These games we play

Everyone will, I hope, pardon me while I make a long and direct address. If nothing else, pardon me on the grounds that I intend this to be an end to the whole business.

Clark, you say that you liked me better for my disdain of you, but I think you assume that I never liked you. At one point, I had been wont to like, admire, revere, and envy you in pretty much equal measures. You always had more talent and more friends than I did. You were funnier and more fun to be around. I say this simply to make sure you avoid the mistake of thinking that Dalsing girl never liked you anyway. I did. Your actions, your choices, changed that. Which sounds pleasantly like the monologuing of a evil villian so feel free to quote me whenever you write the Fantastic Four or any other comic, as I'm sure you will (be paid to write comics, that is, not quote me).

That said, I think you read too deeply into my entry. My first thought on finding your entry was, "What the fuck." That was followed swiftly by the thought that I ought to look up Matt Griffith and tell him that our subterranean society of smart people, first concieved of in high school, was back on, because now I had connections in the subterranean world. Maybe I was unnecessarily harsh, but it's only because I feel that I can be quite pithy when I'm nasty (probably untrue, but friends always laugh). I definitely feel like I did Caleb an injustice.

Because let's face it, my WTF moment really came from the fact that I never did anything to you other than stop liking you. Caleb has every right to hate me. I don't think I did anything wrong there, but I certainly didn't do everything right.

But to return to the point, my entry was just one in a series of stories I tell about the people I've met and the places I've gone. A light-hearted story, a joke.

It was also my way of trying to turn the tables in the games you played with words. Thinking of the way you speak and write always reminded me of the kid who stayed close to the safe spot while playing freeze tag. While I was out fighting the good fight, unfreezing my friends, teasing, taunting, flirting with disaster, there was always that one kid who never had the guts step away from the safe spot and really play the game. Was I going to end up frozen the way I played? Hell, yeah, but I was going to need the breather by that time and I was going to know that five people were out there in the world waiting to unfreeze me. It was a strategy to win or lose everything. You play the game to not lose. Every relationship, every discussion, every everything, you don't want to gain anything. You just don't want lose.

Of course, now I see that I mucked up my turn something awful. Now you think I want to come out and play. I don't. You tell me in your comment to ignore and reinterpret your words. But, you see, I already had, hadn't I? I already knew. God forbid you say something you mean, something you'll stand behind, so I pretwisted and preturned and preprodded your remarks into a shape I liked. Because, no, Clark, you never called me a power hungry bitch, that would have meant you had to stand by your words, explain them rather than explain them away. You also didn't come talk to me, at a time when we were good friends, and bring up a problem you had with me. No, instead, you yelled at me that running writer's club wasn't a position of authority, blah, blah, whatever. I've let it go, and only ever refer to as the "power-hungry bitch episode," as a joke, the way I did in my post.

That comment, by the way, masterful. You put frilly complimentary borders on every barb and edge every compliment with razor blades. The problem is that, in the end, it doesn't end up meaning two opposite things at once; it ends up meaning nothing.

Sorry if I upset you, or if you imagined me in the Golden State, sobbing away, but it was a joke. I already know not to take your words at face value, because nothing you say or do can be taken at face value.

In the end reckoning, I laughed at myself. I looked up some old friends in the process, and I thought of looking up some others. I may yet do it if I can find them. That's what I'll take away from this. And yes, you're right, I'm doing "relatively well." Relative to what, we'd never agree on, so we'll leave it there. But I'm happy and right where I want to be.

Caleb, if he cares to, can take away the fact that, I agree that he has a right to dislike me. And if he cares to hear it, I think he'll do great things as well, because he wasn't one of the safe spot kids. When he says things, they're real, and I respect that.

Chrissy is not a major winner here, but she does get to relive her clever haikus and to be told that "Peter Pan Games" suddenly strikes me as a very clever title.

You can take away whatever you wish. But I'm going to change this game once and for all. Fuck the safe spots; fuck clever and vague phrases; fuck not standing by what you say and not saying anything you feel is worth standing by. Tag, you're it, buddy. And while you're it, I dare you to say something real for once. But say it to someone else. My mom says it's time to come in for the night, and I won't be coming out to play tomorrow. I've got better things to do, like pick out the song to play when I count down seeing the ocean on the Great Highway (so far, I've had the best luck with "When I Come Around") or picking out the clothes I'm going to wear tomorrow.

I think for a million reasons (most of which, only God and I can fathom) that ending with this quote is poetic symmetry:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream