The James Story as Promised

James contacted me in a couple of times in the fall and I did a very good job of dodging him. I got an email from him in early September telling me that he and Hamlet were to be married. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself, I always seem to do that in these stories, let me back up and give you the entire story.

As many of you know, James and I split amicably when I moved back to New York after my time in Sydney. We then entered a very strange situation where we really didn’t know what we were. It was the classic and futile story of emotions battling geography. 10,000 miles is too far for the biggest plane to fly and too far for love to sustain and not fade. After I returned to the east, James was to move to Singapore in July of last year, we were to live together for a couple of months, while I finished up my assignment and he finished his PhD. He was going to get a TA post at the Uni in Singapore and I was going to apply for jobs in Sydney (I was actually offered one, but alas things never work out the way we plan) to keep all geographic options open. If the few months of living with me worked, we planned on making a commitment and start to build a life together. We would find a place be it in New York, Sydney, or a 3rd option. But before I could commit to James I needed to know that we could live together and do the day to day. I wasn’t going to base a life changing decision on 6 months of dating someone. Apparently that wasn’t good enough for James and he took another road.

He told me when I was in Europe to visit him that he had met Hamlet and they were fighting the urges for a more intimate relationship due to James’s lingering romantic entanglement with me. I told him that he was the only person that could tell him what he wanted and he would have to let me know. He did. He dumped me like yesterdays garbage. The two men that I have loved in my life and told me they loved me have thrown me to the curb faster that a night with Bratboy. I don’t understand if you love someone and want to make a life with them how you can just thrown them away. Ive spent years trying to convince myself that neither really cared for me and that I was a simply play thing but I cant do it. There must have been something there in both of these relationships. But at the end of the day there is no point in chasing silly phantasms. Ultimately James picked Hamlet over me and returned to Europe to be with him and Alex picked a French porn star and that was the last I heard of him.

As I said, James tried to contact me a few times throughout the fall. One of the correspondences was the wedding announcement. After reading the email several times to make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating I calmly stood up from my desk, an I walked into an empty conference room and without turning on the lights I crawled under the conference table. The late afternoon sunlight was coming in through the floor to ceiling windows and I lay very still on the floor of this rented conference room in Singapore for over an hour and just watched the boats in Singapore harbor silently glide by. I have no idea what I thought about in that time under the conference table. All I remember is being still and trying to cry. But I found that when your brain is empty so are your tear ducts. About an hour later the anger came. It wasn’t so much anger that he had passed me over for Hamlet, it was more of that jealous anger that again, someone else found happiness and I was left sick (I was in the middle of the mono crisis of 2008 at that point), alone, and sad while he was capturing the time of his life in Europe. 4 days later a sent a simple note back to James wishing him and Hamlet all the happiness in the world and many years of joy to come. Strangely I was devoid of feelings about the situation as I hit the send button.

The heat of Singapore help burn off all the negative feelings I had about James and my return to New York was eventful to say the least with losing my job and have to find another one. What can I say. In my life, when it rains it pours. But what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and I have made it through much worse on my own. I went to catholic school for god sakes.

In early December I get a note from James that me misses me as a friend and wants me back in his life. I am furious. How dare he! The emotions on this one were two fold. The first and simplest of all the emotions was pride. They always come back. The Whore, The Child, and now James. I use nicknames of course to protect the guilty. They go a little time without me in their lives they always come crawling back. It’s a small sense of pride until I realize that the reason that come back is the good feelings they associate with me. This is Usually because they dumped me and have no bad taste left in their mouths from the relationship. At this point I figure out that 9 times out of 10 something has gone wrong in their lives and they need emotional reassurance and renewal from me. The pride fades and turns to anger. So we are back to how dare he! I push him off a few more times and even go as far as tell him that he cannot call.
Finally I tell him that he has to tell me what is going on because I want nothing to do with him. He breaks it down for me. Hamlet is cheating, stealing his money, and he is generally unhappy. He wants to move but has no money and doesn’t know what to do. He needs help and doesn’t know who to turn to. So what do I do? I help him. I talk him through all of his situations, try to calm him down, let him bitch to me about how hamlet has never been honest to him. Together we put together an escape plan, for lack of a better word. We gets out, starts a new life on his own. I get a small thank you which in nice. But once he is back on his feet and on the right track he stops contacting me. Type sucker on my forehead.

I haven’t spoken to him in 4 months. I miss him everyday. I never want to speak with him again. I wish him all the luck and joy in the world.