Bad behavior?!?!

What is it about folks who behave badly and perhaps cheat, lie, steal and manipulate and then when caught turn themselves into the victim?

This week I discovered that a buyer client of mine was poached by another agent in my office. The buyer knew that he'd behaved badly because once I had discovered what was going on he started stalking me electronically. The other agent knew that her actions were wrong because she made her actions known to me in a very public setting where had I reacted at all I would have looked bad and embarrassed a guest to our office.

What is most disturbing about both of these people is that they to some degree have tried to turn themselves into the "victim" in all of this. The agent so; by becoming over wrought by the fact that I won't discuss this with her. You see, the damage is done, I don't need to discuss what's happened, I don't need to subject myself to bad or inappropriate behavior, I just won't do it. I'll forgive, but I won't forget and why should I? As for my former client/friend, the same is true, he's left me a message where he's all but blamed me for his behavior in one breath and in the next offered to "make it up to me."

I don't want to be made up to. It is too late on both counts for respect, which is what I did and do want. In each instance each one of these people could have come to me before hand and explained what they wanted to do and we would have come up with a plan from there. That being said, I will not subject myself to bad behavior and then after the fact be painted the wrong doer and be expected to assuage collective guilt.

What do you do?

What do you do when you examine your life and you see that time and again that someone close is missing in action during defining moments?

I examine John's sickness and passing, I examine Kim's passing and I see one particular family member who is present in just a rather fleeting ghostly fashion.

This is Life

Rocky and I just weren’t working, there was too much on again, off again and way too much drama. I knew too that I was drinking too much and I also knew that when this school boy relationship had to end it would be me that would call it to an end. Otherwise, we’d just keep bouncing off one another, year in and year out. We’d chew each other up until there was no taste and no passion left and then we’d just be together in our misery. I ended it and now I needed to get out of Wilson. There was too much emotion drowning me in that place.

I met John when Rocky and I were still a couple. With Rocky at his folks for the weekend I’d gone to Raleigh to the bars with my friend Charles. The club was crowded and smoky, dimly lit and loud. The music blared with a rhythmic base and once a cover was paid and one was buzzed in, the outer door kind of spit you into the sensually charged environment of CC’s. Charles and I got drinks, circled once as was our habit and then perched at the far end of the bar. With one drink gone and another on the way we decided to dance. Charles and I had been boyfriends but that didn’t work, as friends we worked.

As a rather self indulged, self centered, self absorbed young man who was in the habit of using up men before they could use me up, I kept my eye on the assorted guys who were watching us dance. That’s when I saw him. On the right side of the club a head popped up over the cruising crowd and then he disappeared only to pop up a few feet to the left. He had beautiful brown hair, longish and just slightly out of style but pleasing. Then he was gone again. He popped up even further left; he was wearing a tight shirt, stretched nicely over a muscular, but not overly so torso and jeans, tight but not too much so. He lighted and moved in front to get a better view of the dance floor and dancers. He was handsome and he was watching me.

I’d always thought and had been told by older gay mentors that the whirling dervish of the gay club was no place to meet a mate or life partner. But my question always was, “Well if not in a gay bar, then where?”

I was never given a satisfactory answer to that question. With a break in the music, I found my nerve. I never really lacked any gumption as a young man; I typically saw what I wanted and took it. I walked straight up to him and wagged my finger, for him to come to me and he walked out onto the dance floor and danced with me. He was my height, a little slimmer than me, well rounded in all of the right spots, his nose very prominent French. Well formed, not bulbous but there was no missing it. And his eyes, his eyes were huge and blue. I could have gone swimming in those eyes. The rest of the evening we danced and drank. His name was John.

Charles had gone off to find his own fun and John asked me if I wanted to go home with him. He lived in Chapel Hill, I lived in Wilson, and we had a big problem. The two towns are an hour and a half apart, but I said yes after John promised to bring me home the next morning, besides he was hungry and I wasn’t ready to let him go just yet, there was something about this man. Charles and I parted and I drove off into the warm spring night with someone I didn’t know, but his name was John. He was hungry and so we went searching for someplace to eat, his idea was the swank Magnolia Grill which was closed, thank God, it isn’t a place for after the bars, I’d learn this fact many years later. The Pan-Pan was open and we ended there, talking about superficial things, asking a lot of getting to know you questions and eating omelets. Then we went to his place.

Our first intimate event with one another was not much of anything. He showered, I noticed that, I showered too but where I took perhaps three minutes to wash the smoke of the bar off, he took thirty minutes. I wandered around his house looking at things. The décor was sparse; there was practically nothing on the walls, the place felt very transient. Finally washed he emerged from the bathroom and we tumbled into bed, mostly making out and exploring. When finished he went to sleep and I started to panic. I kept asking myself as I lay beside him, “What am I doing here?”

Rocky could come home early and I won’t be there and if Rocky comes home early and this guy, this John drops me off at my home, well how am I going to explain that? More specifically, how am I going to fib my way out of it? Then lies and fibbing were pretty standard, I couldn’t let my weakness be self acknowledged. I got out of the bed and moved to the couch in the living room, I tossed, turned and panicked most of the night and even considered hitch hiking back to Wilson. The problem was I had no earthly idea where I was aside from being somewhere in Chapel Hill or maybe I was in Durham. I had no idea where the highway was and so I’d just have to wait.

John was a sleeper. Seven am came and went, I asked him to get up. I had to get out of here. Eight came and he didn’t move. Nine, still nothing and I was starting to fume, Ten, snoring, eleven, stirring and noon up finally, and then another thirty minute long shower and he emerged agitated. Rightly so, I’d disturbed his sleep all night with my anxiety and the drive home was a long quiet one.

Random thoughts

When I find myself angry with people; I try to remember that everyone is a child of God and God loves them.

I think about God alot, but do I think about God enough?

Happy Easter Dan

Dan,
I hope you are well. Just wanted to send you a short note here at Easter time wishing you a happy Easter.

I certainly hope that you’ve taken some time this past year to examine why you (singular) are so angry and that you (also singular) are starting to come to terms with it and get past it. It is in quiet time that in our heart that God shows us what is right is right and what is not right is not.

You are my brother and I love you and no amount of silence or distance or anger can change that. I hope and pray that someday hopefully sooner rather than later you will engage with me, us, and that we can sit down together and have some time to move beyond this.

Happy Easter,
Love,
Mike

This and that

So for a year, A YEAR, A LONG, LONG YEAR, health care reform has been on the front burner, on CNN, on MSNBC, everywhere and on the lips of every Tom, Dick and Nancy in Washington and outside of Washington who has an opinion, a bias an ax to grind and turf to protect.

So for a year, A YEAR, ok you get it, we have been subjected to this endless, ENDLESS bickering about how this will or won't work. The point that's missed well there are many but here's my point; we can spend trillions on war machines, we can spend trillions on highways, we already spend trillions on social medical programs; so then why, oh why are some thirty million American uninsured? And more importantly; WHY DO SOME OF YOU WHO HAVE POWER AND CONTROL AND MONEY, WHY DO YOU NOT CARE?

I'm insured, by the grace of God. I had a very good friend, ok former partner teach me how to work the system so that I could acquire insurance in spite of being self employed and in spite of a pre-existing condition. Of course I pay well over five hundred dollars a month for my insurance and well, sorry to say Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, it ain't all that great. If I contract cancer or some other catastrophic illness, it will destroy me financially if I decide to fight and live. Sad isn't it?

So to Congress, to Governors, to Attorney Generals in various states who PROMISE to sue should health care reform pass; you with your safe government SOCIALIZED medicine and one hundred percent coverage; I hope and pray for you that you'll never, NEVER find yourselves with a pre-existing condition and lacking coverage. I hope you find the grace, the courage, the nads to step up and pass a bill that albeit not perfect will at least afford thirty million of your country folk an opportunity for health care coverage.

I hope that you in power will think about these people when you next have to vote on billion dollar airplanes, highways and other ear mark bills. I hope you think about your country folk when you go to your doctor or to Bethesda Naval Hospital and you don't even have to make a co-pay and you are completely covered. I hope that you think about us when you have to have a CAT scan and you don't have to pay for it because, well, we pay for your health care.

Patience

Colossians 1:11 (NIV)
11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully

Sometimes it is really difficult to be patient; well of course; following Christ is difficult.

Today I received a call about a potential listing. I am typically very excited about listings and new business. In this instance though, I had a bit of a history with the gentleman phoning so my guard was up from the start; the conversation was pleasant, well for a bit.

I hadn't been to this home, I had seen it on line including pictures and the place is very pretty. It was terribly overpriced but very pretty. Well the man eventually turned to length of contract and I told him that I don't take less than six month contracts. He started to get animated and angry; much like our historical conversation so I nipped it in the bud; I wished him luck and hung up.

In rolling this over in my head I wonder if I was patient enough. I guess in time and in prayer I'll figure that out.