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20 December 1998 |
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I forgot to mention in the last entry that my friend will pay me back the $50 for my massage, as he had meant to buy mine. I had simply paid both at the time because it was less complicated that way. Having each of us pay seemed more like us going dutch than my giving him a gift, and that was not my intention. Oh and the hip is fine. It recovered quite a bit during the gentler portion of the massage. Thank god, no crutches. I can't sleep, though it is well into the teeny morning hours, because something that has been bothering me is eating at the back of my brain and making me crazy. The story goes something like this. This fellow I know, Roy, used to have a very nice job at ABC Pyrotechnics, but he got laid off. Now he has a much less paying but more stable job at XYZ & Sons Fireworks Company. Yes, he's struggling. Back when he was still at ABC, he came to know Angela, a woman who worked and lived in that neighborhood. Angela used to have a drug problem but had cleaned up and had a modest job in the Department of Sanitation. They became friends, and sometimes had sex. It was what I call a fuckable friendship. Now, since she had such a meager job and he was paid quite a bit better, he used to give her money from time to time. When he took the job at XYZ, he didn't get to see much of her, since his new job was in a town a good ways away. After a couple months passed, she called and asked for help. Her building was condemned, and she got evicted. So he set her up with a friend of his. He decided that she seemed to have fallen off the wagon. He didn't hear from her for another few months. More recently, he began to get messages from her. She didn't have a phone number to leave, but she was having a serious health problem and needed to talk to him. A few days later she left another message, and yet another a few days after that. A couple weeks passed, then she left a message that she was in the hospital, so of course now she had a phone and could he please call her. He didn't. He said that she just wanted money, and not to worry about her. The next day, she was transferred to a different room and left another message with her new phone number. Again he didn't call her. "Don't worry about her. She just wants money and I don't have any. Fuck her." As far as I know, she was discharged from the hospital, and who knows where or how she is right now. The part that troubles me is that Angela was fine to have around as long as Roy was fucking her, and as long as he had money. But now that he doesn't have much, and she is in these kinds of straits, he cannot even be bothered to call her and tell her himself that he has no money. He won't even offer a bit of food or some clothes or just even the truth that he can't do much for her. I have trouble understanding how someone who is ok to have sex with is beyond a person's compassion. I could never have sex with someone that I can't even feel compassion for. And I'd hate to think that I can't have compassion for someone I once considered worthy of sex. What does this have to do with me? This is all between Roy and Angela, right? None of my business? Probably. The reason this is keeping me awake is that I really liked Roy and counted him as a good friend. But what kind of person is this really? What kind of person would do this? Do I want someone like this, who is otherwise a decent person, to be much involved in my life? Will I ever be treated like Angela? And I feel guilty that I passed up the opportunity to do something for her myself. Yes, I don't even really know her, having met her only a couple of times. And yes, I have very little money myself, but there is likely something I could have done, had I made the attempt. Instead I left it to Roy, since he surely was more responsible for her than I. And he turned his back on her. --Spring
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