The Other Day I Wrote Something About a Friend.

Usually, when I write about my friends I use the "blog a clef" technique, and don't name them, but every once in a while I'll use real names if the story seems particularly interesting and the facts are all a matter of public record anyhow.

I did so the other day, and I sent a copy of such a story to my "friend" to make sure she was okay with the piece.

Well, she wasn't. She hit the roof and wrote me a scathing note accusing me of sabotaging her career, and making her look "self-promotional" at the same time. (A bit oxymoronic, but what the hell.)

Of course, I took the article down as quickly as I could, but I lost a day to a depression that that had to do partly with her cruelty, and partly with my own ambivalence about using my journalistic skills strictly for things that are perfectly unlikely to bring any renumeration in whatsoever.

You see the oddity, right: an old high-school chum behaves like a cunt, and I'm the one who wants to give up writing, and/or eat my gun; was anyone over the age of 17 ever this sensitive? Christ.

I know the solution, and I'll bet you do, too: start selling articles for Actual Money; get my books published, rather than let them molder away on my hard drive, and never again turn my back on people whom I can't really trust.

I'm indebted to this person in a moral sense, just as I'm morally indebted to the family practitioner in Tehachapi I see every year or so who likewise rags on me for what probably (also) amounts to being bright and good-looking—even in middle age. But at this stage in my life I'm not prepared to take unlimited amounts of shit from anyone.

Ack: why eat my gun when I can feed it (metaphorically speaking) to other people?

UPDATE, 6/24: Prof. P. assures me that KT is quite likely to read this someday, and take exception to the word "cunt." After all, she did conclude her note by saying that she recognized that I didn't mean to hurt her. What she did not specify, of course, was whether she'd intended to hurt me. And it appeared to me that she had intended to hurt me, and in no uncertain terms.

"Besides," I told him. "She won't ever read it. She doesn't believe in blogs."

"Bullshit," he responded. "You know she's going to be monitoring your site after you removed the offending article."

If she cared that much, I think she would have thanked me for taking the article down. Or perhaps even apologized for telling me that something I had meant in a nice way had been a "shock," and an "embarrassment" to her.

As for the "feeding other people my gun" line, that's simply my way of saying that whenever possible, I don't want to turn my anger inward, and contemplate "eating my gun" (that is to say, committing suicide). I've admitted my part in this: I need to get people's permission before I write about them without veiling their identities (or at least make an honest effort to do so).

The other party in this hasn't owned up to her part in the kerfuffle.

This is someone I see every four years or so. We can remain friends, or not. It makes no particular difference to me. I did something wrong. I made it right. I'm getting on with my life.