Confession

I was reminded of this on Friday when Alessandro and I, seated across from each other at the Hungry Cat were sipping our kumquat martinis ("This tastes like OJ, and it's girly," says Alessandro) and confiding in one another on minor life infractions: sophomore year in college, Alessandro and I invented a fictional boyfriend for me in order to capture the attention of my sophomore-year crush, a known home-wrecker - a man who was only interested in women who were seriously involved. I was single and deeply enamored, willing to do anything. I am a good storyteller (I'd like to think. Well, convincing, at least). You know how it is.

This feels terrible to confide, but I must do it. It is important, once in a while, to take ownership for the kind of loathsome person you're capable of being. And it was ten years ago. A disclaimer: yes, of course I'm ashamed. Telling this story upsets me greatly.

But I must: we invented a soccer-player boyfriend. He went to Stanford on athletic scholarship and was an orphan because he had lost both his parents in that Bay-area earthquake. And he wasn't about to come visit Providence because he was taking a year off, traveling through the Middle East, attempting to find inner peace. Because the Palestinian territories are where people go in search of "inner peace." Such is life. Despite the distance, we were bonded in a cosmic way. At night, we would have parallel dreams - like two parts of a story. It was intense. I remember he was also a musician of some sort and a community organizer, I think? And he was documenting his life experiences for an upcoming book, to be published by Knopf. Either way, he was a pretty intimidating fictional boyfriend.

In the end, my fictional boyfriend became more compelling and larger than life than the love-interest. He was the kind of guy you wanted to hang out with and be friends with, and he said and did these really interesting things. That I invented. I had to abandon the project. It got complicated, maybe a little out of hand; I lose interest in projects quickly. This is another loathsome quality I have that makes me a loathsome person. But there was also this - the part worth considering seriously: do you ever engage in a project, simply for your own entertainment and the entertainment of your friends, because you don't actually think anything is going to come of it, and then the fictional world leaks into the real world, creating consequence, and then you're up shit creak with a mess on your hands? This project would fall into that category.

I'd like to think I've redeemed myself. Alessandro definitely has; after dumping a man on his driveway the morning after (also, I think he was crying and begging Alessandro to reconsider) he felt bad. Years later, after a karmic incident that made him reflect on the driveway situation, he donated to Haiti in the name of the poor driveway-reject (who, in Alessandro's defense was a known drama queen clearly taking advantage of Alessandro's patience (I have your back, Alessandro)). My karma came back to haunt me too, in odd ways. There's no getting away with anything in this world. We are capable of terrible (and only mildly funny) things. That redouble into other dimensions and chase us through life in wholly Other, but still perceptibly recognizable incarnations. Oddly, it takes a kind of emotional criminality to realize just how much life has up its sleeve. And this is a particularly unique aspect of the psychic/consequential world. The truly kind never really experience karma through this distinctly absurd lens. And what do you do when the door swings the other way? Laugh, I suppose, even if life isn't a particularly laughable enterprise.

The world is full of sad people. Sometimes, we are them.

That's it.