The UnTexan

THE RETURN OF THE CREEP: HELLO, YOU MUST BE GOING

I wasted a great deal of time and energy on a guy who called my wife on the phone a few years ago. When I answered the phone, he introduced himself as her former boyfriend, which immediately said to me: This is one of those creepy-crawly assholes who find themselves sad, lonely, miserable, sickly, aging, etc., suffer from an intense attack of the-way-we-were-ism and can't resist the urge to give an old girlfriend a call. He's married, of course, and unhappy, of course. They're always married, aren't they? And unhappy and/or lying. And this guy was married and lying about it even back in what he obviously recalls as the good old days (a REALLY long time ago) up in the icy north where the lakes freeze so solidly you can drive a car on them.

My wife, whose first impulse is not to be suspicious of people's motives (she's wonderful that way), took the phone and cheerfully caught him up on her life, her accomplishments (which have been many) and our wonderfully happy marriage (now 22 years long). That is because she mistook the guy for somebody who actually gave a shit about any of that stuff. I knew differently. And I knew it immediately. I knew it empirically; I knew it intuitively. I didn't even have to hear much of the conversation to know. Remember that old Rolling Stones lyric about being "practiced at the art of deception" from "You Can't Always Get What You Want"? That's him. That's the guy. I recognized him right away. I went to sit on the patio.

By the time my wife hung up the phone I was furious. Why didn't she hang up sooner? She was puzzled at my reaction (I don't ever act like that, never had before, never have since) and thought I was getting all worked up about nothing (which further stoked my fury). She said it had been years ago and she didn't go out with him but a short time, etc. And I was fine with that part. But I was not fine with the rest of it. She said she was "flattered" by the call. I knew he was manipulating her, playing her (and I suspect that's what he was doing even in the good old days -- he was married back then, too -- because this crap is not simply what he does, it is who he is). She couldn't see him coming (which stoked my anger even further). Or maybe she simply didn't recognize what she was looking at (which left me completely bumfuzzled).

The guy was a stereotype, somebody you could see coming from a mile away, the kind of smarmy and self-righteous creep a guy can see coming from here to California without looking very hard. He is the guy who is always out there looking for a way in. Any way in. Guys like that are dangerous.

I told my wife she would receive a heartfelt email from the guy very soon seeking another level of communication. Something warmer and fuzzier perhaps. Something secret for sure. She didn't think so. Or didn't want to think so. But an email arrived. And it didn't take long. And he sent it to her from an email account he secretly set up in his daughter's name (smarmy knows no limits).

His predictability would have been amusing if it had not been so infuriating.

DISPROPORTIONATE ANGER

But I could never have predicted the way my anger grew huge and unmanageable and would not subside. That took me by surprise. It surprised my wife. But I was not angry at her. Never ever. None of this was her fault. It was not jealousy. I am not a jealous guy. And I am intensely, happily and passionately married (the 'til death do us part kind of marriage). I love my wife and I know she loves me. This was something far more primal than jealousy.

The way I saw it, this guy was invasive, intrusive, malicious, dangerous, nearly criminal. He invaded our lives like a thief, a murderer, a rapist, stealthily crawling in through a quietly jimmied window and circling our bed on tiptoe in the dark. He was a threat. I had a reason to be angry. A guy who arrogantly identifies himself to me as my wife's ex-boyfriend, secretly sets up email accounts in his own daughter's name, is so clearly long-practiced in the art of deception, and won't go away is reason enough to be angry. But my anger was bigger than that. It was far beyond jealousy and deep into dangerous and unknown territory. It was a place I had never been before. My wife did not understand the immensity of my rage; I was beyond understanding. And I couldn't escape. That is what scared me.

My wife sent him an email politely telling him to go away and that helped for a while, but little by little my rage returned. I hated it but it happened. Then it consumed me. I did hours of research and eventually knew far more about this guy's life than my wife ever would have cared to know (I also had to wonder: What kind of narcissistic moron tries to mess with the wife of a former investigative reporter who works for an intelligence company?). I knew stuff, lots of stuff. I had enough knowledge and rage to become a destroyer of worlds and families (I won't hesitate next time). But I held it close and stifled the rage. If knowledge is power, I should have felt like Superman. But I didn't. I needed to DO something. I at least needed to speak for myself. My wife forwarded me his email address along with the email she sent him. I think she was a little nervous about what I might say or do. She asked me not to contact his wife and children. I didn't (It was my first instinct and I should have followed it. Not my problem).

So I fantasized about doing evil things, but I finally sent him a message that was remarkably restrained (except for the "fucking pathetic" bit I included near the end). It reads in part:

"... Both (the phone call and emails) were beyond insulting to her and to me. Neither will happen again, not now, not 10 years from now, not when it strikes your fancy.

“Never EVER contact my wife again. You will not call. You will not email. You will not write. Nothing. There will never be a circumstance, no matter how dire, that will permit it. As she made clear in her response to you, 'There will not be a time in the future when we can write or talk.' As she took some pains to explain, we live in a world from which you are excluded. Your exclusion is complete and permanent and we have agreed to work together to make sure it stays that way. She has made her wishes known to you; I have made mine. Any further attempts -- ever -- at contact by you will be considered both malicious and harassing. She took the high road in responding to your email; there will be no high road if you ever contact her again.”

I sent the email to his personal account AND to his daddy's-little-secret@ email account on May 17, 2005.

I felt better. Eventually my anger subsided then finally disappeared. I can't explain it except to say what he did probably touched some dark childhood fear of threats and betrayal (dysfunctional families hide all kinds of stuff in dark places). Wherever it came from, it was terrible. It was real. I hope never to visit that dark place inside me again. I can never apologize to my wife enough for what I became in those angry days. And I can never thank her adeqately for lovingly grabbing hold of my hand and not letting go until I escaped of the dark hole I was in. We came out of it together.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

That was five years ago and reading over my email to him its message remains perfectly clear. "Never" still means never. And "Never EVER" still means Never EVER. And "There will never be a circumstance, no matter how dire" still means not even if you are sick, dying, ecstatically happy, seriously suicidal, being held captive in a cave by Al Qaeda, nothing. The message still says what it was meant to say.

Now this.

A few days ago the guy ignored everything my wife said and everything I said and wrote to her again. He mentions reading both of our emails to him and declares himself laughing out loud ("lol"). But we aren't laughing. This time it's a private message to her on Facebook. A "five-year update" for people who don't want to be updated and tried to make that clear five years ago. But this time she sees him for what he is. She told me about his message last night. Did he think she wouldn't mention it to me? He seems not to have understood the "we have agreed to work together" to keep you out part of the email I sent either.

My wife is angry. I am angry. We resent the intrusion. We resent having to spend any more time on this. She says we will sit down together and deal with it. No time will be wasted. And whatever we do, or don't do, I hope he gets the message. Stay away. If it isn't clear enough, he should read through the email I sent him five years ago, especially the part that says, "there will be no high road if you ever contact her again."

The message is simple: Stop now. Bad road ahead. And bad roads can lead to dark and dangerous places. But the high road ends here.

*******************

Meanwhile, this one goes out to The Creep. You know who you are.

 

Think about it darlin'.

COLORADO RAINBOW

Living color. It was that kind of week.

Those are the Sangre de Cristos in the background.

HUD: A MINOR CHARACTER HE WRIT LARGE

Screenwriter Irving Ravetch is dead. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay, written with his wife Harriet Frank, for Hud.

Ravetch is the man who looked at Larry McMurtry's novel Horseman, Pass By, saw Texas coming down the road and tried to warn the rest of us what was headed our way. He found a relatively minor character in the book named Hud Bannon, recognized him for what he was, pumped him full of bullshit and hot air and turned him into the unprincipaled, greedy, Bible-thumpin', money-grubbin', land-grabbin', stripmall-buildin', queer-baitin', Mexican-cheatin', black man-draggin', prisoner-executin', sleaze-baggin', fuel-suckin', George W. Bush-electin' (a minor character writ large if ever there was one), aw-shucks-dumbass-from-Dumas shit kickin' good ol' boy we all have come to recognize as the charming Texan next door. Ravetch saw Texas for what it was and called it Hud.

Here's what Hud's old daddy Homer Bannon says in the movie: "You don't care about people Hud. You don't give a damn about 'em. Oh, you got all that charm goin' for ya. And it makes the youngsters want to be like ya. That's the shame of it because you don't value anything. You don't respect nothing. You keep no check on your appetites at all. You live just for yourself. And that makes you not fit to live with."

Or as Hud himself puts it: "This country is run on epidemics, where you been? Price fixing, crooked TV shows, inflated expense accounts. How many honest men you know? Why you separate the saints from the sinners, you're lucky to wind up with Abraham Lincoln....I say let us dip our bread into some of that gravy while it is still hot." To which Hud's daddy replies: "You're an unprincipled young man Hud." To which Hud answers: "Don't let that worry you none. You got enough for both of us."

It's "The Hud-ite Creed." It's as American as Obama and apple pie. And it's a pretty good description of the Republicans (Official motto: "We don't care about you") and the way they do their business in Texas and everywhere else. In fact, it's a pretty good description of the world we've let ourselves get cozy with whether we're Republicans or not.

Give me an amen somebody.

Ravetch warned us what was coming and instead of thanking him for it we went out and elected George W. Bush. Twice. And now Ravetch is dead. But because of him I sure knew where I was when I got to Texas. Hud thrives. His offspring litter their shit in McMansion-sized heaps across the landscape. They're everywhere and they go by various names. I once worked with a West Texas guy so slippery and slimey (but always well dressed) he might as well have been called Hud Jr. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a hardcore Hud-ite and Democratic candidate for governor Bill White shows definite Hud-ite tendencies as well. And wasn't Jesse Jackson (takes-one-to-know-one longtime Hud-ite) just warning President Obama to beware of Hud-ism and its many charms?

Now Texas is all over the place. Hud's world is our world. It's the world of the minor character writ large. That makes it a scary place.

See the movie. It's a good movie. Think about Irving Ravetch, the man who saw Hud coming down the road.

Let the script speak for itself.

 

HAPPINESS IS A PLACE WEST OF HERE

My wife and I just returned from a long drive. Too much Texas, some beautiful Colorado, not enough New Mexico and back to far too much Texas. It was good to leave our Austin lives behind, good to drive over La Veta Pass and down to Alamosa, CO, and west to Del Norte, good to spend a few days alone on a ranch by the Rio Grande in the San Luis Valley, good to drive south through Antonito, CO, and into northern New Mexico, good to feast on the distance, good to see the Pedernal to the south, good to grab a chicharron burrito with red chile in Espanola, NM, where we lived for nearly 10 years, good for the mornings and evenings to be cool and the sky clear, good to see a couple of friends in Santa Fe, good to feel at home for a few days and to understand the dark of night and the clear first light of day. It was not good for either of us to come back to Texas. But we had to. Texas is the grim reality of our lives. We never meant for it to be, but it is. So we returned to our house in Austin on Saturday afternoon after a week away. My wife is back already (she always arrives before I do); I come back one gloomy and resentful step at a time. We like our house but we are not at home. The geographically compromised are never at home. And that is who we have become. And it is who we will be until we (1) take a long drive west -- and never come back or (2) resign ourselves to a life of unquiet desperation somewhere well to the east of complete happiness.

Imagine. A place. Where the deer and the dissatisfied play.

True West (or not)

 

 

 

GOING WEST: ESCAPING THE UGLY

Northern New Mexico is the most beautiful place I ever lived. It is likely to be the most beautiful place I ever will live. And up until about 8 years ago I owned a piece of it. But I sold it and moved to Austin, TX, temporarily for clear and simple reasons and then stayed for reasons that are increasingly (1) complicated or (2) silly. I have a mountain-shaped hole inside me that Texas cannot fill. So does my wife. Next to Northern New Mexico almost anyplace is ugly, but this part of Texas is pornographically ugly; it is without redeeming aesthetic value. I like the West, too, and New Mexico is the West; this is not the West, no matter what J. Frank Dobie said. From time to time it is necessary to make a run west into the mountains. So my wife and I are about to run. But we are running to Colorado, a few miles north of the New Mexico border, almost home but not quite. We are running to a ranch house by the Rio Grande in the San Juan mountains. Because we cannot seem to save ourselves from Texas, we content ourselves by seeking temporary relief where we can find it. We will only pass through New Mexico this trip, but no matter. It is always with us. Our friends are there; our life is there; we are not. I hope we can live in New Mexico again someday, but the way things are going I am not so sure that will happen. Time is passing. I will be 66 years old in a few months. I will be 70 in a few years. I became 60 in Texas and I do not want to become 70 here. But it could happen. The past 8 years happened didn't they? Tick-tock.  "Time's winged chariots" and all that stuff.

Now I have to start packing. I want Sunday evening to look something like this.