“You know, if you read those last few posts of yours, you appear to be a man obsessed.  Jesus, Elie, some fuck doesn’t send you back a comment on your manuscript, I mean, boo fucking hoo, welcome to the monkey house,” said the skeleton with a yawn, or pantomiming a scream.

I’m aware of that, dad.  It’s not that the fuck didn’t send me back a comment.  It’s that he then did what you always did, what that insane former judge once did when he unleashed a torrent of rage on me when he suddenly felt vulnerable.

“Uh oh,” said the skeleton, with mock terror.  

I’ve got to keep this brief, at the risk of nauseating my two or three loyal readers.  The fuck didn’t send back a comment.  It kind of made sense.  He’s a distracted guy who cranks out short 1,000 word pieces for $250 a shot, keeps ’em light.  He’s a craftsman, an excellent writer, a great raconteur and, also, a long-time professional writer.  

I was hoping for his feedback, he’s a very smart guy and he expressed what seemed like genuine fascination with the Book of Irv project, but when I didn’t get any feedback, after a few tries, I moved along with the writing, as you know.  There was no point to keep asking him for something he clearly wasn’t ready, or willing, to give.  I kept writing.

“Nursing a grudge,” said the skeleton.  

Sure, if you like.  I suppose I concluded he wasn’t that much of a friend after the third time I asked for his notes and heard nothing back from him.  

“Not an unreasonable conjecture,” said the skeleton.

When I got an email from him recently asking if I was pissed at him for some reason because I’d ignored an email he sent, one it turned out I never got because he’d accidentally sent it to a phantom mailbox, and, although he never followed up when he didn’t hear back (as he’d chided me for not doing),  he felt a little hurt, the irony of it was too beautiful to ignore.  The irony was fucking gorgeous, dad.

My appreciation of that irony, which I did my best to capture in 1,000 words, was apparently forwarded to him by his ex, mortally offended on his behalf and feeling betrayed that I had, apparently, been vicious by referring to the fact that he didn’t need the $250, although I expected, if he’d been honest, he’d concede he’d have been annoyed to have it plucked from his hand by his editor friend, as the fellow had done to me, accepting a piece and later rejecting it.

“I’ll pretend I followed all that.  This guy’s ex-wife was offended on her former husband’s behalf and sent him the piece that also offended, nay, infuriated him?” said the skeleton.  

Bingo.  I suppose my callous observation that he doesn’t need the $250 was my treacherous betrayal.  I was supposed by this snide crack, I surmise, to have brutally laid bare what must never be spoken of.  It would be obvious to even a casual reader what “doesn’t need the $250” really means, and it certainly wasn’t just merely to illustrate his lack of empathy toward a friend who’d gotten slightly screwed.  Nobody, apparently, is supposed to know the shameful secret that this guy is sitting on a shitload of cash, stocks, bonds, etc. I guess, somewhere in the twenty, thirty million dollar range as of twenty years ago.

You know, he’s a salt of the earth working man, who has always worked hard for a living, sometimes in low-paid jobs to make ends meet, this fortune he long ago inherited is a closely held, and apparently humiliating, secret that has nothing to do with anything and it’s certainly not his long-time good friends’ fucking business nor his ex-wife’s business to run her fucking mouth about, whatever the original context may have been for her disclosure.

“Uh, OK,” said the skeleton, understandably beginning to lose interest in the whole thing.  

I kept writing about the details of the situation the last few days, after furious, terse emails from both of them decrying my vicious, unprovoked hatchet job.  It was my only  way to process  it.  Writing allowed the cortisol and adrenaline coursing through my system to dissipate.  I had to dissect exactly what the flood of fight or flight chemicals was caused by, and sorting my thoughts and editing them was the only way I could do that.   As I got a better understanding of the reason I felt as hurt as I did, the situation began to make more sense.  I was finally able to calm down and come to a reasonable resolution of the whole thing.  

“And the flood of stress hormones was caused by me?” said the skeleton.  

No, dad, you’re cool now.  It was caused by the guy’s immediate and enraged reaction when I finally asked him why he’d never commented on the pages I sent him.  He aggressively blamed me for being hurt without cause, told me anybody but an asshole would have just followed up again, and was enraged that I had been so unkind to him.  His tart email ended: That being said, i think you’ll agree that you and I are done here.  Then his ex jumped in, too incensed to use her words, and started clawing at my eyes.

“Sounds fair enough,” said the skeleton of my father, “they sound completely nuts.  Fuck ’em.”

Not with your dick, dad.