Walk of Blame

 How One Woman's Prejudice Keeps An Innocent Man On Lockdown

In a recent briefing between investigators and an Assistant US Attorney where the topic was whether or not to continue a 3-year investigation of me for terrorism, a lone investigator fought tirelessly to stand up for my rights and to show that the claims that were made against me were baseless and fictional. But he was up against a beast of a woman who oversees this never-ending invasion of my privacy, who happens to be unreasonably prejudiced against me and has no sympathy for the damage her team has caused to me, my relationships, and my mental and physical health. She is of the opinion that I am simply displaying my renowned patience, that I am waiting them out so I can get back to terrorist stuff as soon as they give up and move along back to wherever assholes and US Attorneys go when they aren’t destroying innocent lives. 

Her own investigator went over fact after fact after fact, laying out all the ways their investigation was negatively impacting me and listing for her my own evidence gathered as part of my coming civil complaint for damages; evidence that clearly and unequivocally disproves the allegations they are trying to build a case around. He told her I had concrete documentary evidence proving my HIV undetectable status for the last 5 years on hand and ready to submit. He told her about my FOIPA request to the FBI and their seubsequent response indicating that there is no legitimate federal investigation underway where I am named as a party, refuting their claims of an FBI investigation into my alleged terrorist past. He told her that since I became aware of their presence and have endured their mockery and their criticisms for so long, I am a completely different person than the one they saw when the investigation began. 

He argued that continued surveillance was sure to cause irreparable damage to my life, more than it already has, and that the longer they pressed on in search of incriminating evidence, the deeper into despair I was sinking day by day. When this brave man told the AUSA that I was so frustrated and distraught over being so blatantly monitored that I cried in my bed every single day, this heartless woman mocked me with a performative voice saying, “Oh? Is the big bad terrorist crying again? Is the murderer just a widdle cry baby?” 

Just when I thought the male investigator had her cornered with logic and facts and was prepared to hear her finally relent, she raised the most ludicrous reason I have ever heard to continue the investigation. She said that I had become unpredictable, that I had started taking walks around the neighborhood late at night, and that this was an indication that continued surveillance was required. Her reasoning? That I am not a walker. That walking is not something I normally do. 

Forget about how miserable I’ve been, stuck inside a 210 square foot box of an apartment day in and day out with no other people to break up the monotony than these assholes who watch me all day and night. Never mind that my therapist urged me to do exactly what I started doing, which is to get myself out into the world at times where I feel less anxiety from my agoraphobia so that in time I will become accustomed to the outside world again. Let’s just ignore the possibility that maybe a walk through the darkened streets of Capitol Hill was preferable to sitting in that tiny apartment listening to investigators compare notes at shift change regarding my masturbatory habits. I was walking, so that means I’m a terrorist out terroring. 

I don’t know if it’s merely a matter of needing to nail down an arrest in order to justify the enormous amount of money wasted on investigating me for crimes I never committed, or if I’ve become her own personal white wale, but this person in a seat of power over a team of investigators is ignoring facts that are irrefutable and exculpatory in favor of hammering out an arrest warrant and seeing me cuffed and sent to a federal penitentiary. Forget about “innocent until proven guilty.” This woman decided three years ago that I was 100% guilty, and nothing is going to change her mind about it.

At The Precipice Once More

 LOOK OUT FOR THAT FIRST STEP. IT'S A LULU!

I'm really trying hard to have a more positive outlook. Truly! But I can't seem to stop tripping over huge reminders that taking two steps forward will ultimately land you three steps back. It's like just when one awful thing resolves itself, there's no time to even celebrate that small win before its mutant cousin pops up with a chip on its shoulder looking to double the awful you just finished tidying up. 

A major development in my ongoing saga of the mysterious "investigation" that has haunted me for the last two-and-a-half years finally came to fruition this past
weekend, and there are two ways of looking at it. Either these nosey nellies calling themselves "investigators" finally did some elementary investigating and uncovered the truth, which, surprisingly, they shared with a certain former friend whose raison d'etre for the last couple years has been to shout "Shannon's a murderer!" from the mountain tops. The alternative view, and the one I'm actually inclined to believe, is that he and his gal pals got creative and put on one of their now famous scripted performances wherein the former friend gives a stellar performance as a decent human being just long enough for me to swallow the act and buy into the ruse. 

Not this time! Fool me thrice, and . . . well, shove it where the sun don't shine, I guess. Trust is a resource I now guard more tightly than China on rare earths. He killed off my former default setting, which was to trust people completely until they give you a reason not to. Ah, but it's for the best really. There are just way too many people around who look for simps like that and suck 'em dry before they use up that free trust and then bounce. I'm done with those guys. 

Either way, it represents a milestone for me, and it felt like a huge weight was about to be lifted. I could actually feel myself ready to rise, to lift off and glide toward a better future. Nah-ah! No, sir. Get your fat ass back down here in the dirt! Pigs don't fly, big boy! 

Because this troupe of assholes, er. um, actors playing at investigating are incapable of talking to one another at a volume lower than 120 decibels, especially when the whole gang is on speaker phone or Zoom, I got to hear the universe winding up for the next kick to my nuts. I might have been cleared by these jokers of having ever been a murderer or a terrorist, but because they have been invading my privacy for going on three years now, they've managed to make a list of lesser gripes that the Head Cunt in Charge seems intent on pinning on me with a warrant, even though this bitch and her chums are personally responsible for irreparable damage to my life and for the loss of what was a very important relationship for me. 

Bitch has zero empathy and no sense of shame at all. A decent person, upon learning they were completely wrong about something so terrible would reflect on their actions and the impact they had on their target during the course of their mishandled blunder of an investigation and think, "Hmm. I fucked up, and this guy was really hurt in the process. That's on me, and I'm gonna leave this dude the fuck alone. He's earned a break, surviving me and my around-the-clock surveillance as well as he did." And then they would tuck their tail between their legs and shuffle off quietly into the sunset. 

Not HCiC. She see's her errors as inconsequential and focuses on saving face instead of giving grace. Her priority is to find something, anything that will justify the HUGE expense she's racked up with her fruitless and baseless three-year crusade to catch a killer that never existed. What a fucking bitch. 

Even her fellow investigators were taken aback by her gall. One dude, who I actually think is pretty cool, stood up to the twat for a good many hours yesterday, arguing from a place of accountability and sympathy that there was no way in hell there should even be a discussion about sending me to jail after what they did to my life. He's right! 

I just started my work study job last week, and the drama going on all around me is putting me in very real danger of losing my financial aid. I'm taking three classes this quarter, and I'm on a collision course with utter failure in at least two of them, because I've been so consumed trying to figure out if and when these assholes are going to come for me. If I fail even one, my financial aid gets pulled for next quarter, which means I can't attend school or work study. If I don't attend school, I have to start repaying student loans, without which I can't pay rent. Without school, I no longer qualify for SNAP food benefits. Without those, I don't eat. It's like I said, two steps forward. . .here they come.

But, nah. Fuck them. I gave my friend all my support, my love, my loyalty, and in return I earned his betrayal, his lies, and his crusade to punish me for embarrassing him. I did everything I could to protect him, and he wants me in jail for failing to do that. It's so fucked up! He wants an apology I have not been given an opportunity to give him, and because it's so late coming his way, he's beyond angry. He's nuclear. He's lost all reason. There is no getting through his wall of hatred to his gooey Tootsie-roll center. He's lost to me, and in becoming so lost, has become a danger to me. 

I Wish I Never Met You

 

Hope It Gives You Hell

 Petty? Perhaps. But It Feels Right.

After what's been done, the lies that have been told, and the damage done to each other, all I can say at this point is that I really, really do hope I serve as a thorn in his side every time he has to come near my door or walk past my window. When he's parking, I hope there's a moment when he has to ask himself if I can see him and drives around some more to look for another option. I want to know that as much as he hates it, I'm on his mind every damned day, and I hope it's utter hell.

Jealousy Makes A Lousy Third

Part 2: How To Destroy A Friendship With Jealousy In Just 5 Easy Steps

My friendship with Cody began unexpectedly and with such a strong and surprising bond between us. The three months he spent living with me at the beginning of 2023 proved to be three of the best months I've had in all the years I've lived in Washington. We were inseparable. When Cody wasn't at work, he was with me. There were even mumblings from envious mutual acquaintances that I had some sort of sway over Cody to the point where they believed I kept him under my thumb and away from their individual company. 

The truth is that in the beginning, Cody honestly enjoyed spending his time with me. We talked, watched movies, exchanged stories from our troubled childhoods, and formed a truly great friendship. He was so fond of my company that after I'd helped him to move into his own apartment in my building just one floor up from me, he still chose to spend every night of that next month at my place instead of his.

I was happy to have someone so patient who actually seemed to get me. I hadn't felt heard, understood, or accepted by anyone in so long, that by the time Cody came into my life, I'd forgotten what a wonderful and powerful feeling that was. He bolstered my confidence, gave me someone to care for, and was kind and appreciative of the support I offered him. 

While he lived with me those first three months in 2023, Cody and I would co-host countless sex parties. We were cautious about how much 1-on-1 interaction we had, not wanting something as ridiculous as sex to interfere with the friendship we had built. So we invited in others to satisfy our needs while his boyfriend was locked up in California for probation violations. I would recruit guys from Grindr or Sniffies, run their pics and stats by Cody for his input, and invite them over if we were in agreement. It was a lot of fun, until it wasn't.

There began to be a pattern where the guys who came to join us in bed would focus all their attention on the younger, sexier Cody, leaving me feeling left out and unwanted. At first I let it slide, not wanting to make a stink of it by addressing it with Cody, but after the fourth or fifth time, I spoke to him and clued him in on what I was experiencing. The friends who I had been inviting over to play with Cody and me had begun to go behind my back directly to Cody to hang out and spend time, and some of them went so far as to expressly ask him to keep it secret. 

If there's one thing you should know about me, dear reader, it's that I don't do secrets very well. When I get a whiff of one, it's all I can think about. I'll scratch it and pick at it and rub it raw trying to uncover something that's being intentionally kept from me. And that's how I found out about these friends bypassing me to go and have alone time upstairs with Cody. 

I wrote him a letter letting him know that I was aware, and I told him how badly it hurt my feelings that he would participate in such clandestine rendezvous with friends he'd met because of me. I brought up how often I'd been feeling ignored and left out of the fun at our co-hosted parties, and I asked him if he might be willing to be more aware of the times when he felt me pulling away and try to circumvent me getting pulled into my head to overthink the situation by offering some reassurance.

He was hurt, feeling accused and blamed for the friends choosing to spend their time without me at his place. I assured Cody that I wasn't blaming him for their actions, and I apologized for failing to consider his own feelings about those friends and the possibility that he might have felt a kinship that had nothing to do with me. It was selfish of me to expect Cody to be my tether to the real world when I inevitably started to withdraw from activity that seemed exclusive of me. He wasn't to blame for being younger and having more appeal to these guys than I did. I felt awful for the jealousy I felt. It was humiliating.

And though he volunteered to be more vocal toward these guys when they began to focus all their attention on him, offering to speak up and remind them who had invited them to play, the task began to feel like a chore to him pretty quickly, and he ultimately came to resent the responsibility. And then, to really start the jealousy ball rolling, in came Skyler.

Skyler was a cheap hooker I'd hired about a year earlier who turned out to be a criminal and a manipulative, backstabbing thief. I was cautious of him, but when I found out that he and Cody had met and formed a close friendship, I welcomed him back into my life for Cody's sake. I didn't want to be seen as the mean old man who wouldn't let Cody have his friend over to play. So, when Skyler asked for help getting back to Seattle from Louisiana, I helped. I even let him stay with me when he got back, since Cody had moved upstairs by then.

When he arrived, there were a couple of nights of sex, first with just him and me, then with Cody. But from the start it was clear to me that there was a spark between them that I would not be able to compete with. They paired up, and without a word, suddenly Skyler was no longer staying with me as we'd discussed, but had opted to move in upstairs with Cody. They spent more and more time away from me, opting to party with Cody's growing circle of ne'er-do-well buddies.

It became difficult to get any alone time with Cody the way we'd spent the previous three months, just he and I. Anytime he came to see me, he had Skyler in tow, so there were conversations we couldn't have for lack of privacy. Part of me thinks that may have been by design, since having heartfelt conversations on the subject of feelings was low on the list of Cody's favorite things to do. And my jealousy grew more fierce and constant.

Not long after Skyler had entered the scene, I invited an out-of-towner named Lane, who was new to Seattle, to come over for sex. In keeping with tradition, I ran his info past Cody and asked if he would like to join in on the fun. In hindsight, I fully regret extending that invitation. Soon after Lane arrived and he and I had just begun to mess around, Cody showed up. The three of us had fun for a while, but I felt the familiar tug of attention being drawn away from me for longer and longer stints. I got in my head, and I tried to combat that by drinking more G. My plan backfired, and I passed out for two hours. 

That was enough time to cement what would become a burgeoning new friendship between Lane and Cody. They bonded and fucked and talked and fucked and bonded some more while I snored my face off in the other room. When I woke, they dressed and left to go up to Cody's place, where apparently Lane was going to be staying for a while. Apparently he had expressed some discomfort about the guy he had been squatting with expecting him to put out while he was staying there rent-free, so Cody, being the knight-in-shining-armor that he is, offered Lane his futon until he could find other arrangements.

It took close to three months for other arrangements to be found. And during those three months, the friendship I had forged with Cody grew more strained day by day because he was never available to do anything anymore with me, and when he did make an appearance, he always had Lane in tow behind him or Lane upstairs having a crisis, or Lane texting to say he'd been gay bashed by a group of trans girls, or Lane. . . you get the picture. Lane was a pathological liar and a master manipulator who instantly wormed his way in between Cody and me. Needless to say, I hated him for that.

Well, there you have the first two steps toward destroying a friendship with jealousy. Check back soon for steps three through five, and find out just how bad things got.

An Invoice For Your 2 Cents

In response to an unexpected request via PayPal for me to send him $572.93 for "Mental trsuma and rehab", my response to SXXXX SXXXXXXXX's ridiculousness was going to read as follows:

To: XXXXXX_691@yahoo.com

Amount: $0.02

The people of Seattle have spoken: The days of HXXXXX CXXX charming his way into the hearts and minds of decent people are at an end. Between the thefts, the squatting, and the narcissistic use of them, you burned through every good person available to you in the Puget Sound region. 

Now your reward is an uncomfortable slab of Seattle's summertime sidewalk upon which to stretch out your new titanium leg and rest your drug-addled head. Maybe you'll dream of your glory days when I opened my home to you, your cat, and that bitter little troll you used to carry around with you who is so awful even cancer couldn't kill it. 

Remember how you rewarded that kindness and generosity? My reward for keeping a roof over your head was lies, gaslighting, and a citywide smear campaign that trumped even your previous attempts to villainize me in social circles. Those sweet dreams of memories gone by are all that I can offer you now.   

Despite your and MXXXX's campaign to disparage my name and ensure that people thought the worst of me by fabricating vicious rumors which you helped spread through our mutual social circles, (Pssst! It didn't work), I have a comfortable home, a great new job, and a growing number of friends with whom I enjoy outstanding benefits. I've grown quite fond of my life without you in it, so kindly go back to ignoring me the way you used to when I actually wanted you to talk to me. You had your chances - TWO of them - to benefit from my care and support, and you threw them away.

Now, as a ridiculous man with a big mouth and a high opinion of himself once said to me, "I don't want anything from you, I just want to be rid of you." Shush. Be gone. Go fall in love with everyone you meet, preferably on the other side of the Cascades. And please don't take this as an invitation to engage in debate. For your reference, this invoice is what it will look like when somebody asks for your two cents.

However, knowing that he expected to provoke such a tirade from me, perhaps even craved it in his current state of mind, I opted to deprive him of one and offered nothing in reply to his pathetic and pitiful plea for money that is not owed to him for trauma he self-inflicted and rehabilitation he will never actually pursue. 

I feel sorry for him in a way because he will never be able to understand how many people he has hurt or why his misuse of them was a terrible thing. And because of this flaw in his thinking, he will continue to alienate those unfortunate men onto whom he seizes an opportunity to latch. 

Beware, men of Seattle, Portland, all points in between! There's a hungry hooker named Holden on the loose, and he's desperate to fall in love with you.

* I have redacted all names to preserve the privacy of the people mentioned in this post, even though I guarantee were the tables turned they would offer no such grace toward me.

An Unexpected Reunion

How My Ex Best Friend Came To Be Asleep In My Living Room On His Birthday

It may come as a great surprise to learn that for the last two and a half days, my apartment has become stuffed with an ex bestie who recently did some fucked up shit to me, half of his belongings, and his cat. But it's true. Not only is my head spinning from the 180° turn of events, but my heart has not yet understood what exactly the fuck is going on. It knows it wants to rage, to burst into a fiery ball of molten pain and sear the flesh right off of his stupid face, but it doesn't quite comprehend how to reflexively cause more pain to someone who is clearly already in a bad position.

Nearly 2 weeks ago just as I was finishing work at around 7:00 PM, I received a DM on Sniffies from a profile I'd never seen before except for saying hello to it maybe half an hour earlier. The DM contained a screenshot of a profile that featured a 10-year old photo of me with an untrimmed beard and about 50 extra pounds of weight, and the name on the profile was "N.A.M.B.L.A.?", implying that I am an overweight, shaggy pedophile. It also contained my full name and private cell phone number, which was captioned in red ink with the words, "Sub-Human Toilet. Shit in my mouth. I have a rim chair.", scrawled across the top of the photo.

I immediately knew it as Shawn's handiwork. He had shown up on the apps just 75 feet away from my apartment a while earlier but refused to answer my messages asking him what he wanted here. It was supremely creepy. And then, to follow that up with the bold proclamation that the greater Tacoma/Pierce County area and beyond now had visibility to my private contact information, even the long list of men I've blocked over the course of the 3-and-a-half years that I have lived here.

No sooner had I realized that than the messages started rolling in. The first guy texting me from an unknown number asked, "Hi, Shannon. I got a huge dump for you. Hungry, baby?" I blocked him. A second message arrived only minutes later, also from a number I didn't recognize. It asked, "Hey, Shannon Murdock! What's the youngest you've ever been with? Mine was 11." I blocked him, too, and hurriedly deleted both conversations. I felt sick at my stomach as dozens more similarly disgusting text messages and voicemails streamed in over the next 24 hours.

My every instinct begged to hurt him, to lash out blindly but explosively and to eradicate Shawn Schneider from the face of the planet for what he'd done to me. Of all the people in the world, he knew better than anyone how things whispered behind my back about me were my Achilles heel. There wasn't any assault he could have made on me that would have done more damage, and I felt him revel in it. 

It took every atom and inkling of restraint in my being to refrain from enacting his utter annihilation right then and there. Images of me on the northbound express bus flashed in my mind, followed by a street altercation and blood, so much blood everywhere that my mind's eye saw only in crimson tones. Instead, I took several deep breaths, put my phone away, and slowed my racing heart to something more closely resembling a seated human male in his forties. I messaged him back, thanking him for the attention he'd brought me and letting him know how surprised I was at receiving such a gift from him - all these attractive men contacting me for sex? Yowsers! Gracias, pendejo.

But the truth was I was horrified. Even now, two weeks later, I'm afraid to go out in public for fear that one of those perverts could be anywhere around me. Was the barista the one who had molested that 11-year-old? Was the bus driver the guy who'd offered me his shit? Does the cashier at the convenience store think I am a pedophile? I've stayed inside even more than when I was strictly adhering to the coronavirus quarantine. 

Then, out of nowhere, my doorbell rang at 5:55AM this Monday morning. I looked through the peephole and saw a tall, lanky figure dressed in a hoodie and wearing a hat that hid his face from the light. I didn't recognize the person, but assumed it must be one of my friends who frequently come over to visit, so I opened the door and invited the mysterious figure in. My eyes searched his face for some recognizable feature just as he turned to me and said, "We need to talk.". In that moment I knew exactly who had just invaded my personal space, and he was every kind of unwelcome there is.

Yet I still held back the instinctive scream that threatened to rush out of my mouth
and shred him with a thousand tiny blades, each honed by my rage and my hurt. "Yeah. We really do.", I said, closing the door and ushering him into the sitting area. "Thanks for the flattering profiles you left for me and everyone around town last week.", I added bitterly.

"Oh, you saw that, huh?", he grinned, not even trying to disguise his smirk. "Yeah, that wasn't me. I'm sorry. I mean that was ME, but it wasn't the me I want to be. You know what I mean?"

"What exactly are you sorry for, Shawn? For body shaming me with that 300-pound photo of me and saying I weighed 350? Or is it that you published my name and my phone number to every psycho and pervert in a hundred miles, who have all, I might add, been blowing up my phone with the sickest shit you can imagine until I finally changed my number."

"Both.", he said flatly, almost sullen in his sudden shame. "I didn't know you'd changed your number.", he said. "That's why you didn't get any of my texts this morning. I've been sitting outside in my truck at the end of the alley for nearly an hour debating what I was going to do when I got to your door, and I texted you all these messages challenging you to come outside and face me. I said, 'I know you're reading these, Murdock. Don't be a coward.', and a bunch of other stuff you didn't reply to. So I finally called you about fifteen minutes ago, and that's when I got the message saying your number was no longer in service or whatever."

"Of course I had to change it. What did you think was going to happen when you made that information public, Shawn? My phone blew up." I stared across the living room at him, sunken into the chair, eyes wide and almost confused, his clothes hanging off of him like rags on a wire hanger. He looked exhausted and a little crazy.

"And what do you mean 'deciding what I was going to do'? What did you decide, exactly?", I asked, remembering the threat I'd detected in that sentence before and fearing a snap was coming any second. I straightened and glanced left and right looking around for anything I could grab to protect myself if he lunged. My eye settled on the heavy glass ashtray in front of me on the coffee table, then met is again to monitor his movements.

"Nothing. Talk. Just talk.", he said with a telling crack in his voice like puberty was making a second house call just as he started to speak. "I haven't slept in days, and I'm paranoid as fuck right now. Somebody, I'm not saying you, but somebody has been putting up profiles everywhere chasing me all over the country saying shit about me and throwing shit in my face everywhere I go." He paused for half a beat, then continued, "If it is you, stop it. Please. Just stop."

"Look.", I started. "I've already told Corey and Tyler both a hundred times that it's not me. I'm so sick of getting blamed for whatever hell you've brought on yourself, either from one of them or some other poor schmuck that you've pissed off in your dealings. I'm going to say this one more time, and then I am not going to discuss it again. I am not responsible for the fake profiles being placed on Grindr and Sniffies." My voice was steady and stern, making my point as confident and final as I needed it to be. "I even managed to capture a conversation with the asshole in screenshots a couple of weeks ago, and I sent that shit to both your exes as proof that it wasn't me. Did they not show you? Don't tell me you haven't been tied to Corey at the waist for the last two weeks, either."

"No, I'm not speaking to Tyler, because -- uh, whole other kind of crazy -- and Corey and I aren't talking. But okay. If you say you didn't do it, I'll take you at your word. It's just that whoever it was mentioned something in one of the profiles about my Opa this time, and I saw red. It took two people to hold me back or I would have been here last night and this whole thing would have gone down a lot differently."

"What, would you have brought your favorite putter and practiced your swing on me again?", I asked with so much contempt that the snark was practically dripping from the words.

"Something like that.", he admitted and then looked away. "It's driving me crazy. Everywhere I go I'm paranoid that he's watching me. He says shit about who I'm with all the time, and like, it's not always right. Like half the time he's wrong, but half the time he's right. And so it's like he's got eyes on me all the time to the point I can't sleep. I leave town and he follows me. He followed me all the way to Atlanta and fucked with me there. On my flight home, I stopped in Dallas for an hour, and there he was with another profile showing up in DFW. I don't know many people that are smart enough to do that kind of shit with computers. You are probably the smartest person I know. So tell me the truth. Is it you? No threat, no fight. Just tell me."

"I already did. We're done with this subject.", I answered, refusing to back down from my line in the sand. 

"Then it has to be Tyler.", he posited. "I've noticed in some of the profiles there are certain typos and misspellings."

"I don't do typos or misspellings. I'm incapable. You know that."

"I do know that. Which is why I'm pretty sure now that it's got to be Tyler.", Shawn concluded. "He's smart. -Ish. But also dumb. You know what I mean? There are words he always spells wrong in everything, and I've seen them spelled wrong in some of these profiles." 

"Then you should be defaming him up in Des Moines instead of dragging my good name through the mud down here. You did that shit to me for something I didn't even do!" I was livid once more. Tears threatened to erupt from my eyes as I clenched my jaw tightly and held them back with nothing but sheer will. I  had to appear stronger than he remembered me. I needed him to see how hardened my heart had become in the wake of his abandonment of me this spring.

"I know, and I'm sorry.", he admitted quietly, almost whispering. "I'm not proud of that, that's why I took them all down. Well, one of them got taken down and banned as soon as it went up, and then I took the other two down, 'cause I felt bad."

"I only knew about 2 of them, and I reported them both to Sniffies and Grindr. Where was the other?", I inquired urgently. My mind raced, wondering how long the exposure had remained in place without my catching it.

"It was at Tyler's. I did one of the two of you. Two birds one stone kinda thing. But that one was the one that as soon as I finished and posted it it got yanked and banned by Grindr.", he answered. "I'm really sorry. I didn't know it wasn't you, and when it said that stuff about my Opa. . . I only talked to you about him, and I remember you using his name against me as a weapon before at the golf tournament in Federal Way that time. And I never, I don't think I ever talked to Tyler about Opa, so it's just weird that the profile would say, 'Your Opa would be proud.', is all. I believe you, it's just. . ."

"It. Wasn't. ME! I swear to God, Shawn, if I have to say. . ." I was incensed. 

"Okay. Okay. Okay, I know. I believe you.", he interrupted, aware of how close I was to losing my shit if he pushed any further and continued to doubt my honesty. "Hey.", he said, waiting for me to look up and meet his eyes. Holding my gaze he spoke. "I mean it. I'm sorry. I made a mistake, and I regret it. I'm sorry."

It was as if a year's worth of pain, doubt, anger, hurt, confusion, and heartache I'd been paralyzed by was suddenly sucked up by a big invisible hose, clearing my vision and leaving hardly any trace of those heavy, ugly emotions in view. I felt a relief the likes of which I haven't adequate words to describe, something akin to a weight that had permeated my body from head to toe and held me down for so long lifted, and I was able to see him for the scared, broken man he was in that moment and forgive him. 

We talked for over six hours that morning, covering everything from the infamous abandonment at Harborview in March to the robbery by Anthony and the rumor that I'd chased him all over Capitol Hill with a gun, ready to shoot him dead in the streets, which were fabricated by the very same friend who robbed me the following day. I steered the conversation toward some of the unanswered or contradicted questions he'd left me with when he bailed and took up with Tyler over me, and to my surprise, he kind of sorta answered me. Not in any useful way, like, with actual information that fills in a blank where there was no information before, but at least he gave me something instead of deploying his usual smoke screen of words and then running for the hills the second I look away.

He stuck to his original story on the subject of my being the one person he didn't want a relationship with. He said then and now that he came here wanting to be alone. He didn't want to be tied to the responsibility of keeping one person happy and not breaking their heart. He wanted to be free of any and all relationships more serious than a friend with benefits. After I'd confessed my feelings to him in late May 2019, he said he kind of freaked out and started trying to find ways to distance himself so that I would maybe lose some of that love. Of course at the time he told me we were totally fine, and that things weren't weird and he wasn't freaked out by my confession. He says he simply couldn't bring himself to say the harsh truth in full because he was afraid it would hurt me so badly that the entire friendship would end, so he tried to maneuver us in a way that only that unwanted love part would die.

As for the part about suddenly going from wanting no relationships at all to being in one up to his heart, he simply claimed that Tyler is a very good salesman and that he'd set his mind on Shawn, so he sold Shawn on the idea of being his boyfriend. In fact, he says that when it started, it wasn't even supposed to be true. He'd been on the phone with Tyler after fighting all day with Corey, who had been accusing Shawn of being in a relationship with Tyler, so Shawn jokingly said to Tyler, "So, did you know that you and me are boyfriends now?". He said Tyler took that to mean that they WERE boyfriends, and that was that. Hmmmph.

I don't know if I believe that, but I wasn't going to push him any further on the subject. He would have clammed up and I would get no more answers to the questions I still had for him. He's stubborn as hell, and he also really thinks that he's sparing me pain and suffering by not telling me his harsh truths, no matter how many times I assure him that's not the case.

By noon, we had come to a sort of uneasy truce; one that neither side had seen coming just hours before when we each had murder on our minds. It was bittersweet, having a slice of our previous friendship pop back to life and start dragging itself around my living room. I almost smiled, despite the soreness still surrounding my heart from all the hurt I'd held onto for so long. He saw that tears had welled up again in my eyes after his apology for how he left me, and he came across to the sofa to sit beside me as the sun shone through the patio window and turned us both into beautiful statues of gold.

When he left that day, I sat in stunned silence for an hour, replaying the morning's conversation over and over again looking for some sign that he'd been scamming me somehow. Had all that toxic animosity between us, all the fearful screening of friends for any signs they'd been in contact with him, all the anger and jealousy, and the pervasive feeling of betrayal all been so trivial that all it took to erase them was one honest conversation and a couple of tight, meaningful hugs? Apparently so. 

I'll tell you the rest in the next installment. I've already given way too many words in this post for most people to tolerate, so I won't push my luck by continuing on with the tale right now. He will be heading to Portland for the weekend, so that will give me time to think through this past week and all the unbelievable twists and turns that it brought into my life again. If you want to find out how he ended up here snoring while his cat kept my two cornered and hissing in the bedroom, check back later. For now, examine that feeling of confusion and curiosity that's swirling around your head right now. That's exactly how I feel now, too. Weird, isn't it?

The Best Conversation Ever

When There's Truth, There's Understanding

The Tragic Fall of Fuckboy, Part 1

As Was Foretold, What Befell Me Soon Befell Fuckboy

Was Everything A Lie?

Saying One Thing, But Proving Another - A Game Of Lie vs. Ty

I'm not sure how to see myself in the mirror's reflection when I'm actually able to tolerate the sight. Am I looking at the sexy, good looking, charming goofball that he told me I was all last year? Or is it the fat, AIDS-ridden, overbearing and unwanted loser whose pathetic need for validation makes him absolutely unattractive to anyone not looking to take something from him or use him in some way? 

I used to have a better picture of my own. Before my world went dark and spun off into cold isolation at the whim of a narcissistic liar, I actually trusted in my own beautiful traits and virtues. All of the pillars upon which right and wrong or up and down were based seem to have been toppled at the realization of his cowardly lies. And the fact that he maintains them as truth keeps them fixed in disarray in this upside down calamity.

Six months ago, I was still under the mistaken impression that Shawn was a good person who simply wasn't wired for the kind of romantic relationship I'd come to want with him. That, in and of itself, would have been regrettable but understandable, had it been true. It was not. We fought and reconciled and tried again a few times throughout August and September, and by October, he'd shut me out once again. His birthday came near the end of the month, and lo and behold, "Holden" had suddenly found a new guy to replace me as his best buddy, and what's more, he was in a relationship with him. A seemingly happy one, at that. Shawn was in love. 

He did have the capacity to love and be loved. He wasn't completely unwilling to be in any romantic relationship with anyone, as he'd repeatedly insisted to me for months. Shawn was perfectly okay having a boyfriend a little on the chunky side who was HIV positive and older than him. He just didn't want me.

And even that truth, hurtful though it might be, would have been an excusable one that I could have accepted had he simply had the balls to say that was the case. Had he simply sat me down and talked it out, explaining what it was about me that was wrong for him in that regard, I could have gotten the lesson I needed from it and moved on. But for him to hide behind a soft lie and let me think he loved me but couldn't handle a new relationship so soon after the dissolution of his 13 years with Corey was an unforgivable bit of laziness and convenience. It excused him from having to say the hard words he was too afraid to watch me hear. Then, when he'd found someone so similar to me in so many ways and became enamored himself, did he finally step up and tell me the truth, cutting me loose with some tears, a bit of heartache, and some closure? No. Not Shawn.Not him.

At first he pretended to let me be back in his orbit, hiding as much of his actual life from me as he could while feeding me lies and making excuses for not seeing me in person. When I grew suspicious of his odd behavior and went to see him unannounced, he was caught off guard and fed me a bullshit story he thought I'd want to hear about how he was simply using this dumb, dumpy rich guy for his car and apartment until he could rebound from his eviction and get back on his feet. 

It excused him from having to say the hard words he was too afraid to watch me hear.

He looked me in the eye and told me that this fuckboy, (who publicly claims to be 36 but is actually 40 years old, and who had to be shamed in front of Shawn into being honest about his HIV status with the men they were fucking) was no more his boyfriend than I had been, and that he still wasn't looking to be in a relationship. He claimed that he was selfishly allowing the new guy to believe what he wanted to believe. That was precisely what he was doing -- to me. The moment I dropped him off at his apartment in the wee hours of the night, he literally fled into the night as if he had escaped some maniac's clutches. Like he was afraid of me. It ripped me apart. What the hell had happened? He was afraid of almost having had to face the lies that he'd amassed. That's why he ran.

He leaves love notes in his boyfriend's car.

That feeling of betrayal eats at my guts like I'm corroding and rotting from the inside. I cry every single day, no matter how hard I try not to think about him, some memory invariably bubbles up to the surface, triggered by some sight or sound or smell. It isn't him that I dwell on, per se, so much as the messy end to our friendship and the lack of identity I am left with as a result of his cowardice. It's unacceptable. My story, more specifically the the part that I shared with him, deserves a just ending. He should have to face me and tell me the truths he hid from me and finally show me the world as it is, not as he would have me believe it.

But I can't make him do what he should. Nothing I say will change his mind or persuade him to suffer the discomfort that telling the truth sometimes requires. He has moved on to greener pastures having had to feel none of the anguish he left me to suffer. He comforts himself with poorly formed philosophical bullshit about letting go of the past, not fearing the future, and making the best of the present. He detaches and forgives all of his bad behaviors by simply writing off the past as something we just shouldn't dwell on. And as long as he can sidestep any collision with me, he will never have to care what he did by doing nothing. Karma will have to be his justice, and I won't even get the pleasure of seeing that unfold. I'm certain it will be magnificent and terrible in its weaving of his next incarnation's circumstances, and what a sight that would be indeed.

Reconciling His Words With His Actions

Going In Circles Recovering From Abandonment

As much as it pains me to admit it, there has not been one day in the months since I was made irrelevant in the life of my best friend, whom I loved very much, that I have been more than one stray thought away from tears. The smallest trigger can set me off no matter where I am or whom I'm with. All of the pain - every ounce of loss - comes sliding down on top of me, crushing me under its weight and holding me in this hopeless pattern that has prevented me from healing even a little since he threw me away. 

The reason, I think, that I'm so stuck is that my brain can't reconcile all of the things he said to me over and over for months with the eventual 180° about face he made after pushing me out of his day-to-day life. I keep trying to repair my decimated sense of self worth by telling myself all the positive and wonderful traits I know to be true of myself, but they won't stick, because they can't be as true as I though if they weren't good enough to let me be loved back by someone. It makes no sense that he could harbor deep, sincere feelings for me one moment while maintaining a barrier between us and the "boyfriend" label he was so afraid of, and the next moment he is head over heels in giddy schoolboy love with a total bossy bottom bitch of a fuckboy who is a disrespectful liar, a manipulator, a controller, and an all around nasty fucking person.

It's like I'm having to question every little aspect of myself, examining them more closely in search of some clue about which truth applies - am I a good, kind, funny, and lovable person that any man in his right mind would be grateful to call his partner? Or am I a depressing, needy, clingy, impatient, and unattractive old fool whose only true value is in his ability to pay for things and offer emotional support or entertainment? It took me years to finally get past the terrible programming my childhood cursed me with and to begin to believe those better things about me to be true. Those things actually started feeling fully legitimate with the occasional validation he gave me to support their validity. But then he took it all away by willfully shutting me out, intentionally flaunting this new relationship, and spreading lies and rumors about me around a community I already don't feel welcome in from the start. 

An apology would have gone a long way toward helping me heal. Seeing him feel his shame would have made me at least feel like he didn't get to sweep my suffering under a rug and move on to greener gay pastures guilt-free and unburdened by the consequences of his cowardly actions. But he didn't. He just fucking didn't.

He often pleaded with me not to hold on to anger or hate, explaining in his semi-literate way that they were heavy, toxic, burdensome emotions that only served to injure the one carrying them around and doing nothing to the subject of their intent. Truly I've never been one to hold a grudge for very long. Not until now, that is. I was almost able to shut out the hurt and ignore the daily feeling of betrayal that swirled sickeningly in the pit of my abdomen threatening to make me vomit at any moment. But he went and let his fuckboy talk to me like I was a crazy stalker who was making up stories about him in some smear campaign. He let that fuckboy diminish the friendship we shared before fuckboy was ever in the picture. Didn't say a word. Just handed over his phone and let fuckboy go to town on me. I could have forgiven a lot, but that and the fact that to this day he has made not one attempt to apologize to me for that or the greater damage he knows good and well that he caused me in the way he ended things between us. He has not had to suffer any of the loss or anguish I steeped in for three solid months. He moved on and fell in love. And I was left to try and put myself back together without a clue as to which pieces were me and which were parts he had used to prop me up for a while. I have completely lost myself and all sense of identity to this fucker.

I hate him. He deserves retribution, not that I am the one to give it, but there is a mighty big hole in my heart right now that has been screaming out for justice, and I don't think it will stop until either he gets his comeuppance and is left hurting, betrayed, alone, and without hope or anyone to turn to for support or until I die. If I still believed in myself, in even the smallest way, I would hold out hope for his getting what he deserves. But hope and justice and fairness are things only a weak, stupid, worthless old castoff holds onto when the world has shown him over and over again that there is no such thing as fairness. That kind of naivete is dangerous. It leaves one vulnerable to users who play off that sense of right and wrong. No, all that seems to fit anymore is the burning hot hatred that fills me when I see his stupid, happy, giddy fucking face. That's what he left in his wake. That's what I've become.