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June 18, 2008

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"You're a bigger man than me," Lilly said, shaking her head and using a slightly disgusted tone. She clearly didn't consider this a remotely good thing. "I would want to kill him."

At issue was who to hate: the cheater or the cheatee. Lilly focuses on the person who's sleeping with the person she loved. I might, too, except:

1. I'm much more angry about Sarah lying at my expense than the actual cheating, which I saw coming.
2. The absolute certainty that he doesn't know I existed.

Or if he does, what he knows is a steamin' pile of fiction, buttressed with the occasional conspicuous truth (for credibility), all designed to elicit sympathy for Sarah. I predict this with utmost confidence, because it's what she's done, to great effect, her whole life. I see no reason why she'd mess with success. She has sex with whomever she wants—whoever makes her feel good about herself, however temporarily. Then she blames the current partner for existing at an inconvenient time for her. Then she invests enormous energies into characterizing this self-indulgence and the subsequent lies as "growth," and then she accepts accolades for growing. So why would I hate Rich? He's incidental. No, he's more than that. He's a colleague. A victim of fraud doesn't hate the next victim. The old binky doesn't resent the new one.

Besides, given her impending impoverishment, she'll need a place to live. His place will do.

"Don't get me wrong. I got bags of hate," I told an skeptical Lilly. "It's just stowed in the right compartment."

posted by john at 08:12 AM  •  solamente