Too Long Too Far
The last time I was here on holiday I was with Logan, dear Logan, a saint of a human, that is until it came to girls, then he loses his mind. Reminiscent of Gary whom was the first person who demonstrated that crazy jealousy. It was a difficult thing for me to understand at first, because it was so contrary to his character, well, his character as I understood it at the time.
Gary was gentle and open, he didn’t care much for grudges and he was honest in the way he interacted with people. He’d poke fun at you of course but he’d never harm you, he’d never betray you. One weekend we were driving out to meet his girlfriend, this was back in high school, he wanted us to meet her, something I’ve never been big on, I don’t believe in mixing groups, as you can imagine this frustrates the hell out of certain types of people, as they feel they’re entitled to my friends, and I do not, but that’s a separate matter.
James, Gary, Oleg and I had a small, sort of, proxy group, we’d do things together outside of school although whilst at school we were all in at least one group together, at school we were all group drifters.
Oleg sort of bound James Gary and I together, Oleg had a simple mind, he did not do well with complex ideas and he had a severe deficiency in risk assessment, bottom of every class at school, his mind wasn’t suited for academia or any great complex thought, however he was a good person, reliable and loyal, he looked after his friends as best he could, we all appreciated that and we looked after him. I’ve been surrounded by intellects all my life so they don’t impress me that much but good people, kind people, they impress me.
Intelligence is inherent, but kindness has to be taught, it’s the greater achievement. In much the same way as a person who studies hard is more worthy of praise than someone who simply does well on exams without having to put much effort in, sadly it’s the other way around, and worse yet if you’re exceptionally capable you’re taught everything in life will come to you easily, but it does, it’s far more practical to be a kind idiot than a proud genius. I’m rambling.
Our school was a hard school, it was an all boys public with a lot of petty gangs and a few serious gangs who had a couple of members here and there, most people there were filled with aggression, bravado and a serious lack of understanding of consequences, you know, teenage boys. For a simple idea of the place I’ve had knives pulled on me in the boy’s toilet, machete attacks against other schools, teacher strangling, revenge attacks by people outside of the school on our basketball courts, juvenile sentences for attempted murder, so and so forth, my point is it wasn’t a nice place and Oleg was an easy target because he was stupid and relatively small.
Gary was a year ahead of us, but he repeated year 12 and that’s when I, James and Oleg met him. Gary befriended Oleg first by himself, even though he got a lot of flack for it he didn’t give a damn, he liked Oleg and he wanted to be his friend, it might not sound like much but back then even things like that were relatively rare and valuable, so I was of course deeply fond of Gary for that, amongst many other things. Gary was a good person, he didn’t start fights, he didn’t pick on anyone, he was inclusive of all people and he defended anyone who needed defending, a lot of people would like to think they are like that, they might revise their history a bit, but the reality of it is at the time very few people are, some people might have the intentions to do so but never follow through with the actions.
So, back on track, one day we’re going to see Gary’s girlfriend at Gary’s request. We drive past his girlfriend’s house and she is outside with a bunch of guys on the lawn, Gary just drives past and doesn’t say anything for about 2 minutes, then he just explodes. He’s assumed the worst and he thought she was cheating on him, or something, and that he had caught her, nonsense of course but he wasn’t in a rational mood. James and I talked him out of driving up onto the front lawn and starting a fight, we convinced him to call her, which he did. She tells him that they are her cousins and that he should come in with us and stay for a while because they’re having a barbecue, he doesn’t care, he accuses her of being a liar and a whore, a snake in the grass and the rest of it, then he hangs up. 30 seconds later she calls in tears apologising, still he’s angry and he tells her that the apologies are worthless, he then insisted that she send all of the guys on the front lawn away, she refuses, saying she can’t just do that since they’re here with their family, to which he replied either you get rid of them or you’re getting rid of me, and that she has got to decide just before he hangs up.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that his behaviour is off the wall, he was in the grips of a severe jealous fit, offering her ridiculous ultimatums that she couldn’t possibly entertain even if she wanted. Even after all that he’s still angry as all hell, she didn’t call back and I suppose thankfully James and I convinced him to let it go and for us to go and get some lunch.
That was the first time I had ever seen that sort of behaviour. I’ve seen it a few times since then though. These males who are some of the nicest people you could hope to meet, unless you’re dating them, and then they are capable of being fucking monstrous and insane.
I’m not the jealous sort, mostly because that’s just my natural predilection but also because, well, this will sound conceited and it may well be but I genuinely believe if I wanted a girl there isn’t another person who could possibly out do me for her affections, there is a focus that comes with infatuation which is very powerful, all thoughts directed towards this one person, males can be very determined when they want something, very focused, and I’m no exception.
Whilst I don’t really have the jealousy thing myself I do understand it, though certainly not to those levels, not to the point where the jealousy, which is based in a desire to keep the relationship, becomes a very convincing reason for other partner to not stay in a relationship with this lunatic.
It’s weird seeing someone you really respected lose a good chunk of their credibility. I don’t know, I always think, well if they’re capable of doing that to them then it’s obviously in them, they have that potential.