When it took me more than three days to reply, he sent me another email, saying that he'd read my recent posts and I should stop whining and be grateful I don't have real problems. (He's apparently under the assumption, based on those half-dozen or so posts, that this whole diary is like that. Again, he takes a brief sample as representative of the entirety. The guy adds a whole new lack of dimension to shallowness, y'know?) He also suggested I read Robert Anton Wilson, of whom he seemed to be assuming I'd never heard just because I haven't mentioned him recently.

One of the great things about the Net is that one can say things to another that, if said to his face, would leave him wondering Why oh why did we ever abandon the Code Duello? Just because other people have worse problems doesn't mean my problems don't exist. If I'd been the one saying "Your problems are all in your head, so stop whining and grow some fucking testicles" to him, he would be squealing so loud they'd hear him at Universal Studios Ôsaka. If I'd said it to his face, I'd probably still be looking for my teeth.

He told me he'd posted about me again, but I sort of have to take his word for it. If I read it, I'd probably feel a desperate need to drive down there and leave a pyro-copro-gram on his doorstep. And what if his brother, or one of his brother's friends, was the guy who fielded it? The only thing they've ever done to me was be related to this guy.

He considers me important enough that he gives regular updates on whether I've posted yet. (He still doesn't link to me directly, though, the way I do to him. I wonder why?) This is me letting him know the disappointing (to him) news that I haven't committed suicide the way he was obviously hoping I would. (If he'd followed the links in my previous post, he'd have seen that I once saved someone from suicide. That someone wishes to go on record as not considering that sort of remark a joking matter, even after two years of therapy.)

So, in short arm: he opened discussion with me, not by asking whether I might like some of his favorite authors, but by slamming my favorites. We then managed to avoid each other until he felt a need to prove his importance by shitting on someone from a great height. It's a pity, too; we agree on so much. One of the friends I do manage (somehow) to keep, the one I saved from killing herself, can find no reason for his shitty behavior, unless it was that I finished off my comment back in June with a "Hope this helps." But if that's the case, why did it take him until August to get really pissed off?

I think I know the real reason he broke his silence. It's found in this quote from his current front-page entry (the pending permalink above):

I�m waiting for someone to actually say, at some point, in some way that means something, that I�m important, that something I did matters, that I�m significant, that someone who hurt me badly for no good reason realizes it was wrong and is sorry about it, that something I put a lot of effort into made enough difference to someone that they�ll actually pay me something for it, that any of the efforts I�ve made, that any of my positive qualities, that any of my talent, will ever be rewarded in any meaningful way.
I�m thinking I�m going to be waiting a long time for that.

In other words, he needed to make somebody feel less significant, under the impression that this would cause him to attain the significance he thinks is lacking from his life. Well, he has attained significance, in much the same way my wise gray-bearded father's hemorrhoids attained significance to him, and my kindly gray-haired mother's uterus to her, before they had those respective organs surgically removed.

And that is all the time I have for him. For now, I'm off to WorldCon. At some point after that, when I can think about him without wanting to vomit, I may check his blog to see if he's taken the advice he gave me and gotten over himself (something we both need to do). As I said before about someone else, he'd actually be amusing if he didn't remind me so much of myself. The difference is, I admit that's my problem with him, while he has yet to admit that the things that piss him off about this diary are traits five minutes' reading of his own blog would show not to be unique to me.

And, on balance, maybe that's our real problem with each other. (I could say "Or maybe it's just mine with him"; maybe I should. But I didn't, to the best of my recollection, have a problem with him until he decided he had one with me.) We're just enough alike that the differences between us are jarring, and we scratch our heads and ask "How can someone whose opinions on so many other matters make so much sense to me, believe other things so jarringly at odds with any reality I recognize or would want to live in?" (At least, I ask that; as far as I can determine, he had and has no awareness of the many things we agree on, nor any desire to have such awareness. I like Harry Potter, therefore I cannot be worth getting to know.)

I could speculate on what produces those differences — the greater length of time I've lived at home; the fact that I know how to drive and he doesn't; the difference in our ages; my having had a biological father around when I was growing up — but that would be treating the problem of our enmity as solvable by dwelling on bits of our past that cannot be changed. It can only be solved by one or both of us moving forward and ceasing, in one way or another, to be the people we are now. And that is not a process that will be helped by our continued involvement, as we currently are, in each other's lives.

-30-

Well. That was cathartic.

I actually wrote a much more quote-packed version of my this post, but I realized the quotes were just padding, intended to insulate me from the very real nausea the situation induces in me. Better to puke it all up, without any sugar coating, and get it out of my system for good.

�

last time, on The Slack Shack - our next inciting exstallment