In fact, I know I’m not because I am sneaking a cigarette as I write this. I know, I know, but I only smoke when I am drinking and I’m drunk. But let’s not go into that. You are marvelously healthy. I am not.
At most, someday my own ego and your natural embrace of life would compel us to go camping, and surely some emergency would present itself and I would show myself to be lacking. Not just physically, but in terms of also the fine character and good sportsmanship that comes with the simplest casual athleticism, which I lack. There would be my constant whining, deprived of the comforts of civilization. My skill at deflecting blame, essential in organized urban life, would take on a demoralizing role. As the situation became more serious, my defeatism, fueled by my deep self-loathing, would take over, making my company all but unbearable, and reducing your chances of survival. This would only be interrupted by the occasional truly surprising and disturbing fit of religious mania, and sickening, piteous abject appeals for love and not to die alone; these will really only be manifestations of bargaining and cowardice. Finally, my weak and cowardly nature would force me to abandon you at some critical moment, out of sheer selfishness. It is not enough that I ate the last cookie crumbs and lied about it, then blamed you, then tearfully admitted it, then blamed you, then had a fit of religious mania where I asked if you really forgave me, then attacked you, and then pitied myself when you easily fought me off, then begged for your love, forgiveness and understanding, and then tried to initiate sex. No, at some critical moment, my nerves and will, unhoned by any organized sport and character building challenges, will desert, yet again, like the insubstantial promises they are, and I will cowardly fail to haul you up, pass back the rope, administer the snake venom or answer the phone.
Worst of all, I will no doubt lie about it, and use our terrible ordeal and your selfless heroic death, to get laid and fulfill my other ambitions. I will use it to impress girls of an inappropriate and impressionable age and use our experience further to justify various sexual shortcomings. I will lie to your Mom. I will tell them that I intended to propose to you on that very fateful day and that you accepted, and not that this was some last ditch effort to reinvigorate a relationship that had staled utterly out of my lack of personal growth. I will lie to your siblings and we will form a grotesque bond based on their love of you and the enormous tearful lies I will have created to make it seem like I tried to save you, found deep resources of love and spiritual strength that in reality, I was wholly wanting.
Finally, when I alone and friendless as an old coot who has told his increasingly shaky story too many times, I will actually believe it and die thinking that I might deserve to see you again.
12 years ago
