Saved by The Hell

Over the past few months, since I told the G-Man to go take a flying leap, I've started to notice how much the little things about him really would not have made him a good long-term partner. (As the Barenaked Ladies famously quipped: Absence makes the heart grow fungus.) There has been a cautious rapprochement since New Year's (initiated and guided by yours truly, since G-Man cannot be bothered to do anything by himself, frankly.)

So G-Man has decided that he's going to start a new job in Suburbialand, leave the big city behind and (he says) have a job that's closer to home that will allow him to bike to work. (No comment.) In starting this new job, G-Man only has four days of holidays during Semana Santa. No skin off my nose, I thought. He still lives at home: Either he'll have the money to do something on his own or he'll scootch off with his parents, like he usually does.

I don't know what the hell got into my head, but for some reason I was feeling overly charitable last week. No, I'll be honest. I know what it was. Elevent months after the fact, he took the photos that I took - I was the only one who'd bothered to bring a bloody digital camera - and made a small video of it. (He'd talked about doing it before but hadn't gotten around to doing it.) And seeing that video reminded me that we really had a good time together, so Dummy Here thought, oh, wouldn't it be great to have him along again....

There's a theory in linguistics that says that native speakers of any language tend not to say more words than the absolute minimum needed in order to get the message across. Well, there are times when I am convinced that G-Man lives his entire life by that idea. I send him a message, saying that I'm glad to see the video and that it brought back great memories, and it's a shame that he couldn't come along on the trip. No response. Throughout this supposed period of rapprochement, it has struck me that, at no time, has he talked about what he wants or what he's prepared to give. As in, I wanna be friends again...but what proof do I have that he does, too?

Cut to yesterday, when, after being online for the better part of an hour, he finally sends me a message. We chat about the usual inane crapola for five or ten minutes, then he brings up the fact that his parents are going to the anti-ETA protest convened yesterday by the Partido Popular (who, it will be remembered, lost the 11 March 2004 elections partially because they lied about ETA being behind the bombings, when it was known, almost from the start, that it was the work of Islamist terrorists.) I won't bore anyone with the details, but G-Man basically cut off the conversation and shut me out once it became clear I didn't agree with him.

And that may have been the final snap I needed. After seeing him behave like a child in a situation like that, I thought, nope. No more kids in my life. So I'm thankful I didn't ask him to go with me. I'm glad that it was nothing more than words in an SMS message, the modern equivalent of words, whispered into the wind only to be blown away, yadda yadda yadda.

Sometimes it just takes the smallest gesture to realize where your priorities are.