On Forgiveness

It’s the end of the year, and I’m a little thoughtful of late. So if you’ll allow it, I’d like to compose a couple of meditations on forgiveness.

1.

When I first moved to this part of the country, on Scruff I met a kid from Brooklyn that I liked very much. We’d had similar sexual awakenings growing up, and compatible tastes in the sack as adults. He liked to put his ass in the air for older men, and I’ve always had a taste for young men with daddy issues to work out. We hit it off online and made plans to meet, but as with so many encounters on the apps, it never seemed to happen.

He would be nearby and available when I was in a meeting. I’d be knocking around the city solo while he was at work. He once arrived when I available in my sleepy suburb for a work event, but he wouldn’t be free from that get-together until an hour when I’d be teaching. Both of us took these criss-crossed impasses with a good humor—but I think we both found them frustrating.

Finally came a time when we both seemed to be available. I was sitting in a coffee shop in the city with nothing to do for several hours; he had a day off work and was hinting heavily to me that he might be available. But as we were catching up with each other in chat, he shared with me that he’d had a brief relationship that ended badly when he’d discovered his boyfriend had concealing a trash heap of lies. I’d gone through my own travails with Cory the year before, so in commiseration I shared with the kid an abbreviated version of that mess—how I’d developed a relationship with Cory that he’d eroded with lies, and how Cory had vanished after leaving me with both a dire care of syphilis and a need for immediate medical attention.

I thought I was consoling this Brooklyn boy by sharing a tale similar to his, one of feeling foolish after wool had been pulled over my eyes. Instead, I freaked him the fuck out. I had syphilis, he wanted to know? And I wanted to sleep with him?

No, I told him. I’d had syphilis. Well over a year ago. I’d gone to the doctor. I’d had shots. I’d had several blood tests since. I didn’t have syphilis any more.

Nuh-uh, he told me repeatedly. That’s not the way syphilis worked. Once you had it, you had it for good.

I was kind of confused. This Brooklyn kid wasn’t stupid. I mean, he had a college degree. He worked for a company that attracts the best and the brightest. He should know better than to think syphilis was incurable. I mean, he was on PrEP, which at least showed some degree of sexual education. But nope. He kept insisting I was unclean—his word. That he couldn’t sleep with me, since I’d had (or, in his mind, since I had) syphilis.

I didn’t put up much of a fight. He was convinced. I was disappointed. I’d been called dirty. Confused and ashamed for no good reason, I wished him luck and tried to put him out of my mind for good.

Life’s too short, guys. Attempting to convince someone to want you, when it’s plain they won’t, is one of the biggest wastes ever of your time. Just don’t do it.

Still, I admit I had pangs. I’d see the kid online in the couple of years that followed. Each time, that flicker of recognition when my eyes landed on his smiling face would result in me sighing, remembering his insults, and moving on. I’d feel momentary anger whenever I saw him on. I’d wonder how could anyone so educated be so dumb, and hurtful. Whatever. It was just one more person against whom I’d have to harden my heart. What’s one more person. Right?

Something happened late last year, though. Out of the blue I got a message from this Brooklyn kid. He wanted my forgiveness. He said he’d been stupid and ignorant. He realized he’d hurt me with his words, and he wished he hadn’t. He didn’t expect me ever to respond to him, and he certainly didn’t expect me to want to get together with him after what had happened, but the guilt of how he’d surely made me feel weighed heavy on his mind. He was sorry, and he apologized for it.

For a moment I experienced a savage stab of satisfaction. I don’t mind admitting it. Who doesn’t enjoy a good told you so? Fucking right he’d made me feel badly. Go guilt! But you know, that feeling evaporated almost instantly, along with all the ill-will toward this kid I’d been building up over the years. He’d done the right thing. He’d apologized, and his apology was sincere and unmotivated by anything but a wish to put things right.

All is forgiven, I wrote back. Tapping out the words lightened my spirit. I laughed, even. It felt good to forgive. My heart felt lighter; all the sour feelings I’d worked up over this boy turned to sweet. They’ve stayed that way ever since.

Forgiving this kid—just letting it go—felt good. For a short period of time, after being weighed down by resentment and upset, forgiving him made me feel weightless. I don’t let go of resentments easily. Given a reason to, though . . . it was as if the incident had never happened.


2.

Earlier this year I wrote about Peter, a kid whose online life had been entangled with mine for years. The essay was one of my more depressive entries; I catalogued how Peter and I had planned to meet again and again, only to have something gum up the works. Earlier this year we’d finally made our first firm date, and then the day of, he rapidly canceled it, set it back on, canceled it again, changed his mind, then finally canceled. At the time, I tried to remain philosophical about the rejection, but when Peter disappeared for weeks immediately after, for the first time in all the years I’d known him, I felt used and abused.

A couple of months after that I saw Peter and his boyfriend together out on the town. The overwhelming sadness I felt I wrote about in the essay ‘Butterflies and Boners.’ I wrote the entry knowing that, as Peter had been reading my blog for years, he was likely to encounter it. Knowing he probably would kept me honest. I didn’t jiggle with the facts. I wrote what I thought was true, and fair; I wrote not meaning to be hurtful, but to reflect my own sense of hurt. I wrote, and poured out my heart, and in return I got a lot of very supportive comments from readers, and a very little bit of closure.

The incident soured me, though. For a very long time after that night in which I encountered Peter and his boyfriend, I didn’t feel like dealing with all the bullshit men were putting me through, just to get my rocks off. Furthermore, I didn’t feel like engaging in any social media at all. Boys were stupid. Men were stupid. People were stupid. I wanted none of it.

This mini-depressive episode didn’t last. Apparently I can only go without sex for so long. I was still in a sensitive place, though, when a month after I shared ‘Butterflies and Boners,’ I got a text from Peter. I would like to see if we have a connection still, he said. I don’t think I want to start with a sexual contact. I’d rather start over a drink, or coffee, or lunch.

What had been a mild depression instantly coalesced into a white-hot furnace. WELL WELL WELL, I raged internally. LOOK WHO’S COME CRAWLING BACK.

I’d read the text mere seconds after I’d received it, and all I could really think was that if Peter had been nervous about sex with me, he could’ve said so at any point in the previous five years. In fact, many times had I urged him to consider meeting me just to chat, only to have him drag me into his fisting, fucking, and breeding fantasies. I stared at the screen for a minute and tried to think of what to say. I wanted to reply with Guess you didn’t read my BLOG ENTRY, MOTHERFUCKER.

Only, you know. In a classy way.

I was still staring at the text when I got the follow-up. I suppose I should’ve read your blog before reaching out.

Mild understatement, that. Angrily I ground my teeth and read on.

Peter wrote, I also suppose I’m glad to read our history from your perspective. It’s not shocking in an “I had no idea I was treating you like that” way - I was very aware - but it’s shocking and different reading it laid out over the course of a few minutes than it is having done it over days and years.

Reading these words, part of me softened. I’d tried not to be harsh to Peter in that essay; I’d attempted to assign as much blame to myself for my lack of good sense as I did him for his youthful heedlessness.

I read on. I have not treated you with respect. Outside of the moments we’ve texted, I haven’t treated you with kindness either. I am sorry for how I yanked you around when it came to actually meeting, and for how I treated you by disappearing.

Oh. He was apologizing.

My skin had felt on fire, my heart had been pounding with a pent-up anger I hadn’t even been aware I was feeling, but his simple words cooled me down. Peter went on to say that he understood if I never wanted to see him, and if that were the case, he’d never bother me again.

My eyes skipped over his last offer. He’d apologized. Peter had apologized—and handsomely. It hadn’t been one of those ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you’ half-apologies. He’d owned up to what he’d done, and expressed his remorse.

And you know what? I felt better. I felt fucking amazing. And I knew in my heart that I couldn’t hold any animus against Peter any longer.

I was finally able to compose a response. I note and appreciate the apology of your last text. Please know that although I think about our relationship with sadness, I bear you no ill will. I meant the last part with all my heart. Hurt as I’d been, Peter’s attempt to make things right were just what I needed.

I forgave him there and then. I wasn’t ready to drop everything and run to meet him, not at that moment—and I told him so. But I thanked him sincerely for apologizing, and told him we’d talk again.

Peter did the right thing, that day. He’d wounded me more deeply than the kid from Brooklyn ever could. His apology, though, let me start healing. Once again I was able to drop a burden of resentment of which I wasn’t even aware I was carrying. The rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the year was happier and lighter because of it.

It takes a big man to make a sincere apology. I know when I try to be half the man Peter was that day and attempt to make amends with those I’ve wronged, it’s never easy, and rarely straight-forward. That he was able to do so after the shock of seeing his actions held up in my mirror speaks volumes to his integrity. Life manages to find endless fresh ways to make me hurt, I wrote in ‘Butterflies and Boners.’ But life manages to find endless ways to help me forgive, too.

It’s the last day of the year. Tomorrow begins a new slate. I ask these questions of you, if you’ve read this far.

To whom might you apologize?

And who in your life, without grudge, might you forgive?