Vice Versa Casual Cruelty

I

I'll tell some stories from my siloed San Francisco life. None of the people on this list know any of these people with the last being a possible exception. People don't remember all that much, in my experience. Worlds mostly didn't collide there, as it happened.

She was a classmate of mine in PA. She moved to California before I did. Lived elsewhere. A nice person and a close friend. A born again Christian who enjoyed tennis, as I did. Had a German parent too. I had a real crush on her in high school, but she was dating the starting quarterback. So, you know.

She knew what she was getting into. She knew my father was a loose cannon. That much she knew. Had him for a German teacher too, which was some kind of treat.

I visited her elsewhere and we watched David Lynch's Lost Highway at my behest. Some years later she moved back east. Was still active in her church. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

She was a successful professional by the early 2000s. Fellow graduates in Palo Alto. That sort of thing, those sorts of people. Nice enough. If anything, kind of boring Christians. Technocratic normies. Pedigreed socially and educationally.

She used her frequent flyer miles for me to join her in a visit to Guatemala together. It was a virtuous and chaste visit, against my better judgement. I remember it fondly to this day. I may have written it up at some time.

The upshot of the story is that she invited me to some church event back east, where I was meant to participate in some panel. And I would have done it, too, but not under false pretenses, especially if the host is paying the freight, yet again.

I sent her some aphorisms a few days ahead of time as fair warning. Those have been suppressed. Only the last person on the laundry list read it and responded: 'What are you going to do with this?' Well, nothing. More commercially minded.

Well, these poetic musings destroyed our friendship. To this day. A quarter of a century later. She felt victimized. But she too was trying to 'mess with my values'. And she had Almighty God on her side. For all the good it did her. Yes, I interfered with her plans. So, who again was the perpetrator and whom was the victim?

II

I had a bespoke t-shirt made back in the GAB daze: 'I Heart Mormon Girls'. This wasn't entirely a pretense. The coolest girl I dated in high school was a charismatic Mormon. She did theater. She played 'The Princess & the Pea' lead and saw to it to don a low cut dress for the occasion. And we males really did flick quarters down her dress as she shook it. Not cut out for that religion.

In a side hall of the high school with an audience thankfully bereft of females. Sure enough, one of their ilk interfered with consenting teens eventually. Another wit noted that this diminutive lass was 'taller lying down than standing up'. Relatively elevated discourse for a hinterlands high school.

But she had a real evident spirit, which my conventional Christian classmates lacked. Some kind of charisma on this girl, as I said. I went to her home, while she was dating someone from another (Mormon?) school.

The Mormon paraphenalia was evident, to my voyeuristic delight. The other girls would bark 'Mormon' at her. Not exactly mean girls, but not exactly nice either. She was pretty and prematurely well measured. She was smart, in the AP history class as a sophomore. Last I heard, back in the late 1990s, she was bipolar and dropped out of BYU. Oh, well.

III

Slight redux and the Geary Club, circa 2012. Ran into a cute fallen Mormon girl. She was there with her boyfriend. Really responded to my ribbing. She was doing Mormon Rumspringa or was genuinely fallen. She appeared not too much worse for the wear, so I'd guess the former rather than the latter.

So, I invited them back, for bad reasons. We were all drunk, but I was the most sober. Soon enough they were snuggling on my bed, and I thought no thanks. And attempted to hasten them on their way. It was initially unsuccessful. So, I put Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima on at full blast. It took less than 30 seconds to evict these imposters. Note to self: Have her ditch the boyfriend when he goes to the bathroom, then fuck-her-brains-out.

IV

I guess the last person to mention was my most intimate male friend in San Francisco, whom several of you know of, even if you didn't overlap. He got fired from there, believe it or not. Ended up working for the Library Industrial Complex in SF. Turns out he did get that novel published in 2021, after at least 2 abortive attempts.

The Grammarians didn't make the cut, his recounting of grad school in Santa Cruz. Not the richest vein, frankly – a therapy novel. Probably a good thing, failure.

Anyway, nothing really to say. Just he had a father that traumatized him all his life. Not just for 6 weeks. I'm reminded every day how I got off light. And how clarifying it all was. Helped me become what I always was.

Well, my old friend's father died maybe 20 years ago but my lost friend still lives, as far as I know. This man had a panic attack when he saw that his son could actually take care of himself without 'help'. Some kind of shit, divorced parents. I wouln't know, from my own life. How bitter sweet it must be for him.