good people leftovers

(a follow-up to http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2015/02/good-people_27.html)

"Whispers" would be a more resonant title.
I'll avoid that, because i don't want to overendow negativity...or overestimate my esteem for this kind of piece. If public-speaking potential is the growing benchmark by which i measure my scribbles, this one's a detour to a dead end. Serious navel-gazing, rather unadorned by wit or frill.
But i can't leave this stone unturned, because the parent piece left a gaping question unanswered, and i made a vow to the universe that i would write nakedly about any facet of my existence. Not that i haven't turned this stone over already. I have:
http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2010/09/villain.html
If you find it within you to villainize me after reading that, i can promise you there are any number of people in your life whom you smilingly embrace, and whom have done infinitely "worse".
So this piece is perhaps then a meditation on how whispers can persist. I say perhaps because i'm going out on a limb, assuming the treatment i've received has anything to do with events that happened some fifteen years past. Perhaps margie's barely-concealed loathing had nothing (or little) to do with me. Crazier things have happened.
But how telling is it that i sent notes to four of my co-creators after the show closed, seeking some glimmer of compassion or understanding of what had happened...and got a response from only one? Considering how mindfucked i was when i wrote those four notes, they were stunningly classy and tactful. The only response came from the person i least expected to answer - margie. Addressing me with icy formality and employing the language one directs at a stalker, she instructed me to contact her no more.
No explanation.
I was tempted to contact a couple of the others once more, just to know whether their seeming coldness might be unintentional. I decided to let it be. It's not my nature to defend myself when attacked. People believe what they want, and it takes a special kind of idiot to fly in the face of that. One day i'll contact mike again, as my affection for him is considerable, and if anyone is going to be honest with me, it's he.
Plus, i was so damaged by what had happened, that to keep on engaging the situation was to play roulette with my life. I'd been savaged by the stress. Past experience tells me it will take months to recover. My stomach feels better, but it's still weak and hollow. Only now, two weeks on, is the burbling noise starting to fade. One night, my head began spinning in a way that felt like i'd fall if i tried to stand. It wasn't lightheadedness...more like what i imagine vertigo to be. If i wanted to live, i needed to put this behind me. A human body under stress literally shuts down...systemic paralysis leading to illness and worse. Watching jeff daniels get a bleeding ulcer on "The Newsroom", i knew that was where this road led, if i couldn't pull away.
Even now, i do myself some damage by writing this. Please believe that comes from devotion to you, and not a deathwish.
Yet too, suicidal thoughts have swirled in me these past weeks. I don't apologize for that, and expect few to understand fully how rational a response suicide is to this world. Fortunately (or not), my quixote complex and fear of death mean that you probably won't be rid of me so easily. But how unbearable to feel this way. Tried, convicted, and sentenced, without being allowed into the courtroom. Literally sickened. I don't know why i'd never considered hanging before, as a tidy and fairly foolproof method. That's the problem with suicide though - it's hard to be classy. After self-immolation, i suppose alcoholism and smoking are the only socially acceptable ways. If that's classy, i ain't got a classy bone in me. It's a shame Earth isn't flat. Walking off the edge might be the only way to go. Never to see this world again, and almost certainly to die...but with the romance of the unknown. Was the jumper despondent, or just the bravest fool in the world? Wheeeeeeeee...
But back to the whispers...had margie heard them? One can only imagine the form they might take, fifteen years removed, and filtered through the innumerable minds and mouths of the world that nurtured Salem and mccarthyism. If that's what happened, i don't judge her harshly. I want to have every faith in her good intent.
Nor have these whispers ever been brave enough to come to me openly. They've been so removed, that i've only been mostly sure they even exist at all. But they would explain a mystery or two...most notably why one of the most cherished actors in the most beloved theater company i once ran, one day disappeared from my life with a totality that smacks of shun. Wherever you are, derek, i love you.
Beyond whisper persistence though, this piece is also about my sensitivity to the energy around me. Steph never acted overtly cold to me during this play, it's only something i felt...and only in the context of unspoken mistrust did it make sense. I've long been hesitant to fully embrace this kind of "intuition", because we're talking about a world beyond the five senses, which even if it exists, most people couldn't even begin to access with any clarity, because we're all too damaged, our heads way too far up our asses.
But my final contact with any cast member made me wonder why i haven't chosen to let these instincts guide me completely. The actor who no longer seemed to find me charming the final week, had offered me much kindness prior to that. Not having a car, i'd been biking the 11.5 miles to and from rehearsal. Once the show opened, she offered me a lift partway. I offered to treat her to dinner after closing, and she happily accepted. We shared congenial conversations on our rides. She often drove me all the way home. The only imbalance was my sense that she was attracted, and my incomplete feeling of reciprocity. Then that final week, i felt something cold and hard in her. I know that's how things often go, when people realize (or suspect) that someone they fancy doesn't feel the same way. But this felt like more. This felt darker. Had she heard a whisper? I sent her a note after closing, and was surprised she didn't beg off our dinner date. My instability alarm blared. When we met a few days later, it took only thirty seconds for her to lay a sweeping, brutal condemnation on me. Simply because i employed the words "virgin" and "slut" (and showing no interest in my context), she slammed shut our initial line of conversation, and asked me to nevermore pretend i was a feminist. Ironically, she was snap-judging me because she thought i was guilty of snap-judging women. I reeled inside, like i'd been stomped in the stomach. I'm surprised i was able to not walk away, and amazed i was able to get down any food.
A well-intended but baseless brutalizing, from which my intuition ought have spared me?
And what does all this mean, in the larger context of my life? What does it say that three weeks of unrelenting stress was so debilitating? In a world of poverty, sexism, racism, and domestic abuse, my experience was closer to normal than not. Have i "resensitized" myself to the point that i can no longer function in regular society? Have i so successfully lowered my emotional walls, to better understand the natural human condition, that i can never build them up again?
I'm not sure. I'd like to hope that this chapter was exceptional. But do i even want to become better able to withstand such inhumanity again?
Who's your villain? What does it say about us that we feel comfortable villainizing anyone? I'll be your villain, if that's what you need. But i hope you'll be human enough to base it on something i say or do, and not...
Whispers.
I love you all.

(for the follow-up's follow-up, see http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2016/04/good-people-leftover-leftovers.html)