I wish there could be a sense of peace about Halfman, but there just so is not.
Even now, when I can see his strangely toe-down step on the sidewalk ahead of me and think ‘ugh. ick. ick. ick. how did I ever?’ etc, I still feel an unending and hot anger at that thing. And I don’t mean the thing he did — I mean that being (calling Halfman a ‘him’ or a ‘person’ literally still chokes me — I can’t make those words come out in reference to Halfman; because I don’t consider them true or accurate). I have managed to refer to it by it’s Name once or twice, but only once or twice. People have names: Halfman is Halfman.
But it puzzles why it should be so.
Why I should still feel such anger at Halfman. Such anger, that when I do catch those glimpses behind my middle finger as I drive by Halfman’s path during the work week, it pops out in my dreams that night.
In the moment, the anger spikes, I laugh a little at myself and keep moving.
In the wee hours, when my eyes are all a flicker beneath my closed lids, I confront that thing. Most recently in a leaky boat. I was the captain, I knew that thing and his wife needed to get somewhere. And I declared I would take her but not Halfman, and proceeded to sail away without that thing in the boat, bailing the whole time, feeling like I’d rescued his spouse.
And then there’s the one where I saw Halfman in the front row of some public event. And–totally out of character–went right up and told him exactly what I thought of his Halfmanself for all to hear. I was rather pleased with the limited vocab I exhibited: colourful and heartfelt. And wholly accurate.
But I awoke wondering why? Why, when I am quite sure he has moved onto the next sex doll. When I am certain he has had no insight into that murky place in there. When I am sure Halfman does not yet even admit to himself what he did to me.
Maybe that’s the bit that sticks in my craw (do I have a craw?).
That I know there is some Halfman woven story he told his wife to minimise the truth and relieve himself of whatever amount of that truth he could keep from her–and I know he believes this story. That he doesn’t even acknowledge inside himself where no one else can see, that he did such a cataclysmically unkind thing to a person he said was his friend.
1000 days 