The Ever-Loving Virgin Prince

Outed obsessors and deficient detractors ,

     And I thought this had all been resolved…

     I start with what should be a rhetorical question: if you were to attempt to ridicule me with a 100% accurate portrayal of yourself, would I feel insulted?

     Not nearly as much as I would be amused.

     Would you honestly believe that I could be bothered by a hypothetical statement of what I would likely do, according to you?

     Not when I know very well that I not only wouldn’t, but furthermore, you already have.

     Feel free to vilify me to the public with descriptions of yourself. I, likewise, will simply allow you to be judged by your own words and actions. You are a far greater opponent and detractor to yourself than I could ever be.

     In the meantime, feel free to continue to attempt to make yourself appear more talented and interesting than you really are with your feeble imitations of myself. Feel free to continue plagiarizing the titles of my works, continue cannibalizing my ideas for things to write about, help yourself to quotes from the people in my life, not yours, because you have nothing more interesting to say yourself. I can not stop you; I can only do it better.

     Because with me it comes from the source, as opposed to from a hack attempting to imitate me.

     So feel free to continue attempting to demonize me with descriptions of yourself and your own deeds; never take any credit for your own wrongs, always shift the focus and the blame to someone else; find yourself a scapegoat. Take every humble admission of flaws on my part as instead being a direct attack against you. Give up, because you’re a quitter. Attempt to boost your own image in imitating me as I actually am. Because truly, it’s not insulting at all; it’s the greatest compliment I could ever receive.

     Perhaps you’re simply just feeling petty, angry, and jealous because I actually am improving my life and myself, where as you simply just keep saying you are. I’m sorry, but I can’t be the villain you want me to be; your problem lies within yourself. So despite what you might say, despite what I may say, what it really comes down to is simply this: we both know what the truth is, and that’s why you just won’t win this one.

     Oh, and forgive me for wanting to express my personal thoughts and opinions, recollections of my life, and memories of my past on my own personal webpage. So you’ve chosen to act like a complete jackass for the past few years, petty and small, and now that you’ve been caught; now that you’ve been shown to be undeniably guilty, irrevocably unmasked, and irreparably tarnished before the public as a consequence of your own actions, you still haven’t the decency or maturity to just hone up to your own shortcomings. No, you instead lash out at someone else, someone who has done nothing to provoke you, someone who’d really rather be left alone, someone who apparently deserves to be attacked for nothing more than having once known you and having attempted to be your friend, and who still recalls you on occasion.

     Listen, it’s not an attack or an insult if you really did it; it’s a memory. And if when I recall you, you don’t like the way it sounds, then perhaps it’s something you should stop doing from this point on. Don’t just say you’re going to stop doing it either, but actually do it! On occasion, I will recall memories of my past; such is human nature. If the majority of my memories of you do not sound positive in nature, perhaps it’s because you didn’t treat me terribly well, or act in a very respectable fashion. But don’t be thinking it’s an insult, simply because it’s something that really happened.

     It’s not like you’ve exactly gone out of your way to be especially kind to the people from your past, and in fact, I’m relatively certain you’ve embellished a few things in your less-than-favorable recollections. I’m also fairly certain that if the people from your past read what you wrote, they would certainly find themselves aghast in disgust, horror, and shock. And you use their names. Not fair to them at all.

     And maybe, on occasion, I have found myself interested in observing your breakdowns and blow-ups. Perhaps I have been grotesquely amused in observing your madness. Maybe sometimes it is fun to watch you self-destruct; it’s not like you can claim you’ve been any better, because you haven’t. That’s really what started all this isn’t it?

     At least I let you know how I feel to your face, rather than presenting a kind face for you to see and then snickering and horrendously mocking you behind your back… which is what you did.

     So I apologize if on occasion I’ve given into my baser emotions; it’s certainly nothing to be proud of. It’s nothing I am proud of, but it’s there; it exists. At least I can face it. At least I CAN look at myself in the mirror. At least I can admit when I’m wrong and when I’ve been wrong. At least I can be honest.

     To be honest, when I quit drinking, when I admitted my failings, when I put it all out there for the world to know, what I had honestly hoped it would do would be to motivate you; to inspire you to similarly improve your life and yourself; to encourage you to finally take the first step in bettering who you are. Never would I have expected so pathetic a response.

     By the way, all I’ve said here has been completely true, as least as I understand it, and can be supported with evidence. Try me.

     So if you wish, you can further respond to this with an outright attack as you’ve done in the past. You can make false claims once more of how our mutual friends find me to be lacking, or pathetic, or however you wish to describe me. I’ll know it for what it is: just words; words expressed by someone that goes absolutely out of her way, and to any lengths, to cause as much hurt as she possibly can whenever the mood suits her. I have no insecurities when it comes to our friends. You may be independent, but I am rational, kind-hearted, and compassionate; I don’t throw my friends away when I no longer have use for them, I don’t treat people like a disposable commodity. That goes a hell of a lot further with people. You’d be surprised at just what the value of a good friend is.

     So please, my paranoid and irrational acquaintance, queen of hypocrites, do stop accusing me of things you yourself are guilty of. Stick to your theories of how everyone’s out to get you if you will, but please leave me out of them. If you’re going to improve yourself, start improving yourself!

     A week from now I will be a month sober. Where will you be? Still the same angry, spite-filled pill-head and boozehound with nothing but an overwhelming feeling of contempt towards the world? Still the same person that says terrible things about her friends, ALL her friends, behind their backs?

     If you want to be portrayed better, start portraying yourself better. I’m tired of this. The past is the past; it will forever exist. But the future is yours: no one will say bad things about you if you don’t give them reason to say bad things about you. Something for you to think about.

     That said, I’ll get to what I had intended to write about. I regretfully inform you all that the Magnificent M and I have parted ways.

     Perhaps randomly grabbing a girl at a St. Patrick’s Day party and making out with her into the next morning isn’t the best way to start a relationship. Whoops.

     It wasn’t going to work; I knew it wasn’t going to work nearly from the beginning. But at least I tried, which is more than she did, and I suppose that’s a big part of why I knew it wouldn’t work.

     I’m getting quite tired of finding myself involved with girls with issues. Parental issues, gender issues, addiction issues, whatever. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of finding myself trying to have a fun time with women that hate the world around themselves. I’m tired of people that don’t see life for the wonderful gift it is. I’m tired of mentally unstable girls with short fuses that blow up at the tiniest thing and regularly cause scenes as if it were the most normal thing in the world. I’m tired of ladies with no ability whatsoever to take any responsibility for their actions or to acknowledge the existence of a single personal fault. I’d say I’m caught in a loop, but slowly and surely, each one is a step up from the last. Now that I’m sober, it’ll be that much easier to find the good ones.

     M and I argued a lot. I knew that was a problem. She regularly embarrassed me in public. She blew up at me if I criticized her for even the slightest thing, be it swearing loudly in a crowded restaurant, or rudely insulting strangers around us and then expecting me to protect her. She was a handful. She strained my patience beyond my Buddhist limits. But at least I tried.

     I knew it wasn’t going to work; my physical attraction towards her faded to almost nil within months, and any other attraction I might have had for her had been nearly completely destroyed due to her constant outbursts and fits. If it wasn’t for her talent, I would have found very little to be salvageable about her.

     I knew things were in trouble when in the very first week of our relationship being official, I found myself in love with someone else.

     Now I’m not the cheating type, and I always controlled myself; no regrets there. But there were times where I was tempted, and if The Jewel hadn’t similarly already had a boyfriend, who knows what trouble we might have gotten ourselves into.

     Now there was a girl I liked; I’d never believed in love at first sight, I’d always found the very concept to be shallow and ridiculous, but with her, I came to believe in it for the very first time. We had a natural and undeniable chemistry. We both enjoyed having fun and loving life, and the way she could keep up with me when we drank whiskey impressed me. I’d never met a girl who could knock back the Irish whiskey like her. But then, I’d never been so incredibly attracted to anyone, or wanted anyone so badly as I had right from the first time I saw her and our eyes met.

     There’s no real tangible, accurate way to describe it; I was new at work, talking to my bosses, and I looked up, and she looked up, and our eyes met. All the scenery went white all around her; there was no background. There was her and nothing else, and I was entranced, with nothing but a “wow” sensation in my mind. The feeling never faded. I tried to fight it off, but it never faded. It was a Sarah Essen /Jim Gordon kind of thing.

     Maybe I’ll call her tomorrow. Can’t say.

     So I was dutiful towards M. I never strayed; I tried to make it work. But it just didn’t work. I’m not terribly broken up about it. It was already over in my mind following Halloween. Any attraction I’d had towards her was completely gone after her behavior that night.

     After I quit drinking, and M didn’t call me once, not to check on me, not to offer support, not for any reason at all, I knew without question that I was done with her. So when she said she wanted to talk, of course it was still me that had to make the call. I was more than willing to break off any last remnants of a relationship with her. Quite frankly, once I’d sobered up, I KNEW I could do better. I was, however, willing to stay friends. See, that’s what normal, well-adjusted people do. Too bad I’ve never gone out with the well-adjusted.

     There would be no Elaine for my Seinfeld. Talking turned to arguing, and as I began expressing my frustration with her over her lack of compassion, or basic human decency, she hung up on me. It almost felt as though I felt a pattern forming. Another one simply finito. No friend, nothing great to take from the experience, just another immature girl with her fingers in her ears and a complete lack of conscience walking away, clean.

     As I’ve said before, I’m not terribly heartbroken about it. Just disappointed. Very, very disappointed in her. We still could have had some fun together, as friends. Still could have enjoyed our mutual interests, listened to Queen together; helped each other out in our various fields of expertise. Again, a lack of maturity has cost me what could have been another friend. Perhaps I don’t need friends like that anyway, at least that’s what everyone tells me.

     Needless to say, the girls at work are no longer safe from me; truly, they haven’t been safe from me for the past several weeks. I’ve become a notorious flirt since sobering up, and my keen British wit hasn’t hurt me in the least. It seems that in the absence of one vice, I’m finding myself needing another. Women. Is there truly any greater or more wicked or more debilitating, soul-crushing, and life-destroying vice? It’s a hard, hard thing being a good man.

     So as of right now I’m trying to get Jester to go with me to see The Nutcracker. As I’ve heard and read, the San Francisco Ballet is supposed to be putting on the best performance it’s done in 20 years. It’s been on my mind a lot; I’ve really had a strong desire to see The Nutcracker again in the past few weeks. The fact that the Jester has recently broken up with old Jameson doesn’t hurt matters much either. I’ve always been a sucker for a redhead.

     Anyway, I’m off to call friends and ladies, smell you later!

Be seeing you,
The Virgin Prince