Poor You

We had to leave the car at the road and carry everything down. He was tired and in a bad mood and purposely took light loads. The hill was so steep that he slipped and fell anyways. He scraped up his knee pretty good and sat for a while, with a wet cloth to mop up the blood every couple of minutes. I watched him through one of the windows in the cottage and even I wanted to smack him and I have the patience of a saint.

In the twelve years that I've known Quentin, he has grown from a shy thinking man into a insolent self-pitying man. He spends so much time thinking about the perceived threats he hears in the words of those who surround him that his ability to discern his inner paranoia from the outer reality, which is sometimes hard, has made it impossible to like him anymore.

I remember something a girlfriend of mine once said to me. She was relating her day to me and it included seeing someone out of the blue. She was insulted when this old friend called her by a nickname she hadn't heard in years. She said to me, "Why is it that people will not accept that I've changed? It's been ten years. Everybody changes, right? Why would he think that I'm exactly the same person I was ten years ago?" I told her it's because no one really changes. She left me soon after that.

That's not really true, however, and despite what I said that day I believe that every second could contain the seed-the germ of an impetus, the line to cross- that could well bring on profundities by the truckload. I just don't go around saying things like that in public. After having made a few of these important announcements you might wonder why I would give up on someone like Quentin. What it comes down to is essentially this: If he believes the world is shit then it is, for him. You know people like this.

So, we rode out the weekend with him bitching about this and complaining about that and I was hoping Monday afternoon would come without someone popping him in the mouth and we were so close. My reputation for saintly patience has been tarnished because as we were packing the car, waiting for Quentin to gather his stuff up, which took the exact amount of time for the rest of us to load the cottage into the car, I lost my temper. I pushed him around a little, with him yelling his head off the entire time, calling me things 'tough guy' and 'big man'. Then I just threw him in the lake. I did, however, solve the problem of never having to worry about his hurt feelings again.

Some of you might think that I was a little rough on poor old Quentin. Fuck you. Sometimes you just need to punch mealy mouthed little whiners in the chops and be done with it.

Yes, some people can change and in ways that are very profound. Look at me, I can spell now. On the other hand there a lot of people out there who will refuse the offer of a seed, or the germ of an impetus or to cross the lines they draw around themselves. Leave them where they lie. Just remember that the next time you see them they'll likely run away from you.