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FINAL DRAFT
Q: Would the one I love ever hurt or betray me?
A: Who else would?
-- Matt Groening, Love is Hell
Daryl came home from his government job one day to find his wife Danielle of seven years just up and moved out of the two-bedroom South Los Angeles house they worked so hard to buy. Daryl never cheated, never hit her. He was just ... eccentric -- Yoruba rituals and ghetto best friends. Danielle's bougeouise sensibilities got tired of trying to mold him into a character from Central Casting.
She proceeded to move her prissy self into an apartment nearby and bough two cats to make her home incompatible to her ex. However, Daryl shared his allergy to cat fur with his two daughters. Three and a half days a week, Shamika and Assata coughed and suffered on the altar of their mother's cruelty, spending the rest of the week at home detoxing with herbal remedies before repeating the whole horrible cycle.
Cara ignored advice from her teenaged son and most of her friends when she let her estranged husband Charles back into her bed. Years prior, Charles' drug abuse drove him to shuffling around southern California streets, but his clean-cut comeback on her Oakland doorstep rekindled affectionate embers for the tall, dark, funny man she ran away to Vegas with.
The laughs returned easily, with passion just as sweet as she remembered. But night shifts at the car dealership got later and later, commissions came in less frequently in a time when auto sales were up nationwide. Charles' crisp close cropped cut started looking raggedy, his eyes less focused on her face. Cara confirmed that she was four months pregnant weeks after she'd found the pipe in his jacket and sent him packing. When her water broke, it was two days after Charles stole her car, disappearing again, leaving tears and confusion as a parting gift.
Betrayal cuts so deep for so many is because it can only come from someone close. Someone drawn in intentionally, bearing a personal invitation RSVPed with a sharp blade in your blind spot. Stories like Daryl's and Cara's are traded in barbershops, on stoops and over cold beers. Who doesn't know one, secretly fearing having their own name exchanged in such a catastrophe?
When one has such a loss -- a brutal divorce with years of economic and emotional fallout, or even watching a trusted colleague ascend with his footsteps on your back -- simmering contemplations can dwell in the core of the double-crossed. Those considerations turn simple commutes into dissections of past events, inspired by random songs that come across your radio dial. They leave late nights rife with CSI-styled analyses of half-remembered glances from before the fall. Sessions on the elliptical turn into treks through whispered bedroom utterances. A life once carefree can become pensive and troubled until thunderclouds of treachery find other skies to inhabit.
What one chooses to do while enthralled by these dark thoughts defines their character. Society teaches that the proper course of action is to live and let live, turn the other cheek and other Judaeo-Christian tropes. This is the commonly accepted wisdom, the gospel of forgiveness and understanding ...
My father believed that this was a philosophy for the weak.
A hard man who'd known hard times, my father lived by his own golden rule: do unto others before they do unto you. Growing up too smart for his own good, downplaying his abilities and his frustrations in a world that was all too happy to kill a Black man with a mind. He'd been stolen from by siblings, seen people actually lynched and bowed his head long before he was legally allowed to walk tall. So the preledictions of this writer, despite the good-natured Christian intentions of his wife, tend towards the 285th Rule of Acquisition: no good deed ever goes unpunished. I was raised to believe in vengeance -- if not direct and commensurate, at least the revenge of living well.
Some might counsel some wisdom from ancients, might give some indication of a bright, shining future ahead once one can work their way through the anguish and confusion of being turned on by those who once held your trust. Those messages are likely composed by pansies.
Here you'll only find the decades-reinforced redemption of accomplishment over adversity. The novel released once freed from the bondage of domesticity. The dropped jaw of an ex as you arrive with someone three times hotter than they ever could be. Helping competitors to demolish the company that overlooked your brilliance. In a day and age where you can buy a flash drive with more memory than every computer in the world four decades ago, costing less than an average tank of gas, it seems nigh impossible for anyone make a cogent case for condonation in lieu of bringing chickens home to roost. If this is indeed the fall of the latest Roman Empire, grabbing what satisfaction one can get through the blood-red haze of hurt seems just desserts for the feast of infidelity.
"You can't advocate retribution as a life philosophy," the naysayers will cry. "That leads to a cycle of negativity, a downward spiral, blah blah blah." News flash, bunky: whether you wanna play or not, you're on the field, which makes you fair game.
"But what of the consequences?" Well, you can sit there and repeatedly let people make a doormat of you, or you can put some steel in your spine and start to avoid a small percentage of the inanity that is the lingua franca of modern life.
"Can't that energy be put to better use?" There are few objectives better than doing well for yourself. The revenge of the much hotter person you're with now (over the clearly less hot paramours of the past remembered by betrayals and infidelities) is the gift that keeps on giving, and I'm happy to keep unwrapping such presents in the present without wallowing in past pains. Betrayal is always personal, but retribution can sometimes be omnidirectional. Rub some of that on you, it's good for your life. Ask the Bush family -- feeling good about feeling bad about doing the wrong thing can take you a long way.
Too far? Abandoning the common social mores taking this into realms beyond comfort? Those values and societal concepts were forged by -- fun fact -- rapacious robber barons, slavers and the clearly morally bankrupt. There's much less chance that they're an example for a finer way and much more chance that they're a control mechanism.
Evangelizing such a message sends a clear signal to people in one's own life -- to paraphrase the words of Mos Def, they should respect their debt or protect their neck. My father also believed that there were two types of people in the world -- predators and prey -- separated not by some genetic quirks nor by impartial natural selection, but by the determination of choice, figuring out which one they wanted to be. This led me to sharpened talons and razor words at a very early age, and it's quite a wonderful thing to say that these lessons rarely leave their students hungry.
FIRST DRAFT WITH NOTES FROM EDITOR RITCH HALL 2
Q: Would the one I love ever hurt or betray me?
A: Who else would?
-- Matt Groening, Love is Hell
Daryl came home from his government job one day to find that his wife Danielle of seven years, whom he'd dated for seven years prior, just up and moved out of the two-bedroom South Los Angeles house they worked so hard to buy. Daryl had never cheated on her, never hit her. He was just very eccentric -- Yoruba rituals and ghetto best friends from his childhood -- and Danielle's bourgeoisie sensibilities got tired of trying to mold him into a character from Central Casting.[I like that but is it too esoteric?]
Danielle proceeded to move her prissy self into an apartment in a less-than-safe neighborhood and buy two cats to make her home incompatible to him. However, Daryl shared something with his two daughters -- an allergy to cat fur. So for three and a half days a week, Tanya and Imani coughed and suffered on the altar of their mother's vengefulness, spending three and a half more days with their father detoxing with herbal remedies before repeating the whole horrible cycle.
Cara ignored the advice of her teenage son and most of her friends when she let her estranged husband Charles back into her bed. His drug abuse drove him to shuffling around southern California streets [better establish that this happened previously, and not in the present, I was confused.], but his clean-cut comeback on her Oakland doorstep rekindled embers of affection for the tall, dark, funny man she ran away to Vegas with.
The laughs came back easily, and the passion was just as sweet as she remembered. But late nights at the car dealership got later and later, and commissions came in slower and slower in a time when auto sales were up nationwide. Charles' crisp close cropped cut started looking ragged, and his eyes less focused on her face. By the time Cara confirmed that she was four months pregnant, she'd found the pipe in his jacket and sent him packing. When her water broke, it'd been two days since Charles had broken into her car and driven it off with her spare key[spare key to the car? Or he broke into the car with a spare key?].
The reason betrayal cuts so deep for so many is because it can only come from someone close. Someone drawn in close, intentionally, on a personal invitation RSVPed with a sharp blade in your blind spot.
Stories like the ones of Daryl and Cara are traded in barbershops, on stoops and over cold beers. Who doesn't know one, secretly fearing having their own name exchanged in such a catastrophe?
When one has such a loss -- a brutal divorce with years of economic and emotional fallout, for example, or even watching a trusted colleague ascend with his footsteps on your back -- a simmering contemplation can dwell in the core of the double-crossed. That consideration can turn simple commutes into dissections of past events, inspired by random songs that come across your radio dial. It leaves late nights rife with CSI-styled analyses of half-remembered glances from before the fall. Simple sessions on the elliptical turn into treks through whispered bedroom utterances. A life once carefree can become pensive and troubled until the thunderclouds of treachery find other skies to inhabit. [good, you are establishing how trauma turns quiet contemplation into brooding]
What one chooses to do while in the thrall of these dark thoughts defines their character. Society teaches that the proper course of action is to live and let live, turn the other cheek and other Judaeo-Christian tropes. This is the commonly accepted wisdom, the gospel of forgiveness and understanding.
My father believed that this was a philosophy for the weak.
A hard man who'd known hard times, my father lived by his own golden rule: do unto others before they do unto you. He grew up too smart for his own good, downplaying his abilities and his frustrations in a world that was all too happy to kill a Black man with a mind. He'd been stolen from by siblings; seen people actually lynched and bowed his head long before he was legally allowed to walk tall. So the predilections of this writer, despite the good-natured Christian intentions of his wife, tend towards the 285th Rule of Acquisition: no good deed ever goes unpunished. Instead, I was raised to believe in vengeance -- if not direct and commensurate, at the very least the revenge of living well.
Some editorials might counsel some wisdom from ancients, might give some indication of a bright, shining future ahead once one can work their way through the anguish and confusion of being turned on by those who once held your trust.
Instead, here you'll only find the decades-reinforced redemption of accomplishment over adversity. The novel released once freed from the bondage of domesticity. Watching the dropped jaw of an ex as you show up with someone three times hotter than they ever could be. Heading over to a competitor and demolishing the company that overlooked your brilliance. In a day and age where you can buy a flash drive which has more memory than every computer in the world of 1980 put together for less cost than an average tank of gas, how can anyone make a cogent case for condonation in lieu of bringing chickens home to roost?
If this is indeed the fall of the Roman Empire's latest iteration, grabbing what satisfaction one can get through the blood-red haze of hurt seems just desserts for the feast of infidelity.
COMMENTARY FROM EDITOR RITCH HALL 2
It works in a lot of ways as a statement of the doctrine of revenge. The ending seems to come a little abruptly, in that it justifies itself and then asks how it could be any other way. In many ways I am waiting for something else to be said, and I am not sure what.
Do you just want to say that we should all believe in revenge? And what are the social consequences of each of us now tossing aside whatever moral compass that leads us away from that conclusion. Those embittered by trauma, loss or circumstance may find cause to embrace your methods depending on their personal bent, but others may look at it as a call for anarchy (people to tend to favor the slippery slope arguments). Is it to say that there is always a place for revenge? And what about when the energy might be better served in other endeavors. I think your point is that betrayal from a loved one cuts deeper, and that is what can lead a person to such measures. Sometimes the revenge is brutal, or deadly (the jaded lover who packs the .9mili and goes down to her job to let her and her boss/lover have it) In some ways the example of Daryl and Danielle points to how tragic revenge can be, particularly when there are innocent bystanders in involved. This op-ed asks a lot of questions that are fundamentally subjective based on context and moral rectitude. I think that there is a ways to reign the point in during the last paragraph to make the whole a little more succinctly. I feel like I need a wrap up at the end or something to make it all come together.
RESPONSE FROM HANNIBAL TABU
Re: "Central Casting"
It *used* to be lingua franca -- a company that existed in the big MGM years of cinema that grew so grandiose that even companies that *weren't* named that were referred to as Central Casting. Another sign I am getting old.
Fixing the drug abuse line to show linearity. Also fixing the car line to remove the bit with the key. It was an older car, and the key that opened it didn't start the thing, but that's irrelevant for our purposes here.
Thanks for the establishing comment. But yes, I consider a doctrine of revenge to be something of a way of life.
The ending seems to come a little abruptly ...
Hm.
Lemme look at that and give it some thought. I was afraid I was ranting like Denis Leary. Are you saying that's justified?
Do you just want to say that we should all believe in revenge?
Uh ... yeah, actually.
And what are the social consequences of each of us now tossing aside whatever moral compass that leads us away from that conclusion.
Hopefully a return of personal responsibility, but I've never been one to traffic in hope. Very few things have actual social consequences anymore.
Those embittered by trauma, loss or circumstance may find cause to embrace your methods depending on their personal bent, but others may look at it as a call for anarchy (people to tend to favor the slippery slope arguments).
... and you're saying that's bad, right
Is it to say that there is always a place for revenge?
Uh ... yeah.
And what about when the energy might be better served in other endeavors.
Well ... that's an argument I can add and tackle.
I think your point is that betrayal from a loved one cuts deeper, and that is what can lead a person to such measures.
*Should* lead a person to such measures. But "revenge" isn't always "getback." Sometimes it's just achieving past the suffering. The hotter girl you get after you get dumped. That sort of thing.
Sometimes the revenge is brutal, or deadly (the jaded lover who packs the .9mili and goes down to her job to let her and her boss/lover have it) In some ways the example of Daryl and Danielle points to how tragic revenge can be, particularly when there are innocent bystanders in involved.
So I'm not being clear.
My point was that revenge happens, like betrayal happens. If one *isn't* about revenge, revenge is still gonna be about them, whether they like it -- or deserve it -- or not.
I'll have to clarify.
This op-ed asks a lot of questions that are fundamentally subjective based on context and moral rectitude.
Most op-eds do.
Maybe I shouldn't have them as questions.
I think that there is a ways to reign the point in during the last paragraph to make the whole a little more succinctly. I feel like I need a wrap up at the end or something to make it all come together.
I see that I need to pound the point and really go off at the end. I can handle that. I used to do it all the time, I just ... well, Ghost Dog did say "sometimes the old ways are best."
Right, then. Thank you.
What the heck is this assignment again?
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