands and their success and failures (ever seen a luxury brand commit suicide?) and she asked if I was still learning anything. I said that I wasn't really but that learning wasn't the point; she observed that learning doesn't mean you go in with a specific goal and I said "learning is spending enough time to pass the test and anything beyond that you're just an uppity shithead looking to get pounded" and she wondered how a kid whose parents share five college degrees between them would end up with such a perverse understanding of "learning." I observed that Occam's Razor on my childhood is they viewed me as a pain in the ass so I learned not to be underfoot. Anyway. The three months I preferred sleeping in a car to sleeping in my house? His parents put me up. His dad is the one who taught me how to drive. I've known him since 8th grade; I started writing screenplays because he needed one. He's the one who moved out to Hollywood and got the MFA from Art Center; I'm the one who popped down and had a six figure union gig within a week of getting off the plane. He stopped talking to me for a year out of jealousy for that. He knows he's the asshole. But he's always been the asshole. For thirty years, he's been the asshole and I've put up with it. For thirty years, I am the unfucker. His shrink once had him pass along the message that I am his fundamental pillar of mental health. What's changed is I'm not putting up with it at the moment and I'm sure that's got him mightily confused. After all, he started talking to me again when I got married so he was willing to put his differences aside. That he was the one with the problem is immaterial. Really? I'm a steeple-chasing horse staring at an eight foot brick wall. In theory? I might be able to get over it. In practice? Sucker's gonna break all my bones. And the jockey doesn't understand why I won't jump because until now, every time he digs in his heels I go higher.