Life As I Play It

I really wanted to throw something together at the last minute that reflected everything that’s gone on this past week. I just needed to find the right setting. I turned on “Reinterpretation” off of the stellar (and free) soundtrack to Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix and here we go.

It always traces back to a game…

After all the drama, once again, I finished the next chapter of Universal Warrior at the last minute and got it off in time for Molly to edit before posting. I was then hit with a hard dose of reality—most of you know about it already—that sent me into a nice little depression.

What does all this mean?

This was what I kept asking myself, as, in nearly blind rage, I sent my left fist into the tile wall of my bathroom over and over and over again, until I looked to the tile and saw red. The tile hadn’t even slightly cracked, as though it was oblivious to my presence, but my knuckles had been worn down. Skin was missing.

I can see someone coming from almost a mile off. I can associate people with how they smell. I can size up people by watching them walk. I can tell someone’s lying before they open their mouth. I can take someone’s arm and sprain it, break it, or make it completely unusable for the rest of their lives.

And none of this means anything any more. The hunter has no prey.

It would be easy to say that the hunter has no place in this world, and maybe it’s true. But since I’m not going anywhere soon, my dilemma was finding the bright side. I’m not one for self-pity. I don’t have time to waste like that.

I feel like I get penalized a lot harder when I break the rules. I admit that I screwed up when I lost my job, but why is it other people did worse and were retained? I walked off of my job site to try to be there for the girl I was with at the time and I got fired. Fair enough, I broke the rules. My former supervisor was caught receiving oral gratification from an underage girl in the stairwell and he was transferred. How the fuck does this make sense?

Wait, I’ll tell you.
Had I not lost my job, I wouldn’t have been able to launch Universal Warrior, I wouldn’t have gotten into freelancing, and I wouldn’t have met Molly, whom, even if I wasn’t dating, is still one hell of an editor. Odd, but it all adds up.

So faced with the reality that I just barely edge by in a month, I was finally forced to acknowledge something I had known for awhile. It’s funny how saying something aloud makes it real.

I will be in Jefferson City for, at the very most, one more year.
If I wanted to throw everything I had into moving to St. Louis in a couple of months, I could—but it wouldn’t make any sense. At the end of this year, my credit rating will significantly improve. Opportunities will open up in January 2010. But that’s not what really got me.

My children are growing up without me. I have no one to blame but myself.
My plans don’t really change. I’m still working, I still plan to see them, when I said I would see them…the contact I have with them now if better than anything I had within the last five years. At least this way, they get to know me, and me them, a little bit before we spend time together.

Yeah, but it doesn’t make it any fucking easier to swallow.

No, it doesn’t, but this is what I have to work with, and it’s better than nothing.

I do feel, however, with Universal Warrior, my children, and this relationship I have…this is the fight of my life. It was never about anyone in the street. It was about the only things that really matter—which, I’ve long maintained, are the people who will go to the wall for you.

And I’ve never lost a fight.
So that’s the best face on a new situation, and the band plays on.

One can’t live in two worlds, I’m realizing. Eventually, you have to make a choice.

You also choose the friends that are worth fighting for.

I have two good friends; one of them enforces a system I don’t really believe in, yet we’re friends anyway. Another disagrees with the system as strongly as I do, but may have broken what is, in my opinion, an unbreakable law. I can’t prove if he did or didn’t; for a change, I did not blindly follow my first instinct, which would’ve led to violence. Instead, I thought things through.

While my law-enforcing friend became angry with me (for not doing the right thing), I stood against the world and desperately tried to convince my wayward friend to cease his involvement—any type of involvement—with an underage girl. In a few short weeks, he had gone from being in love with her to looking at her like a daughter. The thought of it made me want to vomit. How can you do this?! Who the hell are you and what have you done with my friend?!

I saw my friend and the underage girl together, physically flirting and whispering to one another when they thought nobody would notice. I convinced myself that it wasn’t what I knew it was.

Last week, I needed a ride to the career center. My wayward friend agreed to drive me. I had to be there at two; he showed up at a quarter till…with his underage friend in tow.

Millions of questions flooded my mind: Why was she there? Why wasn’t she in school? Why did she keep saying that they had just woke up?

I cut him off after that…for a minute. It’s the Christian thing to forgive, right? Ugh… Besides, it’s not like I was able to prove that he was doing anything illegal. Maybe he was just confused. Maybe someone is going to sell me the St. Louis Arch.

I cornered him, and demanded to know what was going on. I wondered if I was really fighting for him or just struggling to hold on to one of the first face-to-face friendships I’ve had in years.

He told me that he was dating the underage girl’s mother, and that he was spending time with her children in an attempt to get to know them better.

Avery: Thank God. That makes sense.
Busterwolf: You’re lying, and I know you’re lying, you sick f***.

I forgave him. We patched things up.

Yesterday, the girl’s mother happened to be at a friend’s house and I asked her, point blank, if she has been seeing Billy. She denied it. Of course.

I let my instincts guide me as she told me how she was sick of the rumor; she’s never done anything with Billy.

This means, the night we patched things up, someone I considered one of my closest friends lied to me yet again. He lied to me as he promised not to lie to me again.

Crushed, I realized the truth.

I headed home and tracked down my law-enforcing friend. We hadn’t spoken in awhile, and my message was simple: We need to talk.

When he showed up, he wasn’t in uniform, which was good: He would to talk to me as a friend, rather than as a cop. He was cordial as he entered my home and shook my hand. He knew why I had called him. When he took a seat on my couch, I unloaded like a dump truck.

No, I’ve never seen anything illicit between these two with my own eyes. Yes, I thought the situation was worth investigating. Yes, I had seen a lot of physical play between the two, and yes, I thought it was inappropriate. It’s been going on for about a month now…

I lied in a recent myspace survey; I think I cried last night. I know I kept wiping my eyes. I can’t believe I’m doing this.

My friend wrote down everything I said, then closed his notepad and folded his hands. He lowered his head for a moment and just exhaled; one doesn’t become numb to this kind of thing, and it’s a lot to take in.

He looked up to me and asked me, off the record, if I thought these two were being sexual.

…
Yes. I say it out loud.

Whoa…
I was suddenly sprinting for the toilet and there went dinner. I hadn’t thrown up in years, and it was like my body was making up for it. I threw up until it hurt, and I was clutching my stomach. It felt like coughing up acid. Thankfully, there was no blood.

My friend didn’t help. He just waited patiently in my front room.
He did, however, ask me if I felt better when I re-emerged. Not really, I said.

We talked—my friends are good at that—about what it really meant to be someone’s father.

When you’re someone’s father, he told me, you have to lead by example. You don’t cut and run when you get angry with someone. You fight for them for all you’re worth, and when that fails, you do the right thing…

I know he is right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.

Chances are there will be no legal action taken, as there’s no proof. Still, I can say that I did all I could, and mean it.

If I’m going to show my children how to live in this world, I have to do it myself first.

So there it is. I still feel like crud, but I’ll get past it, and maybe one day my former friend will wake up, or maybe he won’t, but that’s between him and God.

I have my own issues to sort through, and I need to keep people in my life who have similar (healthy) goals.

Those are the friends worth fighting for.