An Apology

Monty said he was sorry for the conversation we had the other day. He peppered it with excuses from being really stressed, which is completely understandable, to running out of his medication, which he just got replenished yesterday. I actually didn't speak with him, this was all in the voicemail he left me. He even admitted to making a lot of excuses for his behavior, but it boiled down to the things he said not being fair to me.

When I visited him earlier this year, one of our conversations was him longingly asking me why nothing had ever developed further between us. I told him in all honestly, and as gently as possible, that I have never been attracted to him. He is a wonderful friend, and I value him immensely as such, but I never thought of him beyond that. His wives thought otherwise, of course. If I wanted him, he would have been mine. This I know as fact, and our mutual friends have said as much.

Through the years, he would visit or pick me up at work for an evening out. I was constantly fielding the "is he your boyfriend" questions that always popped up, as often as I had to insightfully remind them that beauty is in the eye of the beholder when coworkers would comment that he was handsome. I confess I've never seen him as a handsome man, always just a good friend.

If I wanted him, he would have been mine. When I learned of his crime, this thought came to mind. Promptly followed by knowing that he would have committed his crime while in a relationship with, or married to, me. It affirmed that I always had made the right decision in not furthering our relationship beyond friendship (the fact that he doesn't do anything for me on that level notwithstanding). While I've never really gotten along with his current wife, I can't even begin to imagine the amount of betrayal she must be feeling. There are times when I feel it, and he is only my friend. As husband, lover, father of her children, she must be feeling much more anguish about this than I am. On one hand, I am sorry for her. On the other, I am thankful it is her in that place and not me.

He is right that that conversation was not fair to me. As much as he tried to explain it away, I know it was truth. He is facing an ending of one phase of his life. Just as any ending, he wants to clear whatever needs clearing. Maybe it was lack of meds and had something to do with the talk he had with his wife the previous day, but it was still truth. In my experience, lack of meds is more likely to loosen the tongue than it is to produce lies.